“What’s this about?” Rath stood in Barrons’s office, declining the chief’s offer to sit. He wanted to get the mystery over with and see Test about the body she’d mentioned. He was anxious to get back to watching Preacher, too. And somewhere in his day, somehow, he needed to hit the Dress Shoppe. “And what’s this about a body?”
“Test will fill you in.” Barrons finished the cookie he was eating and stood brushing crumbs from his sadly wrinkled chinos. He’d not shaved his normally bald head this morning, and a stubbly horseshoe of hair, silver as a dime, was making a rare cameo on his skull.
“As I said. We have a problem. Or you do. Your old friend, Dr. Langevine, wants to press charges against you for your past misdeeds: criminal trespass, B&E, and your attempted murder of him in his manor.”
The investigation of Mandy Wilks a few weeks ago had led Rath to interview Langevine in his secluded mountain manor, where Langevine had laced a scotch he served to Rath. The doctor had meant to disable Rath and dispose of him, perhaps in the incinerator in which the ashes and bones of three girls he’d murdered had been discovered.
“He’s no doctor.” Rath started to leave. He didn’t need this shit, not with Preacher unwatched.
“This is serious,” Barrons said.
Rath turned on Barrons. “He poisoned me.”
“Your blood work was inconclusive.”
“Because I heaved his poison up.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Not nevertheless.”
“You did break into his house.”
“Legally, I didn’t. I slipped through his Rottweiler’s back pet door, which is the same as an open door.”
“You beat Langevine badly.”
“In self-defense.” Rath tapped his fingers against his skull where Langevine had bashed a cue ball. It was still knotted and tender. The wound in his side where Langevine had stuck him with a knife burned like fire ants chewing his flesh.
“That’s not his story,” Barrons said.
“Of course not. He’s innocent. Misunderstood. I guess the girl he was about to give an involuntary C-section to, and the remains of the three girls in his backyard incinerator got there by magic.”
“Magic or not. Langevine’s a citizen. With rights.”
“What is it with these psychopaths, believing they’re the victims?”
“They’re psychopaths. The center of their universe, empty of empathy, with the emotions of toddlers. I’m speaking for the law here only. The D.A. sent word to arrest you. Peaceably. Respectfully.”
“Respectfully? That’s a good one.”
“I haven’t gotten back to her, but she doesn’t want this shit show either. You plead to misdemeanor charges of trespass and simple assault, we’re done. You get fined.”
“No,” Rath said.
“You did trespass.”
“I thought Rachel was in there.”
“She wasn’t.”
“And the girl who was? If I hadn’t—”
“I get it. But your motive is as legally moot as Langevine’s motive for murdering those girls. You broke in. Accept it, move on. There’s not a person who wouldn’t do what you did, if they had the balls.”
“If the D.A. wants to make a mockery of the system, she can charge me—the guy who got Langevine—with the full charges, and deal with the media backlash. It’ll ruin her.”
“I knew you’d do this.”
“Good.”
“Not good. When it makes the papers, it will give Langevine what he wants. Exposure. He wants his idea out there, that his crimes can be defended through Vermont’s Defense of the Defenseless law; that he acted in defense of the young girls’ defenseless fetuses when he abducted them to change their minds about aborting. If you don’t plead, he gets exposure. Credibility. Interviewed by a dozen outlets. That’s how it works.”
Rath knew how it worked.
“There is another way.” Barrons sounded like a car dealer saying “one more thing” just before he pitched a cockamamie warranty. “You weren’t deputized when you went into Langevine’s home.”
“So?”
“If you had been, you’d have had legal authority to reenter Langevine’s house, through the dog’s flap door or down the fucking chimney. Making everything else that ensued legal action as a law officer.”
“So we tell the DA I was deputized, my entry legal.”
“One condition.”
Rath waited.
“You take the senior detective role I offered you when Grout first left,” Barrons said.
“Forget it. I don’t want structure. I don’t want to have to wear chinos. I like working in my pajamas and Carhartts when inclined, which is daily. And I don’t want to have to deal with politics or paperwork or—” Each of these reasons was valid, but none would have normally kept him from helping his friend get this nonsense off his back. The real reason was he could not let anything keep him from watching Preacher. He should have been at Preacher’s place right now, since dawn.
“Your only responsibility would be the Dana Clark case,” Barrons said. “If she shows up today, I’ll still tell the D.A. you were deputized. Problem solved.”
“Dana Clark isn’t showing up today, or any day, on her own power. We know that.”
“All the more reason for you to be involved. You have a deep personal connection with her. We both do.”
I have a deep personal connection to my daughter, Rath thought. And to Preacher. Those are the only two. One for the better. The other for the worse. Outside those two, and a few guys with whom he played darts on Thursday—guys busy with jobs and wives and kids still at home—Rath had no relationships. He felt for Dana Clark. He owed her, especially if Preacher were involved in her disappearance. Her death. Let’s not kid ourselves. But Rachel needed to be his focus.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me it was Dana who was missing when you sent me over to her daughter’s house?” Rath said.
Barrons scratched at the sprouting ring of hair at the back of his head. “I thought Dana was just trapped in the fog on the roadside. I believed that. I wanted you to go in fresh, not see it through the lens of the past crime against her, and see if you would read it the same. And however it turned out, I wanted you there. Now that we know she’s not just lost in the fog, I know you want to find out what’s happened to her. If it’s linked to the CRVK, or to Preacher. Both. You want Preacher back inside as fast as you can make it happen. Take this post, you’ll get him there quicker.”
“I can’t believe you’re playing this card.”
“Of course you can. I’m doing you a favor.”
“I’d be doing the favor.”
“We’re both doing a favor. Your other two options are untenable. I appoint you, we move on. You get Dana Clark’s case. That’s it. Unless you want more.”
“What more would I want?”
“The case Test fell into yesterday, the body in the woods. It might be linked to Preacher. Like Clark might.”
“What was the time of death?”
“Yesterday, midafternoon, I gather.”
Damn it. If Rath had stayed awake, he’d know if Preacher had left and committed a murder, or stayed and made Rath his alibi.
“So,” Barrons said. “You play senior detective for a spell, and maybe get Preacher— However this nut cracks, and it will crack, when you crack it, when you’re done, we both get on a plane to the Bahamas and do some serious fishing for bones and permit, relax with cold Kaliks and warm Bahama mamas. Meantime, all the official connections and power you need are at your disposal, for Dana and this new body, if you want. Records. Files. If it’s Preacher, you’ll get him faster than you will alone.”
“What makes you think I’m trying on my own?”
“Please.”
“I can access records as a citizen,” Rath said.
“Not information not made public. And you’ll have Test and Larkin at your disposal to investigate leads you might not get as quickly, or at all on your own.”
“I haven’t been a real cop in sixteen years. I can’t just be appointed. I haven’t carried a sidearm bigger than my rat shooter twenty-two in ages.”
“I’ll iron it out. I have ironed it out.”
The idea of hauling Preacher in, caging him in a holding cell, it was worth something. Everything. Even with Preacher detained for twenty-four hours, it would be twenty-four hours Rath would not have to worry about Rachel.
“Appoint me junior detective and Test senior detective,” Rath said.
“Not negotiable.”
“When I step down, Test gets the position.”
“I can’t just appoint—”
“You’re appointing me.”
“It’s temporary, interim, that’s how I can get away with it, that and cashing in ancient favors on the select board, for approval. I can promise to give Test the fair consideration she deserves.”
Barrons took a Smith & Wesson M&P45 out from his desk drawer and set it on the desk. He set a police ID filled out with Rath’s name and information, the place for his picture blank. “Just get a photo taken,” he said. “And”—he took out a cache of papers—“sign your John Hancock.”
“Your best detective is going to be rip shit.”
“You’re my best detective now.”
“We’ll see about that.”