Sullivan Briggs had a distinctive five carat diamond ring sitting on his desk. The jeweler he had taken it to first thing that morning had appraised it, conservatively, as being worth somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars. It was a very expensive rock.
A very expensive rock that no one was missing. Sully had entered the ring's description into a dozen different lost and stolen items databases in the last two hours. He'd gotten no hits on it.
“Hey Sully. You've got a fax.” Katie McIntyre walked into the main room of the sheriff's station with several pieces of paper in her hand. “Gosh, look at this mess.” She stared at the back of the room. A blue tarp had been draped across the doorway between the office area and the jail. The crime scene techs had left sometime in the night and they'd left a massive mess behind. “I can't believe someone broke into the jail.”
“Me neither.” Sully reached out to take the paper from Katie. “Has this place ever been vandalized before?” He watched her reaction carefully. Katie had grown up in Callahan County. She knew more about the residents and the area than Sully did and she was normally pretty willing to share that knowledge.
“Not that I know of,” Katie said with a shudder. “I keep thinking about what happened to Meg. It could have been me. I'm here alone all the time.”
“You carry a gun?” Sully asked her.
“No,” she said.
“You know how to shoot?”
“Yes. I just don't like carrying concealed. Maybe this sounds silly, but I don't want to live with that kind of fear in my life. I feel like carrying a gun with me everywhere also means that I should be afraid everywhere. I don't want to spend my days feeling like a victim waiting to happen.” Katie blushed slightly. “You probably think that's stupid.”
“You're not stupid,” Sully said quickly. The truth was that she was one of the smartest girls he'd met in a long time. He had yet to figure out how she had managed to wind up married to the bumbling screw up of a deputy he'd been temporarily hired to replace. The sheriff and Addison were both personally attached to Ian because he was family. They'd made it clear that Sully would only be a member of the Callahan County Sheriff's Department until the state officially cleared Ian for duty. Sully had serious doubts that the state investigator was going to be as lenient on Ian as Frank Chasson and the Callahan County district attorney had been. Murder, even accidental murder, was a pretty serious offense for a sworn officer of the law.
“Why would anyone break into the jail?” Katie asked him after a slight pause. “Don't people normally do the opposite?”
“Is Possum Creek ever normal?” Sully pursed his lips at the damaged wall. The door had been broken down and someone had set a bomb against the back wall. Blood was everywhere, but oddly enough, no one could figure out whose blood it was. Or whose arm had been left in the cell with Kerry. Sully was hoping against all logic that the perp had accidentally blown his own arm off while setting off the bomb. A severe injury would have made him much easier to track down, especially if he needed hospital care.
“No, I guess not.” Katie half-way smiled at him. “Do you need anything else from me before I go back up front?”
“You don't happen to know where Kerry is, do you?”
“You haven't heard?” She put her hands on her hips. She looked like she was trying not to laugh.
“All I know is that he was being held in the jail when it was broken into. I forgot to ask the sheriff what he had done with him and I don't want to bother him in the middle of his doctor's appointments this morning if I don't have to. I'm kind of assuming he's in solitary at the Baker County Jail, but they didn't have any record of anyone being brought up from Callahan County last night when I called.”
“The sheriff was afraid they'd put him in general population and someone would stab him to death with an overly pointy toothbrush,” Katie explained.
“That's probably a valid concern,” Sully acknowledged. “He has more than a few enemies.”
“All Kerry has is enemies. I had the seventy-three year old wife of the Baptist church's choir director come in yesterday and tell me to tell Kerry that if he trampled over her rose garden one more time, she'd string him up like a fish and gut him.” Katie titled her head to the side thoughtfully. “It took me a forty-five minutes to figure out that he's been creeping through the bushes and peering into the windows of the church spying on people.”
“Why would Kerry be spying on the folks at church?” Sully was baffled.
“He thinks the youth pastor is selling drugs to the youth,” Katie explained.
“Shit. Is it a legitimate investigation?” Sullivan didn't even want to think about the possible implications of a drug ring running out of a church.
“No. The pills he saw were aspirin. One of the teenagers had a headache. Addison cleared the confusion up weeks ago, but Kerry doesn't trust Addison. He refuses to let it drop.”
“Why won't Frank just fire that twerp already?” Sully asked the question in his thoughts out loud without meaning to.
Katie was silent for a moment and then shrugged. “Good question. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Sully scratched his head and then frowned at the damaged back wall of the jail. He was willing to bet every dime in his bank account that the break-in at the Callahan County jail was tied to the head he'd found in the trunk of Kerry's car the previous day. “So tell me, what did our esteemed sheriff do with our wayward deputy?”
Katie sighed. “He gave him to Addy to babysit.”
Sully stopped dead in his tracks. “You're not serious.”
“I couldn't make it up if I tried.” Katie held her hands up in exasperation. “Against all good sense, Frank signed Kerry into Addison's custody until he can either be cleared of the crimes or formally charged.”
“Addison and Kerry hate one another,” Sully pointed out. “Furthermore, I wouldn't trust Addy Malone to keep a house plant alive.”
“Yes. I know.” Katie licked her glossy pink lips. “Mooney's started up a betting pool for whether or not Kerry survives.”
Sully couldn't help laughing. The entire idea was too ridiculous for him not to. “Have you placed your bet?”
“Maybe,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “But I'll never tell you who I bet on.” With that she turned on her heel and hurried off towards the front office.
It was only after she'd gone back to her desk that Sully remembered to look at the faxed papers that she'd brought him. It had come from Lora. The DNA sample she'd taken from the head he'd found in Kerry's car matched a sample that was on file with the state missing person's database. Beverly Jones, a 54 year old resident of Rockdale, had been missing for a month and a half. Lora had sent the missing persons report the family had filed to him along with the DNA results. At the bottom of the report Lora had scrawled the words “Call me ASAP”.
Sully picked up his desk phone and dialed her number from memory.