“You first.”
Dalton reaches down to pat Storm. “I think he came for exactly the reason I said. To give you shit about the hostiles. Kick your ass for not moving fast enough. Bitch about you not personally informing him of the tourist attack. Showing up in person only meant he was serious. When I chewed him out for it, he had to regroup. Made up some bullshit about having information. Probably hoped after that memory-lane trip with Émilie, we’d forget to press him on his purpose.”
When I don’t reply, his boot brushes my hip. “You disagree?”
“No. I don’t think Edwin had anything to do with the death of those hostiles or the staging. Unless the First Settlement got a handgun in the last few months, we know they only have rifles.” Last winter, one of Felicity’s friends tried to buy a handgun from us, and the discussion made it clear they had none and, like Cherise, saw no point in them.
I continue, “He’s right about the staging. He’d be subtler and, yes, the problem with the staging is that we were unlikely to find it.… Back to that in a moment. Felicity knows nothing about the settler deaths, and I don’t think he did either. That doesn’t, however, mean that no one from the First Settlement was involved.”
“Without Edwin’s knowledge.” Dalton pauses to rub Storm’s ear. “You think that’s why he let you send him packing so easily. He wanted to hightail it home and see if his people had anything to do with this.”
“He certainly didn’t leave because he felt bad realizing he’d been an asshole.”
Dalton snorts and then puts out a hand, a gesture for me to come over and sit with him.
“I do believe we’re on the clock, boss,” I say.
“We are indeed, meaning if I say”—he motions me toward his lap—“you gotta obey.”
“Pretty sure that’s a harassment suit waiting to happen.”
“Write out a report. I’ll make sure it gets to the proper authorities.”
I slide from the railing and step over Storm. Dalton eases back in his chair, tugging the hat down again as his eyes half close, arms open for me to slide into them. Instead, I veer to the door, his alarmed “Casey?” following me. I return with two bottles of beer from the icebox.
“Since we’re apparently on a work break,” I say.
He smiles and takes one, his hand sliding over it to flick off the layer of condensation. I lower myself onto his lap, and icy fingers glide down the back of my neck, making me yelp and nearly drop my own bottle.
“Payback,” he says.
“For getting you a beer?”
“For encouraging me to drink on the job.”
“You don’t need to drink it,” I say.
“I succumb to peer pressure far too easily.”
He flips the cap into the rusted can by his chair. I remember the first time I saw him drinking during a shift. I’d been appalled. Exactly the sort of behavior I expected from this redneck bully of a sheriff.
It hadn’t taken long to realize just how old those caps in the can were. He did have the occasional beer midafternoon, but considering how many hours he put in, no one could fault him for that.
I lean back against him. It’s a brief respite. We both know that, and after a pull from my beer, I say, “I messed up with my theory.”
“Ah.” His arms tighten around me. “Confession time. All right, Detective, tell me the very minor error that you made and then self-corrected before anyone caught it.”
“Edwin caught it.” I lay my head against his shoulder. “I kept thinking that whoever killed the settlers meant for us to mistake it for a hostile kill. Add to their body count and intensify the sit
uation. But that doesn’t make sense.”
“Only if you presume the people responsible have the forethought to realize the flaw in their plans. That’s presuming a lot, Casey.”
He’s not being sarcastic here. Most crimes aren’t masterful acts of forethought and calculation. It is very possible that someone stumbled over the dead settlers, saw an opportunity, mutilated the corpses, and then said, “Shit, how do we show these hostile kills to Rockton without them realizing we did it?”
That’d been the strongest argument against Cherise’s culpability. She’s far too smart to stage a crime scene and then lead us to it.
“You’re right,” I say. “Someone could have done this, seen the flaw, and backed off to think it through. In the meantime, Cherise and Owen moved the bodies. If people from Edwin’s settlement are responsible, that’s the answer. But it’s also possible that this has nothing to do with us. That the killers were just covering their tracks by making it look like a wild-animal attack.”