He picked his pen back up and tapped it—point, end, point, end—back and forth.
Then he got up and left the room.
“Does that mean he believes me or not?” Isabel asked.
I wasn’t sure. It could go either way, depending on how much Detective Dillion allowed his suspicion of me to influence him.
Isabel and I fell into silence. The time between each tick of the clock above the door seemed to lengthen.
I had to fill the void with something before I took the clock off the wall and yanked its batteries out. “Will you reconsider staying? So many of the officers here are my friends, and they’re good people. They’d protect you from Jerrod if he came for you.”
“I wish I could. It’s been a long time since I’ve had friends.”
She said the word tentatively like she wasn’t sure we were friends. Given the fact that I’d broken into her truck a couple of days ago and she’d held me at knife point, I couldn’t blame her for questioning it. But the talks we’d had let me know we could be friends if we were given the chance.
“That’s why I want you to stay and let us help you.”
She scraped a nail into the arm of the chair. “If it turns out Jerrod didn’t run you off the road, I’ll stay for your wedding like I promised, but then I have to go.”
I opened my mouth to protest again, but she shook her head.
“I know you want to help and that you think the police here could keep me safe, but they couldn’t follow me around like a protective detail. Jerrod would wait until I’m alone. The only way for me to stay safe is to keep moving. Besides, I’ve already drawn too much attention to myself here. The town’s too small, and I’d be too easy to find.”
I had to respect her choice. I couldn’t force her.
And she had a point. If you wanted to go unnoticed, Fair Haven wasn’t the place to do it. “I hope you’ll find a spot where you feel safe staying. You’ll be safer if you have friends to watch out for you rather than trying to do it yourself.” I couldn’t keep a grin from my face. “You’ll sleep better, too.”
Isabel flashed one of her rare firecracker smiles.
The door swung open, and I jumped in my seat. I’d been so focused on Isabel that I hadn’t heard anyone approaching.
Detective Dillion led the way, an oversized manila folder under his arm. Mark limped in behind him.
“Does this mean I can leave?” Isabel asked.
The detective nodded.
“Elise will drive you home,” I said.
She didn’t wait for anyone to change their minds.
I couldn’t imagine how much bravery it’d taken for her to come here. Police stations represented business or friendship for me. They represented something entirely different for her. Since Troy was killed, I’d gotten a taste of what it was like. No one should have to be most afraid of the people who should be keeping them safe.
Dillion dropped the file on his desk. “Pull up close. I’m not wasting resources photocopying the thing again.”
Mark took the chair Isabel had left and scooted it forward. He opened the folder.
“I looked over the file after you two were here last time.” Dillion lowered himself into his chair as if he were tired of it all. “It looks like a straightforward accident. He was out at his cabin during deer-hunting season. When the paramedics arrived, there were cleaning supplies out on the table. It looked like he was planning to clean his gun.”
Mark flipped to the next page, reading so intently I almost thought he was going to bring the papers up to touch his nose.
I wouldn’t spot anything out of the ordinary in the autopsy report, so there wasn’t a point in me trying to read over his shoulder.
I brought my chair closer anyway. “A police chief should know how to handle a gun safely, don’t you think?”
“He should have,” Dillion said. “The truth of it is that we can get sloppy because we handle weapons so often. I once investigated a case where an otherwise good officer died because he didn’t maintain his weapon and it jammed when he needed it to fire. Things happen.”
Mark turned another page. He ran his finger along the typing as if trying to help himself focus.
He removed his hand and slowly lowered the other pages back down.
My mouth went dry and my tongue felt too big to comfortably fit inside. He hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary.
Dillion was looking at him now too. “So?”
Mark closed the file. “I would have declared it an accident if I’d been the medical examiner. He had gunshot residue on his skin. That, combined with the angle of the wound, says it was close range, and he was shot from below. You wouldn’t expect either of those things if someone else were holding the gun. It did look like his head was tilted back when the shot hit his neck, but that’d be consistent with him falling asleep accidentally with the gun still in his hands.”
The chair felt a little wobbly underneath me even though I knew it was solid. We couldn’t have been mistaken. Why else would someone have taken the file from Mark’s house? Why else would someone have tried to kill us after Grady Scherwin gave us a second copy? Why else would someone have taken Chief McTavish if it wasn’t to stop his corruption investigation?
Lightning could strike the same place twice. But we weren’t a lightning rod, and my parents had taught me to be extra skeptical of anything that seemed like too much of a coincidence.
“May I see the file?” I asked.
Mark slid it over to me.
I avoided the pictures and the autopsy report. Mark would have caught anything suspicious there, and I didn’t need to throw up in front of Detective Dillion.
I read through the officers’ reports, but they didn’t tell me anything that Dillion and Mark hadn’t already. Quincey had been one of the responding officers, along with not-yet-chief Wilson. That combination was likely why Chief McTavish hadn’t yet crossed Quincey off his list. The responding officers would have reached the location even before the paramedics, giving them time to stage the scene. For all Chief McTavish knew, they’d been the ones to kill Chief Zacharius and then call it in.
