Chapter 47
Conor pulled his cruiser off the main road and up the hill toward the log cabin in the woods shortly after sunrise to serve an arrest warrant on the man who was not Adam Cruz.
And he had Jojo with him.
He hadn’t let on to her how conflicted he’d been about it, how long and hard he had thought about it. It was one thing to accept her help interviewing witnesses, chasing down leads and negotiating the shark … or maybe minnow-infested waters of Amish-dom, and she’d been invaluable.
But arresting a dangerous man was something else entirely.
It wasn’t about authority. Jojo Kaufmann was still a sworn Somerset County Deputy Sheriff.
That wasn’t it. And when he forced himself to admit what it was about, he didn’t like what he saw.
Bottom line … he didn’t want her to get hurt.
And as soon as he fully owned that understanding, he knew that he had to take her with him.
She had worked the case as hard as he had and to leave her behind because of his feelings …
that was wrong on every possible level. Jojo had earned the right to be here. Full stop.
There was no vehicle in the driveway. Conor drove around to the back of the cabin. Nothing there either.
“Looks like he’s not here,” Jojo said, obviously disappointed.
Conor parked in back. They got out of the cruiser and drew their weapons, searched carefully and could see no one. Then they went around to the front of the cabin, to the only door.
On the porch, Conor flattened himself against the wall on the left side of the door and Jojo did the same on the right. He knocked and announced, “Mr. Mason, I’m Lieutenant McCaffrey with the state police and we need to talk.”
Silence.
Conor knocked again and called out again.
Still nothing.
He reached down then and tried the doorknob.
It was unlocked. Shoving the door inward, he peeked through the open doorway and saw no one, stepped inside quickly, gun raised, and swept the room.
After he cleared the only other two doors in the room—the bathroom and the closet—they holstered their weapons.
Cruz/Mason hadn’t allowed them to come into the cabin when they’d been here the first time.
“I don’t mean to sound like Captain Obvious here,” Jojo said, “but this is some hunting cabin!”
The walls were lined with trophies—two big bucks with huge racks, an antelope, a bighorn sheep of some kind, and even a wild boar.
“You think he shot all these?” Conor asked.
“No … because they weren’t all shot.” She pointed to the smaller game, stuffed and displayed on shelves and tables—a stuffed bobcat that looked ready to pounce, a red fox and a beaver on a log.
On a rack in the back corner of the room were lush pelts—fox, muskrat maybe. Possibly mink. Who knew? The only furs Conor was familiar with were still on the animals.
“This guy’s a trapper—apparently a good one.” She gestured to the trophies on the walls. “But even if he only bagged a couple of those, he obviously knows his way around a high-powered rifle.”
Conor’s phone buzzed on his belt, and he answered.
“McCaffrey here.” He listened. When the man had said his piece, Conor asked, “Would you be willing to sign a statement to that effect?” He listened some more. “We’ll be getting back to you, Mr. Ferguson, thanks.”
He touched the off icon on his phone and lifted his eyes to Jojo’s.
“The bartender at Forbidden Fruit actually gave my card to the guy who worked on the night of the shooting. Name’s Al Ferguson.
He said James Whitman was there that night, came in about seven o’clock, and was there for several hours. ”
Jojo let out a breath. “So there goes our prime suspect.”
“Hey, maybe this Mason fellow will pan out.”
They turned and started to leave when Jojo stopped. She pushed the door about halfway closed and behind the door was a pair of muddy work boots.
“Whoa … These are right out where we can see them,” she said, as if somebody might be listening or recording.
They had an arrest warrant but not a search warrant. It gave them the right to look for the suspect, and to collect any evidence in plain sight. She reached down and gingerly picked up one boot by the shoelace so she could see the bottom.
“That little bit of a footprint in the mud next to the piece of Mylar stapled to a tree, it had an odd little swirl. Could this be that swirl?”
“Could be,” he said. “We need to bag it as evidence.”
“I’ll get a bag out of the car,” Jojo said.
While she went for the bag, Conor took his phone off his belt and snapped pictures of the boots lying in a heap behind the door to establish where they’d found them.
As he opened the door to step out onto the porch, a piece of wood on the door jamb beside his head splintered, and a delayed Crack! ripped into his ears. He dropped to his knees inside the door and pulled his weapon. Where was Jojo?
“Mr. Mason, this is Conor McCaffrey with the Pennsylvania State Police?—”
“I know who you are. I was ten minutes away from gone.”
Another bullet plowed into the side of the door jamb.
Conor keyed the mic attached to his shoulder and spoke urgently into it.
“Dispatch, this is unit one. Code 10-32. I repeat Code 10-32.” Shots fired! He gave his location and instructed “All units, respond 10-12.” Lights and sirens.
Then he called out, “Don’t do this. You can’t get away. I’ve already called for backup and in ten minutes this place is going to be crawling with police. Don’t make this any worse than it already is. Put the gun down now and come?—”
Another shot rang out.
Where was Jojo?