Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(105)

“Put down the gun.”

“I’ll untie your hands, but I am not—”

“If you untie me, and things go south, we’ll grapple for the gun. Neither of us wants that. So I will accept the cuffs if you put that gun down. Pull the chair over. Set the gun on the dresser. Out of your reach. Out of mine. Then you have fifteen minutes of my time, and afterward, if I don’t think whatever you had to say was this important, you’ll be charged with every offense you’ve just committed. We’ll see if your friends in the council can get you out of that.”

She puts the gun on the dresser and tugs over the chair. I sit on the edge of the bed.

“I’m the one who doped Roy,” she says.

“I know.”

She looks at me sharply.

I continue. “All right, I didn’t know for certain. There wasn’t any evidence. But you were at the top of my suspect list. The council asked you to do it, didn’t they? Dose something in his house. Plant the mushrooms. Plant the watch. Hope that he freaks out, and I find the watch and decide he did it and close the case. Phil already tried to get me to do that, as soon as I asked him about the watch. Your setup was clumsy as hell. I’d have expected better.”

“Watch?”

“Phil’s watch. Which you planted at Roy’s.”

She shakes her head. “That wasn’t me. Seems like I’m not the only one who thinks Roy makes a good suspect. As for Phil, he’s drawing his own conclusions. He wasn’t part of this. The council is barely speaking to him. They don’t trust him. They probably fed him the same story I got, that they had proof Roy was the killer, and they’d made a mistake sending him here. Tell Phil that, and as soon as you find the watch, he’ll draw his own conclusions. I can guarantee he wasn’t part of it, though. He failed with Brady. They’ve cut him loose. He’s our new Val. They just haven’t told him that yet.”

“So the council—”

“It’s not—” She stops herself. “It’s people from the council. It is not the entire council. That’s where you’ve made your mistake, Casey. Where we both did. It’s like the blind men with the elephant, feeling around and drawing conclusions based on one part. Except, with the elephant, they didn’t realize they were dealing with the same beast. You and I thought we were dealing with the same beast. And we aren’t.”

“Uh-huh.”

She leans forward. “You see a corrupt council, acting in its own best interests. I see good people who need to make hard decisions to protect the town’s best interests. But it’s not one elephant we’re assessing. It’s a council comprised of different people, with different agendas. I just got a glimpse of yours, and that’s why I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“I have primary contact with the council. You spoke to her.”

“émilie.”

“Yes. She’s the reason I’m in Rockton. She’s dealing with health issues, though, so I’ve been in contact with two others who occasionally give me orders. My order yesterday was to dope Roy. I was told he was the killer.”

“Based on what? I know his real crimes, and they aren’t violent.”

“The council has been investigating, and they discovered he’s wanted on a Federal warrant.”

I start to say he’s not but stop myself and let her finish.

She continues, “They directed me to a cache, where I’d find a substance to place him in an altered mental state.”

“Which it did. It also could have gotten Mindy raped or killed. Maybe both.”

Petra’s cheek twitches. “I know, and that was not what I was told it would do. It was to suppress his central nervous system. Lower his defenses. Like involuntary intoxication. Place him in a state where he’d be far more likely to confess.”

“In vino veritas?”

“Yes. An easy way to place him in a state of increased suggestibility, while keeping him alert enough to be questioned.”

“That sounds like something out of a spy movie. You actually believed them?”

“I’ve used similar substances before. Not in Rockton but—Anyway, yes, I believed them, and while it was not supposed to make him violent, no one can predict the way a person will react. I was supposed to monitor him and then lead him into a situation where he’d be questioned.”

“Except you weren’t monitoring him.”

“I was. Then I was called to help in the general store, unloading the supplies Eric brought, and I made the mistake of deciding I could leave my post for a few minutes. Roy usually doesn’t drink until after dinner, and if I refused to help with the unloading, that would be suspicious. What happened to Mindy is on me. An inexcusable error in judgment. I was also furious with the council, for their error in judgment. That’s all I thought it was. In their zeal to stop a killer, they miscalculated his reaction to the drugs. Then I overheard Eric and Will talking about Roy.”

“Convenient. Also uncharacteristically indiscreet of them.”

She nods. “All right, I’ll rephrase that. I was intentionally eavesdropping on a private conversation between Eric and Will. Eric said you’d done some digging on Roy, and there was no possibility of a Federal warrant. You believed he was being set up and that the doping was tied to that.”