Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
WEST
I put my SUV in gear and reversed out of the driveway, leaving behind the officers still at the crime scene.
Not my town, not my jurisdiction. Wolf Mountain hadn’t seen a murder like this in decades, and their chief had been happy to let me stay once I’d explained who I was and why I was there.
He’d cleared his throat, given me a hard look, and said, “Best you stick around then, but keep your hands to yourself. Don’t want the evidence gettin’ spoiled. ”
I knew what he meant, and he was right. But I watched, and I listened, and I saw so much more than I wanted to.
I couldn’t get the image of her body out of my head.
The jewelry designer, Anna Novak, had been thirty-one, single, and a resident of Wolf Mountain since birth.
The house she lived in had been her grandmother’s, and she’d made a pretty decent living recreating the nature she’d loved with precious metals and stones.
Had she made the necklace Avery and Sterling found?
We’d never know. Anna wasn’t just dead. She’d been murdered. Brutally.
As far as he could tell before the autopsy, the medical examiner estimated she’d been stabbed over twenty times, possibly as many as forty.
That many stab wounds indicated a chilling level of rage.
Based on the pool around her, she’d lost most of her blood, which indicated her heart had continued beating.
She’d been alive through most of the attack.
I was a cop, but I hadn’t always been a cop in a small town. I’d seen bodies. I’d seen murder victims. More gunshot wounds than I cared to think about. But this murder held a level of savagery I’d never seen before. As far as we could tell, whoever killed her had been there for that purpose.
It begged the question of why.
Nothing seemed to be missing. The small house hadn’t been ransacked.
The only disorder came from the fight Anna had put up to save her life.
Chairs overturned. The kitchen table was in pieces on the floor.
Broken glassware. The bloody handprints on the sliding glass door.
I guessed they’d come from Anna crawling, trying to get away, desperate to live.
Smears on the floor said they dragged her back and finished the job.
I tried to stay impartial. I couldn’t be a cop if I let my emotions get twisted up with every case.
There were too many. I wouldn’t be able to function.
But this... I swallowed, trying to force the roil of feelings down into my chest, to lock them away.
I didn’t have time for this, for fear, or pain, or grief.
But when I thought of Anna’s body on the floor, all I could see was Avery and that knife slice across her shoulder and down her arm.
She’d escaped with barely a scar, but seeing Anna’s brutal attack, her life stolen, reminded me how close Avery had come to the same fate.
They had so much in common. Small-town girls who’d grown up to be independent businesswomen.
They were the same age. And they were connected by that necklace.
Was it coincidence that Avery and Sterling had been poking around and Anna ended up dead? It could be. We hadn’t found any proof that this murder was related to their search for evidence. But the timing...
It’s not that I don’t believe in coincidences. I’ve seen enough to know they happen. But they’re a lot less common than people think they are. This didn’t feel like a coincidence. Had the attack on Avery and Ford actually been about this damn necklace?
That I couldn’t answer, but I intended to.
One thing I did know: Harvey might be up to something. He surely knew more than he was telling, but he hadn’t done this.
I didn’t have proof, and I’d be getting an alibi. If he didn’t have one, his name was going straight to the police chief of Wolf Mountain. But my gut said this wasn’t Harvey or Edgar, but was screaming something else. Something Avery wasn’t going to like.
My phone rang. I looked down to see Avery’s name on the screen. I thought for a second before I picked up.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“On my way back,” I replied.
She was quiet, her breathing the only sound on the line. Finally, she said, “Are you okay? ”
“Not really,” I answered. “Are you at the brewery?”
“In my office,” she said.
“I’ll be there in half an hour. We need to talk.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice hesitant. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Yep, see you soon,” I said, hanging up.
I blinked hard into the bright afternoon sun.
The world went on. Leaves on the trees were vibrant, and tourists filled the roads.
It was fall in the mountains, a time for family and fun, and Anna Novak was going to miss all of it because someone, maybe the same someone who’d murdered Prentice Sawyer, had decided she was in the way and that stealing her life was the best way to neutralize her.
Someone willing to kill to keep their secret wouldn’t balk at killing again.
The drive back through town had me gritting my teeth at the sidewalks clogged with tourists wandering into the street.
Maybe we should start giving tickets for jaywalking again, I thought, with a cranky sense of satisfaction.
See how they’d feel about wandering in front of a car then.
I doubted I’d do it. Tourist season kept the lights on through the winter for a lot of businesses.
I didn’t want to scare them off with petty tickets, as annoying as they were.
I crawled through town, tapping the brakes, silently urging the drivers ahead of me to just go, damn it , until I got to the other side of town and flicked on my blinker to pull into Avery’s brewery.
I went in through the side, not in the mood to play friendly police chief with any locals in the taproom. Avery looked up from her desk when I walked in, her eyes worried .
“Hey,” she said. “Can I get you anything?”
I shook my head and closed the door behind me.
“She’s dead?” Avery asked.
I could tell she knew the answer. She had eyes, had seen most of what I’d seen. But she needed to hear it.
“Very,” I said. I wanted to give her the words, if only to scare her off her pursuit, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put those pictures in her head. Bad enough they were in mine. I settled for, “She was stabbed at least twenty times. She bled out on her kitchen floor.”
“You said she fought.” Avery’s voice was thin, as if she couldn’t force enough air through her throat.
“She did,” I agreed. “Based on what we saw in there, she fought like hell. Sometimes it’s not enough.”
“Fuck,” Avery said, sinking into her seat. “Fuck.” She jolted and looked up. “This is our fault. Sterling and mine. We did this.”
“No. I told you, Avery. You didn’t do this. You didn’t stab her. You’re not responsible.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, shaking her head. “Maybe not the way you mean, but if we’d left this alone... If she had the information we were looking for, and someone else knew it...”
“Avery,” I said. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but I couldn’t.
Had she or Sterling killed Anna Novak? No, absolutely not.
Were they responsible for her death? Also no.
The person responsible for her death was the one who’d stabbed her.
Had their investigation reminded the killer that Anna Novak was a loose end?
That was very possible. I didn’t want to tell Avery that.
I didn’t want to see the weight on her soul, but I had to.
Because what I really didn’t want was to see her dead.
“Avery,” I said, leaning against the closed door and crossing my arms over my chest. “You and Sterling have to walk away from this.”
“What?” Avery’s head snapped up. “No, obviously we were on the right track.”
“Avery,” I snapped. “A woman is dead.”
“You just said that’s not my fault,” Avery said, brushing her hair behind her ear with a shaking hand.
“And it’s not,” I agreed. “It’s not your fault.”
“But?” she pressed.
I thought about my words, thought about how to make her understand.
“It’s possible that the person you’re looking for, the person who killed your father, is also the person who killed Anna Novak.
Especially if she was the jeweler who made that necklace.
There was no evidence of a search or a robbery.
As far as we can tell, the only reason the killer was there was to take her life. ”
“To shut her up,” Avery said.
“That seems likely. People know you and Sterling are looking for your father’s killer. They know you’re looking for evidence. Someone stole that file out of your desk. Someone attacked you with a knife,” I reminded her.
“That was about Ford,” she protested, shaking her head.
“You don’t know that,” I said, my words rising into a shout.
My hands curled into fists at my side. Control, asshole , I reminded myself.
Losing my shit was not going to help. I was the police chief, not a spoiled child throwing a fit.
I didn’t need to yell at her, but I couldn’t seem to keep my feelings from ricocheting all over the place.
My heart twisted every time I thought about Anna’s body, picturing Avery in her place.
I couldn’t forget the blood on Avery’s Halloween costume.
She’d been lucky, but luck doesn’t last forever.
Eventually, it always runs out.
“Avery, this isn’t a game,” I said, trying for calm and not succeeding. “This is life or death. You need to leave this alone.”
“I’m not giving up,” she said, lifting her chin and crossing her arms over her chest.
I couldn’t understand why she didn’t get it. “Are you even fucking listening to me?” I said, losing my grip on my temper again. “This woman was brutally murdered, Avery. I’ll be having nightmares about what I saw in that house for the rest of my life. It could have been you.”
“It’s not the same,” she insisted, not meeting my eyes. “I have security. I’m not going to get killed.”