“You?” Jacob says. “Where is the girl?”
“She’s not here,” Anders says. “That was me. It’s just me.”
“Liar!” Jacob spins, peering into the forest.
I duck behind a tree.
“It’s just Will,” Dalton says. “My deputy. You’ve seen him in the forest with me. You saw him earlier. I thought it was Casey, but it must have been Will.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not, Jacob. It’s Will.”
“Eric’s telling the truth,” Anders says. “You’re not feeling well, and you’re confused and—”
“Shut up.”
I peek around the tree to see Jacob with the gun trained on Dalton. My heart stops for a second. Then I force myself to move, to creep toward them, my own weapon raised.
“You want to aim that gun somewhere, Jacob? Point it at me.” Anders tries for a smile. “You know your brother—he’s going to do what you want a whole lot faster if that gun is pointed at one of his friends.”
“Will?” Dalton says in a low voice. “Don’t.”
“He’s your friend?” Jacob says.
Anders nods. “Deputy, friend, sure. So point that gun over—”
“Friend, girl, everyone but me,” Jacob says to Dalton. “You stay away from me for them. For strangers.”
“No, no, no,” Anders says. “It’s not like that. We work together. Eric and Casey and—”
“You stay with them.” Jacob spits the words. “You left me. For them. For strangers.”
I see his finger move on the trigger. And I run. I don’t shoot. I can’t shoot. They’re too close together, and there isn’t enough light. So I run, making as much noise as I can, certain that Jacob will hear and stop. I see a blur of motion, and I’m moving too fast to realize what it is until I hear the shot, and then I see that Anders has launched himself—not at Jacob but in front of Dalton.
I hear the shot, and I see Anders, and in my head I hear myself screaming, but I don’t say a word. I just keep running, toward Jacob now as he stands there, and I dimly see them both on the ground—Anders and Dalton—and I see blood blossoming on Anders’s shirt, and I see Jacob and that gun, still pointed at them.
“Drop it!” I say as I burst into the clearing, my weapon trained on Jacob. “Lower that gun right now, or I swear I’ll shoot.”
He lowers it.
“Drop it, or—”
It falls from his hand, and he says, “Eric?” and totters there, and when I run over and take the gun, I see his face, the shock on it as he stares at his brother, on the ground, under Anders.
“Eric?” he says again.
I grab Jacob’s hands and pull them behind his back and bind them with the cable tie. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t seem to notice. I bind him, and I shove him aside so hard he falls as I race over to Dalton. Anders is still on top of him.
Anders has been shot. And I don’t care.
No, that’s wrong. I do care. I just don’t want to.
My impulse is to shove Anders off to get to Dalton, but I can’t manage that. I don’t need to. I can see Dalton’s wound—it’s a bullet to the top of his shoulder, and he says, “I’m okay, Casey. It’s Will. Help Will.”
He’s been saying that for a while. I just haven’t paid attention. He’d say that if he had a bullet through his heart.
Don’t mind me. Help the other person.
Except the other person betrayed him. Isn’t worthy of his attention. Yet that other person just saved his life. Threw himself in front of a bullet, and no matter how hard Anders might have protested his loyalty to Dalton, this proves it, and I cannot argue with that.
I cut Anders’s cable tie and check his wound. It’s a through-and-through shot to the chest bypassing his heart. He’s fading into shock, and I pull him back by saying, “What can I do?”
“I’ve got it,” Dalton says as he heaves himself up, face contorting with the pain.
“Sit down,” I say. “You’ll only hurt yourself more and—”
“It’s my shoulder, Casey. Not my spine. I’ve got Will. You call Beth.”
I stop. “Beth…”
He grips my shoulder, hard, peering down at me as if I’m the one going into shock.
I shake him off. “I’m fine. Where’s the—?”
He pulls the radio from Anders’s jacket and slaps it into my hand and then kneels beside the wounded man.
“Will? It’s Eric. I’m going to tell you where you’ve been shot, and you’re going to tell me how to help you. Got it?”
I move away with the radio. I pass Jacob, who’s blinking hard, as if trying to rouse himself from a trance. I keep walking, and Dalton says, “Casey?”
I wave that I’m just stepping away, but he starts to rise, to come after me, and I realize I’m going to need to do this in front of him. I motion for him to return to Anders. Then I radio Beth. As I talk to her, Dalton glances over, his face screwed up as if he’s misheard, and he’s opening his mouth, but before I can silence him, he shuts it. He nods. Then he returns to Anders.
I finish the call, and I kneel beside Jacob.
“Something’s wrong with me,” he’s mumbling. “Something’s wrong.”
“I know,” I say. “But I need to ask you a few questions. Do you think you can answer them?”
He blinks harder and rubs his cheek against his shoulder, as if trying to wake from a deep sleep. Then he nods.
* * *
Beth arrives at a run, radio in one hand, lantern in the other as I give her directions until I can see her, and then I shout and jog to meet her.
“You left him?” she says.
“It’s too late. I think he’s gone.”
“Wh-What?” Her eyes bug out as she runs to me. “Y-You mean—No, that’s not—”
“Not possible?” I say. “Of course it is. What did you expect?”
She stops so fast she stumbles and grabs a tree for support. “Wh-What?”
“You drugged Jacob. I don’t know what you gave him, but whatever it was, it was intended to cause delusions.”
She stares at me. “What are you—”
“You gave Jacob drugged food, telling him you were a friend of Eric’s. He’d seen you out here with Eric before—you made sure of that first. It solidified your story. Then, when he started getting sick from the food, you ‘treated’ him. While telling him about Eric’s newest friend. A woman who wasn’t any good for him, would hurt him, was keeping Eric away from his brother. It worked—Jacob did come after me. Only what you didn’t anticipate is that little boy inside him, the one who still blames his big brother for leaving, the one who still wants to lash out at Eric, to hurt him.”
Beth rocks there. Then she looks around wildly. “Take me to Eric. You’re not a doctor.”
“True,” I say. “I could be wrong. But you were right about one thing, Beth. I am bad for Eric. I think he’s a sweet guy, and a really sweet fuck. But that’s it. What matters most to me is justice. So, if you want to treat Eric before he bleeds out, you’re going to have to give me a confession.”
She lunges at me. A well-placed kick in the shin sends her down, snarling, “You crazy bitch. You’d let him die—”
“He’s an officer of the law. He knows the risks.” I point my gun at her. “Now talk.”
“Yes,” she spits. “Jacob already told you what I did, and it was for Eric’s own good, saving him from you—”
“Bullshit. You might be more than a bit delusional yourself, but you weren’t trying to kill me because I was getting close to Eric. You wanted me gone because I’m dead set on solving these crimes. With Jacob, you got a two-in-one deal. An assassin to kill me and a scapegoat you could frame for the murders you committed.”
“Wh-What?”
“It started with Abbygail’s death. You suspected that Powys killed her and somehow Irene was involved. Maybe you were working on getting a confession out of Irene, and it went wrong. Then you and Mick went after Powys. That was the piece I was missing: Mick. I might have suspected you of that impromptu surgery on Hastings, as crudely as you did it to disguise your handiwork. I might have even linked you in via Abbygail. But you couldn’t have hauled Hastings into that tree. You had a partner. Mick. The one person even more broken up about Abbygail than you. The one who’d have snapped when you made up a story about what happened to her. You had to convince him that story was true, because Mick was a decent guy and needed to be sure he had the right target. But then you realized you were wrong, and it was actually Hastings who’d killed Abbygail. You managed to talk Mick into killing him, too, but that’s where you lost him.”
“What?”
“You went overboard with Hastings. Mick was already uncomfortable with what you two did to Irene and Powys, but Hastings was pure sadism. Mick wanted out. He even pointed me squarely in Hastings’s direction. And I made the mistake of telling you that he’d fingered Hastings as the guy who left the berries. Mick became a liability, so you killed him, conveniently framing Diana, in hopes that might get me out of Rockton.”
“You can’t prove—”
“Right. I can’t.” I waggle the gun. “But I’m holding your beloved Eric’s life hostage, so you’re going to give me what I want. Then I’ll let you save Eric, because I don’t want him to die—I’m just willing to let it happen.”
“You’re just as bad as them. A killer—”
“And I deserve to die, blah-blah-blah. Time’s ticking, Doc.”
Her face mottles. “They did deserve to die. I didn’t need to fabricate a story to get Mick’s cooperation. I told him the truth. How Irene came to me for dental surgery two weeks after Abbygail vanished. I dosed her up with diazepam, which made her very talkative. And there was something in particular she wanted to talk about. Confess, I think. Like your friend, Diana. Except in Irene’s case, she confessed to Abbygail’s murder.”
“So Irene and Powys did kill—?”
“Hastings had a thing for Abbygail. He’d hit on her when they worked together in the clinic, but she’d have nothing to do with him. As for Powys, he didn’t give a damn about a twenty-one-year-old girl. What mattered to him was the rydex. Hastings was getting cold feet, knowing Eric was onto him. So to secure his help with the drugs, Powys promised him Abbygail. Irene lured her out into the forest. Hastings raped her. It seems he expected her to ‘come around’ then—she’d see how wonderful it was and how wonderful he was. That didn’t happen, shockingly. Powys knew it wouldn’t. He wasn’t securing Hastings’s help with the rydex by giving him a girl. He secured it by making him a murderer. Abbygail vowed Eric and Mick would hunt Hastings to the ends of the earth for assaulting her, and Powys pushed Hastings until he lost it and strangled her. Then they chopped up her body and scattered it for predators.”
I stand there, shocked into silence. It takes a moment for me to find my voice, and when I do, I say, “You switched out Irene’s X-rays to make it seem like she was here under false pretenses, too. To help me draw the conclusion that I was chasing a vigilante eliminating killers.”
“Which you were. So, Detective, do you agree they had it coming?”
“Irene? Powys? Hastings? Maybe. But Mick?” I look her in the eyes. “Absolutely not.”
She blanches. Then her face hardens. “I’d made a mistake letting him in on it, and I had to correct that mistake.”
“Correct that mistake? You made him a party to brutal, sadistic murders because he was grieving for a girl he loved. Then you murdered him when he regretted it.”
“Mick was weak. That is where I made a mistake. He didn’t like what we did to Powys. I knew he wouldn’t help me with Hastings if he knew what I planned. So I did my surgery, knocked Hastings out, and put him in that bag before I called Mick in. Mick thought he was already dead when he hauled him up in that tree. When he found out otherwise, I had to admit I’d made a mistake letting him help me.”
“So you killed him to protect yourself. Then you planned to frame Diana and let her die in that fire for no reason other than that it would give me a reason to leave town. When that failed, you remembered Irene’s accidental confession and the rumors you’d heard about Diana. You doped her up and got her to confess to even more than you bargained for. But still I wouldn’t leave. I ran into that forest … and into Jacob, the pistol you’d cocked to fire. Perfect timing … and yet I survived, and with Eric playing nursemaid, you couldn’t even make sure I died from unforeseen complications. Still, you could frame Jacob for the murders. Another innocent party whose guilt would doubly help you—blame him for the crimes and get him out of the way so Eric would be free to go south with you.”
“You don’t understand anything,” she snarls.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I think we’ll let the council decide.” I turn and call, “You get that, Sheriff?”
Dalton walks out from a clump of trees. He’s pale and pressing his blood-soaked shirt to his shoulder. But he’s on his feet, walking toward Beth, and she falls back, blinking hard.
“Eric? You … you…”
“Yeah, he’s fine,” I say. “It’s Will who’s been shot.”
“And you’re going to fix him,” Dalton says. “Or I’ll shoot you before Casey can.”