Lake Silence (The Others #6)(30)

Hargreaves leaned forward again. His voice was quiet and rough. “You remember that backup isn’t down the street. You’re out there in the wild country, Wayne, on your own, no matter who answers a call for help and how fast they respond.”

“Business as usual, then.”

They stared at each other.

“What do you want while you’re manning the Sproing station?”

“I want Officer Osgood reassigned to the station. I want him away from Swinn.”

“You think he’ll back you up?”

Grimshaw hesitated. “I don’t know. If nothing else, he can answer phones and type up reports. Walk down Main Street in uniform and look official. Keep his eyes and ears open.”

“There is no safety in the dark, not even on the main street of a village,” Hargreaves said quietly. “Humans screwed up last summer, and we’re all paying for it. What happened to Chesnik and Baker . . .” He sighed. “I have an old friend, a patrol captain in Lakeside, who has a line to the governor. I’ll wangle it so that Osgood ends up working under your temporary command.”

“I’ll have to find him a place to stay.” Grimshaw smiled. “The CIU team was staying at the boardinghouse. So am I. I can handle being in the same building as Swinn. I’m not sure it would be healthy for Osgood, especially once he’s reassigned.”

“Your call.”

That was it? No, it wasn’t. Hargreaves had something on his mind.

“Swinn is a good investigator. He finds the evidence, and prosecutors are glad to see his name on the reports. Nineteen cases out of twenty he is good.”

“Then a few mistakes get made on number twenty?” Grimshaw guessed.

Hargreaves shook his head. “On number twenty, he’s even better. All the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed. And somebody goes to jail, maybe even prison. But it never feels quite right. Swinn jumping on this case? It doesn’t feel right, so you watch your back, you hear?”

“And Julian?”

The waitress brought over the bill. Hargreaves put enough money on the table to cover both meals and the tip. He slid out of the booth and gave Grimshaw a long look. “The less said about Julian Farrow the better. But I won’t comment about him giving you a hand as long as evidence isn’t compromised.”

“Not my job to look for evidence. That’s what CIU is for.”

“Maybe.”

The word was said so quietly, Grimshaw wasn’t sure he heard it. He looked at his watch and swore. He had to get moving if he was going to get back to Sproing in time to accompany Vicki DeVine and her attorney when they reopened her safe-deposit box.





CHAPTER 17





Vicki


Windsday, Juin 14

Opening the safe-deposit box the next morning was better than watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat. You got the happy surprise of something empty being filled without the brown presents at the bottom of the hat.

Everything had been returned—all the paperwork, which Ilya Sanguinati checked off the list he’d made from my record of the documents I’d put into the box. And there was even seven thousand dollars, nicely bundled.

Besides me and my attorney, there were three other people crowded into the privacy room to witness the Return of the Paperwork: Officer Grimshaw, Detective Swinn, and Valerie, who had been the head teller and was now the reluctant, and temporary, bank manager. When Ineke called me at the crack of dawn, telling me she’d pulled out all of her money as soon as she’d heard about yesterday’s naughtiness with the safe-deposit box, I didn’t ask how she’d found out—and I didn’t need to talk to anyone else to know the bank was going to crash. The whole village was holding its breath, especially the folks who hadn’t gotten to the bank yesterday and were now hoping that something would save them.

Frankly, I think everyone was hoping that the bloodsuckers who sucked blood would take over the bank. The penalties for a late payment might be steep, but at least there would be a brutal kind of honesty when they sucked you dry.

I placed each piece of paper in an old leather tote bag as Ilya Sanguinati checked it off. But when it came to the money, I hesitated. I had tucked six thousand into the box. Who had made up the other thousand? Had the bank manager taken it from his personal savings or had he used the bank’s money, which would be another bit of naughtiness?

I hesitated. Then I looked at Valerie, said, “Sorry,” and stuffed all the money in the tote bag.

“Don’t be,” Valerie replied. “I opened my box yesterday and removed the antique jewelry that belonged to my grandmother. It has more sentimental than monetary value, but I didn’t want to discover it missing one day.”

I hesitated a moment longer, wondering if I should put back the thousand dollars that didn’t actually belong to me. Then I glanced at Detective Swinn and swiftly closed the box, which was empty once again.

Swinn wasn’t old, but he looked a bit freeze-dried and his ash brown hair was cut short and stuck up across the top of his head, like it was iron filings being pulled by a magnet. He wore glasses with heavy black frames that dominated his face and didn’t suit him at all. But the glasses didn’t disguise the undiluted venom in the way he looked at me, and there was nothing I wanted more than to get away from him. Unfortunately, he was the person in the doorway and was, therefore, the person I had to squeeze past.