Chapter Three #2
Knowing that nothing he could say would ever make it right, he did the only thing he could to try to atone for his sins.
He strode to the desk where the mayor and lawyers were sitting and set his badge in front of them.
He popped the magazine out of his police-issued firearm and cleared the round from the chamber, then set the empty gun beside his badge.
Lastly, he took the key fob for the police SUV he’d driven here off his key chain and tossed it onto the desk.
“Chief,” one of his officers, Liza Fletcher, called out.
“None of this is your fault.” She gave the mayor a defiant look then faced Tanya’s parents.
“Mrs. Jericho, we’re all so very sorry for what Tanya suffered.
But the person responsible for that is Phil Gunther, not Chief Dawson.
What you just did is wrong. And, frankly, it’s assault.
” She reached for the handcuffs on her utility belt.
“Don’t.” Beau shook his head at her.
He could see the struggle going on inside her. But her respect for him as her boss won out, and she dropped her hands to her sides.
He scanned the faces of his officers. “I’m still the chief of police. And I’m ordering all of you—Collier, Fletcher, O’Brien, Ortiz—not to pursue this any further. Let it go.”
He turned back to the mayor. “Nothing to do with the Phantom investigation is anyone’s responsibility but mine. As the chief, both the successes and the failures of my department fall on me. There’s no need to take a vote on whether or not to fire me. I quit.”
Beau ignored the chaos that erupted around him and headed out the front door. As he began the long walk home, the sound of footsteps running behind him had him swearing and turning around.
Officer Chris Collier stopped a few feet away, his face red with anger. “Chief, don’t you dare give up. Don’t let that coward mayor take the easy way out just to avoid a lawsuit. The city has insurance for this type of thing. It will be okay. Come back inside and—”
“I’m not the chief anymore, Collier. It’s over.”
“No. It’s not. I guarantee that most, if not all, of the council is in there right now telling the mayor to refuse your resignation.
Your other officers are arguing right along with them.
We…we couldn’t tell you about the meeting.
We were ordered, threatened actually, not to.
But we’re not going to back off from this.
You’re the best chief this town has ever had. You’ve done a ton of good and—”
Beau put his hand on Collier’s shoulder, stopping him.
“I appreciate what you and the others are trying to do. But I’ve made my decision.
Honestly, I was leaning toward resigning even before I found out about the meeting.
Hearing the mayor’s arguments and Tanya’s mother simply helped me make up my mind.
Go on, Collier. Go back inside and tell the other officers it’s over.
Don’t get on the mayor’s bad side. Save your own jobs. I don’t need or want you to save mine.”
“But, sir—”
“Good-bye, Collier.” Beau turned around and started down the sidewalk again.
Several moments passed before he finally heard the sound of Collier’s footsteps receding as he headed back to the police station.
Beau passed the parking lot, then the lake where it ended here in town, and headed toward the long winding gravel road up the mountain that would take him home.
Relief that no one was trying to stop him anymore had his shoulders relaxing.
He didn’t want any of the people he’d worked with to get in trouble because of him.
He could weather the loss of his job without any immediate difficulty.
Beau wasn’t exactly wealthy. But he wasn’t hurting either.
He’d made sound investments over the years and would be okay for a good long while before he’d be forced to enter the job market again.
The question was what kind of job that might be.
Ever since he was a kid, he’d wanted to be a police officer.
And while he had plenty of law enforcement contacts in the state that he could tap to get a job in another town or county, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in law enforcement anymore.
Maybe today’s meeting was his wake-up call that it was time to do something else, something where the stakes weren’t life-or-death and he couldn’t hurt anyone if he made a bad decision.
Like the decision he’d made to leave that meeting.
He should have stayed. He realized that now.
Not to argue on his own behalf or even to stick around for a meaningless vote, but to do what he’d intended to do when he’d headed downtown.
He should have told his officers about the visit from Sierra Covington.
They needed to begin an investigation into how she knew what she did and whether others, like her father’s henchmen, were also in town.
He’d call and warn his officers after he got home.
The sound of tires slowly crunching on gravel had him sighing. Collier or one of the others must have decided to try again to change his mind. He kept walking as the car pulled up alongside him, creeping along to match his pace.
When he finally looked over, he didn’t recognize the vehicle. It was a banged-up black four-wheel drive Jeep Wrangler that had seen far better days.
The passenger window rolled down and a familiar face looked back at him, wearing a blue plaid shirt this time instead of a tight black T-shirt. “Hey, stranger. How do you like my Lamborghini?”
He reluctantly smiled. “I might have made some inaccurate assumptions earlier.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Don’t push it, Covington.”
“I take it things didn’t go the way you would have preferred?”
“At the secret meeting you somehow knew about?”
“Um, yes.”
He sighed.
She hesitated, then asked, “Did they fire you?”
“I didn’t give them a chance. I quit.” He continued his slow, steady walk up the steep narrow road with the Jeep keeping pace beside him.
“I thought you would have put up more of a fight.”
He stopped, and the Jeep jerked to a halt. Beau rested his forearms in the window opening of the passenger door. “More of a fight? How would you know what I did or didn’t do?”
Her eyes widened. “Um, I don’t of course. I just, I mean, you haven’t been gone all that long, and I thought you must have given up rather quickly.”
“You’re lying. You knew I didn’t fight at all.
If this was anywhere else but Mystic Lake, I’d suspect one of my officers was spying for you.
But I know my people. I’d trust them with my life.
There’s only one other way I can think of that you got your information.
You’ve somehow put a hidden camera inside the police station, haven’t you?
Let me guess. There’s one at the mayor’s office too. ”
Her lips compressed in a tight line.
Beau started laughing. “I knew it.”
She stared at him in surprise. “You’re not angry? You’re not going to threaten to arrest me?”
His smile faded. “I should be furious. But what would have been a huge deal to me an hour ago isn’t scoring very high on my give-a-care meter today.
Plus, I no longer have the authority to arrest you.
” He gave her a stern look. “You will have the cameras removed, though, right? Promise me or I’ll call someone who can arrest you. ”
“You’d believe me if I give you my word?”
“Hell no. But I owe you one for alerting me about the meeting. I’ll give you a chance to correct your mistake and remove the cameras before someone finds them.
Then I’ll phone in an anonymous tip about someone potentially bugging the police station and mayor’s office, to make sure you followed through.
How much time will you need before I send in that tip? ”
She sighed. “A week? I still might glean more useful information from my cameras.”
“You’ve got twenty-four hours, not a minute more.”
“You and your deadlines. It’s annoying.”
“That needle on my don’t-care meter isn’t even budging.” He started walking again.
The Jeep quickly caught up and slowed beside him. “It’s a long walk home, Beau. If you’re not afraid of tarnishing your reputation by being seen with a Covington, I’m happy to give you a lift.”
He let out a deep breath and stopped. “I’m not particularly concerned with my reputation right now.
” He rested his forearms in the window opening again.
“What’s your end game? What exactly do you want from me?
I’m no longer in a position of power to help you access police files about your brother’s case. ”
“You could call me Sierra, for one.”
“And?”
“I still want to work with you on my brother’s case. You know more about it than anyone else, especially since you recently reopened it. And until we know who killed him—”
“If he was actually murdered.”
“If,” she agreed. “But if he was, the killer likely has you on his radar. All it took for me to find out that you were re-examining cold cases, including my brother’s, was to overhear conversations at nearby tables in a restaurant. If I heard it then others have too.”
“I can take care of myself,” he said. “No need to worry about me, although I appreciate the warning. As to your brother’s case, I can call one of the officers and ask them to work with you. That will give you access to information as well as the muscle of the police department helping you.”
She shook her head. “You still don’t get it, do you? Yes, if you were still the chief, it would be easier. But I don’t believe any of those other cops will dig into the case the way you will.”
He rolled his eyes. “Like I dug into it originally, classifying it as an accident?”
She shook her head again. “Anyone would have classified it as an accident. The only reason I doubt it is because of who the victim really was, a fact I don’t want to spread around.
You know he was my brother. No one else does, not the police at least. I want to keep it that way so I can stay under the radar of whoever killed him, if he really was murdered. ”
“Tanya Jericho’s parents wouldn’t agree with your faith in my investigative abilities.”
“Yes, well, grief has a way of blinding people sometimes. Which is yet another reason that I need you, someone who isn’t emotional about my brother.
Someone who can be objective. And someone who is very good at their job.
I’ve researched you extensively on the internet.
You aren’t the kind of man to give up when you see a thread to pull.
In Tanya Jericho’s case, there was absolutely no reason for you or anyone else to believe she was still alive.
No threads. No clues to pursue. If there was, you’d have dug in your heels and gone to the ends of the earth for a resolution.
The mayor and his lawyers are idiots not to realize that.
Your track record of solved cases is more than enough proof. ”
He frowned, not sure what to make of her little speech. “Thanks. I think.”
“No need to thank me. I’m not offering flattery or platitudes.
Facts are facts. What you need to understand is that my brother wasn’t alone while here in Mystic Lake.
He was with friends, people who knew his true identity.
If one of them or someone with them killed Esteban, they knew they were murdering the son of Michael Covington.
If my father finds out my brother was murdered, he’ll go on a scorched earth policy.
No one will be safe from his wrath. There’s no way anyone would risk that kind of vengeance unless something big is worth killing for here in your town.
I honestly have no idea what that could be.
But if my fears are true, other people are in danger. ”
“You really are worried about the safety of people you don’t know, aren’t you?”
She frowned. “Well of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Why not, indeed. What about this wrath you talk about? You’re painting your father out to be a mob boss.”
“Now you’re just being a jerk, Beau.”
“Keeping it real, Covington.”
“I’m not blind, okay? I’m fully aware of my father’s…reputation, that it’s possible he might be into…less than savory things. I also know that he would do anything to protect his family, including revenge if someone hurt one of us.”
“Fair enough.” He stood in indecision. Everything she’d said made sense. But working with a known criminal’s daughter, no matter how sexy and smart she might be, left a bad taste in his mouth.
She pressed the button to unlock the passenger door. “Are you coming or not?”
The sound of another vehicle approaching had him glancing down the road. An unfamiliar white pickup with tinted windows had just turned onto the gravel road at the bottom of the mountain.
“Come on, Beau,” she encouraged him. “Think of it as an adventure. You get to rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy and save the world.”
He arched his brows. “Are you quoting the Mummy movie at me?”
“Whatever works. Did it?”
The truck coming up behind them stopped about fifty yards back, unable to pass on this particularly narrow stretch of road.
“I already know I’m going to regret this.” Beau hopped into the Jeep.