City of the Lost (48 page)

I hear the shot, and I see Anders, and in my head I hear myself screaming, but I don’t say a word. I just keep running, toward Jacob now as he stands there, and I dimly see them both on the ground—Anders and Dalton—and I see blood blossoming on Anders’s shirt, and I see Jacob and that gun, still pointed at them.

“Drop it!” I say as I burst into the clearing, my weapon trained on Jacob. “Lower that gun right now or I swear I’ll shoot.”

He lowers it.

“Drop it or—”

It falls from his hand, and he says, “Eric?” and totters there, and when I run over and take the gun, I see his face, the shock on it as he stares at his brother, on the ground, under Anders.

“Eric?” he says again.

I grab Jacob’s hands and pull them behind his back and bind them with the cable tie. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t seem to notice. I bind him, and I shove him aside so hard he falls as I race over to Dalton. Anders is still on top of him.

Anders has been shot. And I don’t care.

No, that’s wrong. I do care. I just don’t want to.

My impulse is to shove Anders off to get to Dalton, but I can’t manage that. I don’t need to. I can see Dalton’s wound—it’s a bullet to the top of his shoulder, and he says, “I’m okay, Casey. It’s Will. Help Will.”

He’s been saying that for a while. I just haven’t paid attention. He’d say that if he had a bullet through his heart.

Don’t mind me. Help the other person.

Except the other person betrayed him. Isn’t worthy of his attention. Yet that other person just saved his life. Threw himself in front of a bullet, and no matter how hard Anders might have protested his loyalty to Dalton, this proves it, and I cannot argue with that.

I cut Anders’ cable ties and check his wound. It’s a through-and-through shot to the chest bypassing his heart. He’s fading into shock, and I pull him back by saying, “What can I do?”

“I’ve got it,” Dalton says as he heaves himself up, face contorting with the pain.

“Sit down,” I say. “You’ll only hurt yourself more and—”

“It’s my shoulder, Casey. Not my spine. I’ve got Will. You call Beth.”

I stop. “Beth…”

He grips my shoulder, hard, peering down at me as if I’m the one going into shock.

I shake him off. “I’m fine. Where’s the—?”

He pulls the radio from Anders’s jacket and slaps it into my hand and then kneels beside the wounded man.

“Will? It’s Eric. I’m going to tell you where you’ve been shot, and you’re going to tell me how to help you. Got it?”

I move away with the radio. I pass Jacob, who’s blinking hard, as if trying to rouse himself from a trance. I keep walking, and Dalton says, “Casey?”

I wave that I’m just stepping away, but he starts to rise, to come after me, and I realize I’m going to need to do this in front of him. I motion for him to return to Anders. Then I radio Beth. As I talk to her, Dalton glances over, his face screwed up as if he’s misheard, and he’s opening his mouth, but before I can silence him, he shuts it. He nods. Then he returns to Anders.

I finish the call, and I kneel beside Jacob.

“Something’s wrong with me,” he’s mumbling. “Something’s wrong.”

“I know,” I say. “But I need to ask you a few questions. Do you think you can answer them?”

He blinks harder and rubs his cheek against his shoulder, as if trying to wake from a deep sleep. Then he nods.

Beth arrives at a run, radio in one hand, lantern in the other as I give her directions until I can see her, and then I shout and jog to meet her.

“You
left
him?” she says.

“It’s too late. I think he’s gone.”

“Wh-what?” Her eyes bug as she runs to me. “Y-you mean— No, that’s not—”

“Not possible?” I say. “Of course it is. What did you expect?”

She stops so fast she stumbles and grabs a tree for support. “Wh-what?”

“You drugged Jacob. I don’t know what you gave him, but whatever it was, it was intended to cause delusions.”

She stares at me. “What are you—?”

“You gave Jacob drugged food, telling him you were a friend of Eric’s. He’d seen you out here with Eric before—you made sure of that first. It solidified your story. Then, when he started getting sick from the food, you ‘treated’ him. While telling him about Eric’s newest friend. A woman who wasn’t any good for him, would hurt him, was keeping Eric away from his brother. It worked—Jacob did come after me. Only what you didn’t anticipate is that little boy inside him, the one who still blames his big brother for leaving, the one who still wants to lash out at Eric, to hurt him.”

Beth rocks there. Then she looks around wildly. “Take me to Eric. You’re not a doctor.”

“True,” I say. “I could be wrong. But you were right about one thing, Beth. I am bad for Eric. I think he’s a sweet guy, and a really sweet fuck. But that’s it. What matters most to me is justice. So, if you want to treat Eric before he bleeds out, you’re going to have to give me a confession.”

She lunges at me. A well-placed kick in the shin sends her down, snarling, “You crazy bitch. You’d let him die—”

“He’s an officer of the law. He knows the risks.” I point my gun at her. “Now talk.”

“Yes,” she spits. “Jacob already told you what I did, and it was for Eric’s own good, saving him from you—”

“Bullshit. You might be more than a bit delusional yourself, but you weren’t trying to kill me because I was getting close to Eric. You wanted me gone because I’m dead set on solving these crimes. With Jacob, you got a two-in-one deal. An assassin to kill me and a scapegoat you could frame for the murders you committed.”

“Wh-what?”

“It started with Abbygail’s. You suspected that Powys killed her and somehow Irene was involved. Maybe you were working on getting a confession out of her and it went wrong. Then you and Mick went after Powys. That was the piece I was missing: Mick. I might have suspected you of that impromptu surgery on Hastings, as crudely as you did it to disguise your handiwork. I might have even linked you in via Abbygail. But you couldn’t have hauled Hastings into that tree. You had a partner. Mick. The one person even more broken up about Abbygail than you. The one who’d have snapped when you made up a story about what happened to her. You had to convince him that story was true, because Mick was a decent guy and needed to be sure he had the right target. But then you realized you were wrong, and it was actually Hastings who killed Abbygail. You managed to talk Mick into killing him, too, but that’s where you lost him.”

“What?”

“You went overboard with Hastings. Mick was already uncomfortable with what you two did to Irene and Powys, but Hastings was pure sadism. Mick wanted out. He even pointed me squarely in Hastings’s direction. And I made the mistake of telling you that he’d fingered Hastings as the guy who left the berries. Mick became a liability, so you killed him, conveniently framing Diana, in hopes that might get me out of Rockton.”

“You can’t prove—”

“Right. I can’t.” I waggle the gun. “But I’m holding your beloved Eric’s life hostage, so you’re going to give me what I want. Then I’ll let you save Eric, because I don’t
want
him to die—I’m just willing to let it happen.”

“You’re just as bad as them. A killer—”

“And I deserve to die, blah blah blah. Time’s ticking, doc.”

Her face mottles. “They
did
deserve to die. I didn’t need to fabricate a story to get Mick’s co-operation. I told him the truth. How Irene came to me for dental surgery two weeks after Abbygail vanished. I dosed her up with diazepam, which made her very talkative. And there was something in particular she wanted to talk about. Confess, I think. Like your friend, Diana. Except in Irene’s case, she confessed to Abbygail’s murder.”

“So Irene and Powys
did
kill—?”

“Hastings had a thing for Abbygail. He’d hit on her when they worked together in the clinic, but she’d have nothing to do with him. As for Powys, he didn’t give a damn about a twenty-one-year-old girl. What mattered to him was the rydex. Hastings was getting cold feet, knowing Eric was on to him. So to secure his help with the drugs, Powys promised him Abbygail. Irene lured her out into the forest. Hastings raped her. It seems he expected her to ‘come around’ then, she’d see how wonderful it was and how wonderful he was. That didn’t happen, shockingly. Powys knew it wouldn’t. He wasn’t securing Hastings’s help with the rydex by giving him a girl. He secured it by making him a murderer. Abbygail vowed Eric and Mick would hunt Hastings to the ends of the earth for assaulting her, and Powys pushed Hastings until he lost it and strangled her. Then they chopped up her body and scattered it for predators.”

I stand there, shocked into silence. It takes a moment for me to find my voice, and when I do, I say, “You switched out Irene’s X-rays to make it seem like she was here under false pretences, too. To help me draw the conclusion that I was chasing a vigilante eliminating killers.”

“Which you were. So, detective, do you agree they had it coming?”

“Irene? Powys? Hastings? Maybe. But Mick?” I look her in the eyes. “Absolutely not.”

She blanches. Then her face hardens. “I’d made a mistake letting him in on it, and I had to correct that mistake.”

“
Correct that mistake?
You made him a party to brutal, sadistic murders because he was grieving for a girl he loved. Then you murdered him when he regretted it.”

“Mick was weak. That is where I made a mistake. He didn’t like what we did to Powys. I knew he wouldn’t help me with Hastings if he knew what I planned. So I did my surgery, knocked Hastings out, and put him in that bag before I called Mick in. Mick thought he was already dead when he hauled him up in that tree. When he found out otherwise, I had to admit I’d made a mistake letting him help me.”

“So you killed him to protect yourself. Then you planned to frame Diana and let her die in that fire for no reason other than that it would give me a reason to leave town. When that failed, you remembered Irene’s accidental confession and the rumours you’d heard about Diana. You doped her up and got her to confess to even more than you bargained for. But still I wouldn’t leave. I ran into that forest … and into Jacob, the pistol you’d cocked to fire. Perfect timing … and yet I survived, and with Eric playing nursemaid, you couldn’t even make sure I died from unforeseen complications. Still, you could frame Jacob for the murders. Another innocent party whose guilt would doubly help you—blame him for the crimes
and
get him out of Eric’s life so he’d be free to go south with you.”

“You don’t understand
anything
,” she snarls.

“Maybe,” I say. “But I think we’ll let the council decide.” I turn and call, “You get that, sheriff?”

Dalton walks out from a clump of trees. He’s pale and pressing his blood-soaked shirt to his shoulder. But he’s on his feet, walking toward Beth, and she falls back, blinking hard.

“Eric? You … you…”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” I say. “I lied. It’s Will who’s been shot.”

“And you’re going to fix him,” Dalton says. “Or I’ll shoot you before Casey can.”

And that’s it. Well, no. It’s not. When we talk to the council, Beth tries to retract her confession. That’s when I bring up the trap left in the clearing with Hastings’s body. I accuse her of trying to hurt Dalton, and she can’t resist that bait, saying it must have already been there, defending herself and thereby trapping herself.

By morning, the council has sent a plane to pick her up. Apparently, they don’t trust Dalton to get her out of Rockton alive. After that? Well, I don’t give a shit what happens to her after that. I cannot forgive her for what she did to Mick, to Jacob, to Diana, and, however inadvertently, to Dalton. And there’s hurt there, too, and I’ll let myself acknowledge that. She’d become a friend, and I do not understand what she did. I do not.

As for Anders, he’s fine. Physically, at least. The rest? That’s a little more complicated. The next morning, I wake in Dalton’s bed, and I lie there, trying to figure out how to tell him that the guy who saved his life is a killer who’s been informing on him.

When Dalton wakes, he pulls me to him for a kiss, but then stops, wincing at his shoulder wound, and I take advantage of that to wriggle away and prop up on my elbow.

“I need to tell you something about Will,” I say.

He shoots upright. “Did he get worse—?”

“No, I’m sure he’s fine. But … I found out something about him last night. That file Mick had on the people smuggled into Rockton … He’d stolen it from you but added an extra entry. On Will.”

Dalton goes quiet and rubs his mouth.

“You knew,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“He’s not in your book.”

“I got rid of the page a while ago, in case anyone found it. I’d have told you if I thought there was any chance he’d killed Abbygail and the others. Or if you got involved with him.”

“Okay.” I hesitate and say slowly, “You knew his backstory, but there’s more. In order to stay in Rockton, well, there was a price.”

“Informing on me.”

I blink at him. He shrugs. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? They let him in because they wanted leverage inside my department. Knowing who the spy is made it easier for me. I didn’t tell Will anything that I wouldn’t want getting back to them. I did give him some stuff that could get me in a bit of trouble, just to monitor. After about six months, he stopped passing that along, and that’s when I knew I could trust him. I still never gave him anything that could get me kicked out.”

“Which is why you told me to keep even the murder investigation between us.”

“Yep.”

I lie back on the pillow. He stays there, on his side, watching me as I stare at the ceiling.

“How do you deal with what he did?” I say finally. “How do you reconcile that?”

“I don’t.”

I look over at him.

“Something happened over there,” Dalton says. “In the war. All I know is that the guy who killed his commanding officer just sacrificed himself to save me.
That’s
the person I need to focus on.”

I expect any conversation with Anders will wait until he’s recovered. It doesn’t. He wants to talk to us, and Dalton realizes he’s not going to truly rest until he does. Dalton expects we’ll do this together. I refuse. He’s the one Anders has worked with for two years. Been friends with for two years. Betrayed for two years. That’s a conversation between them.