Chapter 19 #2
“Let’s get him on tape,” I said. “Then we’ll see what I recognize. I also haven’t seen his face yet.”
My phone buzzed while Atlas drove. I almost ignored it. My arm was throbbing, and I had a zip-tied custodian in the back of a cruiser ahead of us and approximately four hundred things to do before noon.
I looked anyway.
It was a forwarded email from the county system. Someone had wanted me to see it. The subject line was enough: Oregon State Board of Psychology — Formal Complaint Filing — Dr. River Bennett.
I read it twice. Anonymous complainant. Conduct unbecoming. Personal relationship with investigating officer. Family’s documented history with the county mental health system.
Documented history. That was the phrase they’d used for her mother being committed to a facility the Fund controlled.
Same language as mine, I thought.
Atlas glanced at me in the rearview. I could tell he knew something was up, but he didn’t say anything.
The complaint wouldn’t stick. River hadn’t done anything wrong, and a review board would see that eventually.
But eventually wasn’t now. Now, it meant weeks of inquiries, documentation requests, and potentially a panel appearance, all while she was trying to build a practice in a town that already had complicated feelings about her last name and the fact that she’d been MIA a lot lately.
But it didn’t need to destroy her license.
It just needed to cost her enough time and energy that she couldn’t keep doing what she was doing.
That was how these people worked. Not the knife. The ten thousand paper cuts.
River sat in the passenger seat, eyes forward, still coming down from the woods. I didn’t know if she’d seen it yet.
I pocketed the phone. Suspect first. Then the call.
By the time we stepped into the station, the place hummed like a hive on the edge of swarming.
Phones rang. Radios crackled. Linton sat at his desk outside the interrogation rooms, bouncing his knee so hard the entire metal frame vibrated. His freckles stood out against skin that had gone three shades too pale.
“Sheriff.” He sprang to his feet. “He’s in two. Darren Whitlock. I read him his rights again when we moved him. He asked for a lawyer, then changed his mind, then asked if he could see a priest.”
I frowned. “Did you call the public defender?” I asked.
“Yeah. Office said someone would be here in the morning.” Linton swallowed. “He, uh…he keeps asking what we’re going to tell his kids.”
River flinched.
“Okay,” I said. “You did good. Get yourself some coffee. Get me a copy of his booking sheet. And stop vibrating before you rattle your teeth out.”
“Yes, sir.” He tried for a smile. It came out shaky but there. “You gonna…?”
“I’m going to talk to him,” I confirmed. “River, you can sit in the observation room. But you know the drill.”
She nodded, her face tight. This wasn’t her first time on the other side of the glass.
I took a second outside interrogation two, hand resting on the cool metal of the doorknob.
My reflection flickered in the narrow window, pale, tired, arm in the sling Ainjil had insisted I wear for at least twenty-four hours.
I looked like a sheriff in a small-town horror story.
Which, to be fair, wasn’t far off. Then I went in.
Darren Whitlock sat hunched in the metal chair, cuffs looped through the ring bolted to the tabletop.
Forty-ish, soft around the middle, hairline starting to creep, Maple Ridge High custodial polo stained with mud and something darker.
His eyes were bloodshot, and the skin on one side of his nose and cheek was angry and red, starting to turn an eggplant purple.
He looked like exactly what he was. A guy who swept gym floors and fixed lockers and sometimes drank too much at the Hollow Oak on Friday nights.
He also looked like he’d tried to stab me in the dark. The dickhead.
“Mr. Whitlock,” I said, shutting the door behind me.
He flinched at the sound, shoulders jerking up around his ears. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to get you that bad,” he stammered. “He said it was just supposed to be scares. Eyes and slashed tires and notes. No real harm. I swear to God, I wasn’t—”
I pulled the chair out across from him, letting the scrape of metal on tile cut him off. Then I sat, laid a folder on the table, and folded my hands on top of it.
“Who is ‘he?’” I asked.
Darren swallowed. His gaze flicked to the glass, then back to me. “I…I want a lawyer.”
“Okay.” I leaned back. “You’re entitled to one. You know that. And you know that I can’t keep asking you questions once you invoke. But you also know that if you ask for one and then keep talking, everything you say is still on the record, and it will likely be worse for you if you don’t talk.”
He nodded miserably. “Fine, whatever.”
“Was that a fine ask whatever, or a fine, I still want a lawyer whatever?”
He just stared at me.
“Okay. So, here’s what’s going to happen then,” I continued.
“I’m going to ask questions. You’re going to decide whether you want to answer them now or wait until there’s someone here whose job is to tell you to shut up.
In the meantime, you are under arrest for aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, conspiracy to harass, and whatever else we dig up from that drop box and your phone records. Do you understand?”
He made a strangled sound. “I’m not a bad guy.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe you’re just a guy who made a couple of really stupid choices because someone dangled money in front of you.
Maybe you were scared. Maybe you thought you didn’t have another option.
I’m not here to judge your soul, Mr. Whitlock.
I’m here to figure out how many people my town has buried in the woods because they asked the wrong questions, and who the hell keeps causing trouble lately. ”
A beat.
“And right now, you’re the only one in this building who knows those answers.”
His eyes filled. “They’ll kill me,” he whispered.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before,” I said flatly.
“Maybe we walk you out of here in the morning with a slap on the wrist and no record of you cooperating. Maybe we pretend you don’t know anything and let you go back to sweeping up after basketball games while the people who paid you keep pulling strings.
” I leaned forward, my voice low. “I’m not sure either of those would be real great for you.
Or, you can talk. On camera. On tape. With your rights read and your statement clear.
You give us names. You give us locations.
You give us so much goddamn detail there’s no way a prosecutor or a jury can ignore it.
And then I put you somewhere they can’t touch you.
Protective custody. New ID if we can swing it.
Your kids get visits instead of memories. ”
He stared at me like I’d offered him a lifeline and a noose at the same time. “My kids didn’t do anything wrong,” he choked. “They just…they just want to graduate. Maybe have a decent life.”
“Then help me make it a town worth graduating from,” I said.
We stared at each other across that cold metal table. Then his shoulders slumped.
Something in him gave. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. I’ll talk.”
I hit the record button on the tabletop unit, recited the time, date, case number, and advised him again of his rights. He waived his right to counsel for the purposes of the statement, voice shaking but clear. I could almost feel River watching, imagining every line of her body strung tight.
“Let’s start simple,” I said. “State your name for the record.”
“Darren Michael Whitlock. I, uh…I work custodial at the high school. Have off and on for the better part of two decades.” His cuffed hands clenched. “I’m not part of some…cult or whatever you think this is.”
“Good,” I said. “So, then, tell me how you ended up wearing a mask and attacking me with a hunting knife in the rain.”
He winced. “That wasn’t supposed to happen, man. The knife wasn’t…I brought it in case…in case an animal came at us or somethin’. Coyotes get bold sometimes, ya know? I was just supposed to…you know, paint. Watch. Deliver things.”
“Deliver what, exactly?”
“Notes. Photos. Sometimes a USB drive or two. Other times, cash.”
“Who gave you those things?”
He licked his lips. “A guy from city hall. Clerk. Name’s Bradley Kline.
He said he was acting on orders from ‘upstairs.’” Darren’s voice dipped lower, like someone might be listening through the vents.
“He said there’s some kind of a…special fund or something for making problems go away.
People who made trouble got a visit. Or a warning.
Or a one-way ticket out of town if they were smart. ”
My jaw tightened. “The Benevolence Fund?”
“Sounds right.” Darren swallowed. “He said it was…you know, for the good of Maple Ridge. To keep things stable. Some folks, they said…they said they were sick. Or dangerous. Or…I dunno, asking questions they shouldn’t.”
“Like Eleanor Jenkins, maybe?” I said.
His whole body flinched. That was answer enough. I gave him a beat. When he didn’t volunteer more, I nudged.
“Tell me about Eleanor, Darren.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, but I saw tears leak out anyway. “I saw her at the high school sometimes. Talking to the kids about civic engagement or whatever. She wasn’t…she wasn’t crazy, okay? People only said that after. She just…she just asked a lot of questions.”
“What kinds of questions?”
“Where the Fund’s money really went. Why some families got help and others didn’t.
Why folks who called the hotline about domestic violence or mental health never heard back, but then a week later their spouse or kid was gone or checked into some facility out by—” He stopped himself with a choked sound.
“Out by where?” I pressed, even though I already knew.