Riverbend Road (18 page)

Cade hadn't even smiled, though the other police officers celebrated with her, and Jesse Fisher even brought in a bowl of her favorite gelato from Carmela's.

Another reason she knew she had made the right decision about graduate school.

“What's going on?” she asked now.

“Carrie Anne's babysitter called and one of her kids was throwing up so she had to take off,” he said, referring to their receptionist, a divorced single mother trying her best under difficult circumstances.

“Oh, I hope it's nothing serious.”

“A stomach bug, as far as Carrie Anne can tell. But I just got a call about a domestic dispute at the marina and Cody is out helping Jim Buttars round up a bunch of dairy cows that broke down a fence in his pasture and are wandering through the neighborhood. I need you to hold down the fort here.”

“I can take the domestic disturbance.”

He shook his head. “I've got it. I've been in meetings all morning and could use a little excitement. You know how to reach me.”

Did she? That was a big part of the problem. She knew his phone number by heart and how to call him on the radio in half a second flat but she had no idea how to
really
reach him.

He took off without another word and after a moment, she plopped down at her desk. For a summer afternoon during the busiest time of year, the phone was surprisingly quiet and she decided to use the downtime to catch up on paperwork that had piled up since her suspension. It wouldn't hurt to clean things out in preparation for leaving.

An hour later, she finished organizing her own files but decided to clear out some of the old folders in her desk, cases dating back to before her time, when this had been Cade's desk.

It was surreal to see her father's handwriting on some of the paperwork, his bold, no-nonsense scrawl. Again, she had that odd sensation of walking back in time, as if she could go knock on the door to the chief's office and find him in there puzzling over a case or talking on the phone to a witness.

She had to smile a little as she leafed through the mostly closed cases of parking violations and a few drunk and disorderlies. Hmm. Most of these should have been filed a long time ago and she felt guilty that she hadn't gone through the drawer before this.

The majority were dated in the weeks just before and just after her father had been shot, when everything here was understandable pandemonium while the Idaho State Police investigated the officer-involved shooting and the subsequent death of the shooter, Joseph Barlow, a drifter who decided to rob the local liquor store at gunpoint for gas money to get him to the next town.

While her father had been fighting for his life, Cade had been named interim chief and probably hadn't had time to organize some of his old paperwork.

She could have handed the work off to Carrie Anne when her kids were healthy again. But since things were slow and her own work was caught up, she decided to take on the task. It was kind of interesting anyway, encountering names of townspeople she knew on old files, and there was a definite sense of satisfaction in putting a little order to the chaos.

She reached the bottom of the pile when she found it.

At first when she saw the name Ronnie Herrera on the form, she thought it was another drunk and disorderly. Ronnie could be a great guy but he didn't hold his liquor well. She had broken up more than one bar fight at the Mad Dog where he had been involved.

As she read further, though, her insides seemed to turn to a block of ice.

Impossible. It must be some mistake.

By the time she reached the end of the form—a witness report, actually—the ice seemed to have crackled out to fill the rest of her.

What was this, and why had it been tucked away under other incident reports in a drawer of Cade's old desk?

She had read every single scrap of paper in the case file about her father's shooting. The state police had investigated it thoroughly—when a police chief was shot and severely injured and the suspect in turn shot by another officer, every stone had to be turned over.

She had never read this particular witness report, though. She was sure of it. Was it possible she missed it somehow?

Her copy of the documents in her father's case file was at home—it somehow had seemed important for her to have a record of the cataclysmal event that changed so many lives—but the original would be just a few feet away in the file cabinets.

On impulse, she made a copy of the witness report for her own duplicate of the official case file, then found the original. She was carrying both to her desk when—naturally—Carrie Anne's phone rang.

She pushed the buttons to pick it up on her desk extension. “Haven Point Police Department. Officer Bailey speaking.”

“Hello, Officer Bailey. This is Detective Warren from the Portland Police Department. How are things in your little corner of Idaho this fine afternoon?”

Maybe it was the result of her lingering turmoil from Ronnie Herrera's confusing witness statement, but she took an immediate dislike to the detective's smarmy, falsely jovial, brothers-in-arms tone. She checked the caller ID to verify it did have a Portland area code.

“Fine. Quite busy today. How can I help you, Detective Warren?”

Some of her curtness must have trickled through the phone line. The detective paused for a moment then spoke in a tone that was markedly cooler. “I'm doing an ATL on a person of interest in a case I'm working and got a tip this week that she might be in your area. I'm wondering if you can point me in the right direction.”

Typically, the Haven Point PD tried to cooperate with other jurisdictions but something about the detective set her on edge. She didn't want to assist with his attempt to locate but since she was the only one in the office, she didn't know how she could avoid it.

“Haven Point has nearly six thousand residents. I'm afraid we can't know every single person in the city limits but I'll help you if I can. Do you have a name on this person of interest?”

“Yeah. She's a pretty redhead by the name of Andrea Montgomery. She might also go by her maiden name. Andrea Packer.”

Wyn froze, suddenly on alert.

Oh Andie. What kind of trouble are you in?

“Hmm. Montgomery or Packer, you said?” She did her best to stall for time while she tried to figure out how to play this.

“Yeah. There's a chance she could be using another alias entirely. She would be new to the area, probably within the last month or so. She's also traveling with two children, a boy who's four but small for his age and a girl who is six.”

Who the hell was this detective and why was he looking for Andrea? Was this man part of the reason her friend had been so jumpy?

“Whatever name she's going by,” the man went on, “she's about five foot four, a hundred and twenty pounds, with red hair and green eyes. No tattoos, but she does have a small scar at the corner of her mouth, left-hand side, maybe half an inch long.”

How would this detective know Andrea didn't have any tattoos? Wyn wondered, all alarms now firing wildly.

“I'm sorry but I'm afraid I can't help you. That doesn't ring any bells for me,” she lied. “Like I said, we can't know every single person in town. What makes you think she might be in our jurisdiction? Does she have family here? If so, I can check with them to see if they have any clues to her whereabouts.”

“No. No family there. She has a...business connection, but it's tenuous.” Frustration crackled through the phone line.

“If you want to send us her mug shot and jacket, I'll let the police chief know. We can certainly keep an eye out for her.” She tried to keep her voice calm and even, hoping he couldn't hear the hard suspicion in it.

“She doesn't have a mug and she's never been arrested before, so she doesn't have a rap sheet.”

She did her best to play along. “A slippery one. I get you.”

“I do have a snapshot I can shoot you. Do you have an email address?”

“Yes. But first, let me jot down your particulars. What was your name, precinct, phone number and badge ID, just so I can pass it along to my chief? He's a bit of a hard-ass about that kind of procedure.”

She had no problem throwing Cade under the bus in this situation, even though her words weren't strictly true. Cade ran a tight house but not to the point of obsession—except when the rule violation involved her disobeying direct orders or the chief of police engaging in extracurricular activities with one of his officers, anyway.

Again, he hesitated slightly and she had the distinct impression Detective Warren would prefer not to divulge all that information but couldn't avoid a direct question.

He recited his necessary identification, which she wrote down carefully.

“Got it. Go ahead and send me what you have and I'll pass it along to my chief and the rest of the department so we can be on the alert.”

She gave him a department email address she knew Cade didn't monitor. Until she had a chance to talk to Andrea, it might be better to keep this information to herself.

“You should have it within the hour.”

“Great. We'll be sure to get back to you if anything pops.”

“Thanks.”

“You mind telling me why you're looking for her?” she asked, trying to weave her question ever so casually into the conversation. “If we've got some kind of a dangerous criminal mastermind in our midst, we would really like to know so our department can be on alert.”

Again, he hesitated almost imperceptibly. When he spoke, that smarmy, ingratiating note had returned. “I'm afraid I can't talk about it. You understand. It's an ongoing investigation and I'm not ready to reveal my hand just yet.”

Which both of them knew was cop code meaning he didn't have diddly—if there even
was
an investigation.

“Anyway, it's only speculation at this point,” Warren went on. “I'm just looking to have a conversation with the woman. But I have to find her first.”

Wyn r
eally
needed to have that conversation first. The only way she could help Andie was if she knew what was going on.

“You go ahead and send me that photograph. Meanwhile, I'll pass this information along to my chief and let him take it from here.”

“Chief Hard-Ass,” he said, in that jovial tone that grated down her spine like a room full of fingernails scraping down blackboards.

“That's the one. You'll hear from me, either way.”

“Thank you for your help, ma'am. I'd like to get down to your neck of the woods someday. I hear it's beautiful.”

“We like it,” she said shortly. “Thanks for your call. You'll hear from us.”

She basically hung up on the man then stared into space. What was Andie mixed up in? And what did this Detective Robert Warren have to do with it?

On impulse, she went to the first line of investigation and Googled him. From the first few links, she was able to get an image of a man younger than she might have expected, maybe late thirties. He appeared to be highly decorated, with several citations she found listed on an online bio.

Maybe she was crazy to be on edge about the phone call and to think that he was somehow connected to Andrea's edginess when she first came to Haven Point.

There was a chance her instincts were totally out of whack. Maybe Andie had committed some heinous crime in Portland and was on the run here. She had a hard time reconciling that idea with the woman she had come to know, but it wasn't the first time that day she had come to question her own judgments.

She had to get the story from Andrea and figure out a way to talk to her friend when she couldn't evade the questions.

She closed the last file just as Cade came back. “Did you get things sorted at the marina?” she asked.

“Yeah. Two brothers fighting over whose turn it was this week to drive the boat they went in on together. I'm guessing they're now rethinking that particular business decision and will likely end up selling the thing.”

He glanced down at her desk before she could hide the notebook where she'd jotted down information during her phone call. “Detective Robert Warren from the Portland PD. What did he need?”

She couldn't possibly tell him his neighbor across the street was a person of interest in an as-yet-undetermined investigation. Not until she had a chance to speak with Andie herself.

“Just an ATL. When he sends me the particulars, I'll pass it along.”

To her relief, he took that at face value. “Okay. Keep me posted.”

“I will.”

“Anything else happen while I was gone?”

The witness statement she had found was concealed beneath the thick file into her dad's shooting. Cade, of all people, might be able to shed light on it. He had been there, the other responding officer. It had been his shot that had finally taken out Joseph Barlow during that last, terrible gunfight.

“Something weird.” Her stomach was suddenly a tangle of nerves, just talking about that day two and a half years earlier. “I was organizing my desk and clearing things out when I found a form that hadn't been filed under the corresponding case number.”

He shrugged. “It happens, unfortunately, though things have gotten better since we computerized more paperwork in the last few years. Just put it in the right file.”

She met his gaze. “It's a witness report from the Joseph Barlow shooting.”

He froze like a cougar on prey, his features going completely still. Sudden tension seemed to ripple through the room. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Ronnie Herrera. It's the weirdest thing. I thought I knew that case inside and out. I read every detail of it. I never knew Ronnie was down at the marina, sleeping in his pickup truck after he and Elena had a fight.”

He nodded, his mouth in a hard line. “Oh yeah. I'd forgotten that. Yeah. He was there.”