Chapter 51
The interview room was becoming an all too familiar place for Clint’s comfort.
As usual, he’d been brought here and left alone to sweat the possibilities.
This time for more than an hour. If that was what Caruthers wanted, he would be damned disappointed.
The only thing on Clint’s mind was the fact that there had been another murder.
Ray Hale was dead.
Anguish tore through Clint. No matter what Ray had done in the past, he was the only person in this whole damned town who had tried to help Clint. Not once had he shown his appreciation.
Clint grabbed back control. He couldn’t let his emotions run away with him like this. He was sorry as hell that Ray was dead, but the best thing he could do for the man was find his killer. He couldn’t do that in here.
Knowing that Caruthers would be watching him from the other side of the mirror on the wall, Clint sat right where they’d left him.
No fidgeting, no looking around, absolute stillness.
His goal was to get out of here, get to Emily, and keep her safe while finding some answers.
Every time he turned around, there were more questions and no answers.
The door opened. Mike Caruthers and Lee Brady entered the room. Brady took a seat at the table. Caruthers didn’t appear inclined to sit.
“Clint,” Brady began, “I strongly advise you to think carefully before you answer a question that may incriminate you.”
Clint shook his head. “I don’t have anything to hide.” He shifted his gaze to the deputy chief. “Say what’s on your mind, Caruthers.”
“Have you ever been to Ray’s hunting cabin?”
“No. He offered it to me as a temporary place to stay after my house burned, but I declined.”
“Where were you between noon and two p.m. today?”
That was easy. “At work until one. You can check with Marvin Cook and the rest of the employees at the repair shop. I left at one and drove straight to the Valley Inn. I was with Emily Wallace after that until you picked me up. The manager at the inn saw me arrive shortly after one, and Emily and I left around two to go to Violet Turner’s house.
” Clint wasn’t sure whether it was disappointment or relief he saw in the deputy’s eyes. Maybe a mixture of both.
“Can you identify these?” He placed a plastic evidence bag on the table, the contents a handful of ripped photos.
Clint studied the fragments, then said, “Torn photographs. I’d have to piece them together somewhat to be certain, but they look like some of the ones from my house.
You saw the place after it was vandalized.
” He didn’t have to remind Caruthers, but for Brady’s sake he did.
The memory of all his mother’s damaged things squeezed his heart.
“Is there any reason Ray would have these in his possession?”
“As a favor to me, Ray was going to take some of the pieces to a guy he thought could restore them. But I can’t say whether these are any of the ones he took, not without touching them, and maybe not even then.”
“Once I’ve confirmed your alibi, you’ll be free to go, but stay close to home or work. I may need to question you again. And—” Caruthers glanced at Brady before proceeding, and he nodded. “We’re going to need to do DNA testing on any person of interest related to Keith’s case.”
“If you don’t offer the sample voluntarily,” Brady explained, “they’ll get a court order. I’ve been made aware of the names on the list. There are several others, Clint, so don’t feel singled out.”
“No problem.”
Caruthers turned his back and headed for the door.
Clint almost didn’t ask, but he needed to know. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Caruthers hesitated but didn’t look back. “We’re not releasing any of the details yet. When we do, you’ll see it on the news or in the paper like everyone else.”
Clint’s alibi was rock solid. No way they could nail this on him. Caruthers just didn’t like him or trust him because of the past. But then, Clint had known it would be this way. There were simply some things a man couldn’t live down.
Innocence would never be enough.
6:15 p.m.
Clint knocked first, but when there was no answer, he used the key Emily had given him and entered the room. It felt a little different, being trusted with her key. But it was only a rented room, nothing to get excited about.
“Emily?”
He checked the bathroom. No Emily.
Since her car wasn’t out front, she might have decided to spend some time with her parents, but he didn’t like not knowing.
He noticed the note on the dresser then.
As he read the words, he swore. What the hell did she mean by meeting Baker alone?
He tossed the note back on the dresser and glanced at the clock. She’d left the time on the note. She’d been gone for more than an hour. She should have been back by now.
He was going over there.
Baker’s house was silent, but his truck was in the driveway.
Clint parked behind Baker’s vehicle and got out, his senses on alert to some danger he couldn’t name. If Emily had left already, where had she gone? He supposed she could have taken a different route back to the inn.
He banged on the front door. Stabbed the doorbell a couple of times. No answer. Not a sound.
Well, hell. If he was going to break into the guy’s house before dark, he’d better do it from the back.
His lock-picking tools had been confiscated.
Maybe he’d have to try kicking the door in.
At the end of the house the garage door was open, so he checked there first. The garage was cluttered with junk, lawn-maintenance implements and piles of beer cans.
Baker was evidently starting a collection.
At the door that led into the house from the garage, Clint tried the knob, and to his surprise the door was unlocked. Inside, the place was as dark as a tomb. Clint stayed still for half a minute and listened for any signs of life.
Nothing.
He flipped a switch in the kitchen and an overhead light flickered on. His apprehension mounting, Clint surveyed the room. Dirty dishes were piled up. Counters were cluttered. Baker’s wife must have been on strike.
Clint moved toward the living room, then turned on a light in the short hall.
Every damned blind in the house was closed tight.
Baker was stretched out in his recliner, apparently dead to the world.
Clint watched a few seconds to make sure he was breathing.
He looked like shit. Both eyes black, nose swollen.
A .38 lay on the table by his chair. Using a dirty sock from the floor, Clint lifted the weapon and placed it on top of the entertainment cabinet, out of sight and reach.
Then he grabbed Baker by the shirtfront and hoisted him out of the chair.
His eyes tried to open but couldn’t seem to stay that way.
“Baker.” Clint shook him. “Wake up, you little bastard.”
Baker’s eyes started that blinking upward-roll thing.
“I said, wake up!” Clint shook him harder.
He tried unsuccessfully to struggle, mumbling nonsensical words.
Clint hauled him into the nearest bathroom and shoved him into the shower. He turned the cold water on full blast.
Baker screamed and cursed and tried to bolt.
Clint blocked his path out of the three-by-three tile cubicle. “Come alive, Baker; we need to talk.”
Baker’s eyes widened and fury blazed across his face. “I knew you’d come if I called her over here.”
“Where is she?” Clint slammed him against the wall and held him there. He ignored the cold water.
Confusion scrunched Baker’s face. “I . . . She didn’t show.” The fury made a reappearance. “But you’re here . . .”
Clint turned off the water and dragged Baker’s ass into the kitchen. He needed to speed up the process. He knew plenty of tricks. He’d learned them firsthand in Holman.
He plopped Baker into a chair at the kitchen table. Clint searched a couple of drawers until he found what he needed. Baker attempted to get up, but Clint slapped a hand on his head and shoved him back down. His level of intoxication made him easy to control.
Clint sat down next to him and manacled the other man’s right hand. He flatted it on the table, palm down, and held it in place with his left. “Now, tell me where she is.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit.”
Using his free hand, Clint positioned the point of a knife’s long, slender blade against Baker’s hand at a strategic spot. “Tell me.”
“Screw you.”
The slightest pressure and the knife pierced the skin, slid right between two bones and into the laminate tabletop beneath. Blood bloomed and slid around the wound. Baker screamed, thrashed his legs around a bit, but he didn’t dare move his hand.
“Tell me where she is.”
“She didn’t come! I passed out. If she came by after that, she left without trying to get me up.” His eyes were wild when they connected with Clint’s. “I swear. I didn’t see her.” His voice shook.
Clint pulled the knife free but didn’t release Baker’s hand. The guy howled as if Clint had cut the damned thing off.
“Why did you call her?”
Troy glared at him, his eyes looking like road maps, his face red from consistent overindulgence in alcohol.
“Why?” Clint repeated as he positioned the knife again.
“Nooo!”
“Tell me,” Clint urged. “This only has to hurt as much as you want it to.”
“Because I wanted to get you here,” Baker cried.
“Why?” The knife remained poised for the next intrusion.
“I want you to pay, you son of a bitch!”
Clint let that go. “Any other reason?”
“My life is falling apart,” Baker cried. He started to sob. “My wife left me. She took my kids.” His whole body shook with his anguish. “My best friend is dead and it’s my fault.”
Clint stilled. “Why is it your fault?”
Troy wiped his face with his free hand. “What the hell is it to you?”
The tip of the knife pierced skin in the next spot.
Baker howled. It really wasn’t that bad, but the alcohol magnified everything. This technique didn’t hurt nearly as much as numerous others Clint could have used. It was the watching it happen that got to the victim.
“We had a fight!” he screamed. “He told me that he cheated on Heather that night.”
Clint wasn’t sure her boyfriend’s cheating was relevant to her murder, but pursued it anyway. “That’s it?”
Baker pointed the best glare a drunk could muster at Clint. “He was with another girl the night my sister was murdered.”
“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?” Didn’t sound right to Clint.
Baker’s face fell into grim defeat. “I wanted to kill you,” he admitted.
“You came back here and tore all our lives apart.” He stared at his bloody hand, at the knife Clint still held over him.
“It doesn’t matter now. I’ve lost everything I care about.
” He settled his drunken gaze on Clint. “You should just cut my throat and put me out of my misery.”
“You didn’t kill Turner?”
A long pause of obvious confusion. “Why the hell would I tell you if I did?”
The fear and uncertainty in his eyes told Clint he wasn’t getting more than that.
Clint pushed out of his chair. He grabbed a clean dishcloth from one of the drawers he’d looked in before and wrapped Baker’s hand.
Before leaving, Clint picked up the receiver of the kitchen extension and punched in 911.
He placed it on the counter. When no one responded, an officer would be dispatched.
Baker would survive the injury to his hand, but Clint wasn’t altogether sure the guy was safe from himself or whoever the hell had killed Turner and Ray.
Clint wiped the knife clean and tossed it into the sink. “Sober up, Baker.”
“He’s dead because of me.”
Clint hesitated at the door. “Who’s dead because of you?”
“Keith,” Baker said, his voice feeble. “I called him a coward, told him he should just kill himself and get it over with for what he’d done . . . or I’d make him wish he had.”
This conversation wasn’t going to make sense until Baker was sober. But something had gone down between him and Turner before he died.
Right now, Clint had to find Emily.
9:00 p.m.
Clint drove around for hours with no luck. He finally returned to the inn. She hadn’t come back there either.
He’d gone by her parents’ house and the houses of all her friends, at least the ones he knew about.
She wasn’t anywhere. Her cell went straight to voicemail each of the dozens of times he’d called.
Fear had his heart pumping double time. He was calling Caruthers.
Emily wouldn’t just disappear like this.
He crossed the room and reached for the phone but hesitated when the message light blinked at him. He snatched it up and punched the necessary buttons for retrieving the message.
“Clint . . .”
It was Emily. Her voice sounded shaky.
“I’m at the hospital. Can you come when you get this message, please? I need you.”