Protector (Copper Mesa Eagles Book 3) (14 page)

“Rogers,” he shouted over the top of a cube wall. “You know if Walter is here yet?”

“Got here early this morning,” another voice called. “Said he couldn’t sleep so he just came in.”

Walter
, Garrett thought.
I know that name. He did... something.

“Come on back,” the detective said.

* * *

Walter’s office was downstairs, in the half-basement level of the building. When Garrett left town, the police station was a little brick building on one corner, and the few cruisers mostly parked on the street outside it.

Now, it wasn’t exactly
impressive
, but it was a real police station, and had at least twice as many officers working as before, even though it still wasn’t very many.

“He’s retired, but we let him come in a couple times a week and keep records,” the man leading them said. “His wife died, and he needed something to do, you know?”

He knocked on a door and pushed it open, revealing a large desk with an old man in front of a room full of shelves.

“Thanks,” Ellie said. The man nodded and left.

Walter looked up, peering through his glasses.

Now
Garrett recognized him.

The little old man was Walter Thompkins. He’d been a cop in Obsidian for as long as Garrett could remember. When his parents had died, he’d been just a few years from retirement.

He’d also been completely dismissive of Garrett, Seth, and Zach. He was the one who’d told them about their parents’ accidental cremation, the one who’d told them that the case was closed, it was a clear accident.

The one who’d insinuated that maybe their parents had been drunk or reckless for taking that road at night, in the rain.

Fury swelled in Garrett, and he balled his hands into fists, then jammed them into his pockets.

Don’t get mad
, he thought.
Get evidence, and get justice.

“Seth?” Walter said, peering up.

“It’s Garrett, actually,” Garrett said.

“As I live and breathe,” Walter said. “We thought you were gone forever.”

No thanks to you,
Garrett thought.

“Here I am,” Garrett said. It was the only thing he could think to say.

“Well, welcome home,” Walter said. “I guess you also want to look at the file on your parents’ accident?”

“Do you have one?” Garrett asked.

“Also?” said Ellie, stepping forward.

Walter looked from one to other, and then nodded.

“There’s not much in it, I’m afraid, but we’ve got one as long as no one’s gotten rid of it,” he said. “And yes, your uncle was just here, looking at it. He said that the three of you had asked him to do a little sleuthing, and he just wanted to put your minds to rest. Very nicely dressed.”

“Shit,” whispered Ellie.

“Hmm?” asked Walter.

“Nothing,” she said. “When was Garrett’s ...uncle... here?”

“A few hours ago,” Walter said. “Your family should really communicate better. I assume you’re Mrs. Monson?”

“No,” Garrett and Ellie said together.
 

“I’m a private investigator,” Ellie said.

Walter frowned.

“The file’s family only,” he said.

Garrett saw red for a moment.

You just let someone who’s been after me for years look at it, you old idiot!
he wanted to shout, but he felt Ellie’s hand on his arm.

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’ve got some things I need to do in the library. I’ll see you later.”

Then she walked out of the room.

Garrett looked back at Walter, who stood, slowly.
 

He walked toward the shelves that took up most of the room, “Now, where did I put it...?” he muttered.

Garrett just watched, feeling helpless.

Chapter Fourteen

Ellie

Ellie grabbed the folder from her backpack in the Jeep and headed for the Obsidian Public Library.

She hadn’t been kidding when she told Garrett that these things were solved by looking at endless boring documents in basements, not car chases and shootouts. Hell, she’d been a PI for five years now and never even drawn her weapon or exceeded the speed limit.

Several polite conversations later, Ellie was set up in a small, dark room in the back of the library, the microfiche reader glowing in front of her.
 

If she was being honest, she didn’t mind not having Garrett there with her. It would go faster this way, without Garrett to...
distract
her.

Small, dark rooms seemed like a recipe for trouble between the two of them, or at least a recipe for not getting very much done.

Scanning the headlines, Ellie blushed, thinking of exactly
what
they could get up to in there. The
Kane County Register,
a thrice-weekly publication, didn’t exactly have a lot to report, and its headlines said things like:

AREA RESIDENTS ANGRY WITH CROWS

or

LARGE POTHOLE ON US 190 FIXED

Most days, the police blotter was empty, and when something had been reported, it was inevitably graffiti or a stolen bike.

Ellie found the days around the crash, and read the articles with a tightening feeling in her stomach. She’d read them all before — Garrett had managed to find
these
, at least — but they still made her feel almost nauseous.

What she was looking for was something,
anything
, that might help otherwise. She looked at the crime blotter, she looked at the classifieds. She read the letters to the editor, just to see if anyone was complaining about... well,
anything
.

There were calls for the road to be closed, of course. People condemning the way that “people these days drove like maniacs,” people saying that if the Monsons had prayed harder it wouldn’t have happened, people calling on others to send the three orphaned boys presents of toys and blankets.

I’m not sure most people realized they were teenagers
, Ellie thought.

But there was nothing she could
use
.

After an hour, she sat up and stretched, her back getting stiff after hunching near the eyepiece for so long. Ellie scrolled through a couple more police blotters, not expecting anything.

Then, something caught her eye.

Vandalism: Side view mirror torn from red 1991 Chevrolet Malibu, 4200 block of Canyon Ave. Please contact Kane County Sheriff with information.

Ellie read it again, and then one more time. It was dated a full month after Garrett’s parents had died.

Ellie’s mind
raced.

They might have waited until no one would connect the two things
, she thought.
Not that anyone was trying
.

But why report it at all? For insurance
?

Ellie wrote down the address, then left the small dark room.

Chapter Fifteen

Garrett

When Walter walked back toward Garrett, he could already tell that the box was light from the way the old man held it.

“It’s a good thing you came in now,” he said, putting the file box down in front of Garrett. “That one’s due to go in the next round of shredding.”

Garrett held his breath and lifted the lid off of the box. There were only a couple of file folders inside, and he picked one up as Walter headed back to his own desk.

Inside was a Xerox of the accident report, filled out by hand by someone named James Marsh. There was hardly anything to it, and Garrett read the whole thing in minutes.

Single-car accident. Persons were reportedly driving home from Blanding to Obsidian via a small back road. Conditions were poor. Driver failed to brake adequately, causing vehicle to drive off the road.

It was so dry and clinical that Garrett almost felt like he was reading about someone else’s tragedy.

Vehicle rolled several times before coming to a stop
.
Both passenger and driver pronounced dead upon arrival at Blanding General Hospital
.

In short, the report didn’t have anything.

Garrett took a deep breath and picked up the other folder in the box and opened it.

Photos.

He shut the folder, took another deep breath, and opened it. The first photo was from far away, the mangled car only taking up a quarter of the paper if that. Garrett was pretty sure that this was the one photo he’d seen before: the car crumpled from every direction, both airbags limp and white in the front seat, the car itself upside down, the ceiling crushing the steering wheel.

What was it like?
he wondered.
Driving, and then you’re airborne for a split second before—

He shook his head slightly.

Stop it,
he told himself.

He’d never seen the next photos before, but they were all of the same car from different angles. It was clear that they had been taken the next day, when the sun was out, after the rain.

Some of them had the cleanup crew in them, and Garrett glanced at their faces. Most of them he recognized — either they lived in Obsidian, or they’d worked at the junkyard when he’d tried to get his parents’ car back.

He flipped through them again, a hopeless feeling slowly descending.

There’s nothing here
, he thought.
I came all this way and there’s nothing
.

The last photo in the set was another shot of the car. There was one person in the frame: a man with dark, slicked-back hair with sharp widow’s peaks. He had his hands in his pockets, underneath his bright orange vest, and he was looking up at the sky.

Garrett didn’t recognize him. He flipped back through the other photos slowly, squinting at them. At last, he pulled out two more, both with the stranger in them.

He put the other photos back but spread those three on the table, staring.

It’s probably just someone from Blanding
, he told himself.
You don’t know everyone in the whole county.

“That was a hell of a crash,” Walter’s voice said, just behind him, making Garrett jump. He hadn’t even heard the older man shuffle over.

“I’d never seen a lot of these before,” Garrett said. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“We didn’t want the three of you to have to see them,” Walter said.

Yeah, I’m sure that’s what happened
, Garrett thought.

Instead of saying that out loud, he tapped the unfamiliar man in the photo.

“Do you know who that is?” he asked.

Walter pulled glasses from his pocket, then held the photo up close to his face, catching the light better.

His lips thinned. He looked at Garrett over his glasses, and then slowly lowered the photograph.

“My wife died six months ago,” he started.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett said, automatically.

What does this have to do with my parents?
He wondered.

“She was only seventy-six. Too young. This will sound cliché, but when she passed, I realized that the things I’ve done in my life mattered. They mattered to me, they mattered to her. They mattered to everyone.”

Walter looked at Garrett, his pale blue gaze steady.

“We found a hubcap that night,” Walter said. “It was just off the road, lying on top of a shrub, half its branches fresh broken off.”

Garrett was suddenly certain what was coming next, so certain he could barely form words.

“Was it from my parents’ car?” he asked.

Walter just shook his head
no
.

“I saw another car that night,” Garrett said, staring at the pictures. “I told the police. I told
you
, and no one believed me.”

“It came from the top,” Walter said. “Sheriff Tusk said he’d looked into it, and no one else saw a car. He chalked it up to youthful imagination, and told us the hubcap had been there a couple days. I knew better, but I kept my mouth shut. I figured it didn’t really mean anything.”

Garrett just closed his eyes and nodded. He forced himself to stay calm.

Yelling at an old man won’t accomplish anything
, he reminded himself.

“Tusk’s dead now,” Walter said. “So I can’t get fired if I tell you that the day after these photos were taken, I got into the station early — this was back at the old station — and saw this man coming out of Tusk’s office.”

He tapped the man in the photo Garrett didn’t know.

“Dressed much nicer than this, though,” Walter reflected.

“Do you know anything else?” Garrett asked.

That’s him
, he thought.
That has to be Boudreaux.

“Just that we all got bonuses that year,” Walter said. “Took the grand kids on a ski weekend.”

Garrett’s mind whirled.

There was another car that night
, he thought.
I’ve been right all along. There was another car, and Boudreaux, whoever the fuck that is, was there. He orchestrated this and then managed to get it all covered up.

“Did you talk to this guy at all?” Garrett asked.

Walter shook his head.

“Not once,” Walter said. “There was nothing strange about him until that morning I saw him coming out of Tusk’s office, and then he was gone.”

Garrett put the photos back into the folder and the folder back into the box.

“Thanks, Walter,” he said.

Walter just nodded.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” he said. “I don’t know if I ever said that before. Good luck.”

Garrett slipped out of the basement office and walked out of the police station in a daze.

I have to call Ellie
, he thought, his hand automatically going to his pocket before he remembered he didn’t have a phone.

Shit,
he thought.
 

Okay, she can’t be too far. It’s just Obsidian.

Chapter Sixteen

Ellie

Ellie pulled the borrowed Jeep up in front of a small house with vinyl siding. Laundry flapped in the breeze in the side-yard, and the lawn was neatly mowed, though the house needed another coat of paint.

Shabby, but well cared for.

This is a wild goose chase
, she thought.
I’m sure that whoever lost that side view mirror doesn’t live here anymore, and doesn’t even remember losing it.

She neared the door, raising one hand to knock, and paused. Inside, she could hear angry voices — no,
one
angry voice, and then someone else who sounded
afraid
.