Ashes and Bone (20 page)

“You’re right, we don’t,” Gina said. “Because I don’t believe for a minute this is about a resort. Not when the success of it depended on getting Ironwood. You couldn’t put the financial squeeze on the church the way you did the Semples, and you lost Ironwood. Which means Norton lost their access to the main road. And there’s nothing about a permit being filed for a new road or access. In fact, I couldn’t find record of any building permits being filed at all.”

“They’re waiting on the zoning to be finalized.” Mayor Asher cut a glance at his son. “We’ve had a holdup. But things should move along shortly.”

Dylan’s mouth tightened into a white line. Cage battled with his options. He could wait, try to get Dylan alone, or he could go for it now, while Dylan was tired and furious with his father. Weak.

“Dylan, I know you’re a good guy. And probably stuck with the shitty end of the stick,” Cage said. “What’s your part in all this? You hate Norton. What isn’t your father telling us?”

“How dare you,” Mayor Asher said. “My son–”

“Is an adult,” Gina said. “And if he knows something that could lead us to Nick Samuels’s attacker, an accessory. So are you. So one of you needs to start talking.”

Dylan wiped his face, dragging the soot down his chin, leaving a trail of finger-shaped streaks. “I think Norton will destroy our history. But my father disagrees. And there isn’t much I can do about it.”
He doesn’t want his father to know about his digging.
Cage decided to hold on to that for now.
Trust. Earn it and keep it.

“Mayor, here’s my theory,” Gina said. “I think that Wyatt Booth and his man Stanley are bad news. Maybe they’re involved in something bigger than we realize, maybe not. But I think they want that land for a different reason than what we’ve all been told. They’re lining your pockets to make sure they get what they want. And if what they want is worth enough, maybe they’re willing to kill to protect it. You get caught in the middle.”

“You are out of line, Investigator. I won’t sit here and be accused of something so outlandish.”

She didn’t let up. “Where were you when Nick Samuels disappeared? And this afternoon when Ben Moore was murdered?”

“I was at home when Samuels disappeared, riding out the storm. Plenty of people can attest to that.”

“And today?”

“Here. I left Ashland shortly after Investigator Foster visited and have been here all day.”

“Will you give us permission to check the security cameras?” Gina asked.

“Yes,” the mayor said. “Do whatever you need to.”

Dylan remained silent during the exchange, his jaw clenching every time his father spoke.

“What about Wyatt Booth?” Cage asked. “You obviously brought him to town. How well do you know him?”

“I didn’t bring him to town,” Mayor Asher said. “You have my son to thank for that.”

Dylan’s head shot up, his upper lip curled so high his teeth showed. “Yeah. Blame it on me.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Here you are, pious and self-righteous about saving Roselea’s history, and it’s your fault Booth came here. The blame is on you.”

The undercurrent of the mayor’s words struck Cage like the sting of a hornet’s nest he’d once stepped on. The mayor was talking about Booth, the person, not his company or all the money it could bring in. And he spoke of blame like he meant it.

“Dylan?” Cage pressed. “I think you’re stuck the middle. And telling us whatever happened will help you feel better. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you had anything to do with this mess. But I think you know more than you’ve told us.”

Nodding, Dylan stared at his father, who glared back with barely veiled disgust. “Yeah, so it’s my fault. Before any of this happened, I told…a friend about the land. About how I’d like to prospect it, try to find something of historical value.”

“By friend he means his boyfriend.” The mayor pressed his hand against his chest. “Breaks my heart. And by telling him about the land, he means he took him there for their ungodly activities.”

“You’re a bigot.” Dylan sounded tired of what was probably a never-ending argument. “And a hypocrite.”

“So, you showed your friend the property,” Cage prompted. “And then what?”

“He saw the potential. Turned out, he had connections to Norton. Word got back to Booth, he paid my father a visit.”

“What connections to Norton?” Gina said.

Dylan glanced at his father, whose hard eyes flickered with fear. “Norton’s been expanding down here for a while. My friend had worked on another project with them, but I didn’t know—didn’t even think about his saying anything—until Booth showed up and started talking to my father.”

“Where’s this friend now?” Cage asked.

Dylan ground his teeth. “We no longer speak. I don’t know where he is.”

“Give us his name, then.”

Another hard look from Dylan, followed by a heavy sigh. “Carl Gilbert.”

Cage caught Gina’s gaze, and she nodded. So the FBI’s informant in the Delta Correctional Facility, the one who’d been running the meth ring and illegal antiques fraud, was the instigator in this whole mess.

“Do you mean Norton’s expanding their business, or former Senator Wyatt Booth is expanding his reach and his pockets?” Gina asked. “Because I’ve heard some really interesting things about his side business.”

Dylan swallowed, his mouth opening just enough Cage thought he was going to spill.

“I’ve also heard Norton’s had some problem projects,” Gina said. “Right down to a dead project manager. Whose business just happens to have been purchased by Norton right after his death. Ben Moore made a monthly payment to them for more than a year. But the business didn’t file taxes. What do you suppose Booth—I’m sorry, Norton—uses that account for?”

Dylan blinked. Bit his lip, rubbing his hands on his knees. He was going to talk. Cage knew the look, had seen it a hundred times before.

“He’s told you what you need to know,” Mayor Asher cut in. “We know Wyatt Booth only through our business dealings. He’s a former senator, old money, and as he told you, a descendant of John Wilkes Booth. A powerful man who’s treated us well.”

“How powerful?” Gina asked.

“He’s a successful businessman. Use your common sense.” He crossed his arms in a way that clearly stated he wasn’t saying any more. The moment lost, Dylan had clammed up too, his mouth tight and his eyes tired. Cage needed to get him alone. Appeal to him as a friend.

“One last thing before we go.” Gina reached into her jacket pocket for the bagged item she’d brought along. She sat the cartridge box on the desk. “Do you know anything about this? We found it hidden in Nick’s abandoned car.”

Dylan’s expression changed from defeated man to excited kid. His eyes gleamed, his mouth falling open. He reminded Cage of Dani when she saw a new artifact. “Wow. That looks like the real deal. Where’d you get it?”

“It is authentic,” Cage said. “Dani confirmed it. Ben’s Memory Lane Antiques had both real and fake items. This was in one of the pictures Ben sent to Nick.”

Gina rested her hands on the mayor’s desk and lowered her voice like she was about to share a big secret. “We think Ben got himself mixed up in the Dixie Mafia. They were getting a cut of his antiques money. And Nick figured it out, thanks to Ben’s tip. So the logical thought is that this sucker,” she tapped on the protective plastic, “given the way Nick hid it in his car, can tell us something about who took him. Or had him taken, since I’d guess the Dixie Mafia has goons for that sort of thing.”

“And the FBI is telling us that the Dixie Mafia has been infiltrating this area for the last few years,” Cage said. “The head boss has political ties and family money. They hide behind several different legit businesses. Construction is one of them. Resorts, that sort of thing. Sounds a lot like Booth’s line of work.”

A muscle in Dylan’s cheek twitched, but he didn’t break. “Well, if that’s what Nick got himself involved in, I’ll be praying for him. I’ve heard the only way out from those guys is death.”

“Nick had a note stashed inside the cartridge box,” Gina said. “Says ‘Matt and cousins.’ You know anything about that, Mayor?”

Mayor Asher stilled. His cheeks puffed out like he was holding his breath. “No, I surely don’t. I’ll ask you both to leave now.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Gina said.

Cage followed her out, giving Dylan a final nod. He waited until they were back in the saturated air to speak. “So Dylan wants to talk. I need to get him alone.”

“Make it happen.” Gina’s grim expression deepened the lines around her eyes. “I’ve got to call my contact at the Bureau and let him know about his boy’s involvement down here. And I’m going to see if I can find out any more about this note and the mayor’s contacts. He looked like a pufferfish ready to explode.”

T
hey’d barely made
it back to the station when an urgent call from Jeb Riley came in. He told Gina he couldn’t talk over the phone, he needed to show them something.
In the morgue, of all the damned places. This has all the stench of something big going down.

“When’s Ben’s body going to be taken to Jackson for the autopsy?” Cage followed Gina through the bowels of the hospital, the shimmering white walls giving him the creeps. Why did the place have to look like every scary-ass horror movie he’d ever seen?

“Soon as Jeb takes it.”

“Did he tell you why he wanted us to meet him here?” Cage hated the morgue. Last time he’d been inside one, he’d been looking at his sister’s doppelganger, murdered in almost exactly the same way Lana had been. The sterile smell washed over him, triggering his sense memory. He nearly gagged. He’d rather smell actual death than the antiseptic, chemically enhanced odor that accompanied the unnatural part of dying.

“He just said we needed to see something. And the body should have been on its way by now.” Gina opened the door, grimacing at the sight of Ben laid out on the steel table. Local autopsies were rare; Jackson did most of them, but the table was available if needed, along with basic and equally gut-twisting equipment. Cage kept his eyes on Ben instead of on the built-in coolers lining the wall. After his first visit to the morgue years ago, he’d had nightmares of the steel doors opening and a rotting corpse sliding one foot and then the other onto the cold tile.
My very own horror movie.

“What’s this all about, Jeb?” Gina asked. She and Cage stood on opposite sides of the table, Ben’s body between them. Still in the black bag, with only his face and torso visible, he looked worse than he had hanging from the rafter. The broken bone in his neck protruded through torn flesh, his eyes open and spotted with blood. The tip of his purple tongue peeked out of his mouth. Cage swallowed back the rising bile and tried to ignore the encroaching smell of decomposition.

Jeb’s eyes were bright, and he bounced on his heels. “I kept thinking if Ben didn’t do this to himself, how’d someone force him into it? He’s a healthy, strong man. Smart, even if he made dumb decisions. So how in the hell did someone lure him into the hayloft and into that noose? Bugged the hell out of me. So I brought him in here to have a closer look.”

“And?” Gina waited.

Cage looked at Ben’s blank eyes again. It seemed they stared back somehow. But the accusatory look was gone. He just looked dead. And far from peaceful.

Jeb slid up the sleeve of the t-shirt Ben wore. “Look closely at his bicep, and tell me what you see.”

Wrinkling her nose, Gina moved closer. After a moment, she released a hard breath. “Shit.”

Cage followed suit. He couldn’t see anything but freckles, the festering smell of rotting flesh distracting him. And then he saw it. “That’s a needle mark.”

“Exactly,” Jeb said. “At first I thought maybe Ben was a closet diabetic. But he’s healthy. My niece is a nurse, and I had her do me a favor. She ran a tox screen.”

“That’s against protocol,” Gina said. “You’re not a doctor. We can’t use it in court.”

Cage didn’t care. His heart hammered against his ribcage, blood beating at his temples the same way it did every time he sensed a major break in a case.

“So what,” Jeb snapped back. “Get him to the Jackson medical examiner and order another. The findings will be the same.”

“And what are the findings?” Cage tried not to let his nerves show.

“Fentanyl.”

The sterile cold of the room seeped into Cage’s veins and shot down his spine. He turned to Gina, who had a triumphant smile on her face.

“Sounds like something we’ve heard before, doesn’t it?” she said. “Isn’t the prescription given in patches?”

Jeb nodded. “Yes, but it’s a growing product on the drug market. You put the gel from the patch onto a hard surface and let it dry. Takes a few hours. It turns into crystals, which are then injected with the right solution. It’s dangerous because the patch releases the fentanyl at an hourly rate. But used this way, you’re getting a lot more of the drug than used in surgery. It could easily cause death, and if not, can certainly incapacitate someone.”

Patch. The word dropped over Cage like a bucket of ice water. “Wyatt Booth has a patch. He’s got chronic knee pain. Between the pictures and this, I’d say we’ve got enough to bring him in.”

“It’s risky,” Gina said. “He’s got a lot of connections, and he’s going to put every one of them to use. We need to play this very carefully.”

“So we wait?” Cage said. Nick didn’t have the time for them to wait, if he was even still alive. They needed to move now, shake Booth or Stanley. Make someone talk.

“No. We go to the one person who was presumably around all day and probably knows a lot more than she wants to admit. Or even realizes. Margaret Asher.”

Getting Margaret alone
wasn’t going to be easy. Judging by the number of vehicles in the driveway—none of which were blue or damaged—the mayor, Booth, and Stanley were in residence, as well as Dylan. Cage prayed Margaret would answer the door, which would allow Gina to speak to the men while he questioned her.

Instead, a wary-looking Dylan answered the door. He’d showered, but the stench of smoke still lingered. He glanced over his shoulder with something like fear in his eyes. “Now isn’t a good time.”