This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(33)

“You were trying to warn us that your food was poisoned,” I say. “Before my dog ate the rest.”

He nods, eyelids fluttering as if even keeping them open is too much effort.

“Is she okay?” he manages.

“She doesn’t eat anything without permission. The sheriff got your tray out of there. We’ll be analyzing it for poison.”

He gives a harsh laugh, wincing again. “Pretty sure it’ll come back positive.”





19





I’ve lied to Brady. I have no way to analyze his food. Down south, we’d just ship the sample off to the lab. Up here . . .

Before I requisitioned a Breathalyzer and urine-testing kits, Dalton used the old-fashioned methods—walk in a straight line, recite the alphabet backward, let me see your eyes . . . I need something more scientific. To be honest, though, I’ve never used the formal tests and gotten a result different from his assessment. It just stops people from protesting their innocence when I have hard evidence.

Our poison-testing method is not unlike Dalton’s sobriety testing. Someone finds berries or mushrooms in the forest, brings them back to town, and he says, “Yeah, don’t eat that.” Food spoilage is a bigger poisoning risk, but Rockton has very stringent food-handling rules, and the problems occur only when someone says “I’m sure that meat I left out of the icebox is fine.”

The one person who might have been able to help us here is Sharon—the woman we just buried. Not only was she a gardener—familiar with poisonous plants—but for Sharon that was more than theoretical knowledge. She was one of the residents the council snuck in, a wealthy woman who’d poisoned her husband and his pregnant mistress. Even in that case, though, we could hardly have gone to her and said, “Hey, you wouldn’t know anything about poisons, would you? Random question.”

We don’t have any chemists either. The two residents with that sort of experience are both dead, which has at least temporarily fixed Rockton’s drug problem.

So I’m not sure what to do, beyond saying, yes, Brady was poisoned, and it seems unlikely that it wasn’t in his food. As for what it could have been, I’m stumped. We don’t use pesticides in our greenhouse. We certainly aren’t spraying our yards to control “weeds.” Nor do we use poison for vermin. That’s just too dangerous.

I’ll need to dig up all the chemicals we do have. I’m hoping to narrow the field by figuring out suspects and what sources of poison they have access to. The obvious place to start is by tracing the path Brady’s breakfast took.

Dalton was the last person to handle it. He took the tray from the delivery person and gave it to Brady while Paul stood guard and the delivery person waited. So two people were watching the whole time, meaning I can eliminate Dalton, should anyone else suspect him.

Who delivered the food? That’d be Kenny.

Then I need to consider those who prepared the food. There’s Brian, who made the muffin and poured the coffee. Before that comes the person who brought the tray—with scrambled eggs and sausage—from the kitchen. Then the person who made the eggs and cooked the sausage, as well as everyone else who was in the kitchen at the time.

Finally, the chain goes back to the guy who made the sausage. Mathias.



“I did not poison the sausage,” Mathias says when I walk into the butcher shop.

“Yes, I know.”

That stops him, bloody knife in hand. He wipes it on a cloth, slowly, as if awaiting a punch line.

“You delivered that batch of sausage yesterday,” I say. “There was no way of knowing which links would go to Brady, and you wouldn’t poison innocent people.”

“Thank you.” He sets the knife aside and removes his apron. “I did not shoot at Mr. Brady either. I was expecting to see you after that.”

“It was the wrong kind of murder.”

He chuckles, pleased. When Brady first arrived, Mathias had asked if I wanted him to assess or assassinate the prisoner. If I’d pursued that, he’d have claimed he was joking. He wasn’t. I have no doubt that Mathias has killed murderers. He has a modus operandi, though. Poetic justice. What Brady is accused of requires a more fitting punishment than a shot in the head.

“Also,” Mathias says, “you are not convinced he is a killer.”

“Are you?”

“No. But I am rarely convinced until they confess. Even that is never a guarantee. In Mr. Brady’s case, though, I require more interviews to make an educated guess. Which would still not be enough to warrant capital punishment. One must be absolutely certain. Hypothetically speaking.”

“I should have you speak to Roy and his crew about that.”

Mathias sniffs. “Roy is a cretin. I would like to interview him.”

“That can be arranged. We’d appreciate it, actually.”

“So if you did not come to question me . . .”

“Even if there’s no way you poisoned the sausage, I must be seen coming in here to question you. Otherwise it’ll seem as if I’m excusing you because we’re acquainted.”

“ ‘Acquainted’?” His brows rise. “That is an odd word to use, and I will presume you choose it because you have temporarily forgotten the French word for friend. Otherwise, I would be insulted.”