Each day that passed decreased the odds. The farther they got from the discovery of the body, the less likely the case would be solved.
Today passed much the same way: Walt feeling handcuffed by a cautious attorney and limited by circumstantial evidence. He called Fiona twice and left messages, fearing that she was avoiding his calls over embarrassment about the reappearance of the “stolen” Engleton truck, and let her know that he couldn’t care less and was just happy to know Kira had apparently returned. Fiona’s refusal to return his calls annoyed and frustrated him, but the next step was hers to make. Hers to take.
With the girls asleep and the dishes washed, he sat down at the computer to catch up on e-mail.
The kitchen phone rang and Walt snatched it up.
“I found the guy’s vehicle, Sheriff.”
“Gilly?”
“I found the SUV. Avis sticker on the bumper. Plates still on it. It’s Gale’s rental.”
“Where?”
“Well off trail or I’d have found it sooner. Was those night vision binoculars did it. Sun warmed the metal all day and the thing gave off a signature after dark. I’m standing here looking at it. You want me to open it up?”
“Don’t touch a thing. Give me directions. It’ll take me an hour or so. You sit tight.”
“Got it.”
He called Lisa and asked her to cover. Called the office and told them what he needed, including Fiona, and instructed them how to keep it off the radio, and how to release the vehicles one at a time, wanting to avoid a press stampede. Took a deep breath as he changed back into a freshly pressed uniform shirt.
He looked in on the girls just before Lisa arrived wearing a bathrobe with jeans. She looked tired and headed straight for the couch.
Walt offered his bed, saying, “Fresh sheets.”
“How long are you going to be?”
“Take the bed,” he said.
She nodded and trundled off, scratching her backside through the bathrobe and causing him to wonder if they didn’t know each other too well.
G
illy Menquez looked small and pale behind the glare of headlights, squinting into the searchlight from Walt’s Cherokee.
“This is good, right, Sheriff?”
“Very good.”
“About last week—”
“Forget about it, Gilly. It’s behind us.”
“I got me a wife and four kids. Another coming.”
“All the more reason not to drink on the job.”
“You coulda had me fired.”
“Just don’t make it ‘should have.’ ”
Gilly eyed him curiously.
“Never mind, Gilly. Just don’t let it happen again.”
“It won’t.”
Walt kept the smile off his face out of respect. Gilly looked all worked up, his face twisted like he might cry. Walt placed a hand on his shoulder, happy to have someone his own height, but wondering if Gilly’s devotion was to the Blessed Mother or the bottle.
“This is exactly as you found it?” The man nodded, but submissively, and Walt was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Wanting to keep him busy, Walt asked Menquez to search the immediate area on the passenger side of the SUV. Walt took the woods to the left, awaiting Fiona’s camera and at least one deputy before entering the vehicle. He’d shined his flashlight through the glass to find the SUV was empty, keys in the ignition. The keys might come back with latent prints; he was eager to get on with it.
Flashlight in hand, Walt moved methodically through the forest undergrowth. He heard Beatrice clawing at the Cherokee’s side window and wished he could let her out. Gale’s rental had been abandoned in a swale between two treed ridges running east-west. Given the overhead canopy of evergreens, it seemed a miracle Gilly had ever spotted the heat signature, and Walt took it as a sign that the investigation had turned. Cases either turned for you or against you, and he’d grown superstitious over time.
He saw it as a wink of white, a color that didn’t belong in the forest palette, approached it somewhat breathlessly, nearly called out to Gilly at his find.
He pulled back some fern, revealing the smooth, turned handle and grip of a baseball bat. Bent and reached down farther, pulling back the twist of green revealing the bat’s wide end.
His heart was pounding now, really pounding, like he’d run a fair distance or hit the bench press. At first the discovery elated, filled him with a childish glee, cementing his theories and confirming his investigative excellence. He thought how impressed Boldt would be to discover that his own suspicions of Vince Wynn had not only been well founded but on the mark.
Just below the crown of the bat was a rust-colored smudge and what looked to be some human hair. He was looking at the murder weapon, and though he had yet to equate the truck’s abandonment with the discarded bat, the timing and the logistics, the connection to Gale seemed inevitable. With any luck the case might be closed by noon, and the cameras and reporters could go home.
He donned surgical gloves, checking behind him. He’d lost sight of Gilly, off in the woods. And now, from well below, the first winks of arriving headlights. And behind those another set. His team would be here in a matter of minutes and, hopefully, Fiona among them—someone to celebrate the find with.
He dropped to one knee and was reaching for the center of the bat—keeping his contact off both the handle and the blood evidence—when the flashlight cast small shadows over the burned engraving—a script font—and three letters:
ton
He knew bats—Louisville Sluggers in particular—knew the placement of the logo and the location on the bat of certain brands or endorsements. This fit neither. Without giving it any thought his mind jumped ahead, trying to process which slugger this particular bat was named for, and why it might have been burned onto the bat so far down the head. He spun the bat slightly and the rest of the name appeared:
Engleton
.
A WOOD RIVER LITTLE LEAGUE ALL-STAR DONOR: MICHAEL ENGLETON
Walt froze, the sound of the approaching vehicles growing louder. Off-balance and dizzy, he realized he wasn’t breathing. The bat was supposed to have come from Vince Wynn’s autograph collection. It was supposed to prove beyond a doubt that Wynn had taken the law into his own hands, just as he’d threatened to do.
The next image in his head was that of Kira Tulivich raising a bat and coming from the Engleton house toward Walt as he peered into Fiona’s window. Kira Tulivich, so traumatized and victimized that she couldn’t get through her keynote address without having a flashback that kept her from continuing.
The vehicles approached. Walt, hand on the bat, hesitated.
“The bat could have been stolen,” he said aloud, quickly shutting his gob and thinking of the mountain man, or the meth cooker, or whoever had vandalized the Berkholders’ place.
The bat firmly in hand now, he held it down, in lockstep with the movement of his right leg, as he marched hurriedly toward the idling Jeep. Beatrice went frantic with his approach. The headlights of the oncoming cars grew nearer.
Gilly Menquez appeared out of nowhere, at the rear of the SUV. “Sheriff?”
Walt stopped, keeping the bat screened from Menquez. “Gilly?”
“You got anything?” Walt didn’t answer. “For me to do?” he added.
“Wave those cars down and keep them from contaminating the scene. Stop them back there as far as you can and tell them to kill their lights. Hurry it up.”
Gilly took off running. A moment later, as the car lights went dark, Walt slipped open his Jeep’s back hatch, switched off the interior light, wrapped the bat in a blue tarp, the same blue tarp they’d used to move Gale’s body, and tucked the bundle behind his emergency backpack at the hinge of the backseat.
He told himself he was merely preserving evidence, was hiding it so that no one would know of its existence, so that there could be no possibility of it leaking to the press before he’d had it properly recorded and analyzed. So that whatever evidence it provided could be used effectively and properly before it was misused and abused in the court of public opinion.
He was not withholding evidence. Not doing anything wrong.
But then why had he hidden the bat from Gilly? Why had he secreted it in the back of his Jeep rather than record its location with a photograph—SOP for a first officer’s discovery of any suspected murder weapon?
He shut the hatch as Fiona emerged into the glow of the Jeep’s headlights. From behind her appeared Barge Levy carrying a heavy backpack in his right hand. And then, a moment later, two deputies, one of them Tommy Brandon.
“Sheriff,” Fiona called out, juggling two camera bags. She looked skeletal in the pale light. Fragile and pale and exhausted as she hurried ever closer.
“Ms. Kenshaw,” Walt said, his voice breaking.
T
he digital clock on the kitchen microwave read 3:07. Walt was forced to decide whether or not to wake Lisa, and he’d ruled in favor of giving her a chance to sleep at least part of the night in her own bed. She drove off in her robe and jeans, bleary-eyed but grateful for the chance to get home.
With her out of the house, he pulled the blue bundle from the vehicle and walked it around to the privacy of the back door, never doubting for a moment that he might be watched. He’d long since learned two things in law enforcement: everyone carried at least one damaging secret, and there was no such thing as privacy.
With the blinds drawn, he carefully unfolded the tarp and stared at the bloody bat, wondering what the hell he was doing. He had a variety of excuses at the ready: he was protecting the investigation from a leak that could potentially strengthen Wynn’s defense (though the inscription to Michael Engleton made that a difficult angle); he was keeping the first real significant evidence away from any chance of public exposure; he was sequestering evidence to allow himself to pursue a methodical investigation and interrogation of suspects—most notably, Kira Tulivich. Convinced that he was okay as long as he didn’t contaminate or destroy evidence, he wrapped the bat carefully in cling wrap, then secured it with tape.
He hunted around in the garage and came up with an oversized cardboard box and cut it down to size with a razor knife and crudely shaped it to fit the bat. He used bubble wrap and newspaper and packaged the bat in the box, sealing it with more packing tape. He went online and filled out an overnight shipping label, printed it up, and left the package on the dining-room table as a shrine to his misbehavior.
Boldt had offered his help in speeding up the processing of evidence. The Meridian lab might expedite the work because of its association with a possible homicide, but Walt could overlook that possibility and send it to Boldt with a decent excuse in his back pocket. One day to reach Seattle, one day to process. He should have results in less than forty-eight hours, about the quickest he could expect it from the state lab in Meridian. But by putting it onto Boldt’s books he maintained absolute privacy, something that could play heavily in his favor in the days to come. In the event the bat implicated someone of interest to Boldt in the Vetta investigation, then his use of the Seattle lab was further justified.
But he didn’t sleep well that night. He tossed and turned, and what little sleep he found was marred with bad dreams and tangled plot lines that kept him barely below the surface. He awoke irritable and tired and got the girls off to camp in a cloud of silence they could feel. Even Beatrice kept her distance, lying with her head on her crossed paws, her eyes never leaving him.
“Stop it!” he called out to her across the room as he cooked French toast. She blinked, looked away, then refocused on her master, his four-legged conscience refusing to let him go.
A
t ten a.m., Walt left the office without explanation, telling Nancy only that he was heading home and would be back in fifteen minutes.
Nancy associated such unexplained departures with family or health issues, both of which worried her, as in her mind she’d taken on the role of his guardian since the divorce. She often handled personal matters for him that had nothing to do with his job.
“Everything all right?” she’d asked, a question he didn’t have to answer given the expression he wore.
“Fine,” he lied.
“If I can help,” she added, causing him to slow down, debating either a reprimand or an apology. She received neither. He continued out the door, his eyes locked ahead of him like a marching soldier.
“Sorry to call so early,” Walt said, Boldt’s face filling the small window on his computer screen.
“Up for hours,” Boldt said. “What can I do for you?”
“Am I that transparent?”
“You’re using Skype,” Boldt said, “instead of the phone. But I’m glad you called. Matthews had an explanation for us.”
“Concerning?”
“First, why don’t you tell me why you called?”
Walt kept his explanation of shipping the bat short and simple—he needed the lab work expedited. No excuse; no reasoning offered. He’d appreciate a phone call or e-mail the moment they knew anything. Boldt took it all in stride.
“Now you,” Walt said.
“The girl at the nursery,” Boldt said. “What was her name?”
“Martha Sharp. Maggie.”
“Pot. Matthews says she’s growing pot out there. She’s working it at night when she doesn’t belong there, which is why she was so sensitive about not being there after hours. She’s doing this on her own to supplement her income. She lives alone, probably with one of her parents who is ill or relies upon her. We scared the hell out of her by nosing around, but the point is, Matthews thinks she probably saw something. With Gale, I mean. I described the interview and—this is her magic, Sheriff—she jumps in and starts to break it down for me. I know it may sound like hocus pocus, but this is what she does, and I’ve learned to trust her.”