“Would have been better taking his chances out there,” Dalton says, jerking his thumb toward the forest. “The wolves in here are a lot more dangerous.”
FOURTEEN
Our theory makes sense. Even Dalton rarely sees wolves around here. Garcia likely heard them howling at night and presumed they were close. Even if he encountered a pack of the more vicious wolf-dog hybrids, they wouldn’t leave such neat and shallow bite marks. Nor would they have let him escape so easily.
There’s also the issue of coincidence. In all this wilderness, Garcia just happens to fall into a crevice where we’re searching? And just happens to be calling for help while we’re within earshot? Sure, it’s possible. It’s a whole lot more possible, though, that he heard us talking to Cypher and Jacob, our voices echoing through the quiet forest. Then Garcia formulated a plan, which ultimately got him killed. There’s a lesson about the dangers of crying wolf in there. Maybe a joke, too, a little of that gallows humor my sister sniffed about.
We leave April in the clinic, cleaning Garcia’s body, hooking up a dummy IV, and making it appear as if the patient is sleeping. When Kenny wakes, we’ll have to break the news that he’s stuck in that supply room. He won’t want a dead roommate … and we also don’t want him near Garcia when we expect someone will try to break in. As for letting Kenny in on the secret, well, it’s not as if he’s a suspect.
For everyone else …
April thought Anders was joking about eliminating ourselves from the list. Down south, I’d never turn to my detective partner and say, “Where were you the night our victim was killed?” Up here, with such a restricted population, everyone must be a suspect.
I know Dalton didn’t do it, and he’s my alibi. So that’s sorted. Anders is cleared, too, which really does make this easier.
Dalton takes off to speak to Phil and update the council. I head to Anders, who has found the militia members with solid alibis. We station them outside the clinic, with orders not to disturb the patients.
Next comes the public announcement. I spin our story—Garcia is comatose, and he has not told us who he came to collect, and we hope he’ll make a full recovery. In the meantime, someone shot the guy, and it’s my job to figure out who.
After that, everyone wants to tell us where they were at the time of the shooting, with cries of “I’m sure someone saw me” and “Hey, Jim, didn’t you see me?”
Dalton would tell them not to be too eager to claim an alibi, because if it turns out they can’t produce a good one, that’s suspicious. I try his tactic. The roar of the crowd drowns me out. Anders gets up on the porch with his trained-military bark, and people hear that, but well, there’s an ingredient missing from our bluster: Dalton. With him, it’s never mere bluster, and they know it.
Someone shouting for my attention stops midword and goes crowd-surfing. Or, more accurately, he does an impressive imitation of a bowling ball, the people around him serving as pins. Dalton strides through and grabs the guy—Artie—by the back of his shirt. Then he drags Artie over
and dangles him in front of me.
“You have something to say to my detective?” Dalton says.
“Uh, y-yes. I wanted to tell her that I was over at the Roc—”
Dalton cuts him off with a firm shake. “I’m not holding you up so you can convey your alias, Artie. What you just did is the proper way to speak to her. What I heard before? It’s not the proper way.”
“I’m sorry, Casey. I just wanted—”
“You just wanted what everyone else wants. You think you’re special?” Dalton raises his voice. “Sam? I find Artie’s enthusiasm suspicious. Go search his quarters. Bring me anything that looks like a weapon … or contraband.”
Dalton tosses Artie aside and nods for me to address the now-silent crowd.
“I need to handle this one person at a time,” I say. “Which is going to take a while. I’ll start with those who were on search parties or had volunteered for town patrol. If you were helping us with the current situation, you move to the front of the line. If you do not have an alibi, give your name to Will. If your alibi is ‘maybe someone saw me around town,’ give your name to Will. We’ll follow up with you later. For now, I only want to speak to those who were in the presence of at least two other people. Patrol volunteers to my left. Everyone else with a two-person alibi, queue up on my right.”
* * *
The council will see us now.
We’re almost done gathering preliminary alibis when Phil comes to say there’s someone on the line. That’s how he phrases it. Someone. At first, I think he’s being pissy, refusing to grant his replacement a name. But then I see his expression.
“Who is it?” I ask as we walk.
“I … I don’t know.”
“Someone you aren’t familiar with.”
There’s a pause. A long one. That look intensifies, until he seems as adrift as he did when he first discovered he had to stay in Rockton.
When Phil arrived in town, he’d marched in like he owned the place. Undaunted by a new situation, or by meeting people who had every reason to hate his guts. There’d been a touch of the junior executive in that. The thirty-year-old AVP striding among the cubicles, unable to hide his disdain for the grunts who lacked the education and connections to rise higher.
Then Phil was told he had to work alongside those grunts, and his orderly world tilted, his career path jolting out of sight. Now he has that look on his face again, as if he’s just discovered that not only is he condemned to purgatory with the office drones, but the entire upper-management structure has changed, his connections disappearing … and with them, his chance for escape.