Mock Apple Alibi, page 14
“How do you expect me to confirm it without seeing who it is?” Willie demanded in frustration.
“It’s going to be public information once he is identified,” Erin pointed out to Sheriff Wilmot. “What good does it do you to keep Willie from finding out? Why not let him see while there’s still a chance Vic is still alive and he can do something to find her and bring her back safely?”
“We don’t work with criminals.”
“Law enforcement works with criminals all the time,” Erin scoffed. “Don’t try telling me that.”
Terry glanced over at her, but he didn’t say anything to censure her. Wilmot looked at Stayner and Willie, then made a decision. He flicked a hand over to the dead body.
“Let him see. But don’t get too close, Mr. Andrews.”
Willie pushed by Stayner and walked closer, staying back from where Terry stood guard. He looked down at the man.
“This is the man who threatened you last night?” Willie asked Erin.
“I haven’t gotten close enough to confirm it, but he’s the same build and dressed the same way.”
“You never saw his face?”
“He was masked. But he had a tattoo on his right arm.”
Willie looked over at Terry. “Does he have the tattoo?”
The crime techs had not yet arrived, and Terry had said that he couldn’t do anything to try to identify the body until then. He looked at Wilmot, who gave a nod. Terry pulled on a glove and tugged the man’s right sleeve up half an inch.
He nodded. “A coiled-up rattlesnake. Orange-red. It matches Erin’s general description of a rounded, red or orange shape. Not bad, considering the lighting when you saw it,” he told her, “and that you were being threatened at gunpoint.”
Erin took a deep breath and let it out again, trying to keep the images at bay. She didn’t want to think about the threat. She didn’t want to think that this man had returned to take Vic and things had gone horribly wrong.
“You can’t tell anything about the bullet?”
Terry pressed the jacket down against the body to get a better view of the bullet or the bullet hole.
“Single gunshot. Small caliber. Maybe a .22.”
Erin didn’t know much about bullets, but she assumed that the small handgun Vic kept concealed in a bra holster was a .22.
“That doesn’t really tell us anything,” Terry told her. “It’s a common caliber. Nice shooting, to drop someone with a single shot in the back.” Then he looked at Willie. “So, do you know him?”
Chapter 27
Willie gave a brief nod. “Jackson clan,” he said briefly. “Could have been sent by Vic’s pa. Or someone further up the food chain. Eddie Potter.”
Sheriff Wilmot wrote the name down. “How do you know him? When was the last time you saw him?”
Willie shook his head. “I have no idea. You just get familiar with these people if you have been around the clans for long. Potters have been on this mountain for generations. I’m sure you probably have a dozen more living here in town.”
“Did Eddie Potter live here? In Bald Eagle Falls?”
“I reckon he was closer to Moose River, but don’t take that as gospel. People move around, and with the number of people who live on farms and in other rural areas, it’s hard to say who lives closer to what towns.”
“But for sure, he is a Jackson?”
Willie nodded. He clenched his teeth and said nothing.
“Did you send someone after him when you heard he threatened Vic?” Wilmot asked bluntly.
Willie looked at him. “If I had, why would I tell you?” He shook his head. “I didn’t know anything about it until this morning.”
And the man must have been killed the previous night. He wouldn’t have stayed in the woods all night waiting for Vic or Erin to come back outside. Not with the police search going on. That meant he must have been killed pretty soon after he had threatened them. Maybe he’d had a partner who had taken him out of the equation to prevent him from being caught, questioned, and possibly implicated.
Vic could not have gone out into the woods looking for him. Erin was sure of that. Was it possible that she had called Willie to report the incident and he had been able to get someone into the woods and to find the intruder before he had managed to get out?
Erin didn’t see how Willie could have known or done anything unless he had been in the woods already. Had he been there to see Vic? Vic hadn’t said she was planning to see Willie that night, but with all that was happening with the clans, she kept her meetings with Willie secret, even from Erin. Could Willie have been there, waiting for Vic to get home, and witnessed everything? It wouldn’t be hard, under those circumstances, for him to follow the man and shoot him in the back once they were out of earshot of the house.
Would Willie shoot him in the back? Or would he think that was cowardly and insist on calling out to the man and accusing him face-to-face?
“Why would Vic’s pa send someone out to threaten her?” Terry asked, approaching it from the other direction.
“I don’t rightly know. Vic was raised inside the clan, but that doesn’t mean she knew any clan secrets. What would you tell a kid that would put anyone at risk a few years later?” Willie frowned at Erin. “What did Potter actually say?”
“He just….he said to quit asking questions and mind our own business. But we hadn’t been asking any questions about the Jacksons. I can’t think of why he would think we had.”
“What had you been doing?”
“Talking to Campbell Cox. About Mary Lou.”
Willie’s scowl deepened. “Mary Lou?”
“You don’t know anything about who might have taken Mary Lou?” she asked him.
“I can’t say I do. I assume that if it was a Dyson, I would have heard about it.”
“Why would a Dyson take Mary Lou? Or a Jackson, for that matter?” Erin shook her head. “If this guy who came and threatened us was a Jackson, then Mary Lou must have been taken by the Jacksons, right? That is why they wanted us to stop asking questions?”
“Makes sense,” Willie agreed.
“But why would a Jackson kidnap Mary Lou?” Terry demanded. “She wasn’t involved in the clan. She wasn’t related to anyone in the clan’s leadership, was she? In either clan? She was just an ordinary Bald Eagle Falls citizen who wasn’t involved in anything to do with the clans if she could help it.”
Willie rolled his eyes and looked at the sky as if trying to predict the weather.
“Am I supposed to know everything that everyone in either clan is thinking? Who knows if Mary Lou had anything to do with anyone in either clan? Maybe she cut someone off in traffic. Maybe someone had a crush on her in high school. Maybe it was something to do with a deal that Roger made and then reneged on. Maybe he borrowed money from the wrong person trying to get them back on their feet, before he attempted suicide. Mary Lou and the boys wouldn’t know. Roger might not remember after his brain injury.”
“You think Roger borrowed money from the Jacksons?”
Willie held his arms out. “How do I know? He wouldn’t have told me. They wouldn’t have told me. There are plenty of bad deals going on with both clans all the time. They don’t necessarily reach the ears of those who are in charge. And there would be no reason for me to know about it years ago.”
Erin shook her head. None of it made any sense. But she had a different priority. It didn’t really matter who had killed Eddie Potter. She wouldn’t mourn him. And while she cared about Mary Lou and what had happened to her, finding out who had killed Potter wouldn’t necessarily get them any closer to finding out what had happened to Mary Lou or Vic.
“If the Jackson clan threatened us, then did they come back and take Vicky?” she suggested. “Or did Potter get ambushed by a Dyson who had come for her?”
“There’s another possibility,” Terry pointed out. “Vic went after the man who threatened her, and the reason she is missing is because she’s on the run after shooting him. She doesn’t want to be found.”
“She didn’t go after him,” Erin objected. “I saw her go back to the loft after you left to join the search. Ask Officer Stayner. He went to check on her before the bed.” She looked at him, eyebrows raised.
Stayner nodded his head slowly. “Yes, she was still there when I checked in on the girls—on the ladies. Both were getting ready for bed.”
“Vic was dressed for bed?” Wilmot asked.
Stayner seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second before nodding his agreement. “Yeah. Lacy nightgown. She said she was on her way to bed. She wanted to be up this morning for… something,” he finished, eyes on Willie.
“So she didn’t come after Potter,” Erin said with a nod. “She just went to bed.”
“You said you prevented her from shooting Potter in the back after he threatened you,” Terry reminded her.
“Yeah. So Vic didn’t shoot him. Maybe he had a partner out here. Or a Dyson stalking her ran into Potter. But it wasn’t Vic.”
“You know she didn’t have any qualms about shooting him in the back.”
“But she didn’t go after him. So that doesn’t make any difference.”
“He might have called her. Or she might have seen him through the window. You don’t know what might have happened after you were in bed and Stayner was gone.”
“For that matter,” Wilmot rumbled, “we don’t know for sure that Vic didn’t shoot him after the confrontation. You could be covering for her. It’s a little suspicious that he was shot in the back with a small caliber weapon like Vic might be carrying. After being shot, he might have kept running for a while, so you thought she had missed him. But eventually, the blood loss or the shock killed him. Here.”
Erin rubbed her forehead. “Vic did not shoot him,” she insisted. “You know me. Why would I lie about it if she did? She was within her rights to do it when he was threatening us with a gun.”
“Not when he was fleeing. Not in the back.”
Erin folded her arms across her chest. “You really think that matters with an organized crime guy waiting for us in the dark with a gun? Maybe we couldn’t see him. He shot at us, and Vic shot back as he turned to hide behind a tree or came after me.”
Erin looked around at the foliage and nodded her head.
“You can’t prove that’s not what happened. So why would I cover it up? It’s a lot easier to tell you that Vic was protecting us.” She clenched her jaw. “But we need to find her. She isn’t just staying below the radar because she shot the guy. She’s not hiding. Something happened to her. I know it, and you know it,” she pointed at each of them in turn, “and you know it, and so do you.”
The men looked back at her without saying anything, but none of them argued it. They knew as well as Erin that if Vic had shot a clan member after being threatened at gunpoint, she would have just told the police, and no one would ever have prosecuted her for it.
“We need to find her,” Terry agreed, pressing his lips into a thin line. “I agree. I think—first things first—that someone should call her parents. See whether they have heard anything from her or through Jackson clan channels.”
He didn’t offer to do it himself. He had met Vic’s parents and had a pretty good idea of how they would react. Erin wasn’t sure it would do any good for her to call. They didn’t have a very good opinion of her either. Willie might be able to make some kind of official inquiry through clan channels, but she didn’t think there was any love lost between them now. There wouldn’t be any “courtesy” calls.
“What about Jeremy?” she suggested. “He might be able to talk to their ma. I don’t think anyone can talk to him.”
Willie nodded his agreement immediately. Erin raised her brows at Terry and Wilmot to see if they wanted her to go ahead and do it.
“We don’t want word to get out to the whole town,” Wilmot said slowly. “We are still trying to keep this under wraps. Maintain some control over the situation. If you think you could impress upon Jeremy that he can’t talk to anyone else about it and get him to agree to make the call, I’ll agree to it.”
Erin pulled out her phone immediately.
A group of men and women arrived in a tight cluster. The crime scene techs and maybe someone from the medical examiner’s office in the city. Erin was surprised that he had gotten there that quickly.
She withdrew a distance away so that she was not in their way and would not be overheard on the phone. She found Jeremy’s number and tapped on it.
Chapter 28
“Hey, Erin,” Jeremy answered the phone in a casual, friendly tone. “What’s up?”
“Jer… Vic is missing.”
He didn’t immediately go into panic mode. “Well, where did that sister of mine disappear to now?”
“We don’t know. This is serious, Jeremy. The police want to know if you’ll call your parents to see if they have heard anything.”
“Why would they have heard anything? Vic doesn’t report to them.”
Erin mentally rewound to give him the background. “Last night… the two of us were threatened at gunpoint, told to stay out of things that were none of our business. This morning, the guy who made the threats was found dead. Willie has identified him as Eddie Potter, a member of the Jackson clan.”
“Potter?”
“Yeah. Maybe Vic recognized him, even though she didn’t say. If she did, she might have called your parents to find out why he was after her. Or if she’s been taken hostage, they might have been called to let them know what was going on. Or they might be able to ask who went after her and why.”
“Okay, okay,” Jeremy interrupted the flow of words. “Okay. You know for sure that it was this Potter guy? That he was the one who threatened you?”
“Yeah. He wore a mask, but his clothes were the same, and I saw a tattoo on his wrist. So yeah, we’re pretty sure that this guy who is now lying dead in the woods was the one who came after us.”
“And Willie identified him as Potter?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess that answers my next question… you’re sure Willie isn’t hiding Vic somewhere? I mean, that would be the logical thing to do.”
“If he’s hiding her… he’s a good actor. They were supposed to meet this morning, but Vic never showed up. He called me, and I went to find her… but she wasn’t in her apartment. Then we were walking the path that she would have taken in case she was hurt somewhere along the way and found Potter’s body.”
“Did Willie shoot him?”
Erin had been staring off into the woods, trying to mentally separate herself from the crime scene, but at Jeremy’s words, she looked back at Willie.
Was Willie that good an actor? Erin wouldn’t have said so. A good liar, but not necessarily a good actor. He held his cards close but didn’t put on a show.
“What kind of gun does Willie carry?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremy admitted. “What was Potter shot with?”
“Don’t know for sure, yet, Terry thought a small caliber, maybe a .22.”
Jeremy grunted. “I’ve never seen Willie pull a piece, but I would expect him to carry a .45 or something similar. Handgun or rifle?”
“Uh… I don’t know. They didn’t say. But I guess if they thought that it could have been Vic who shot him, they must be thinking it was a handgun. Do you know if that little one that she carried…”
“I’ve never played with it, but that size, I would expect it to be a .22. Why would they think that Vic did it? I thought you said that you and Vic were together. You can tell them she didn’t.”
“They said maybe she went after him later.”
Jeremy scoffed. “She’s not an idiot.” He didn’t say anything for a minute. “You reckon something happened to her? Somebody snatched her?”
“I’m really worried,” Erin admitted. “If you could please talk to your parents, just to make sure they haven’t heard anything. And,” she dropped her voice, even though there was a lot of discussion going on between the law enforcement officers and the techs and she didn’t think anyone would overhear her, “if you have any other connections to the Jacksons that you could use… I know your brothers are in the pen, so they probably can’t help. Still, you might know other people in the organization who would talk to you if they knew it was a personal inquiry about a family member…”
“I burned my bridges when I left the organization,” Jeremy said. “No one is gonna talk to me. But I’ll make some calls. Maybe an old friend of Vic’s would be willing to help. Don’t call me back. Let me deal with it.”
Erin agreed. “Okay. Let me know when you can, okay? We really want to find her.”
Jeremy agreed and disconnected. Erin slid her phone back into her pocket.
“What’s going on?” a soft voice inquired. “What happened?”
Even though the voice was quiet, Erin whirled around to see who had spoken, startled.
Her gamekeeper, Adele, stood with a rifle held in the crook of her arm. She patrolled the woods for trespassers in exchange for living in the summer cottage. The woods were sometimes used by teenagers for parties or by squatters looking for a quiet place to live. While Erin had compassion for the squatters in particular, she had come to understand that she could be held liable for anything that happened in the woods if she were not diligent in sending trespassers on their way. So she tried to help the indigent in other ways.
Erin gave a long sigh, trying to slow the beating of her heart after being startled by the tall redhead.
“You scared me!”
“Sorry. I was trying not to interrupt or scare you,” Adele continued using a very soft voice that would not attract the policemen’s attention. “I heard the voices.”
Erin looked around. From where they were standing, she could not see the body. But she nodded in that direction, over where Terry was standing talking to the techs, wearing their protective clothing so they would not contaminate any evidence.
“A dead body,” she admitted reluctantly.
Adele looked around. “A body? Who? No one we know, I hope?”
