Chapter Thirty-Two
We manage to convince Gretchen to delay her pick up, using our sat phone. That’s a start, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. She isn’t ready to cancel altogether and let us take her home … with émilie making sure she doesn’t expose Haven’s Rock.
We’ve headed back to town, quietly talking on the way.
Was Blake killed for what he saw? From that distance, he wouldn’t have been able to identify anyone. They could have just not wanted to take chances. Eliminate all witnesses. After all, Blake and Gretchen had lingered in the area afterward.
But circle back to who they were burying. A convict laboring in a mining camp. A guy who didn’t die of natural causes, who hadn’t perished in an accident. He’d been poisoned.
I hate to think a prison camp would murder one of their charges, but they did execute one of their guards in front of us. They may also—as we speculated at the time—have killed the man who kidnapped Max. It’s not a huge leap to killing a miner, maybe one who was causing trouble.
But would they kill Blake—and try to kill Gretchen—for potentially witnessing the burial?
Although it’s not impossible, I think there’s more to it. We know they’re security paranoid. Now we know why. What if they spotted Blake on that rock, surveying the land around their secret and highly illegal mining camp?
They track him and notice he’s with a woman, and they appear to be outsiders, not residents of our settlement.
The next morning, still watching Blake and Gretchen, they follow Blake to the creek.
Maybe he sees them. Maybe they confront him.
Something is said that makes them decide he’s come for them, for their prison camp or their mining operation.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Is that the answer here? As Gretchen said, just the cruelest bad luck? I’m starting to think it is.
Blake and Gretchen weren’t here by accident, but they were what they claimed to be. Hikers … who happened to be in the area because they knew the prospector who started all of this.
I know there are other answers, but everything fits, and Gretchen’s reactions had seemed genuine. They weren’t even here because they thought Mark/Matt’s death seemed suspicious. They literally only came because he said it was a beautiful area.
If all that is true, then it seems someone from the mining camp must have killed Blake.
There’s no third party running around murdering hikers.
We never really thought that was the answer.
We just needed our link, and we thought we had it in Blake and Gretchen’s connection to Mark, but the reality is that Blake probably died because he stepped onto the side of a mountain.
He was spotted, and that sealed his fate.
So what do we do next? We know what we want to do, obviously.
“Confront the bastards,” Dalton says as we near town. “Tell them we know what they are, and we know they poisoned their own employee. They could argue about Blake, insist they didn’t do it, but that doesn’t matter. We have enough.”
“Enough to send them packing?” I say. “Or enough to have them decide we need to be handled the same way they handled Blake?”
Dalton mutters under his breath.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it,” I say. “This only confirms how dangerous they are. We can’t just confront them and tell them to leave.” I take his hand and squeeze it. “But it’s a start. We send Gretchen home and then we have a long talk with émilie.”
Dalton opens his mouth, but we’re on the outskirts of town, and it’s still daytime, with people milling about.
“We’ll get Rory and keep talking,” I murmur.
“Casey,” a voice says behind us.
We turn as Phil strides from the direction of the town hall. “May I speak to you?”
Dalton says, “I’ll grab Rory and check on Storm. Meet you at the clinic.”
I agree, and he leaves.
“May we speak in private?” Phil says, nodding toward the town hall.
I follow him in and shut the door. He locks it, making me raise my brows, but he only heads to his desk and begins tidying papers.
“I have something to confess,” he says.
“You’re not leaving Haven’s Rock? Yes, we know.”
He only gives a faint eye roll and pops the cap onto a pen. “It’s about the break-in. Something I failed to mention because I didn’t want to cause friction with Isabel.”
I settle into a chair. “Is something missing? Something you don’t want her to know you had?”
He frowns, as if he can’t fathom what such a thing might be.
“Of course not. The problem…” He sighs. “Isabel and I disagree about locking our cabin door. I am uncomfortable leaving it unsecured. She teases me about being a city boy who hasn’t adjusted to small-town life.
About a week ago, I thought someone had entered our home.
I didn’t mention it to Isabel because we’d only recently had another point of friction about the door—I locked it, and she didn’t take the key, so she was locked out. ”
“All right…”
He stacks papers. “If I said I believe someone entered our home, she might think I was…” He shrugs.
“Lying to bolster your argument? I can’t imagine that.”
“Perhaps, but since nothing was missing and I wasn’t sure someone had entered, I decided not to mention it.
I forgot it until yesterday, when I said I believe the intruder at the Roc tried to access my desk.
Afterwards, I remember the potential break-in at our home.
The reason I believe someone entered there was that several things on my desk were out of place. ”
“Your desk at home? How many desks do you need?”
“I don’t know, Casey. How many pairs of hiking boots do you need?” He looks pointedly down at my latest pair. “You like having a choice of footwear. I like having a workstation in each place where I work.”
“Okay, okay. So you think someone entered your home and checked your desk there. Then they did the same at the Roc.”
“I believe it is a possibility. Now, while I was here working, I checked for signs that anyone tampered with this desk or filing cabinet, but given that it’s a communal workspace and not everyone keeps it tidy, it’s impossible to tell.”
There’s clear condemnation in his voice, but I ignore it.
His idea of a messy workstation means a crooked stack of papers and one uncapped pen.
Instead, I say, “Also, the town hall is one of the few buildings we do lock. Even when it’s open, anyone can see you enter.
Unlike the Roc, where there’s a back door. ”
“That was my thought as well.”
“Someone checked two of your desks. Looking for more than a stapler. You mentioned your files.”
“Yes, as I said, I keep them secured and hidden. There is no sign that anyone has tampered with that storage unit. I wouldn’t expect that anyway, as only you and Isabel know I keep them in a separate place and neither of you knows where.”
I lean back in my chair. “My first thought would be that they’re looking for resident files, but we’re very clear we don’t keep those on-site.”
“And if they suspected that was a lie, they’d presume you and Eric have them. I am very clear about the scope of my position.”
“You aren’t the people person. You’re the thing person. Inventory, schedules, supplies. Everything about the town infrastructure and operation, excluding the residents. So what would someone want with that?”
He hesitates.
I peer at him. “Phil?”
“I don’t know,” he says a little too quickly.
“But you have a suspicion.”
“Let me continue to think and dig. Even if I’m right, it’s not an immediate threat.”
“Do I get a hint?”
He shakes his head. “You have murders to investigate. I only wanted to mention it, in case you see a connection between the murders and the break-ins, though I cannot imagine what it would be.”
I don’t push Phil. There’s no point. He’s a corporate guy, and this is corporate ass-covering. He realized he may have neglected to tell me about a break-in, so he remedied that.
Why would someone want town-manager files? Even though I consciously dismiss it for now, it nags at the back of my subconscious as I head off to the next bit of business, partly because this is yet another item on my to-do list that seems unconnected to the much bigger issues.
Earlier, I’d planned to speak to Muriel, before I was derailed by émilie’s new information.
Now it’s time to get her to give me the name of who she’s been seeing.
And while I chafe at that waste of effort, there’s also a possibility it might lead to something useful.
And maybe that’s why, when I settle into that interview, I push a specific theory harder than I should.
“Fine,” she says, sitting primly on the edge of her bed. “I’ve been meeting someone. No, I won’t tell you who it is. Whatever the punishment is for breaking curfew, I accept it for both of us. Double the punishment to maintain his privacy.”
“Is it Eric you’re meeting?”
Her head shoots up. “What?”
“Maybe Phil?”
“Of course not.” She bristles. “You’re mocking me, and I do not appreciate it, Detective.”
“How am I mocking you?”
Her glare intensifies. “By mentioning two men who are very happily in relationships. Men who are younger than me, attractive, and taken. Out of my reach.”
“No, I’m only referencing the first part of that equation—the two men who are taken.
Well, so are Devon and Brian, but if you said it was one of them, I might be even more certain you were lying.
My point, Muriel, is that the only reason you’d protect your lover’s identity is if he were off the market.
That takes it down to a very small number of men. ”
Her mouth hardens. “My lover is in a relationship. Just not with anyone in town. Back home.”
“Cut the shit, Muriel. I know your lover isn’t from Haven’s Rock. I have evidence of that.”
Here’s where I bluff. Where I push a theory I have zero evidence for because it suits my own needs. If her lover isn’t from Haven’s Rock, that means he’s from the mining camp, and I would love to have that extra bit of leverage with Rogers.
Hey, so, one of your guys has been regularly trespassing to visit one of our residents.
“Not from town?” Muriel gives a high, nervous laugh. “Where else would he be from? There’s no one else out there. You really are reaching, Detective. Maybe you should take some time off. I can’t imagine how tough it is, working out here with a new baby, hormones still running wild.”
I bite back a response. She’s panicking and swinging wildly.
“There actually is another settlement,” I say. “A distant one. That’s where your lover is from, and I have proof. I just need you to admit it so we can move on.”
She squirms. She denies. I stand firm until finally, she blurts, “Yes, okay? Yes. He’s from another settlement.
I wasn’t lying about needing time to myself, though.
That’s how we met. I would go for walks, and one day, I bumped into him.
Scared me half to death, but it was obvious he wasn’t some recluse living in the forest. He was well-dressed—in expensive outdoor clothing—and he had perfect manners.
He said he lost track of time and walked too far from his camp.
We got talking and then…” She shrugs. “One thing led to another.”
“You said he was well-dressed, well-mannered … Can I get a little more?”
She hesitates and glances down, murmuring, “I don’t want to get him into any trouble.”
“You aren’t. I just need to confirm he really is from that settlement.”
She frowns. “Where else would he be from?”
“Well, we run a town for people in hiding, where we promise privacy. In some cases, like yours, they’re in hiding because people are after them. People who want to hurt them.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widen. “No, he’s definitely from the other place. He has no idea what our town is. He asked. He was very curious but—” She stops short and swallows. “You don’t think … Oh God. What if…?” She squeezes her eyes shut. “What have I done?”
“Muriel,” I say, keeping my voice soft even as a bell clangs in my skull. “Did he ask you to find information on Haven’s Rock?”
Her head whips up. “Wh-what?” The terror on her face tells me everything I need to know.
“He asked you to get information, right? On the town?”
“N-not about the residents. I wouldn’t do that. He just … He was very curious about how our town runs, because he runs the other one, and they’re having trouble. He wanted to know how we get supplies and so on. It—it seemed harmless enough.”
“And how did you attempt to obtain that information?”
She glances away again. “I, uh, went to talk to Phil. I thought maybe I’d just, you know, express an interest in the town’s operation. I figured he’d be at the Roc, so I went inside. He wasn’t there.”
“Did you look for that information?” I catch her gaze. “Answer very carefully, remembering that I would not be pressing if I didn’t have proof. Also remember that you’re already on thin ice, having outright lied to me—yesterday and today—and implied today that my problem is hormonal.”
She has the grace to color at that. “I—I didn’t mean—”
“Where did you look for the information your friend asked you to get?”
“In Phil’s desk,” she blurts. “Quickly. I felt horrible afterward, and I didn’t touch anything. But I swear, my—uh—friend only asked about town operations. Nothing on residents.”
I won’t push her to confess that she also went into Phil and Isabel’s house. I have enough here. “Now are you going to describe your friend?”
She does … and it’s exactly who I expect.