Criminal Intent (MIRA) (2 page)

“Nope. But it’s one mother of a mess. Poultry truck hit a pickup head-on. Smashed the hell out of the pickup, and the poultry truck flipped over. Chickens running all over the highway. Those that aren’t lying dead in the road, that is.” His blue eyes warmed with humor. “Got the whole damn sheriff’s department out there chasing after ’em in the rain. Me, I pulled traffic duty instead.”

Her pulse thrumming rapidly, she offered up a silent thanks to God. With most of Brogan’s deputies tied up chasing chickens west of town, she and Sophie might have a shot at heading east without being followed. “Thanks,” she said, rolling up her window. With a quick little wave, she took a right turn onto Gaskell and began backtracking.

“Where are we going?” Sophie said.

“For a ride. If you’re hungry, I stopped at Piggly Wiggly and picked up a couple of sandwiches. Tuna on whole wheat. Oh, and there’s a big dill pickle in there somewhere, too.”

Momentarily distracted from her grief, Sophie leaned over the back of the seat and rummaged through the bag. “Did you get me chocolate milk?”

Thank God for fourteen. At that age, food could always be depended on to distract. The fewer questions Sophie asked, the better. At least until they were out of Mississippi and had landed someplace safe. “I did,” she said. “Bottom of the bag.”

Ahead
of her, a blue and red reflecting sign marked the I-20 entrance ramp. Above it, lettered in white on a green background, the names of distant places beckoned her.
Birmingham. Atlanta. Columbia.
Far from here, but were they far enough? Robin clicked her turn signal and slowed for the ramp. On this main thoroughfare that ran from Texas to South Carolina, Friday night traffic was steady. Heart thumping, she paused at the yield sign and watched a Wal-Mart truck zoom by. Behind it she spied an opening. With renewed determination, she accelerated onto the highway and smoothly merged with the flow of traffic headed elsewhere.

Six
months later

Serenity, Maine

T
his was just a temporary gig.

Davy Hunter reminded himself of that fact for the umpteenth time as he met the cool blue eyes that gazed back at him from the rearview mirror of the police cruiser. It wasn’t as though he’d made a lifetime commitment. This was just two months out of his life. Eight weeks. Sixty days. Not so very different from working as an office temp, the law enforcement world’s equivalent of a Kelly Girl. If he got lucky, he’d coast through the entire two months. This was, after all, Serenity. His biggest challenge would be to avoid dying of boredom.

Fumbling for his travel mug, Davy raised it to his mouth and took a slug of black coffee. These early mornings would take some getting used to. He suspected they’d probably also curtail his customary late-night activities. A man approaching forty couldn’t afford to burn the candle at both ends, not when he held the kind of responsibility that Ty Savage had just handed over to him.

He
studied his mirrored reflection, still amazed by the stranger who looked back at him. He barely recognized himself. His eyes were clear, his hair neatly trimmed, his beard gone. He cleaned up pretty good for a guy who’d spent most of the last fourteen months buried in a bottle. If it hadn’t been for Ty Savage, he’d probably still be there.

He’d tried to turn down this job, had tried to argue that his law enforcement days were over, that there were other people better suited to the position, that he preferred to work with wood instead of people. Wood was straightforward. It never lied to you, never played head games with you, never pretended to be anything but what it was. Wood never let you down. You could mold it to suit your own needs, and it wouldn’t complain. If it broke, it was no big deal. You could just toss it out and start over again with another piece.

Fat lot of good arguing had done him. Ty had simply bulldozed over his every objection.
If you were good enough for the Feds, you’re good enough for Serenity.
Davy’d expected the Board of Selectmen to roll on the floor in hysterical laughter when Ty presented him as his number-one choice for a temporary replacement. But damned if they hadn’t been impressed by his credentials. It was amazing, the respect the word
Quantico
seemed to command among those who’d actually heard of the place. The board had approved him by unanimous vote. So here he sat in the parking lot of the police station, contemplating the clean-cut stranger in his mirror, dressed in a starchy blue uniform that scratched in the damnedest places, and scared shitless because he didn’t know squat about running a police department.

Interim Police Chief. Cute title. One they’d strip him of quickly enough, once they discovered the unparalleled depths of his incompetence.

There was no sense in putting it off any longer. Feeling like a man about to face a firing squad, Davy drained his coffee mug, opened
his door and stepped out of the cruiser.
Two months,
he reminded himself again as he climbed the steps to the police station. Two months, and he could go back to being invisible.

He heard the music the instant he opened the door, Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson revving up a live audience with the musical reminder that it was five o’clock somewhere. At a corner desk, Officer Pete Morin was engrossed in conversation, one beefy hand clamping the telephone receiver to his ear, the other hand scribbling furiously as he took notes. Behind the dispatch desk, Dixie Lessard sat filing her nails with an emery board and humming along with Alan and Jimmy. She glanced up, saw him standing there, and her eyes widened at the sight of him in his newly-pressed uniform. “Woohoo,” she said. “You’re looking good, Hunter.”

Dixie was a friend, probably the only friend he’d have here in the hallowed halls of justice. There were people in this town who blamed him for what had happened to Chelsea, but Dixie Lessard wasn’t one of them. “That’s Interim Chief Hunter to you,” he said with mock gruffness.

She grinned. “Hope that doesn’t mean I have to kiss your ass every morning,
Interim Chief
Hunter.”

He considered her suggestion. “I dunno. Did you kiss Ty’s ass every morning?”

She rested her chin on her palm and said wistfully, “If only I’d been asked.”

“Uh-uh, Dix. He’s a married man these days.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the scenery. Ready for your first scintillating day in law enforcement?”

He managed, just barely, to fend off a yawn. “I showed up, didn’t I?”

“And just brimming with enthusiasm, I see.”

“What are you talking about? This
is
enthusiasm. Not my fault if you don’t recognize it.”

Dixie’s
grin was wry. “Fine, then, have it your way. Make yourself at home. Coffee’s in the corner behind my desk. Be forewarned, it’ll grow hair on your chest if you don’t already have it there. You empty the pot, you’re expected to make the next one. Directions are taped to the wall. If you need secretarial assistance, come to me. I’m the department’s jack-of-all-trades, so don’t be shy about asking. I assume Ty already covered the important stuff in your meeting Friday, so—” She paused and dimpled. “Anything else you need to know?”

“Yeah.” He crossed to the coffeepot, lifted the lid of his empty travel mug, and poured himself a refill. “I’d like to know why the hell I agreed to this insanity.”

“That, my friend, is a secret known only to you.” The phone rang, and Dixie swiveled in her chair and pushed a button, abruptly cutting off the offending object midring. Her voice dripping sweetness, she said, “Serenity Police Department. How may I direct your call?”

Pete was still tied up so, coffee in hand, Davy ambled off to Ty’s office—his office, for the time being—and dropped into the chair behind the desk. He’d been in here a number of times, but he’d never really paid attention. It was simply a cop’s office, with the standard ugly walls and third-rate equipment. From Alberta to Zimbabwe, police stations all looked pretty much the same.

But now that the office was his, at least temporarily, he took a good look around. Dust motes danced in a ray of sunshine in front of the single tall window. The shelves were loaded with books, all of them somehow relating to the criminal justice field. On the putty-colored wall above the bookcase, Ty’s neatly framed college degree shared space with a bulletin board that held an assortment of memos. Everything was obnoxiously tidy. Even the walls, ugly as they were, looked as though they’d been recently painted.

On the corner of the desk sat a framed photo of Faith. Davy picked
it up and studied it. With her wild mop of dark curls and her vivid blue eyes, Ty’s wife looked a decade younger than her thirty-seven years. She was laughing into the camera lens, those blue eyes devilish, as though she held a marvelous secret but didn’t intend to tell a soul. A vast change from the somber, recently-widowed Faith who’d come here last year after her cousin died. Love appeared to agree with her. Or maybe it was pregnancy that had brought that dewy flush to her cheeks.

Either way, it was none of his business. His jaw clenched, Davy replaced the photo and slid open the desk drawer to inventory its contents. Ty Savage was relentlessly neat. There wasn’t an item here that didn’t belong. Pens and pencils, paper clips and staples, all arranged with obsessive orderliness.

Davy shoved the drawer closed. What the hell did he think he was doing, coming in here, trying to fill Ty’s shoes? Even if he did know most of the town’s criminal element on a first-name basis, his years as a federal agent hardly qualified him for this. He might know where all the local bodies were buried—both literally and figuratively—but what he knew about procedure in a small-town cop shop was laughable. Until he conquered that ignorance, he was doomed to stumble like a blind man.

He glared at the red-and-black DARE poster tacked to the wall. He should probably gather his people together, call a staff meeting. Make some kind of bullshit speech about how, in Ty’s absence, they had to pull together and work as a team. But bullshit had never been his forte, and he’d never been much of a team player himself. It was probably wiser anyway, for the first few days at least, to tread lightly and observe heavily.

He wasn’t a people person. Sure, he understood what made people tick. Understood humanity’s baser motives—revenge, greed, the
desire for power. Knew them intimately, understood how to work them to his advantage. Manipulation 101. It was one of the primary weapons in a federal agent’s arsenal. But the people he’d associated with on a daily basis during the years he worked undercover weren’t exactly the type a man was expected to make nice with. Hell, he wasn’t sure he was even capable of making nice. How long would it take for the citizens of Serenity to figure it out? How long before they started complaining loudly to the town fathers about the surliness of their interim chief of police?

Back in the days when he wore a tie to work and rode a desk, his fellow agents had razzed him endlessly about his aloofness. He’d just shrugged it off, knowing it was all meant in fun. But during his undercover stint, he’d deliberately emphasized his taciturnity, made it an integral part of the persona he displayed to the world. Davy Hunter, silent and dangerous, a man who hung out with thieves and junkies and wouldn’t hesitate to slit a man’s throat if the guy was stupid enough to cross him.

He’d somehow managed to pull it off. Even people who’d known him all his life had bought his act. It was so over-the-top it was laughable. Sure, he was tough. You didn’t get to be a federal agent without a solid core of toughness in there somewhere. But the image he’d portrayed had been little more than an exercise in thespian skill. Now that he’d left the DEA behind, he was finding the adjustment difficult. How was he supposed to make a smooth transition from rugged Neanderthal to a man who related to the world in a normal fashion?

The intercom on his desk buzzed. He stared at it for a moment, then fumbled with the button to answer it. “Yeah, Dix?”

“Got a call for you. I could’ve given it to Pete, but I thought maybe you’d want to get your feet wet right away.”

He felt a little stir of adrenaline, the first he’d felt in a while. Maybe
playing rent-a-cop wouldn’t be as painful as he’d anticipated. “What you got?”

“Shoplifter down at Grondin’s Superette. He’s giving them a hard time.”

A shoplifter. Hell, it didn’t get much more exciting than that. “Got it,” he said. “Hey, is Pete still tied up?”

“Negative.”

“Ask him if he wants to tag along.”

Gilles Letourneau was royally pissed.

The wiry little drywall contractor charged toward him like a rampaging bull the instant Davy walked through the door of the office where Letourneau was being held. “Finally!” the contractor said. “Somebody who’ll listen to my side of the story!”

Davy exchanged glances with Buzz Lathrop, the nineteen-year-old assistant store manager. The kid’s relief at seeing two members of Serenity’s finest walk through his door was palpable. Lathrop gulped and rolled his eyes in a gesture of helplessness and exasperation.

“I saw that!” Letourneau snapped. “Smart-ass young punk!”

“Mr. Letourneau,” the kid said, not quite able to contain the quiver in his voice, “you have no reason to be calling me names. I’m just doing my job.”

“Oh? So now it’s your job to intimidate customers, eh? I’d like to see where that’s written in your job description. I’ll have you know, I’m calling my cousin Richard. He’s a lawyer, and I’m gonna sue your scrawny ass off!”

From where Davy was standing, the only one who seemed to be doing any intimidating was Letourneau. The kid, who’d been a mere grocery clerk six months ago, was shaking in his shoes.

Davy braced his feet stiffly apart. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m sure we can discuss this like civilized human beings.”

“Yeah, right,” Letourneau
said. “What the hell are you doing here? Where the hell is Ty Savage? He’ll put an end to this right now.”

“He’s taken a leave of absence, so you’re stuck with me. I’d like to hear from each of you, one at a time, what happened here. Mr. Lathrop?”

The kid swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “This morning, Mr. Letourneau was observed removing a copy of the
River City Gazette
from the stand near the front door and exiting the store without paying for it. He was apprehended—” Lathrop paused to clear his throat “—he was apprehended in the vestibule by the front end manager and one of the baggers.”

“Right there in front of everybody I know, these bastards strip me of my dignity. Right in the frigging vestibule!”

“Mr. Letourneau,” Davy said, “you’ll get your turn.”

“This is ridiculous! It’s a frigging newspaper, for Christ’s sake!”

“Gilles.” Davy fixed him with a hard, cool stare. “Shut up.”

The little man abruptly clamped his mouth shut. “Thank you,” Davy said, and turned back to Lathrop. “He was observed by whom?”

“By Natalie Fortin,” Lathrop said. “One of our cashiers.”

“And how much was this newspaper worth?”

It was a question to which they all knew the answer. Lathrop colored slightly. “Fifty cents. I know it’s not much money, but the thing is—” He glanced at Letourneau and threw back his shoulders. “It’s not the first time. He does it every morning.”

Davy turned to look at Letourneau, who glared at him with bold defiance. Raising his eyebrows, he said, “That true, Gilles?”

“You know what?” Letourneau said. “Me and my family, we been shopping in this store for twenty years. Twenty years! My
four brothers and my sister. My cousin Richard and his wife. Me and Yvette. Between us, we got seventeen kids. That’s a whole lotta milk, a whole lotta diapers. A whole lotta macaroni and cheese. You do the math. We could shop at Food City, you know? Or we could drive to Rumford and shop at the Hannaford store there. The prices are lower. But we’d rather shop here. My father went to school with Emile Grondin, and we’ve always taken care of each other. I scratch your back, you scratch mine, you know? We need groceries, we come to Grondin’s. Emile needs a room redone, he calls me. Makes for better community relations, keeps everybody happy, and keeps the money where it belongs, right here in this town where my family’s lived for three generations. Thousands of dollars I spend in this store every year. And this is how I’m repaid!” His righteous indignation was a sight to behold, his face so red he looked in danger of having a stroke. “I’m treated like a common criminal in front of half the town!”