Cold as Hell (Haven’s Rock #3)

Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I call Storm over and beeline for the residences. Grant has gone to confront Thierry and…

And that is not where the voices are coming from. I frown and peer through the dark town until I see Dalton. He’s up ahead, planted in front of Grant, who’s trying to get around him to the butcher shop. Mathias stands on the front porch, arms crossed, one hand holding a large knife.

“If you cannot handle him, I will,” Mathias says. “You do not want that.”

“Get the fuck inside and let me handle it,” Dalton snaps.

“Are you going to handle it?” Mathias says. “I question that right now. If you cannot—”

“Stop your fucking posturing bullshit, Mathias. You are not helping. Get your ass inside. Now. ”

“Mathias!” I shout, and I sound as if I’m calling a growling dog to heel, I’m okay with that. He is posturing, which he does to shore up his reputation—and keep people at bay—but he usually doesn’t interfere with our job.

“Get inside,” I snap in French.

Mathias turns a gaze on me, and for two seconds, it’s ice cold, sending a chill through me. But then he blinks and sniffs.

“Tell your husband—” he begins, in French.

“I’ll tell him nothing,” I say. “Show a little damn respect and address him yourself.”

The front door opens, and Mathias wheels, knife raised. “I told you to stay inside.”

Sebastian only fixes Mathias with a look… and then steps past him.

“You!” Grant shouts. “Get the hell out here and face me.”

Two figures come running between buildings. Anders and Marlon. They both advance on Grant, but Dalton lifts a hand, telling them to hold off for now.

“What’s going on here?” I say as I walk over.

“He’s the one Lynn was with,” Grant says, jabbing a finger at Sebastian. “He was screwing around with her and he killed her.”

For a second, I think Grant saw Sebastian walk into the butcher shop and, from the back, mistook him for Thierry. They’re about the same height and build, with dark blond hair. From the front it’s clearly Sebastian, and it’s light enough to see his face.

“Sebastian?” I say. “You think Sebastian—”

“I was going through Lynn’s drawers. I need clothing to cover her dead body, after someone left her in a storm naked. I found this in her underwear drawer.”

He lifts something I can’t quite make out. Dalton takes it gingerly with a gloved hand and holds it out to me. I walk closer. It’s tiny feathers braided into a heart.

“It’s a fishing lure,” Grant spits. “Like the ones he makes.”

“Sebastian is not the only person who knows how to tie a lure,” Mathias says.

“Those are his feathers. Lynn bought one of his damn lures. Or she says she bought it. She didn’t even fish, but she said the feathers were so pretty.”

They are very nice—iridescent black interwoven with white. Pretty… and distinctive.

“They’re my feathers,” Sebastian says, ignoring a warning growl from Mathias. “Lynn did buy a lure from me, with those same feathers. I brought them back from the settlement when I went to see Felicity. Lynn liked them.”

“Is this the one she bought?” I lift the lure.

“No,” Grant snaps. “It’s not.”

Sebastian opens his mouth.

“Do not answer her,” Mathias says.

“Lynn bought a regular lure,” Sebastian says. “That one’s mine, which Mathias knows because he saw me making it last month. It’s for Felicity.” He looks at me. “I did not give it to Lynn.” He looks at Grant. “Your wife was a nice lady, and I enjoyed talking to her, but that was it. I have a girlfriend. I—”

“You killed her. You screwed around with her and then you murdered her. There is something wrong with you, boy. Lynn couldn’t see it, but I can. You’re not right.”

“I did not kill your wife,” Sebastian says. “I was not having an affair with her. I did not see her yesterday. I did not kill her. I’m very sorry for your loss—”

Grant lunges, but Marlon and Anders leap forward to grab him even as Dalton catches him and blocks his path.

“You can’t hide behind that old man forever,” Grant snaps.

“Grant…” I say. “If someone did kill Lynn, we will investigate. You need to—”

“He did it. Search his place. Interview him. He murdered my wife, and if you won’t do something about it, I will.”

Dalton shakes his head. “Grant? You’re under house arrest. Come with me—”

Grant snarls and lunges for Sebastian again, but the others easily hold him off and then haul him away. Once they’re gone, I turn to Sebastian.

“ Non, ” Mathias says.

Sebastian turns and murmurs something I don’t catch to the older man. Mathias scowls and stomps into the butcher shop, slamming the door behind him.

“Ignore him,” Sebastian says. “He’s just a little… overprotective.”

“Just a little,” I murmur.

“I know you need to talk to me and probably search the apartment again.”

“I do. Last time I was only looking at the sleeping pills.”

“I know. Come on up.”

Before I can climb the stairs to Sebastian’s apartment, Marlon comes loping back and motions that he needs to speak to me.

“I’ll go up—” Sebastian says, and then stops. “I’ll wait here.”

I nod my thanks for his understanding—if he’s even remotely a suspect, once again, I can’t let him enter his apartment before I search it. I lead Marlon off.

“I wasn’t going to come back,” Marlon says. “But Eric thought I should. I told him…” He rubs his arm, as if cold, and glances behind me. I look back to see Sebastian sitting on the porch, looking the other way, giving us privacy.

“I told him that the figure I saw with Lynn, it could have been the kid.”

I nod. “Sebastian’s the right size. I know.”

“So is Thierry. Hell, so are a bunch of others, men and women. I don’t think he’d ever hurt Lynn. He’s a good kid, and he’s crazy about his girlfriend, and I know that doesn’t mean he couldn’t… whatever, but I just can’t see it.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just…” Marlon trails off and shakes his head decisively. “That’s all. I’m just having… Shit, Casey. I was the last person to see Lynn alive. I probably saw her with her killer. I could have saved her.”

I squeeze his arm. “You had no way of knowing, and her killer was almost certainly armed. If you confronted them, they might still have killed her—and also killed you.”

I don’t know that, but I need to say something. I can’t imagine the guilt he must be feeling. He nods, slowly, mumbling, “Maybe. Okay. I should go.”

He glances toward Sebastian again.

“Marlon?” I say. “What is it?”

He hesitates, and then says, “Will asked whether I could say the guy I saw absolutely wasn’t the kid. I think he hoped I’d say yeah, it wasn’t. I said he was the right size, and Eric said you need to know that. So…” He smacks his hands down at his sides. “That’s it. That’s all I had to say.”

He turns. I let him get two steps. Then I say, “Marlon…”

He turns, slowly, almost reluctantly. “Yeah?”

I walk over. “That’s not all, is it?”

He hesitates, and glances in the direction the others went, as if wanting to leave this and catch up with them.

“Marlon…? If there’s more, I need to know it.”

He exhales. “It’s nothing really.”

“Tell me, and I’ll decide whether it’s nothing.”

He glances after the others again and then says, “I thought it was Sebastian.”

“Thought…?”

“When I saw Lynn being escorted by someone, my first thought was that it was Sebastian. Something in the way he moved.” Marlon throws up his hands. “I don’t know. It was just an impression. But then Grant thought I said Thierry’s name, and I realized I didn’t have any proof about who it was, and if something happened to Lynn, I shouldn’t be making guesses.”

He looks at me. “I didn’t tell Grant I saw Thierry escorting Lynn. But I didn’t say I just saw ‘someone’ either. I said I saw Sebastian.”

Sebastian takes me up to his apartment. He offers tea or a cold drink, but I say no. I need to interview him quickly. My talk with Marlon had given Sebastian time to come up with a story, if that’s what he needed.

Do I think Marlon’s right? No, but what I think isn’t important. If there are detectives who can tell the guilty from innocent, I will never be one of them, and I’ve honestly begun to believe they don’t exist outside detective stories. The ability to “tell” monsters from ordinary people is a fiction we tell ourselves, because we don’t want to accept the truth, which is that nothing gives away the monsters among us.

Grant said he knows something’s wrong with Sebastian. So that’s proof that you can tell, isn’t it? No. What Sebastian has isn’t a streak of evil. It’s sociopathy. Call it mental illness or neurodiversity. What it means for him is that, as hard as he tries, he’ll never quite act the way we expect of neurotypical people.

Hell, the longer I live in Rockton or Haven’s Rock, with such a small community of people, the less I’m convinced that neurotypical is even a thing and not just a name given to a mental construct humans have declared “normal.” To someone like Grant, confident in the presumption he is “normal,” it’s easy to look at Sebastian, or April, or even Dalton and me, and to narrow his eyes and decide something isn’t quite right.

In Sebastian’s case, yes, Grant is correct that the deviation in the young man’s brain does make him dangerous, and so I cannot absolve him of this accusation outright, as much as my gut says the crime doesn’t fit the young man I know.

“That is the heart I made for Felicity,” Sebastian says as we crest the stairs into the apartment. “I’m sure of it, but I’d like to check where I was keeping it, if that’s okay.”

I nod and follow Sebastian to his room. On his dresser, there’s what looks like a jewelry box. When he opens it, I see that it’s his lure-making equipment. He pulls out a drawer and removes tissue-wrapped objects. He takes out one, starts to unwrap it, and then stops.

“This one’s been opened.” He points at the bottom. “I fold them under when I wrap them.”

“Those are…?”

“My lures.” He takes out another one. “This one’s been opened, too.” A third. “But not this one.” He shows me how he’d tucked it under, forming a perfect pouch for the elaborate and delicate lures.

He opens the three. They’re all lures—none a heart-shaped decoration like Grant found.

“It was in here,” he says.

“When did you last see it?” I ask.

He shrugs. “When I made it last month. I wrapped it up and put it away.”

“And you didn’t notice one missing?”

“The other three were already in there. That’s the drawer for Felicity’s lures. I finished hers first, and then moved on to doing ones for others. Once they were done, I didn’t open the drawer again.”

He doesn’t say that someone stole the heart. He doesn’t even point out that the opened ones suggest someone was looking through the lures. Sebastian isn’t only smart—he’s a convicted felon. And he trusts me to draw my own conclusions.

“You sold a fly to Lynn?” I say.

He nods. “About a month ago. Someone heard I do them and was asking about them, so I promised to bring some to the Roc. I did. A few people wanted to buy them for spring fishing. Selling them is awkward—I don’t need credits—but if I give them away…” He shrugs.

“If they’re free, everyone will want one because they are pretty. That’s why Lynn bought one?”

He nods. “She said she doesn’t fish, but she wanted it.” He glances over. “She wasn’t flirting or anything. To her, I’m a kid. Yeah, she hit on Gunnar, who isn’t much older than me, but she definitely saw me as a kid.”

“Who all was there when you were showing them off?”

“Uh… I can give you a list of those who were at the table, but others stopped by for a look. Anyone in the Roc that night saw them, and more people know I make them, from conversations and such.”

“Did you mention the heart one to anybody?”

“I don’t think so. Mathias saw it and…” He stops. “Lynn. Not that she saw it, but I asked whether she actually wanted a fly or just something else, maybe for a necklace. I said I’d made a heart for my girlfriend. She said the fly was fine.”

“Was that at the Roc?”

He nods. “And before you can ask, others were there, but I don’t remember who.”

Sebastian lowers his voice. “Is it true what Grant said? I heard that Lynn died of exposure. But you think it was murder?”

“Grant knows it was hypothermia, and he knows we’re investigating the possibility it was murder. Anything else is his own conjecture.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets, going silent. Then he says, “I don’t have an alibi. It’s the same as for the night Kendra was attacked. During the storm, I was here in the apartment, working on my flies. Mathias was, too, which is technically an alibi but…”

He shrugs. Again, Mathias would tell us whatever it took to exonerate Sebastian.

“He wouldn’t let me get away with murder,” Sebastian says, as if reading my thoughts. “He’s been very clear on that. If I screw up, that’s it.”

“No exceptions?”

Sebastian exhales and lowers himself onto the edge of his bed. “I should say no exceptions but we both know Mathias’s ethical code is a little convoluted.”

“Just a little.”

“If I killed someone in self-defense, he wouldn’t turn me in. But if someone hurt me, I wouldn’t kill them in revenge. That’s a shitty revenge—hurting them back would be correct. Same if someone hurt Felicity. Now, if someone hurt another person I care about, like you or Mathias? I’d probably just turn them in. No offense.”

I need to bite my cheek at that. He says it with sincere apology, as if I might be offended that he’d turn in my attacker rather than wreak vengeance himself.

He continues in that same thoughtful tone, as if laying out the circumstances under which you’d commit murder is very ordinary conversation. “But killing someone because they killed a stranger, even horribly?” He shakes his head. “I’d be putting a target on myself, and I don’t do that.”

Unlike Mathias. That’s what he means. I’m sure Sebastian knows what crimes Mathias has committed. While that’s hardly part of normal psychotherapy, nothing about their particular therapeutic relationship counts as normal.

“What about an accident?” I say. “What would Mathias do if you accidentally killed someone?”

“Accidentally let Lynn die of exposure?”

I move to a small chair and sit. “Someone was seen escorting Lynn during the worst of the storm. The size of the person fits you. Let’s say you’re out and you see her struggling to get to her residence. You help her. As soon as you see the residence, you say goodbye, and she gets turned around in the whiteout and heads into the forest.”

“But that wouldn’t be my fault. Sure, I’d feel bad that I didn’t take her to the front door, but no one would blame me.” He considers. “No, I guess Grant would still blame me. But if that happened, I’d quietly tell you what happened, and I know you wouldn’t go around telling people that I let her die. Or even that I was the last to see her.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“So I’d tell you. But whoever was seen with Lynn, it wasn’t me.”

I’ve given him an out here. Someone saw a person escorting Lynn, and that person could have been him. All he has to do is say yes, that’s how it happened. Oh, I’d still investigate, because Lynn didn’t just get lost and die. But without more information, this could seem like a way to explain why he’d been seen with her. He didn’t take it, though.

“Wait,” he says. “What time did someone think they saw me?”

“Roughly four. During the worst of the storm.”

“Then I might have an actual alibi. I stepped outside around three thirty to see what was happening with the storm. I noticed someone outside at Kenny’s place, wrestling with a shutter. I pulled on my stuff and told Mathias I was going out. One of the external shutters on the carpentry store had come loose and was banging away and Kenny was fixing it before it flew off and damaged something. I helped with that, and then we went in and had a coffee. I got back around six and made dinner.”

He looks my way. “Please tell me that helps.”

It does, if Kenny can confirm the alibi. Or, at least, it helps prove that Sebastian wasn’t that person seen with Lynn. Does it exonerate him completely? No. But it’s a good start.

“It helps,” I say. “I’m going to need to search your room, though.”

“Do whatever you need to do, because between the drugs for Kendra and Felicity’s heart being in Lynn’s drawer, I’m starting to feel like someone here doesn’t like me much.”