“Casey, don’t.”
She lifts a gun, pointed at me. Pointed not at my head, but at my shoulder, and when I see that, rage fills me. It’s the same thing I’ve done, the same thing I did with Phil, to show that it’s no idle threat. She does that, and I want her to point it at my head instead.
Don’t do what I would do. You are nothing like me.
“Casey? Just sit down, okay? I’m here to talk. That’s it. Talk.”
I stare at her, and rage blinds me until I see only the gun floating in front of me.
“This is not how you talk to me,” I say, my teeth gritted.
Petra eases back, gun lowering a fraction. “It’s not how I want to talk to you, Casey, but apparently, it’s the only way I can.”
“Like hell. I may not be happy to chat these days, Petra, but that does not give you any right to—”
“I did what I had to.”
“Break into my house? Tie me up while I’m asleep? Hold me at gunpoint? If you try to tell me that I’m overreacting, and you’re still my friend, you had better be prepared to shoot me or I swear I will kick your fucking teeth in.”
She blanches at that.
I step toward her. “You want to talk to
me? Take off these cuffs. Put down that gun. If you do that, I might give you five minutes.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she says. “If I’m not holding you at gunpoint, you’ll decide when and if you listen to me, and when and if you stop listening to me. You’re pissed. I get that. I don’t blame you. But this…” She waggles the gun. “This is the language you and I both understand. It’s the only language, under the circumstances, you’ll respect. But this isn’t the conversation where I try to convince you I’m on your side and hope you’ll see I am. This is one where I—we—are in a shitload of trouble, and I need you to listen to me.”
“Put down the gun.”
“I’ll untie your hands, but I am not—”
“If you untie me, and things go south, we’ll grapple for the gun. Neither of us wants that. So I will accept the cuffs if you put that gun down. Pull the chair over. Set the gun on the dresser. Out of your reach. Out of mine. Then you have fifteen minutes of my time, and afterward, if I don’t think whatever you had to say was this important, you’ll be charged with every offense you’ve just committed. We’ll see if your friends in the council can get you out of that.”
She puts the gun on the dresser and tugs over the chair. I sit on the edge of the bed.
“I’m the one who doped Roy,” she says.
“I know.”
She looks at me sharply.
I continue. “All right, I didn’t know for certain. There wasn’t any evidence. But you were at the top of my suspect list. The council asked you to do it, didn’t they? Dose something in his house. Plant the mushrooms. Plant the watch. Hope that he freaks out, and I find the watch and decide he did it and close the case. Phil already tried to get me to do that, as soon as I asked him about the watch. Your setup was clumsy as hell. I’d have expected better.”
“Watch?”
“Phil’s watch. Which you planted at Roy’s.”
She shakes her head. “That wasn’t me. Seems like I’m not the only one who thinks Roy makes a good suspect. As for Phil, he’s drawing his own conclusions. He wasn’t part of this. The council is barely speaking to him. They don’t trust him. They probably fed him the same story I got, that they had proof Roy was the killer, and they’d made a mistake sending him here. I can guarantee Phil wasn’t part of this. He failed with Brady. They’ve cut him loose. He’s our new Val. They just haven’t told him that yet.”
“So the council—”
“It’s not—” She stops herself. “It’s people from the council. It is not the entire council. That’s where you’ve made your mistake, Casey. Where we both did. It’s like the blind men with the elephant, feeling around and drawing conclusions based on one part. Except, with the elephant, they didn’t realize they were dealing with the same beast. You and I thought we were dealing with the same beast. And we aren’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
She leans forward. “You see a corrupt council, acting in its own best interests. I see good people who need to make hard decisions to protect the town’s best interests. But it’s not one elephant we’re assessing. It’s a council comprised of different people, with different agendas. I just got a glimpse of yours, and that’s why I’m here.”
“Okay.”