“I asked Emma about it later. She said he was a cop with a penchant for violence, and the local cops protected him because he was one of their own. Never arrested him, no matter how much he knocked around his wife. It took the mother years to get away, and by then Evie was out of the house and on her own.”
Suddenly Evie’s comments about dirty cops were making more sense.
“Anyway, Emma would kill me if she knew I was telling you this, but I saw the way you were looking at her last night and...I see now that I’m not the only one who’s found love.”
“Yeah, but Emma didn’t actively hate you when you got together.”
“No. But she didn’t trust me, and my having money was not a point in my favor with that one. If I’d had any doubts about her character, her complete disinterest in my money dispelled them.”
He took another sip of beer and smirked.
“Now she’s totally into me. I can’t wait to marry her.”
“You’re getting married already?” I said louder than I probably should.
Wyatt shushed me. “I’m waiting a while to ask her. Emma’s like a deer, you have to approach her gently, with no fast movements.”
“If Emma is a deer, Evie is a feral cat.”
Wyatt laughed. “You’re not wrong about that one, my friend. But it sounds like she cares more than she lets on, based on what I overheard from Dawn and Emma.”
When I finished with Wyatt, I headed home. I was tempted to go over to Evie’s, but I figured she needed space. I settled on the couch to watch some ESPN. The phone woke me up just before midnight. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that it was Johnston.
“Chief?” Johnston’s voice was wary, like he was expecting me to be mad.
“What did she do now?” I asked, knowing this had to be about Evie.
“Um, you’d better come to the bookstore. You need to see this for yourself.”
For the second time in a week, I grabbed my shoes and service weapon and raced over to Boozy Books in the middle of the night.
All the lights were on in the shop, with Johnston standing guard by the open door.
“Status report,” I barked at him.
He stepped aside with a grimace.
“I was doing my patrol and I found this.”
I stepped into the store and stopped in my tracks. Evie, Emma, and Dawn were all there, surrounding a blonde man who was sitting on the floor, immobilized by duct-tape wrapped around him from his ankles to his knees. His arms were taped to his body, and another strip of duct tape covered his mouth. The man looked furious. I recognized him from the mugshots as Brian Peterson. Officer Reyes stood close by, his eyes pinned to the group as if expecting more trouble.
Evie held her paintball rifle, pointing it at the man’s head. The large splatters of paint on Peterson’s chest, abdomen, and thigh told me that Evie had gotten several good shots off the guy. Dawn held a broom, brandishing it like a weapon, while Emma was recording everything on her phone. I had a bad feeling I’d be seeing this on the town’s Facebook page within a few hours.
“What the ever-loving fuck is going on here?” I bellowed.
Evie jumped, turning to face me with a defiant glare. “We did what the police couldn’t. We captured Brian Peterson.”
“Caught him in the act too,” Dawn said, pointing to a large knife and a can of spray paint several feet away on the floor.
I rubbed my temples.
“Can someone start from the beginning please?”
“You’re never going to believe this,” Reyes muttered.
“The girls and I were standing guard,” Evie began. “We figured he was coming in the back door, to avoid anyone seeing him through the front windows, so we slicked up the floor by the door with oil.”
She pointed behind her and I had flashes of that movie where the parents left the kid home alone to fight burglars.