Po knocked again.
There was no response. No sound of movement. No shifting of the shadows behind the blinds. He shared a glance with Tess, and she felt her mouth tighten. ‘We should check around the back,’ she said, but didn’t follow the suggestion with action. She stood slightly behind Po, and his presence was reassuring. When did she originally begin feeling this way, unsure of her own ability to do her job? No. She was no longer a cop. These days she was only a private citizen, and she had no right to be standing on the porch of a desperate man’s home about to take away his liberty. Why in God’s name had she even accepted this task?
Because she had to.
Not just for the remuneration that admittedly she needed badly, but also for her wellbeing and state of mind. She had been forced out of her career, and more than anything wanted to prove to the naysayers, of whom both her mother and Jim Neely rated highly, that she was still capable of performing. She’d signed up to protect and serve, and it wasn’t through her own fault that that duty had been snatched from her. Helping put Albert Sower behind bars was the kind of validation she required. To do that she must bring back Crawford Wynne, whose testimony would send Sower down permanently.
OK. Get a grip, girl, and get on with your job. She edged away from Po, leaning to peek through a narrow gap between the blinds and window frame. She saw a slither of a room as uncared for as the house and yard. No person was visible. She moved the other way and this time checked a kitchen window. The light was off inside, but enough daylight was available to make out a ramshackle table and ladder-backed chair. An empty plate sat neglected on the table, and flies bounced off and on it in search of morsels. She looked back at Po.
‘He isn’t here,’ she mouthed.
‘Or he’s hiding,’ Po replied.
‘I should go around the back.’
‘No. Wait up.’ Po reached for the door handle. It twisted in his grip and the door fell open an inch. Po raised his eyebrows.
‘What are you doing?’ Tess hurried to his side.
‘Taking a look.’
‘You can’t. It’d be breaking and entering.’
‘I haven’t broken anything. The door was unlocked and open like this when we found it.’ Po offered a conspiratorial smile. ‘Don’t say that wasn’t a line you used when you were a cop.’
‘We have no right to go inside.’
‘I probably had no right bashing up Benoit’s face either, but I did. C’mon, Tess. Do you want to get this done or not?’
‘Yes.’
‘So throw away your goddamn rulebook, will ya?’ Po pushed open the door, allowing it to swing naturally on loose hinges. A waft of hot, stale air rode over them. Sickly sweet, it made saliva flood Tess’s mouth, and she forced down a retch.
‘What is that stench?’
‘That’s the aroma of bachelorhood,’ Po said wryly. The stink was an accumulation of unwashed laundry, spoiling food, spilled beer, sweat, and vomit. It was the smell of the drunk tank at most police stations and one that Tess was familiar with.
‘Hello.’ Po’s voice was barely discernible as he announced them. ‘Hello. Crawford Wynne?’
No reply was forthcoming.
From somewhere inside the house there was a ticking noise. Unlike the sound of a clock these ticks were intermittent.
Tess’s attention went to the kitchen. The ticks were coming from there, like someone knocking a slim metal bar against steel plate. From where she stood in the open vestibule she could see that nobody lurked in the dingy kitchen, though. Po had gone left to check the sitting room. He returned within seconds. ‘Not there.’
Tess moved into the kitchen, seeking a pantry or cellar door. It was unlikely the house had a basement, but there might be a crawl space, as the house was raised above street level on cinder blocks – a precaution against flash-flooding of the nearby river. While she checked, Po searched two bedrooms he’d discovered at the back of the house.
The horrible stench was worse in the kitchen, unsurprisingly. Dirty dishes and discarded take-out boxes were strewn about the work surfaces. The plate on the table and the rank leftovers on it continued to attract flies. Tess ignored everything else, and moved towards a door in the back left corner. As she edged closer she listened intently, but all that sounded was another loud tick. It was off to her right so she disregarded it. She fed a hand into her purse and wrapped her fingers around the butt of the Glock, then reached for the door handle with her free hand. ‘Hello? Anyone in there?’
No reply, but what did she really expect?
Her fingers wavered over the door handle, unsure of what she should do next. Her guts clenched.
Before her nerve failed she pulled open the door, sliding the gun half out of her purse.
Whoever had designed the house had gone for space-saving measures rather than convenience. The door off the kitchen opened directly into a tiny bathroom with a shower stall, WC, and pedestal sink all cramped into no more than six-by-six feet. Handy for drunken bachelors, she thought. They could sit on the toilet and vomit in the sink without having to move between either. The shower stall was empty, apart from an empty shampoo bottle abandoned in one corner. The window was tight shut. Tess reversed into the kitchen.
Tick!
From deeper in the house she heard Po moving around. By his lack of alacrity she assumed his search had come up blank too. She turned and surveyed the kitchen, looking for clues as to where Crawford Wynne had gone.
Tick!
What the hell was that noise?
She tested the air, and thought she detected gas.
Tensing, she prepared to bolt. But what were the chances of outrunning an exploding gas main?
Tick!
Allowing pinched air to hiss from her throat Tess moved for the cooking range. Holding a palm over one of the ceramic rings she felt warmth rising off it in waves. The ticking was the cooling of the appliance. Not long ago someone had warmed something to eat. She checked and found a pan resting in the sink alongside a number of piled dishes and cutlery. The pan contained some steaming brown sludge she didn’t care to identify, but it was apparent that Crawford Wynne was no accomplished chef. The burnt muck was the source of the gassy stink, she realized with some relief, not a ruptured gas pipe. Having spoiled his lunch, had Wynne left the house to find something to eat and they’d missed him by a few minutes at most? Damn typical, she thought.
Her attention was drawn to the table. Not what was upon it, but down at the floor where the ladder-backed chair was shoved aside. The legs of the table had been forced a few inches to one side as well, clean tracks in the dirt showing the action had been recent. Maybe Wynne had been sitting at the table and realized his food was burning and had leapt up to grab the pan off the hob. That’d explain the sign of disturbance, except she wasn’t convinced. She opened her mouth to hail Po, but he beat her to it.
‘Tess. You should come and see this.’
She took a last look around the kitchen, then headed through the vestibule. Po waved her towards a door at the rear of the sitting room. The door was shut. She nodded at the kitchen. ‘Signs of a disturbance back there,’ she said.
‘They’re not the only ones.’ Po indicated the door lock. At first glance there was nothing evidently wrong with the lock, but on closer inspection she saw that the retainer was twisted out of its holder in the doorframe. Fresh splinters of wood and dust lay on the floor, showing that the door had been recently forced inward. That door had been shoulder-charged, but on the way out whoever was responsible for the forced entry had taken the time to close the door behind them. It was probably the same person who’d lifted the pan off the hob to avoid the house burning down. She doubted that those were the actions of Crawford Wynne.
Po pointed at a splotch on the floor. It was only one of many drips and stains, but this one was fresh. It was a glob of saliva, and it was tinged red. Someone had spat a bloody mouthful on the floor, and this she did believe was the work of Wynne.
‘They got to him before us,’ Po announced.
‘We can’t be certain of that,’ Tess replied, but she knew the truth. And Po knew that she knew it.
‘How’d they make it to him before us?’ he asked.
Tess had no idea.
And she was momentarily lost as to what to do, or where to go, next. She grew aware that she was still clutching the butt of her Glock. She withdrew her hand, rubbed it over her face. She caught the waft of gun oil and stopped what she was doing, and searched for a tissue in her pocket.
‘We should get out of here,’ Po announced.
‘We should call the police,’ Tess said.
‘Yeah.’
Except she didn’t.
Po took the tissue from her.
She watched as Po wiped down the door handle. ‘Did you touch anything?’
She thought of the hot hob. She had held her hand over it only. ‘The bathroom door handle.’
Without comment Po walked away and she followed to the kitchen. As he wiped down the door handle she again studied the table, and also took another lingering look at the pan of food discarded in the sink. ‘Wynne was sitting here when they entered the house,’ she said. ‘He was preparing some lunch: the hob was cooling when I checked. He wasn’t that shocked when they forced their way inside, so maybe he thought it was Benoit; maybe they don’t respect things like door handles too much and Wynne was used to his pal making a noisy entrance. It was only when they came in here that he tried to get up. See here,’ she indicated the scuff marks on the floor, ‘and the pan in the sink? I think there was more than one man who came for him, possibly even three or more.’
It would take a single man with a gun to control him, and to quickly flip the pan off the hob into the sink, but it was more likely that Wynne’s abductor had assistance. A more likely scenario was that two men controlled him, keeping him seated, while a third person handled the hot pan, knocked off the power and such. Judging by the bloody saliva near the back door Wynne had been struck in the mouth to help keep him subdued.
‘There were two in the car earlier,’ Po said. ‘But it’s as I said back then; I think they’d hand Wynne over to a third man, a professional. You’re probably right and the three of them came for Wynne together.’
‘But how’d they know where to look?’
‘Remember those cop cars we saw screaming up Railroad Avenue?’
‘Aw, hell! They forced a location from Marnie or those others at the clubhouse. But how could they know to look there? Do you think Trey Robinson gave them the heads up after all?’
‘No. Not Trey. There’d be nothing in it for him. Not if he wanted to earn the bounty from the Chatards for my head.’ Po was already heading for the front door. He again used the tissue to wipe down the handle to remove his prints, then handed back the tissue. Tess took it from him and shoved it away in a pocket. Po went off the porch and across the shabby front yard shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Tess had an idea what he was up to when he crouched down alongside their rental and began rummaging.
‘Son of a bitch,’ she sighed. Last night when they’d disturbed the guy beside their car in the hotel parking lot, he’d noticed them returning and made it look like he was attempting to gain entrance to the car. He hadn’t been. He was covering for the fact that they’d surprised him as he planted a tracking device on the undercarriage of the Honda. Proof of the point was when Po straightened and held out a small black box in his palm. ‘This explains how they knew where to find us at Robinson’s place in Baton Rouge, and how they followed us to the Cottonmouths’ clubhouse. Tricky bastards.’
He was probably right, Tess decided, but it didn’t explain why they knew to follow her from Maine in the first place. Somebody had sent them after her, and considering the shortlist of people who knew her destination it didn’t make this discovery feel like a success.
‘Let me take a look at that,’ she said.
Po tossed her the tracking device. It wasn’t amazingly sophisticated, but these days it didn’t have to be. You could probably pick up transponders like it at any branch of Radio Shack. Regardless, it had done its job. Tess cursed under her breath. There was she hoping to prove herself by bringing in Wynne and she’d been outwitted by simple technology.
‘Don’t go busting your balls over it,’ Po said, taking back the device and turning it over in his hands. ‘I was fooled too.’
‘That doesn’t help, Po. I should’ve known better. Hell, if I’d’ve given it more thought I’d have realized that the guy was up to more than trying to steal our freakin’ CD player. They planted a tracker on us so that we’d lead them to Wynne.’
‘Hunh. Yeah. But they got the hop on us by cutting out the middleman. While we wasted time going to Benoit, they came directly. I guess when they spoke with Marnie they weren’t as nice about it as we were.’
‘Do you think they hurt her?’ Her question was rhetorical, because there was no doubt.
‘And those others in the chess league,’ Po added. ‘Those cops weren’t responding in numbers like that because a few harsh words were thrown around.’
Tess threw back her head, hands over her face. A groan of frustration welled in her and she struggled to hold it in. Those people died because she’d fucked up again.
Po’s hand rested on her lower back. ‘C’mon, there’s nothing we can do about it now. Let’s get out of here, OK?’
He steered her to the Honda. But before he could start the engine Tess leaned forward and placed her face in her hands.
‘You do realize that we’ll be implicated in this, don’t you? Once the cops follow up and find Wynne missing, Benoit will talk. He’ll tell them how interested you were in finding Wynne, and how you forced Wynne’s location from him. The cops will assume you were also the one responsible for hurting Marnie and the others.’ Tess spoke in a monotone, her hands partially muffling her words. She finally lowered them, raised her head and blinked back tears. They weren’t tears of regret, but anger. ‘We need to put this right before it explodes in our faces.’
‘You want to go to the cops and explain ourselves? OK, then let’s do it.’ Po’s words surprised Tess.
‘We should,’ she added, but was again reticent.
Po rubbed his palm across the back of his neck. ‘If you think that’s the correct thing to do, then I’m happy to go along with your decision. But …’
‘But what?’
‘But that means we’ll be cut out of any further investigation. There’s no way we’ll find Wynne then and we’ll probably get booted back to Maine with our tails between our legs.’
Tess shrugged. ‘You get paid whatever the outcome.’
‘I didn’t come here for the money,’ Po reminded her. ‘Neither did you, I’m betting.’
Tess lifted her damaged wrist, rubbing it distractedly with her opposite thumb, and the motion wasn’t lost on Po.
‘You’ve a point to prove to yourself, huh?’
Tess’s mouth pinched, but she met his gaze. He’d pushed for these answers before, and she’d always refused to share them. Back then he didn’t have the right to know the intimate details of her downfall, but after this, well … perhaps an explanation was owed.
‘I’ve a point to prove to everyone,’ she admitted reluctantly, but once that was said, her story came more easily.
There was a storm coming over, having swept down from Canada to dump upward of fifteen inches of snow across New Hampshire and the southern tip of Maine. Portlanders were used to inclement weather fronts, but this one – so early in the season – had caught some people napping. It wasn’t so much the snow as the driving wind that forced it almost vertically in blinding flurries, causing whiteout blizzard conditions. Anyone with an ounce of brain had found a warm spot indoors, but there were others not so wise, and some that had no option but brave the storm. Residents trying to drive home found that the going was worse than tough, and some abandoned their vehicles. Those that didn’t leave their trucks and cars got stuck in drifts, slewed off road, or ran into abandoned vehicles in their path. That nobody was killed in any of the numerous collisions was a miracle.
Bad weather could be the law-enforcement officer’s friend. A cold snap or torrential or sustained downpour forced the bad guys off the streets, and there was a definite dip in the crime statistics for the duration of most storms. Usually a sheriff’s deputy could park their cruiser out of the way, settle in for a quiet night, and hope the bad spell lasted to the end of their shift. Perhaps they’d answer a call to a domestic disturbance – people forced together who really shouldn’t be in each other’s company for more than a minute or so – or to a brawl at one of the bars, but that was about all. Thieves, muggers, and robbers: most preferred calmer conditions under which they’d ply their trades.
That night was different, and anything but a quiet one for the emergency services. Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office logged more calls for assistance than it had any other night that year. It was a case of all hands to the pumps, and even some of the deputies on opposite rotation were called in to assist. Sergeant Teresa Grey was enjoying dinner at Hugo’s on Middle Street, having already tried the panko-crusted day-boat scallops, and about to tuck into the restaurant’s renowned bittersweet chocolate cake served with peanut-butter ice cream, when she received a call from the dispatcher on her cell phone. Sitting opposite her, Jim Neely, her fiancé, rolled his eyes, and reached for a napkin to dab his lips. He knew as resolutely as Sergeant Grey that their cosy night together was over.
‘It’ll be this goddamn weather,’ Jim predicted, with a lolling eye toward the nearest window. It was as if an orange blanket had been draped over the restaurant, the white wall of snow catching and holding the dim glow of the exterior lights.
Tess apologized with a roll of her own eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Jim. Duty calls.’
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘But isn’t that just typical?’
Hugo’s was situated at the top of Portland’s Old Port, a once humble family eatery that had evolved dramatically over the last few decades to a point where it now enjoyed national attention for its fine cuisine and innovative menu. Resplendent with soft leather seating, wrought iron and red birch furniture, bespoke china, and hand-stitched menus, it was a place of opulence someone on a sergeant’s pay grade rarely got to enjoy. Dinner was Jim’s treat, and he’d been looking forward to a treat in kind from Tess afterwards.
‘They’re sending a car for me.’ Tess stood, looking forlornly at the untouched sweet just served to their table. ‘Maybe you should leave your car here, Jim. It sounds as if the streets are bad tonight.’
‘I’ll follow you out,’ Jim said with little enthusiasm.
‘No. Finish your dinner. I wish I could stay with you but …’
‘Yeah, you already said. Duty calls.’
Jim was disappointed, but he needn’t be so surly about it. When he’d first began dating a deputy he had to understand that her job came first, their relationship afterwards. Since she’d been promoted through corporal, and then to sergeant, the constraints on their personal time had only grown tighter. Nevertheless she was sorry about having to leave. She really did want to taste that chocolate cake and ice cream.
Jim peered out of the windows, pure hatred on his face for the storm. When he turned to look up at her, his hatred barely slipped.
Tess touched him on his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Jim. We’ll do this again another time. ’Kay?’
His face grew less pinched, and his eyes softened a little. ‘What’re the chances of you getting home tonight?’
‘Slim to nil,’ Tess said, offering a regretful shrug.
‘So there’s no chance of waking up beside you in the morning?’
Tess would have promised to do her best to get home before he had to be up for work, but it would have rung false. Instead she patted him again on the hand and turned for the door. She didn’t as much as offer a peck on his cheek, but then again neither did he.
A sheriff’s department cruiser rolled up within minutes, and Tess got in alongside a young black guy she knew, Arlin Porter, who was wearing a thick parka over his dark brown CCSO uniform shirt and cream trousers. His Smokey Bear-style hat was protected by plastic, but lay on the console between them.
‘D’you believe this storm, Sarge?’ Arlin asked.
‘It’s bad,’ Tess agreed.
‘This night can only get worse.’
Arlin Porter had no idea how right his prediction would prove.
Ordinarily a drive from Middle Street to the Sheriff’s Office on County Way should take five to ten minutes. It took Arlin the better part of twenty minutes to negotiate the stalled and abandoned traffic on Spring Street and High Street. Once they hit Park Avenue the going was a little easier, until they met a jam outside the Portland Ice Arena, where a bus had skidded on the wet snow and blocked the road in both directions. Sheriff’s deputies already on the scene had funnelled the traffic along side streets as best they could, but the snow made them treacherous and Arlin had to negotiate another two collisions on Congress Street before they reached their destination. Things, Tess thought, would have been much easier if she’d worn her uniform to dinner at Hugo’s.
She kept a spare uniform in her locker, and once she’d dressed, and collected her sidearm and equipment belt, she took Arlin’s lead and donned a parka and fitted her hat with a plastic cover. She took her kit bag and a pair of thick gloves to the cruiser where Arlin waited for her. She would ride with him that night, an extra pair of hands rather than carry out her usual supervisory role.
‘Calls are stacking up, Sarge,’ Arlin informed her before she’d even settled in.
‘Pick one, and let’s go.’
Arlin called up the dispatcher, and a harried voice announced that Fire Department paramedics on a call to an address at Holyoke Wharf had requested police backup. The Portland Police Department was as busy as the other emergency services, and could CCSO respond until they had a unit free? Portland Police Department had jurisdictional responsibility for the city, while CCSO patrolled the fourteen towns in Cumberland County that didn’t have their own police resource, responding to emergency calls, and enforcing criminal and traffic laws. But it wasn’t unknown for the sheriff’s deputies to pitch in and help when required of the PPD.
‘You know our motto,’ Tess said to Arlin.
‘First to serve,’ Arlin quoted back at her as he hit the lights and sirens.
They made better time on Route 1 around the old harbour front. Snow was still falling but the wind had dropped marginally. Still, the wipers could barely keep the windshield clear, and outside the large wet drifting flakes reflected their gumball lights. Tess felt she was at the centre of a kaleidoscope. As they approached Holyoke Wharf, they looked for the first-response crew in need of assistance. Arlin spotted the PFD ambulance parked adjacent to the wharf, its rear doors open, but there was no sign of the paramedics. He pulled alongside the red and white truck, tyres squeaking on the drifting snow. Arlin informed the dispatcher they were on scene, while Tess was already getting out the car. It was slippery underfoot.
Across the way a gas station’s lights beckoned. She saw two paramedics hunched over a man lying at the rear of an old station wagon. Heart attack, she assumed, if the driver was as ancient as his car. She began walking, heard the clunk of the cruiser’s door as Arlin followed.
As they approached, one of the paramedics looked up at them. Snow had accumulated on his hair and shoulders, but he seemed oblivious to it. The second medic was female. A short woman like Tess, but a bit older at perhaps thirty-five. She too was covered in snow, but took a moment to bat it off her hair and her eyelids as she greeted them. She didn’t bring them to speed on their casualty, but aimed a shaking finger at the gas station. ‘In there!’
‘What’s happening?’ Tess asked, following the medic’s gesture.
‘Two guys, trying to rob the convenience store,’ the medic said breathlessly, but she had already turned back to her patient.
Tess looked for Arlin; saw the deputy drawing his sidearm. She held out a hand, forestalling him. ‘Are they armed?’ she asked the medics, trying to spot any wounds on the victim lying on the gurney between them.
‘Yes,’ the woman said, ‘but I’m not sure what with. We pulled in to grab some snacks, and came across this guy lying here. He has bleeding to his head, and looks to have been knocked down. I saw two Caucasian males inside, they were hollering at the cashier. That’s when we called for backup.’
Tess drew her sidearm. ‘Can you move the victim?’
The male medic nodded sharply.
‘Good. Try to get clear in case there’s any shooting.’
‘We haven’t seen a gun,’ said the woman.
It didn’t mean the robbers were unarmed. Neither did it mean that the deputies wouldn’t be forced to discharge their weapons. The last Tess wanted was for any innocents to be caught in the line of fire. She told Arlin to call it in and request extra patrols. But that night she didn’t trust anyone to reach them quickly enough. It was down to her and Arlin to work with the cards they’d been dealt. Through her own radio she heard Arlin’s voice, rattling off a brief update and request for assistance. She heard ‘A-ffirmative’ responses, but it would be minutes before the first patrols arrived at the scene. Protocol dictated that she set up a safe perimeter, wait for assistance. From within the convenience store there was a loud bang. Not a gun, but something crashing to the floor. It was followed by a man’s bellow, then a cry of pain. She started for the door. Without question, Arlin moved alongside her, before he fanned out to the right, trying to get a view through the front window. He shook his head, dislodging snow from his hat, but it was because he could see nothing of the suspects. Tess crouched as she approached the entrance. It was automated and slid open. Tess ducked around the doorframe, a quick scan, before withdrawing. She looked at Arlin, who’d moved up beside her. ‘Cover me,’ she said unnecessarily.
She went inside, rushing to the corner of a shelved unit containing the usual motorists’ supplies. She poked her head around the next corner and immediately saw three men struggling beyond the counter. The two robbers had vaulted the cashier’s desk to get at the cash. The attendant was a slim Chinese man, and though he was outweighed and outnumbered he wasn’t for going down without a fight. He was no Bruce Lee though. He clung to both men, scrambling to pull a bag from one of them, while holding back the hands of the other with swipes of his left arm. He screeched incessantly, as if the money they’d grabbed had come from his own wallet. The three of them crashed down behind the counter, shouts and curses ringing out.
‘Sheriff’s deputies,’ Tess hollered. ‘Put down your weapons.’
Her order didn’t elicit a lessening in the racket.
‘Sheriff’s deputies!’ She followed her words this time, moving fast along the aisle towards the counter. She held out her gun, finger trembling on the trigger guard. Arlin moved too, although he approached the fight via the other side of the aisle. He also called out for compliance.
A figure broke free of the melee and vaulted the counter.
‘Get down! Get down!’ Arlin hollered at the man. The guy was tall, skinny, his face covered by a scarf hastily wound round his head. In the tussle it had been pulled askew and covered one of his manic eyes. He wore a heavy chequered coat, jeans, and boots. In one hand was a small cotton sack. In the other a large hunting knife. ‘Drop your weapon, drop your weapon!’ Arlin yelled.
The man shouted something, his words muffled by the scarf, and he ducked away from Arlin, directly into the aisle where Tess was. She opened her mouth to bark out the warning that protocol demanded, but the man swiped at her with the knife. Tess jerked away, but the blade ripped into the cuff of her parka, snapping her hand to one side, and Tess’s gun went off.
Inside the store the sound was tremendous. Tess’s ears rang, and she barely heard the shout of warning from Arlin as the tall guy kicked at her. He got her good, right under the breastbone, and she sank to her knees. The man cut at her again. She got her gun hand up, so it saved her throat, but she felt the cold fire of the blade go through her wrist and her gun clattered to the floor. The man brought back the knife, ready to plunge it again into her. Tess was defenceless against it. She howled, a mixture of frustration and fear. Through her mind’s eye danced her mother’s face. ‘I told you so!’
Boom!
Arlin’s bullet took the robber in the side of the head. The scarf danced loose as he fell. So did parts of his jaw. He landed flat on the floor alongside Tess. She reached for his fallen knife, to throw it clear. That’s when her hand flopped uselessly back on itself, held to the wrist only by a strip of meat. Blood gouted from her severed wrist, cut almost through from one side to the other. Tess blacked out and didn’t know another thing. Not until much later, waking from surgery.
‘Everything just happened so fast,’ she told Po as they sat in the Honda, parked on a patch of decaying gravel alongside a small church. The boughs of a spreading oak dappled the sunlight on the windshield. Unconsciously Tess flexed her fingers, trying to rid herself of the psychosomatic pain her recollections had ignited. ‘If I’d shot him when I had the chance, then …’
Without asking permission, Po reached across and took her right hand in his. He turned it over, and again she thought those rough fingers should not be capable of such a delicate touch. His index finger traced the risen scar tissue on her wrist, following it from the inner wrist joint almost to the radial artery. He turned over her hand and there was a similar scar on the other side, although this one was barely noticeable. ‘He almost took off your goddamn hand!’
‘Yes. He cut through the joint, severing tendons and veins. His knife nicked the radial artery too. The surgeons saved my hand, but … well,’ she paused, her eyes fogging, as she curled up her fingers: they trembled. ‘I underwent microsurgery, and months of rehab, but I struggle with any intricate tasks now. I’ve lost all dexterity in my fingers. I couldn’t thread a needle to save my life.’
‘Me neither,’ Po said, ‘and I didn’t have my hand chopped off.’
Tess thought of the defensive cuts on his forearms: a shiv couldn’t deliver the chopping force of the huge hunting knife her attacker was armed with. But it could have easily put out his eyes or punctured the arteries in his throat if he hadn’t got his arms in the way. He’d killed his attacker, and Tess could only wonder how he’d managed to do so. Her injury – or the shock of it – had thrown her into unconsciousness in a heartbeat.
‘You once admitted killing a man,’ Po went on. ‘But now I hear the full story it was actually your deputy. What did you call him? Arlin, wasn’t it?’
‘Arlin shot my attacker, yes. He also arrested the second robber, who I hear came out with his hands up.’
‘Ah. That stray shot you got off?’
Tess felt glass in her throat. She nodded, but didn’t say.
Her bullet had cut through the counter and ended up lodged in the Chinese clerk’s chest. After all his heroism the man had been slain by friendly fire.
‘So what was your reason for leaving the Sheriff’s Department: the shooting or your injury?’
‘A bit of both. Although I was exonerated of any wrong doing, and that it was proven my gun went off as an accidental discharge while trying to defend myself, an innocent man had still died. Officially I was off the hook, but it wasn’t a popular decision with everyone.’
Po nodded sagely. ‘I recall hearing something about you in the news, and you were getting the shitty end of the stick. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but yeah.’
‘My case attracted some anti-law enforcement lobbying. Quite a crowd gathered outside the Sheriff’s Office demanding my dismissal, and things grew ugly. If this were anywhere other than Portland it would probably have ended up in a riot. My legal advisers encouraged me to lodge my resignation, as an all-round goodwill gesture.’
‘You did that?’
‘I’m not a complete idiot. That’d feel too much like admitting it was my fault. No. I waited, but my injury meant I was no longer fit for active service. I didn’t want to steer a desk from the office so ultimately I was pensioned out on medical grounds. It didn’t satisfy the lobbyists, but to hell with them. They should walk a mile in a cop’s shoes before they start criticizing.’
‘So the clerk died, huh? Unlucky.’
‘He died immediately; my bullet got him in the heart,’ Tess dipped her head, allowing her a moment to hide her glassy eyes. ‘I was hospitalized for weeks. And for what? Two hundred and twenty-seven bucks. Not even a fucking handful of Hershey bars!’
Po squinted at her final remark, and she realized she hadn’t shared the finer details of her grandfather’s ignominious end. She didn’t explain, just waved her comment aside. ‘The old man the paramedics took away? He survived. Apparently the robbers tried to roll him at the gas pumps, and when all he had was a twenty-dollar bill for gas they hit him over the head and left him for dead. With such small pickings they turned their attention on the convenience store.’
‘Desperados,’ Po said. ‘Or assholes.’
‘A bit of both,’ Tess said, echoing her earlier words. She suddenly realized that Po was still holding her hand. It had grown comfortable there in his palm, but perhaps the gesture was more intimate than either of them intended. She drew it away.
Po wasn’t finished. ‘You told me you caught Jim Neely apologizing about you to some friends: it was because of what happened, right? And he was ashamed of you? What a jerk!’
‘Seeing the back of him was the only good thing to come out of the worst night of my life.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Everything else I lost I’d’ve liked to have held on to.’
‘So completing this case is about making amends, right, restoring your reputation? Kind of make or break? Well, if you want to go to the police then so be it, it’s probably the right thing to do. But if you’d rather throw away that rulebook, like I said, and go after Wynne’s abductors, well … I’ve still got your back.’
‘Oh, believe me, I want to go after them, but there’s a problem: I don’t know where to start.’
Po held up the transponder. ‘Now they’ve got Wynne, they might give up on us. But I don’t see it. We’ve both seen two of the guys working for Sower, so in some respects that now makes us witnesses. You know what happened to all the others, right?’
‘They’ll come after us.’ The prospect should have terrified her. She straightened, turning to look Po directly in the eyes. ‘Good. Let them come. We might be able to salvage this case if we can take one of them in.’