“What about one of the dispatchers?” he asked. “When they’re working the desk, they’re often asked to pull a file for someone. It wouldn’t look suspicious. Aren’t you friends with Sheila?”
I held back a flinch. “Sheila wasn’t willing to even give me a name when I wanted to know who was working the night Troy died. Both Henry and Case would require us to lie to them. And, at this point, I’m not sure they’d buy it. If I was accessing that file officially, I wouldn’t need to ask one of them to get it for me. Neither would you. We’d get it from Detective Dillion.”
Henry might still do it. He hadn’t seemed to care so much about whether I was telling him the truth or not as long as he had a story he could tell to cover his hind end if anyone asked. That also meant he’d likely turn us in without resistance to save himself if it came to that, though.
“I think we should ask Rigman,” I said at the same time as Mark said, “I think we should ask Scherwin.”
I’d rather smooch a creepy, crawly forest creature than ask Grady Scherwin for help. “Really? Grady Scherwin?”
“The only reason you don’t want to ask Scherwin is you don’t like him,” Mark said.
My inner child wanted to cross her arms and pout at the implication, but that would only prove his point. “You don’t like him, either.”
“I don’t, but this isn’t about who we like or don’t like. It’s about who we think is least likely to have been involved in the corruption going on.”
I slumped back in my seat. Grady Scherwin was a jerk, but did that mean I thought he was also a dirty cop? Just because someone was a police officer and followed the rules didn’t necessarily mean they also had to be a nice person. “Let’s each make our case, then. You said yourself that Scherwin is badge-heavy. He likes power. He’d probably love to be controlling everything behind the scenes and congratulating himself on how he’s getting away with it.”
Mark was shaking his head before I even finished. It hit my nerves about as well as wet shoes squeaking on a linoleum floor. It made me feel like he hadn’t listened to everything before deciding I was wrong.
I also knew that Mark always listened, even when it appeared like he wasn’t. Now wasn’t the time to pick a fight over something unrelated.
Mark pulled into the animal shelter parking lot. He must have finally realized, too, that we couldn’t keep driving by the police station without drawing attention. “Grady likes respect. He likes exercising his authority as an officer because it publicly gives him that respect. Shady backroom deals aren’t going to give him the kind of validation he’s looking for.”
He had me there. “Okay, but Grady Scherwin grew up here, and he’s been with the Fair Haven PD longer than Rigman. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to study the pictures in the lobby.”
One of the walls in the lobby of the Fair Haven police department was lined with a picture taken on January second of each new year. I’d looked at them multiple times over the past months while I waited for Elise or Erik or whoever else I’d come to meet or talk to.
Assuming I remembered correctly, the people who’d been there before Wilson took over as chief were Lawrence, Quincey, Grady Scherwin, Henry McCloud, Case Hammond, and the chaplain. Elise and Rigman had joined shortly after, when a couple of the older officers must have retired. Everyone else filled in the gaps along the way.
“Rigman grew up here, too,” Mark said. “He only worked on another force waiting for a spot to open here. He wouldn’t be in the picture the year Chief Wilson took over because it was taken a month or two before Rigman got hired. He was here that year. I know because he beat Elise out for the spot.”
That was suspicious timing. So was that Rigman would have waited so long for a job “back home” only to decide later on in his career that he wanted to make a change and specialize in crime scene reconstruction, a job that would likely move him to a bigger city. Maybe he saw that he was about to get caught, and he was ready to close up what he was doing in Fair Haven and move on.
“What if they’re both involved?” I asked softly.
Mark went gray around the lips. “Then we’re screwed.”
We had to take a risk on one of them. We needed to see what was in that case file that the killer wanted to hide so badly. “I don’t suppose saying Grady Scherwin makes my skin crawl would change your mind?”
Mark’s dimples peeked out. “The opposite, actually. I think whoever managed to run this scheme for this long has better people skills than Grady Scherwin.”
Point taken. The best deceivers were usually charming or forgettable. Grady Scherwin was neither.
“You win. Grady Scherwin it is.”
18
We decided to grab take-out fish and chips from A Salt & Battery before we headed to the police station to wait for shift change. Grady Scherwin would either be coming into work or heading home from work since they were short-handed. It was the best time to catch him. Neither of us knew where he lived or had his cell phone number.
I paid for our meals, since Mark forgot his wallet at my house, and we ate in the car parked out front of A Salt & Battery. It would have been warmer inside, but neither of us felt like facing the stares Mark would get.
Nearing the end of his meal, Mark yawned again large enough that his jaw looked like it was going to fall off his face.
I crumpled up my now-empty container and shoved it back into the plastic bag it came in. I tossed it into the back seat, next to my purse. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until tomorrow?”
“I’ll be fine. Just didn’t sleep well the last few nights.” Mark clamped a hand over his mouth, but the twist to his features gave it away that he was yawning again. “We need to do this tonight. Our wedding is coming fast. I can’t leave the country anymore, so we’ve already lost our honeymoon. And we don’t know what else this guy has planned.”
I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to go into the dress shop sometime today to try on my dress again. Between my late, then sleepless, night with Isabel, Mark getting out on bail today, and the pieces we’d fit together since then, it’d gotten pushed to the back of my mind.
But marrying Mark and getting to spend the rest of our lives together was the important part, not what I wore to get married. The priority was this case. “At least let me drive then.”
He handed over the keys without an argument. He must be exhausted. Mark was easily the better driver of the two of us, especially on winter roads.
We swapped seats, and I drove us down to the Fair Haven police station, going around the back side into the parking lot normally reserved for staff. Unlike much of Fair Haven, street lights lit the parking lot. I picked the corner with the most shadows, in order to wait. With our luck lately, Detective Dillion would come out before we spotted Grady Scherwin. Then we’d have some real explaining to do.
Mark and I fell into silence, and the clock on my dashboard ticked another minute closer to shift change. The staff coming in should be arriving soon, slightly before the staff leaving.
I sent up a small prayer that Grady would arrive alone rather than at the same time as another staff member.
A truck with wheels almost as tall as I was rolled into the parking lot, a low rumble ensuring everyone knew it was a diesel engine. The driver pulled up almost directly under one of the street lights. He took two spots, angling his truck so that no one could park too close. The driver had to be a man—no woman I knew felt the need to drive a truck like that.
Maybe it was because I was from Washington, DC, where parking spots were at a premium, but people who took up two spaces to protect their paint job was one of my pet peeves.
The door opened, and Grady Scherwin stepped onto the running boards and then down to the ground. I couldn’t see his sandy blond buzz cut under his beanie, but the physique was right—body-builder arms and a gut that said he needed more cardio and less weight training.
The fact that he didn’t climb back in upon seeing that he was taking up two spots made it clear he’d intended to do it. It figured. Just when I thought I couldn’t like him any less, he dropped even lower in my estimation. And it had to be right before I needed to ask him a favor.
Mark already had his door open. I scrambled out after him.
