Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(55)
“I’m just pointing out—”
“I have a double alibi. Your sister and Kenny. I was in the clinic when we heard the shots.”
“There’s actually been some question about that,” I lie. “You might want to reconsider.”
She sputters. “Question? What question? I was there. April, Kenny and I discussed the sound. And why the hell would I kill this guy? You know what I did, Casey. I embezzled funds from my employer, and then Graham convinced me the cops were getting close and I had to run. He double-crossed me.”
“Shocking.”
She glowers. “Yes, you saw that coming. Maybe someday you and I will have a conversation about how your best friend could be such a flaming idiot. Or maybe now that you’ve actually fallen for a guy, you have some idea how that works.”
I don’t point out that Dalton has never lifted a hand against me, and if he ever did, I’d be gone forever. That’s victim blaming. The truth is that I don’t think I can ever understand how Diana could still love Graham after what he put her through. I simply have to accept that she did. Which doesn’t ever excuse the rest. I don’t care how much you love a man, you don’t betray your best friend for him.
“Graham has the money,” she continues. “I’m stuck up here for at least another year. A U.S. Marshal wouldn’t be involved because it’s not a U.S. case, and Graham isn’t going to send someone after me, because I’m no threat to him. Never was. I’m not you, as he reminded me, over and over again.”
“Well, if you didn’t shoot Garcia, then we have a problem, because only the three of us knew where that gun was.”
“Someone else must have.”
“Eric and I forgot about it. Otherwise, we’d have secured it in the gun locker.”
“I presumed it was in the gun locker.”
“Did you mention to anyone that we took a gun from him?”
I’ve been hoping she’d volunteer this information. That’s why I lied about her alibi being in question. The obvious defense would be to say that she mentioned the gun to someone. I even prompted her by saying we hadn’t told anyone.
Diana might insist she’s not “like me.” That’s she isn’t a threat. She might not know how to take revenge on Graham or how to make him pay for what he did, but she has a finely honed survival streak. I’ve tossed her a life raft here, and it didn’t matter if saving herself meant tossing someone else to the sharks. She’d have done it in a blink. The fact that she hasn’t tells me she doesn’t have the answer I want. I still ask, outright, but I’m not surprised when she says,
“I didn’t tell anyone, Case.”
“If you did, it’s in your best interests to tell me.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She pulls her legs up, crossing them. “I didn’t tell anyone anything about what happened at Eric’s house because I knew that wouldn’t help you guys. Also, admittedly, I wanted to prove you could trust me. So, because I kept my mouth shut, I’m now your prime suspect. I think they call that irony.”
“What about after Garcia ran? Maybe you mentioned something about him being unarmed? Maybe people worried that he was running around with a gun, and you said no, he wasn’t.”
She shakes her head. “No one realized that I’d met Garcia, so I didn’t volunteer that information. To anyone.”
I rise from the chair. “All right then.”
“Can you talk to April and Kenny again? I don’t know how there can be any confusion about my alibi.”
“It’s fine. Your alibi stands.”
She gets to her feet. “You lied?” Before I can answer, she says, “Wait. You lied about my alibi, expecting me to toss you other suspects to save myself. Wow.”
I meet her gaze. “And you wouldn’t have?”
Her mouth opens. Then it shuts. She sits down. I let myself out, and she’s still sitting there, staring into space.
*
I head to the station. Dalton’s there, doing paperwork. One huge advantage to working in Rockton is the lack of paperwork. It’s a running joke with law enforcement that our job looks so much cooler in TV and movies, where we’re constantly on the move, out in the field solving crimes. The TV audience doesn’t want to see us stuck behind a desk, two-finger typing endless reports. Down south, besides reports for our supervisors, everything must be detailed, as meticulously as possible, in hopes of an arrest and trial. Or, if we fail to find a suspect, we want those notes for future investigators.
In Rockton, my only supervisor is the guy sitting at the desk. There isn’t an aspect of my cases that I don’t verbally share with him. The council doesn’t require reports or documentation. They don’t give a damn. There are no prosecutors to worry about either. Dalton, Anders and I are the entire judicial system. The only people we need to document anything for is ourselves. That’s what Dalton is doing. He’s handwriting a report on Garcia’s death for our files. I’ll add to that as the investigation proceeds.
Dalton writes while Storm snoozes at his feet. He doesn’t look up when I come in. I put a coffee and a few cookies in front of him. The coffee is in a travel mug. The cookies are in a Tupperware box. That’s another oddity to Rockton living. You won’t find the ubiquitous cardboard cups, cookies in a paper bag or even cookies wrapped in a disposable napkin. We are the most eco-friendly town in the world, I suspect. For us, it’s pure practicality. We can afford the water and the manpower to wash dishes far more than the cargo space to fly in disposable items. By the door, there’s a blue recycling box with an assortment of mugs and plates and plastic containers. Every other day, someone from the dishwashing unit will stop by to grab it. The contents will be cleaned and put back into circulation.