Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
I don’t find anything in Sebastian’s room, and that’s not surprising. If he is being framed, it’d be wise for the killer to hide a “trophy” in Sebastian’s bedroom—a piece of clothing or jewelry—but the storm means it’d be hard to have gotten access to this room today. Either Sebastian or Mathias has been here or in the shop all day. Any evidence would need to be hidden later, which is why it’s a good thing I conducted the search now.
I’m also quick to warn Sebastian to keep both the shop and their apartment secured, but according to him, they’ve been doing that since the drugs were found missing.
Do I think Sebastian is being framed? Yes. Stealing the temazepam had seemed a matter of convenience. Someone knew he had sleeping medication and discovered Mathias doesn’t lock the doors. But the heart-shaped lure placed in Lynn’s underwear drawer is deliberate.
Not only does Sebastian match the basic description of the person Marlon saw, but the way that person moved suggested it was Sebastian. I know what Marlon meant by that. Sebastian carries himself in a way that seems a study in contradictions. He gives off a very casual air, laid-back and unprepossessing. That’s what he wants people to see. It lowers their guard and helps them dismiss him. Sure, he might seem a little off, but certainly not dangerous. Just a kid. That’s why Lynn would have set her eye on Gunnar while never looking Sebastian’s way. He seems younger than he is. Just a kid.
And yet, despite that affected persona of nonchalance, there’s a watchfulness to him, an alertness. He has a very relaxed stride, like the kind of guy who’d stroll into a bad neighborhood by accident. But the rest of him—his face and especially his eyes—tells a very different story. He is exceptionally aware at all times. That casual walk and eagle-eyed gaze could be emulated by anyone who has watched Sebastian.
Our killer isn’t acting on impulse. The theft of the drugs implies planning. What if part of that planning meant setting up a fall guy? Someone who bears a physical resemblance to them, especially when bundled in winter wear.
Who might frame Sebastian this way? Anyone matching his basic physical size, which includes a half dozen men and women in town. But the one that comes to mind first? The one who keeps sliding into the center of this.
Thierry.
From Sebastian’s apartment, I pop by and see Kenny, who confirms what Sebastian said about helping him and having coffee afterward. The times match up. Next I go to where we’re holding Grant. In Rockton, we’d had a cell in the police station for anyone we needed to confine. The problem came when we needed to watch—or guard—someone and didn’t want to make them stay in a cell so small they couldn’t even stretch out on the floor. We do have a cell in Haven’s Rock, but we also have a windowless bedroom with a guard area just outside the door. That bedroom is where Grant’s being held.
I find both Dalton and Anders just outside the building door, talking.
“I need to speak to Grant.” I look at Dalton. “Ten minutes tops. Then I’m off to bed.”
He grunts and opens the door.
“I’ll grab my stuff for the night shift,” Anders says, and takes off at a lope.
Dalton and I go inside. The small exterior room has a cot and a chair. That’s where Anders will spend the night, right outside Grant’s door. Dalton knocks on that door.
When no one answers, Dalton sighs. “I know you’re in there, Grant. I’m just knocking to be polite and let you know I’m bringing Casey in.”
“Yeah? I just lost my wife. Polite would be not treating me like a goddamn criminal.”
Dalton opens the door. Grant is up on the bed, dressed, arms crossed, a kid who’s determined to spend his grounding like that.
“You’re here because you threatened a resident,” I say. “You were warned to stop. Warned multiple times, in deference to what you’ve gone through. But if you kept threatening, we needed to put you in here to cool off. It’s better than the cell.”
“You know who should be in the cell? That kid.”
As I move into the room, I take a better look at Grant. Could he pass for Sebastian? He’s a couple of inches taller, but otherwise, if he had the walk right, he could have done it. Heavy winter wear—plus a blizzard—means I can’t rely too much on the description.
“You say you found the lure in Lynn’s underwear drawer,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Hidden?”
He shrugs. “It was wrapped in a pair of her underwear, so yeah, hidden.”
“Would that be a safe place for her to hide something?”
He looks at me like I’m joking. “Uh, it’s her underwear drawer. I don’t go in there.”
“Not even to put away laundry?” Dalton says.
Grant’s face screws up. “Why would I be putting away laundry?”
“I put away ours,” Dalton says. “Including my wife’s underwear.”
“Well, I don’t. The laundry is her job. Always has been. And before you think that’s some chauvinistic bullshit, I do dishes and she does laundry.”
“When was it last done?” I ask.
He throws up his hands. “How would I know? Again, not my job. She takes the laundry and brings it back.”
We have a centralized facility here, as in Rockton. I can check when it was last done for Lynn and Grant, which might narrow down the window of when that lure could have been dropped off. Still, if it’d been a few days, that increased the risk of Lynn finding it.
“Back up to yesterday morning,” I say.
“I wish I could,” he mutters, and again, I’m reminded that he really is grieving. Or doing a good job of faking it.
“When you left your apartment, did you lock the door?” I ask.
“Lynn and I left together for work. We never lock it.”
“What time was that?”
He peers at me. “Are you suggesting someone planted that lure?”
“I’m running through all possibilities. Now, what time did you leave?”
I make notes of his comings and goings that day. Both Lynn and Grant worked all morning, and neither seems to have returned before the storm. Since then, Grant has come and gone, never locking the door. There would have been plenty of opportunities for Lynn’s killer to slip in and leave that lure.
The family building is currently being used for couples, too, since the only family is Dana and the boys. Being seen hanging around when you don’t live there would be noticed… unless you have a reason for hanging around. Unless people are accustomed to seeing you at that building because you’re tutoring the two boys who live there.
And, once again, the pendulum swings back to Thierry.
I go home after that. I stay up for a while talking over the case with Dalton, but I’m in bed shortly after midnight, and thankfully, I’m too exhausted to lie there working it through. The next thing I know, it’s morning, and I wake to Dalton packing our bags.
“The weather is clear enough to leave?” I say.
He grunts.
I push up into a sitting position. “I’m not going to argue against leaving, Eric. I hate taking off before this case is solved, but I won’t risk our baby’s life for that. If the weather is good enough to fly, I just need time to talk to Will. He’ll be in charge of the case. He can investigate, but mostly, we’ll just need the town to be locked down until we return. Which, I know, may not be for a few weeks. I don’t expect Will to solve the case, but I do trust him—and the others—to lock down tight and keep the killer from striking again.”
“The weather isn’t good enough to go,” he says. “That’s what I’m grumbling about. The cloud cover’s too low. I’m hoping it’ll clear, though. Meanwhile, you have time to keep working the case.”
When he walks close, I pull him into a kiss. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank the damn clouds.”
“I know, and I also know you want to leave as soon as possible. Which we will. I promise.”
I start my day with a breakfast meeting. It’s supposed to be a private meeting with Anders, in preparation for handing over the case, but I find him at the clinic, and it’s hard to call him away without making April feel excluded. And the more I think of it, the more I realize she should be part of this. Not only is she our medical examiner, but she’s discovered a love of mysteries. They appeal to her problem-solving brain. Our mysteries might not be as tidy as the ones she reads—and she may consider that my fault, for not being as good as those fictional detectives—but she does appreciate any chance to give her mental muscles a workout.
So it’s a meeting for three. Well, four, when Dalton returns with breakfast. But then he also returns with Yolanda.
“She asked the status of the investigation,” he grumbles. “I made the mistake of telling her.”
“He said you were discussing it with Will over breakfast,” Yolanda says. “I decided to join.”
I look up at her from the chair April insisted I sit in. “You’re always saying you want to be treated like everyone else and not pull rank… and then you pull rank.”
“Pfft.” She sets a plate of bakery goodies on the counter. “I never said I won’t pull rank. I totally will, when it suits me. What’s the point of privilege if you can’t wield it to get what you want? So fill me in. I’m guessing this bullshit about Lynn’s death probably being accidental is just that—bullshit. You know it’s murder.”
April says, “Someone stripped her, tied her down, and watched her die of hypothermia.”
The room goes silent and Yolanda stares, as if this might be my sister’s developing-but-odd sense of humor.
Then Yolanda says, “Oh,” and sways, and Anders darts forward to steady her. She doesn’t object until she realizes it and then brushes him off and lowers herself into another chair he’d dragged into the room earlier.
“That was blunt, wasn’t it?” April says.
“A little.” Yolanda tries for a twisted smile. “But better than cushioning it for me.” She leans forward, inhaling deeply. Her hand trembles, and when she notices it, she curses and shakes it hard. “Fucking tremors.”
“They worsen with stress,” April says. “But I suppose you know that.”
Yolanda gives another hard shake of her hands, as if that will help. Then she looks at me. “Is April right about Lynn?” At my sister’s small noise, she says, “Of course you’re right, April. You wouldn’t say it otherwise. I mean, are we sure that’s what happened or is that the theory?”
“We’re never absolutely certain,” I say. “But it’s the theory that fits the evidence, unless anyone else can come up with another one. Lynn was found naked, which can happen during hypothermia.”
“Getting naked?”
“Paradoxical undressing. There’s a medical explanation. It’s like a severe hot flash, and the person—already confused by the hypothermia—takes off their clothing. So that seemed to fit. We found some of her clothes before we found her. But then there were very light abrasions on her wrists and one ankle. We went back and found marks in the snow suggesting she’d been lying on her back with her arms and legs out. Abrasions on a tree and two bolt holes in the ice suggest where she’d been…” I hesitate to say “staked out” and go with “… tied up.”
“And the part about her killer watching her?” Yolanda fists her hands and tucks them away. “I know that might not matter. What counts is that she died…” She swallows hard. “Horribly.”
“But it does matter,” Anders says. “It shows what kind of person we’re dealing with.”
Yolanda honestly looks like she’s going to be sick. I can argue that she inserted herself in this, and so we bear no responsibility. If I’d tried to dissuade her, she’d only have dug in her heels. But she didn’t live in Rockton. She hasn’t seen what we have. And whatever tough facade she adopts, that isn’t necessarily who she is underneath. I know that better than anyone. Looking as if nothing would faze you doesn’t mean you lack the empathy to understand what Lynn endured.
So I soften my tone as I say, “We found evidence that someone sat on a log facing where she’d been tied. Of course, that doesn’t prove they watched her—”
“He did,” Yolanda says. “That was the point. If he’s going to make someone die a terrifying death, he’s going to watch.” Her voice drips with disgust. “Otherwise, why bother.”
“I would agree,” April says. “I realize you don’t like to speak in absolutes, Casey, but it was a truly horrifying way to kill someone. Sadistic. The point, I believe, of sadism is to observe the suffering.”
We all sit in silence as breakfast stays on the counter, untouched. Then I say, “Speaking of absolutes, though, we can’t be sure this was a man, so let’s not refer to them as he.”
“No sexual assault?” Yolanda says.
“No sign of it.”
“Then Kendra…” Her gaze shoots to me. “Are we presuming it’s the same person who tried to take Kendra?” Her shoulders hunch. “That that was supposed to happen to her?”
“The only clear link is the fact that we have one attempted and one successful abduction. I think that’s enough to link them in theory, but I’d like more.”
“Have we run a tox screen on Lynn?” Yolanda asks.
“It is inconclusive,” April answers.
“And I’m not sure she would have been drugged,” I say. “At least not in the same way Kendra was. It was a storm. Someone was pretending to help her get home and led her into the forest. While we don’t see signs of a struggle, she was dressed in heavy outerwear, as was her attacker.”
“Scratches wouldn’t show,” Anders says. “Even blows would have been cushioned.”
Yolanda says, “So she let him— them —undress her and tie her up without arguing?”
“She may have been in shock. She also may have just been doing as she was told, presuming it was an assault.”
“Get it over with,” Anders murmurs.
“Or feign compliancy and hope to lower her attacker’s guard,” I say.
Yolanda shakes her head. “I can’t see that. She knows she’s in trouble. She’s going to fight.”
I say nothing. Oh, I would argue—fiercely—in any other circumstances. Yolanda might not intend it, but she’s skirting dangerously close to victim blaming. Sometimes fighting is the answer, and sometimes it’s not, and no one can say which they’d do until they’re there. At eighteen, my boyfriend and I faced three guys in an alley. They’d come for him. I fought. He fled. He survived… until I recovered enough to confront him.
Would I be so quick to fight back again? Knowing I nearly died that time? That isn’t a call I can make until I’m faced with the choice, and even then, whatever I decide would be ten percent informed decision and ninety percent animal panic.
I say, evenly, “I don’t consider the lack of defense wounds to be proof Lynn was drugged. If she did comply, she was disabled quickly, before she could react.”
Anders nods. “It really can happen that fast. She’s going along with what her attacker says, plotting her escape, and then they overpower her. Tie her up as she’s still processing what’s happening.”
“And screaming for help,” I say. “We can’t overlook that. She was only a hundred and fifty feet from town. Her first reaction—correctly—would be to scream.”
“Except there was a storm,” Anders says. “No one could hear her.”
“He didn’t gag her?” Yolanda says. Then her face sharpens with bitterness. “No, of course he didn’t. He didn’t need to, with the storm raging, and it’d be much more satisfying to watch her screaming.”
“We found no sign of a gag.”
“I did find signs of laryngeal trauma,” April says.
Yolanda looks sick again.
I straighten. “We’ll go over the case in detail, along with the suspects and all evidence. That’s why we’re all here. Eric’s hoping the clouds will lift enough for us to leave today. If we do…” I fight to keep my voice steady. “We’ll likely be gone for a few weeks. Which means I can’t finish this investigation.”
“We’ve got it,” Anders says.
“I hate leaving. I had a scare the night before last, but it doesn’t seem to have been anything serious and—”
“You’re leaving,” Anders says, meeting my gaze. “I know you’re going to say you feel fine now, but what if something goes wrong when you can’t leave?”
“The baby is still in breech,” April says. “I am not certain I care to conduct my first Cesarean section on my sister. I would like you to leave.” She pauses. “That sounds harsh. I mean that, for your sake, I would prefer you to leave, but also, if it helps convince you to go, I do not wish to be responsible for anything going wrong with my niece’s birth.”
“It’s a girl?” Yolanda says, perking up.
“We don’t know that,” I say. “April and Eric have just decided it is.”
“But we could find out,” Yolanda says. “We have an ultrasound here.” She looks at me. “It would be a good idea to take a look at the baby. And a welcome distraction right now. You owe us that much.”
I snort. “I certainly do not. If I need an ultrasound, April will provide it… without checking for the baby’s sex. But, back to the case, I wasn’t arguing for us to stay.”
I glance at Dalton, who has said nothing, but I haven’t missed how tightly he’s been holding himself during this part of the conversation. “I promised I wouldn’t. I agree that, while I feel guilty leaving when we have a murder, my obstetrician strongly urges me to go to Whitehorse, so I will. April doesn’t want to be responsible for any problems with our baby, and neither do I. We fly out at the first opportunity. We have satellite phones now, and I can micromanage that way.”
“If the phones work,” Anders says. “I have a feeling they might stop, depending on how often you call to check up on me.”
I shake my head.
“There’s not going to be a lot of investigating,” Dalton says. “Casey should have time to pursue her leads before we go. After that, it’s a matter of you guys following up on any new leads, but mostly just making sure no one else gets hurt.”
“Locking down?” Anders says.
Dalton nods. “We’ll talk to Phil and then we’ll hold a town meeting.” He glances my way. “And as proof of my love, I will lead it while you get these guys up to speed.”
I smile. “Thanks. The residents may not appreciate that, but I do.”