Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(39)

“What can we call you?” I ask.

“émilie,” she says, giving it a French pronunciation, though I don’t detect an accent in her voice. “That is my name, and that is what you may use. Now, the situation at hand . . .”

“Mark Garcia is dead,” I say. “We just aren’t letting residents know that yet.”

“I see . . .”

“I don’t know how much Phil told you. Eric and I found Garcia. He’d apparently fallen into a crevice after being attacked by wolves.”

“Wolves? That’s never happened before, has it?”

“No, and it still hasn’t. Garcia lied. The alleged bite marks don’t correspond to a wolf attack. They were shallow puncture wounds, which he made out to be much more serious, as he did with his supposed injuries from falling into that crevice. We believe he heard us talking—we were with Tyrone Cypher, whose voice carries.”

She chuckles. “That is putting it mildly. I remember Tyrone. I heard you’d made contact with him recently.”

“We have, and we’re using him for tracking. Anyway, we believe Garcia heard us, lowered himself into the crevice and made the wounds himself, so he could be brought back to Rockton as a patient, giving him the chance to escape the infirmary and grab his fugitive.”

“Clever . . .”

“He’d even been more clever if it didn’t get him killed,” Dalton mutters.

émilie chuckles. “True. So from what Phil told me, as you were returning Garcia to town, he was shot by a sniper.”

“Not a sniper,” I say. “Just a person with a gun, hiding in the bushes. He was shot twice. The first wouldn’t likely have been fatal—it was poorly aimed. The second was the lucky shot—lucky for the shooter, that is. Garcia survived until we got him to the clinic. I could tell he wouldn’t survive much longer, so I shut down access to the clinic. He died shortly after. Only Eric, Deputy Anders and my sister know that. Oh, and Kenny will—we needed to move him. Otherwise, we’re telling people that Garcia slipped into a coma without revealing his target. We’re hoping whoever shot him will come back to finish the job before he wakes up.”

“Excellent. You have the situation under control.”

“Yeah,” Dalton drawls. “A Federal marshal died retrieving a fugitive from Rockton. That is not a situation under control.”

“Our immediate concern is finding Garcia’s killer,” I say. “But the larger issue—the one that we’ll need the council for—is figuring out how serious this leak is. First, we must determine whether or not Garcia was actually a U.S. Marshal. I doubt it, given that he came here alone. My hope is that we have a bail bondsman or private bounty hunter who didn’t file a trip plan with anyone down south.”

There’s a pause. Too long of a pause.

“He’s a marshal, isn’t he?” I say finally.

“We’ve found a Marshal Mark Garcia who works out of Spokane. I have his photo here. Getting it to you is obviously a problem. I can’t determine height from the photograph, but he seems physically fit. He’s forty-five. Dark eyes. Dark hair with some graying at the temples. His mother is Caucasian, father Hispanic. Does that match your intruder?”

“Yes, but I’d like more.”

“So would we. You are correct that his behavior is inconsistent with what we’d expect from American federal law enforcement. The marshals do not operate like this, a lone wolf chasing down a fugitive. However, as I’m sure you’re aware from your own law enforcement experience, Casey, how officers are supposed to behave is not always consistent with how they do behave. Even within a department, there can be variation in how ‘standard’ standard operating procedure really is. There can also be exceptions.”

She’s right, of course. It only takes one superior officer to sign off on something like this, for whatever reason. Maybe Garcia’s partner was unavailable. Or his partner was supposed to join him later. Or, simply, Mark Garcia was a pain in the ass to work with, and his superiors gave up on him. It’s not supposed to happen. But it does. I’d gone out on cases without my usual partner for various reasons. I wouldn’t fly into the Yukon wilderness alone, but I can’t look at Garcia’s situation and say it could never, ever happen.

“Then he’s filed a flight plan,” I say. “They’re going to come looking for him.”

“We hope not. Our hope is that he got a lead and chased it without pausing to follow proper procedure. That may be unlikely.”

“It is.”

“We know that, and so we’re already pursuing other avenues. We have contacts within the USMS, as we do in most Federal agencies. That has proved advantageous over the years, allowing us to ensure that we do not permit dangerous criminals into Rockton.”

Dalton and I exchange a look at that.

émilie continues. “We are, of course, very circumspect with those contacts. Which means we can’t simply phone and ask if they’re missing a marshal. But if this man is Marshal Mark Garcia, and he was working a case with a registered travel plan, then we have every hope of resolving the matter before it becomes a security threat.”

“Resolve it how?” Dalton says. “Their marshal is dead.”

“Which means, I fear, that our best hope of resolution punts the ball back into your court.”