My first interaction with Henry McCloud was when I’d called the station trying to reach Quincey Dornbush during my first month living in Fair Haven. Because Henry fondly remembered my Uncle Stan, he offered to get Quincey’s phone number for me. On the surface, that should make my chances good that Henry would help me.
The only problem was he’d still followed protocol getting me Quincey’s number. He’d radioed Quincey first and asked permission. Whether or not he helped me now could depend on whether he felt I had a right to the information. That all hinged on whether he saw me first as Mark’s lawyer or first as his fiancée.
Thankfully, Case hadn’t had the same concern over giving out Henry’s number or I would have had to devolve into hanging around in the police station parking lot, waiting for him to come into work.
I dialed the number Case gave me. It rang for the third time. If he didn’t answer, should I leave a message? It seemed even less wise to leave one for him than for Sheila.
“McCloud,” a man’s voice said.
I jumped. I’d been so busy thinking about whether to leave a message that I’d stopped paying attention.
“This is Nikki,” I blurted.
That sounded too much like Mark’s fiancé and not enough like his lawyer.
“Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes,” I said in my professional tone. It might need work, but it was all I had at present.
“I thought you might be calling me.” There was a smile in his voice like he found my amendment of my name humorous. Like I hadn’t fooled him at all, and he guessed why I’d done it. “Are you officially Mark’s lawyer? You know I can’t discuss details of an active investigation with you if you’re not.”
The way he said it made it hard for me to tell if he was gently instructing me to lie to him. As long as I told him I was Mark’s lawyer—whether it was true or not—he’d talk to me.
This time I couldn’t lie, though. Henry wouldn’t get in trouble for my lie—which might be why he nudged me in that direction—but I’d have crossed into something borderline illegal. That wasn’t a line I ever wanted to cross. Mark wouldn’t want me breaking the law for him.
Thankfully, even though Anderson might be lead on the case, Anderson and I were partners. That did make me Mark’s lawyer in some capacity. I might be batting my eyelashes at the line of legality, but I wasn’t letting it take me home.
“Mark is represented by my firm.”
“What would you like to know?” Henry asked. His tone still carried that smile, as if he saw my choice of words for what they were as well.
I could understand why that would strike him as funny, but his amusement felt slightly inappropriate. Someone he’d worked with had died, the chief was missing, and Mark stood accused of murder. I’d always been described as cheerful, and I was struggling with smiling these days.
But everyone dealt with stress and loss in different ways. If the past year had taught me anything, it was that.
“I know you were the one working the night Troy died. What we need to know is who called in the fake accident Mark went to.”
“It was Troy.” The humor was gone from Henry’s voice now. “Troy made the call.”
9
My chest went tight, like I’d fallen and knocked all the air from my lungs.
If Troy made the phone call that drew Mark away from his house, we’d be back to having no leads.
It was still an if though. I was going to run this case using everything my parents had taught me, and that meant no assumptions. Double-check everything. Leave no chances for the prosecution to disprove your arguments. “Are you sure it was Troy? Could it have been someone else using his name or badge number?”
“It wasn’t just his name or badge number. It was his voice.”
The desire to both throw something and cry built inside of me. I couldn’t do either. The first would be childish, and the second wouldn’t solve anything. Well, except for releasing some frustration. “Could it have been someone impersonating Troy’s voice?”
“They’d have had to be world-class. I hear all the officers’ voices so often that they can’t fool me when they try.”
On any other day, the idea of Fair Haven officers trying to play a practical joke on one of their dispatchers would have made me laugh. Now it simply mocked me and the fact that our best lead for proving Mark’s innocence had evaporated.
The longing to cry pushed out the desire to destroy something. Elise and I hadn’t considered Troy might have made the call. It was the worst possible outcome. “After Troy called you, you called Mark?”
“I did.”
I guess at least we knew Troy was alive when Mark left home. How that might help us, I wasn’t sure, but I’d take whatever I could get. “Did you also call Chief McTavish?”
Elise had mentioned that McTavish was gone when his wife woke up. Something must have happened to get him to leave his house. A phone call or a text like Troy received seemed the most likely. Elise hadn’t said there was a useful text found on Chief McTavish’s abandoned cell phone, so I was betting it’d been a phone call. If we could cross Dispatch off the list, that meant the last number who called his phone might be another lead.
Henry coughed a few times. “Sorry, the cold I had a month ago won’t give up.” He cleared his throat a couple of times. “I called the chief. Before I called Mark, I think. Troy said the accident looked suspicious to him. With a fatality involved, I thought the chief would want to go.”
I planted a hand over my mouth to keep from groaning out loud.
That made it look like Mark had kidnapped or killed Chief McTavish as well as Troy. The prosecution would argue that Mark forced Troy to make that phone call to Dispatch. I could think of at least ten better ways to create an alibi for myself if I wanted to kill someone than faking an accident call, but my opinion didn’t matter. Once this went to court, only the jury members’ opinions mattered. All the prosecution had to do was say Mark was smart enough to figure out a way to both give himself an alibi and lure Chief McTavish out to the middle of nowhere.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Henry said. “Mark’s a good guy, and it’s terrible this had to happen to him.”
“Thanks anyway.”
I disconnected the call before I lost control of my tear ducts. I’d hung so much on being able to crack the story of the person who placed that call. Now I knew Troy had placed the call that sent Mark out that night, but not much more.
I straightened in my chair. That wasn’t entirely true. I knew one other thing. Troy said the accident looked suspicious, which meant the medical examiner would need to be sent out. But he hadn’t asked for Chief McTavish to be sent as well. Henry did that on his own. It was possible McTavish was the collateral damage in all of this.
The person who forced Troy to make the call had expected Mark. Maybe he’d planned to ambush him and kill both him and Troy. If McTavish arrived before Mark, the killer would have had to change his plans.
I pressed my palm to my forehead and pushed my chair back from the table. Elise and I assumed this wasn’t about a case Mark worked with Chief McTavish and Troy because all the major cases McTavish had worked since coming to Fair Haven, I’d been involved with as well. I hadn’t been targeted.
