Chapter 3
THREE
GABE
“Gabriel, we going to need you to come into the station and give us an official statement,” Twana County’s acting sheriff informed him.
Eagan’s grim expression told Gabe she enjoyed Mondays even less than he did, and this one in particular.
There was a faint dusting of purple underneath her eyes, as if sleep had been in low supply recently, and her uniform was slightly rumpled.
He wondered what else was going on and if this case was going to make her job more difficult.
What was he thinking? Of course it was. From his quick search earlier, he gleaned that Wilson was—had been—a popular pastor at the church he led. Church members and the public were going to want answers.
Gabe ran his fingers through his hair again. “Yeah. Can I come in under my own power, or do I have to be ferried in the back of your bad ride again?”
Being arrested, handcuffed, and put into the back of a police car was not Gabe’s fondest memory. He’d played down last fall’s incident for Casey and Elton’s benefit, but the memory of that day reared its ugly head when he least expected it.
Even with the seriousness of the situation, Eagan’s lips twitched. “As long as you head there right now. No detouring. No talking to anyone. Anyone,” she emphasized. “That includes Elton Cox and Casey.”
“Fine. Can I leave now?” He was itching to get away from the scene.
The local press had arrived not long after the sheriff’s vehicles, and the beleaguered guard was still keeping them at bay for now.
The last thing Gabe wanted was some wanna-be crime reporter shoving a mic in his face and asking him questions he didn’t have answers to, like “How did you know the victim?” and “What were you doing here today?”
“You did hear me say that I didn’t even know this guy existed until this morning?” he said.
“We heard, loud and clear. Deputy Choi will provide you an escort.” Eagan gestured at one of the deputies who’d accompanied her to the scene of the murder.
Deputy Choi looked like she could run a six-minute mile with her gear on. She shot Gabe an unsmiling, don’t-fuck-with-me glance. To be fair, Gabe probably deserved it for something he’d done, just not this day.
“Don’t you trust me, Sheriff?” he asked with a smile.
Acting Sheriff Eagan shook her head—whether in exasperation or amusement, he couldn’t tell. “Get going.”
Then she spun on one heel and strode back down the hall.
“It’s a police escort or a ride in the back of my cruiser. Which do you prefer?” Choi asked impatiently.
Gabe tossed his car keys into the air and caught them again. “Under my own power, but thanks again for the offer.”
He climbed into the Honda, resigning himself to arriving at TCSO headquarters in style. Just not with the anonymity he preferred.
Deputy Choi waited for him to park and then escorted Gabe into the low-slung, perpetually out-of-date building. Did she think he was going to make a break for it?
“I swear I’m not making a run for it.” He didn’t point out that the region didn’t really provide much in the way of clean getaways, especially since his boat was gone. There was a choice between a ferry or a two-lane highway.
Choi did not laugh or crack a smile. There was no one in the lobby, just the desk that Althea Mortine had roosted behind for years and the chair she’d sat in. Very unwelcoming.
Since when is a police station welcoming, Chance?
“Who’s taken over for Ms. Mortine now that she’s a guest of the state?” he asked.
Choi ignored him. “We’ll use one of the interview rooms. Follow me.”
Not even a please. Glumly, Gabe trailed after the deputy.
Not everyone is charmed by you, Chance.
More’s the pity.
“How is it, working for Sheriff Eagan?” he asked when they arrived at the door of a room that Gabe was way too familiar with. With any luck at all, the dirty-sock smell was fully gone at last.
“Sheriff Eagan took a chance bringing me on. I won’t let her down.” Choi opened the door and pointed toward the table and chairs that were older than Gabe. “Have a seat.”
Choi’s answer explained her no-nonsense attitude, and Gabe realized he was glad that Eagan had supporters in the department. It couldn’t be easy trying to clean up after Eli Rizzi.
“Now, Mr. Karne,” Choi said when they were settled, “we need to know your movements this morning and what led you to the discovery of Mr. Wilson.”
Gabe took a deep breath and began.
Twenty minutes later and they were done, at least Gabe hoped so. Choi was reading over her notes, which were neat and legible from what he could tell across the table and upside down. Gabe figured he was about to be asked to add his signature at the bottom of the page.
“To recap, you received a phone call this morning. The caller asked to meet. You’d never met Roy Wilson before, never had any interactions with him. He claimed that Emmett Spurring gave him your number.”
“Not as far as I know, and yes, that is what he told me, that Spurring gave him my number. Which, as I stated, was odd because Spurring and I have never been buddies.”
“And Wilson said he wanted to hire you.”
“Yes, that’s what he said.”
Gabe was starting to get a tad irritated by her tone.
“And yet he didn’t tell you what for?”
“No. He said he didn’t want to talk over the phone. It was all very cloak and dagger.”
“Do you often accept jobs from strangers without knowing exactly what they want from you?”
Tamping down his irritation, Gabe replied, “To be honest, yes. It’s a bad habit of mine. I’m thinking of having my innate curiosity surgically removed.”
The deputy was not amused; she probably thought that was a good idea. She tapped the notepad again. “I know about you, Mr. Karne, and I encourage you to be entirely truthful.” Gabe did not imagine the slight emphasis on the second to last word.
“That’s me, Gabriel Truth-Teller Karne.”
Choi shot him a dark look.
“After the call, you traveled from your home on Heartstone to Heron’s Roost in Irondale, where”—Choi paused and glanced at her notes again—“you discovered the victim.”
“Yes. Well, once I went inside the building.” He bit his lip to keep from saying he didn’t have X-ray vision because if he did, he wouldn’t have gone in. “I figured the Mercedes in the lot was his. And the front door wasn’t locked.”
Gabe didn’t add that it was his experience that late model high-end cars were meant to impress. If Wilson was a man of God, who was he trying to dazzle; surely the heavens did not care.
“It does appear to be Wilson’s vehicle,” Choi acknowledged, then continued. “If you’d never met him before, how did you know the deceased was Roy Wilson?”
Was it his imagination or was she trying to catch him out? Giving a statement was proving to be stressful.
“I did a quick Google search before leaving the house. He wasn’t hard to find. Lots of professional photos on the church site. So many.”
But that was a good question because it made him consider the question from the other direction: How did he know that the person who’d called him had been Wilson?
The stranger on the phone could’ve been anyone.
Well, anyone whose voice he didn’t recognize.
He’d drawn the line at listening to a prerecorded sermon for confirmation.
Setting aside the thought that Unknown Caller might not have been Wilson after all, Gabe responded, “It’s never good to go into a situation completely blindfolded. What I learned made me even more curious about him. What would a pastor want with me? Of course I had to find out.”
That call could’ve been made by almost anyone. Fuck.
“Of course you did,” Choi murmured.
Tapping the sheet of paper with the tip of her index finger, the deputy said, “You stated there were no other cars in the lot aside from the Mercedes when you arrived and no other people in the building.”
“That’s correct. Except for the dead man, who was dead when I got there.
I immediately called you guys. Oh, there was a pickup leaving the lot.
” He’d forgotten that. “I think it was coming from the deli, but it could have been from Heron Roost’s parking, I suppose.
Came pretty close to clipping me. And no, I did not see the driver. ”
He felt like he deserved a gold star for his call to TCSO. Leaving the scene would have been much easier. All calling the sheriff had done was complicate his life. But Casey would be proud of him, so there was that tiny shred of joy.
“Hmm. No idea of make or model?” Choi spun the sheet of paper so that it was right side up for Gabe, then pushed it and her pen across the table. Gabe lifted one eyebrow but did not immediately pick up the pen. It was a nice pen.
“Nope. It was blue, though. Older? Extended cab? Like I said, I didn’t see who was driving. Could have been grabbing a coffee from the deli, I suppose.” Although with the way they’d been driving, the coffee would’ve been on the floor.
She sniffed, telegraphing suspicion. “Make sure everything is correct and sign at the bottom. Then you’re free to go. But make certain we can reach you if we have more questions.”
Deputy Choi distrusted him. Maybe she thought her boss was bending the rules for him.
That Gabriel Karne, ex-grifter, should be detained until the whole situation was sorted out and not released to go about his normal business.
That there would be more questions for him because he was morally suspect.
Technically, this was true, but Gabe liked to think of himself as a work in progress.
“Not that I have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, but aren’t statements usually typed?”
“We are short-staffed, as you saw coming in.”
Right. Althea had probably been the one to take care of this sort of thing.
Once he’d scanned through the document, Gabe scrawled his name across the bottom with a flourish. Choi rose to her feet, the statement in one hand, the other stretched out toward him.
“I’ll take my pen back, thank you.”
Gabe slipped the pen back out of his pocket and handed it to her, plastering his most charming grin on his face. He did not receive a smile in return for his effort.
Back outside, Gabe lingered next to his car, squinting against the now painfully bright spring sunshine, and debated his next move. There was something about a near incarceration experience that made him better appreciate his freedom.
Sheriff Eagan had said not to speak to anyone but surely that meant before he’d given his statement. She couldn’t expect him not to tell Casey or Elton about his morning. He needed to talk to someone he trusted, and Casey was swamped, so Elton it was.
And if Deputy Choi thought he wasn’t going to nose around about Roy Wilson, she had another think coming.
Because, he reasoned, if it hadn’t been Wilson who’d called him, an as-yet-unknown person wanted Gabriel involved in some way, and probably not a friendly one. And if the caller had been Wilson, who had gotten to him in the time it had taken Gabe to get to Heron’s Roost?
Back behind the wheel, he pulled his phone out and poked at the screen. While he was waiting for Elton to answer, he opened his window. Maybe he needed to invest in one of those sunshades like the one he’d seen in that Mercedes; it was getting warm.
“Hello?” Elton said.
Elton always sounded skeptical when he answered a call, as if his phone’s caller ID was lying.
“It’s me, Elton. Gabriel. Are you home?”
“Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that you’re usually busier than Brooklyn Dawson.”
Brooklyn was the teenaged daughter of Mercy Dawson, who owned the local general store with her husband, Barry. If Brooklyn wasn’t playing a seasonal sport, she was volunteering at the animal rescue or organizing a community dinner for vulnerable teens.
If Gabe remembered correctly, Elton had also said something about a baseball game. But since Gabe had no intention of sitting through one of those, he hadn’t paid much attention.
“I’m at home, come on over. I’ll get a pot of coffee going.”
Breathing out a sigh of relief, Gabe started the engine and pointed the Honda toward Elton’s place. Gabe needed more background on Roy Wilson, and Elton Cox was the one who would know it. And if he didn’t, he’d know who to approach.