Chapter 44
Logan
“Yes, and I have witnesses who can confirm I stayed there all night, including Staff Sergeant Emery McAllister.” My tongue feels coated in mud as I throw her name out there.
“I’ve already told you all this when you came to my family’s porch on Thanksgiving.
Do you have any new questions for me?” I quote what my lawyer coached me to say this afternoon over the phone before I came in.
Lydia Mercer’s name was at the top of the list of defense lawyers Emery sent, right after she called to tell me she’s had to file official paperwork to recuse herself from Holly’s case, basically outing our relationship to her prick of a boss.
That tells me all I need to know about this conversation.
The detectives share a look.
In the corner above, a wall-mounted camera records the entire exchange. I’m doing my best not to squirm, but the last time I was in this building, there were four bodies heading to the morgue, I’d been brought in wearing handcuffs, and no one seemed to give a damn what I had to say.
“The next morning, you went fishing on Lake Temagami,” Terry says. “Tell me about that.”
“What do you wanna know?” Again, Lydia’s advice—answer specific questions only.
He smirks knowingly. I don’t like the look of him, but I might be biased. “What time did you leave your home for the lake on Saturday morning?”
“It was around seven. The sun was coming up.”
“Did you drive yourself?”
“No, my cousin Jameson picked me up.”
“Is that who you were fishing with that day?”
“Yeah, him and his brother, Jack.” Which I’m sure these two know. “We met Jack there.”
“So, Jameson picked you up at around seven, and you two drove down. Where’d you park?”
“Near the boat launch.”
“And is that where you met your other cousin, Jack Barrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Who brought the boat?”
“Jack did. He was already waiting at the dock for us.”
Terry falters. “He’d already launched the boat?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a subtle nod. “So then you went fishing.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Where’d we go fishing?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. Around the lake.”
“Was it just you three?”
“In the boat? Yeah.”
“What about on the lake?”
I frown. “No, there were other people.”
“Other people?”
“Yeah.”
“Approximately how many?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t count.”
“If you had to take a guess?”
“A guess? Five … ten … I really don’t know.” This guy’s annoying me. “And a loon.”
“A loon.”
“Yeah. There was definitely a loon.”
Terry smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Did you see anything peculiar?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Besides the woman floating face down in the water?”
“Right. Carol Roth. You dove into the water and saved her. Nice article in the paper, by the way.”
I grunt. That damn article is the reason I’m in here.
“So you brought Roth to shore and after EMS took her away, did you return to fishing?”
“No. We packed up and drove home.”
“All three of you?”
“Yeah.”
“In one truck?”
I frown. “No. Jameson drove himself. I went with Jack.”
“Was the boat with you?”
“Yes.”
He nods slowly. “Okay. I think we have all we need here. Thanks for coming in, Mr. Landry.”
That’s it? I pull myself up from the couch.
Schmidt offers me a smile as he moves to escort me out.
I’m halfway to the door when Terry calls out, “Oh, wait, one last question. Did your cousin Jack say anything about going back to the Bale House after he dropped you off that Friday night?”
“Jack? No.”
“You sure? Why don’t you give it a second’s thought.”
But I don’t need to. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Got it.” Terry waves me off, his focus on his notes. “Thanks for your time.”
The big detective walks me out.
I can see Emery’s form behind the cracked blinds in her office, but I don’t attempt to veer that way. I don’t want to cause her any more issues than I already have.
My father’s waiting outside in the truck. “How’d it go?”
“Okay, I think. But he kept asking about Jack.”
“Jack.” He frowns as he pulls out of the station parking lot.
An uneasiness settles onto my shoulders.
“I’m worried about Jack,” I say into the darkness of my apartment, that ball of anxiety that’s been in my stomach all day still firmly rooted.
Emery’s fingertip smooths back and forth over the scar on my torso while my thoughts pilfer through the day.
She showed up at my door in her pajamas around nine, Duke at her side, announcing that Isla was staying at her father’s.
It couldn’t have worked out better had I begged. I need her beside me tonight.
“The way that detective was asking questions, something felt off.”
“That’s Terry. He can make you second-guess yourself while asking about the weather.” She pauses. “What exactly did he ask?”
“They wanted to know where Jack went after he dropped me off that Friday night, and if he took his boat with him when we left the next day. That detective seemed super interested in the fact that Jack met us there with the boat already in the water. Do they have something on him?”
“Honestly, Logan, I don’t know. I can’t go anywhere near this investigation, and Terry’s not bending the rules on that. He’s doing the right thing by keeping me away.”
“I didn’t even know Jack went back to the Bale House that night. I thought he went home after he dropped me off.” And he didn’t mention it while we were fishing.
“Yeah, he was there. His truck is hard to miss. It pulled back into the lot around ten, after he dropped you off. He sat at the bar, watching a late hockey game. He ordered Cokes. And then he left. Nothing about it looked suspicious.” Her breath skates over my bare chest. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. ”
I’ve got plenty else to worry about. “What about you? What’s your boss gonna do?”
She pauses, seeming to give it some thought.
“He can’t get me on misconduct for this because I formally recused myself from the case.
He can try to make my life hell. Start fishing around my detachment, looking for ways to write me up.
There’s already that complaint from those hockey parents sitting with PSB.
Get a few more logged and he could build reasonable grounds for a suspension, at least to start.
That never looks good on someone in my rank. ”
“Doesn’t he have more important things to do?”
“Yeah, but all some of these guys have is their ego, so I wouldn’t put anything past him.
He already doesn’t like me. He can still do his job while retaliating, and if he thinks someone else would do better for Cold River than I can, he’ll see it as his job to make that happen.
” She sighs heavily. “At this point, I’ve started to make peace with it. ”
Maybe she has, but I haven’t. “I’m sorry.” This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
“Why are you sorry? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I came back.” That’s what I did. None of this would be happening if I’d gone to a halfway house somewhere far away and left everyone to continue on with their lives.
A stretch of silence answers, and then her slender, naked body shifts to drape over me. Her lips hover inches from mine in the darkness. “And I wake up every morning so thankful that you did. Got it? We all do.” She punctuates that with a deep kiss that distracts me from my brooding.
But this sense of foreboding lingers, still.
“There!” Jon points to the far corner of the pasture, for both my benefit and Egan’s.
The boy has been spending most of his days with us while my mother juggles the others and the coming busy season and Sarah lies in bed, designing marketing plans for the next ten years while she waits to go into labor.
I squint against the bright morning sun to follow his sightline.
Jon shakes his head. “You know, that hat I gave you helps.”
“It looks so good on my wall, though,” I mutter—my standard answer every time he brings it up—as I search the pasture until I spot the newborn calf wobbling on its legs.
“Baby!” Egan declares.
“Yeah, buddy, that’s brand new. Born within the last half hour, probably.” To me, he says, “Another one for Mak to tag.”
“That guy is certifiable.” The lanky ranch hand approached a newborn calf to tag it the other day, and I said a little prayer that I wasn’t going to watch a man get gored or stomped by the mother hovering next to it.
“You won’t see me doing that,” Jon agrees with a chuckle. “Mak and Holt used to tag all of them by hand, back when the herd was smaller. Now, it’s better to do it during spring checkup when we’ve already got them in the chute.”
“What’s the red dog count at now?”
“Thirty-four. None stillborn yet.” He knocks on the nearby wooden fence post.
“And what’s the pool at?”
“Almost a grand, with two three-way splits. What do you say, Egan? You gonna win again?” He tickles the little boy’s stomach.
I smile at the childish laughter as the bisons’ tails swish.
“Hey! Look who’s coming!” Jon juts his chin behind me, adding, “Haven’t seen Holt on a horse in years.”
Sure enough, Copper canters toward us, with my father in the saddle.
“Grampa!” Egan exclaims, struggling to be free of his father’s arms.
“Nice try.” Jon holds tight as he calls out, “Another red dog!”
“That’s great.” But nothing about my father’s expression says that. His eyes settle on me. “You were right, Logan. Wyatt just called. Cops showed up with a warrant for Jack’s boat and truck.”