Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(37)

Then Phil was told he had to work alongside those grunts, and his orderly world tilted, his career path jolting out of sight. Now he has that look on his face again, as if he’s just discovered that, not only is he condemned to purgatory with the office drones, but the entire upper management structure has changed, his connections disappearing . . . and with it, his chance for escape.

“Phil?” I say. “Is there a problem with the council?”

A sharp shake of his head, coming back to himself. “Of course not. They need to find a temporary replacement for me, which is understandably not easy.”

Dalton snorts at that.

Phil gives him a hard look. “I mean given the security clearance required, Sheriff. In the meantime, someone from the board will be speaking to you.”

“The board of directors?” I say.

“Yes. I don’t deal with them, so I’m not familiar with this person.”

“Did you get a name?”

“No.” A long pause. “She didn’t give me one. I have also been told it’s a private audience. I cannot stay.”

“Huh,” Dalton says. “Well, that’s a problem.”

“I’m sure you can manage without me.” Phil’s tone is cool, but I hear the hurt—and the worry—in it.

Dalton continues, “I mean it’s a problem if you don’t know this woman . . . who won’t give her name and doesn’t want you listening to the call.”

“Any chance the communication system has been hacked?” I ask.

“She provided all the necessary credentials. The call is legitimate. It is just . . . not our standard operating procedure.”

That’s one way of putting it.





FIFTEEN

We’re at Val’s old house. We’ve told Phil he can move in—he was originally in the fortified box we constructed for Brady. His suitcase sits by the front door. One latch is undone, suggesting he’s been using it but keeps it there, like that AVP sentenced to a cubicle, his briefcase ready to grab as soon as his superiors realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.

The house seems ready for a new occupant, with not so much as a piece of art on the walls. That’s because Val never actually moved in herself. Three years in Rockton, and the only personal touch she added was small shelf of journals. I take one down and, with no small trepidation I crack it open. I know now what Val thought of us, and I’m not sure I care to see the extent of her contempt. Within these journals, though, I might find insight into a mind I can’t quite fathom.

And I do. Because they aren’t journals at all. They’re filled with algebraic equations. I remember seeing her doing that once. She’d said something about trying to solve a problem. Later, I learned she’d been a mathematician. Still, I expected that at least some of these notebooks would contain her thoughts, her musings, her words. They do not. I flip through all four to find only numbers and symbols.

Trying to solve a problem of her own.

You never found it, did you, Val?

And neither will I. There is no solution to the problem of Val Zapata. Certainly not in these books.

Or maybe there is, indirectly. These books speak of an obsession. One that is meaningless up here. Solving a math problem wouldn’t have set her free. Nor would it have improved her life. It was a distraction. Expending energy better directed toward improving her life—getting outside these walls and engaging the world. But that wasn’t her way. Never had been. And so she worked through a math problem, filling books with her computations, all that effort about to be consigned to flames, recycled as fire starter.

“Casey?” Dalton says, his voice soft.

I nod and walk to the satellite receiver. Phil has it set to the proper station. I press the call button to let our mystery board member know we’ve arrived.

A woman’s voice comes on with, “Hello?” as if she’s answering the phone.

“Detective Butler and Sheriff Dalton,” I say.

“You’re alone?”

“We are.”

“Before we start,” Dalton cuts in. “I don’t like this. I don’t know you. Phil doesn’t know you. You’re a faceless voice on a radio, telling us you’re a member of the board of directors. So tell me, who am I?”

A dry chuckle. “That sounds like an existential question, Eric. I have the feeling, though, that you know exactly who you are. On a purely biographical level, you are Eric Dalton. Formerly Eric O’Keefe. Or Eric Mulligan, if your parents gave you your father’s name. I’ll go with the matrilineal O’Keefe.”

Dalton goes still. Very still. Panic touches his eyes, and I realize he’s never known his parents’ surnames. Now a stranger is telling him, and that is humiliating. This woman joked that Dalton knows exactly who he is. Yes, he does, in the sense that he knows his place in the world and has a better grasp of his strengths and weaknesses than most people twice his age. But knowing who he is on a familial level, the one that we take for granted? That is entirely different.

The woman continues, her voice calm, as if not realizing she’s telling him anything he doesn’t already know. “Your parents were Amy O’Keefe and Steven Mulligan. Your dad came to Rockton as a newly minted police officer who’d tried to expose corruption in his force and ended up on the wrong side of some very dangerous people. Your mother had arrived two years previously, a Masters student fleeing the unwanted and dangerous attentions of her thesis advisor.”