Sam’s day was already starting to go downhill.
Sam motioned him in and slid the phone off his desk. He knew people like Holden. They stuck their noses into everything. He didn’t need Holden seeing the text from Mick.
He put the phone in his pocket as Holden strutted in, a manila folder in his hand and an arrogant look on his face.
“Have a seat.” Sam gestured to the oak chair with the shortened leg. Holden sat, and the chair tipped forward. Holden’s brows mashed together. Sam bit back a smile.
“What’s the status of this suspect you mentioned yesterday?” Holden leaned back, and the chair tipped again. Again, Sam refrained from smiling.
“I don’t have anything new to report so far. It’s still early in the day,” Sam said.
“Oh, you can’t manufacture something?” Holden asked.
Sam leveled a look at the FBI agent. He leaned forward and tapped his index finger on the smooth top of his oak desk to punctuate his words. “We don’t work that way around here. Maybe you do that in the FBI, but here, we collect real evidence.”
Holden leaned forward too, except when he did, the chair tipped and threw him off balance. A look of anger crossed his face. “What the hell is wrong with this chair?”
Sam sat back, innocence plastered all over his face. “Sorry, it’s a little uneven. We got the castoff furniture here. It’s all old and broken,” Sam said.
“Really? Or is this another example of your unorthodox methods?” Holden tipped the chair back and forth. “Makes the suspect uneasy, doesn’t it?”
Sam was just about to reply with a sarcastic remark when Bev Hatch appeared in the doorway.
“I’ve seen you do worse, Agent Joyce,” Bev said.
Holden turned to Bev. “Sheriff Hatch, do you have any light to shed on the case this morning?”
“Not much. Just following up on a few things.” Bev came into the room.
Holden stood, hefting the manila envelope in his hand. “Me too.”
He flipped open the folder and tossed a few photos on Sam’s desk. They were of Sam and Jesse. One of them showed the two meeting behind the auto body shop where Jesse worked earlier this summer. Another was of them meeting in the woods near the campground. Holden tapped Jesse’s face with his index finger.
“This guy here is a drug dealer. And this meeting here behind this building looks suspiciously to me like a drug deal.” Holden’s smug gaze flicked from Sam to Bev, who was frowning at the photos.
“Is that your contact?” Bev asked.
“Yeah. Jesse Cowly. He’s a small-time dealer. I’ve been grooming him so I can get at the bigger fish up the chain.” Sam looked at Holden. “You guys do that all the time, right? Pass over the little guy so you can get information. He feeds you what you want to know, and you get a bigger catch.”
Bev turned to Holden. “We all do it. I think you’re making a big assumption with these photos. Do you have any proof to back it up?”
Holden remained silent.
“He doesn’t, because it’s not true,” Sam said.
“So you say,” Holden said. “To me, this looks like a drug deal. And since we got a tip that a municipal employee is dealing drugs, you have the perfect cover. You pass it on to this Cowly guy, and he distributes it.”
“Nah. That’s not the way it played out, and I think you know it,” Sam said.
“We don’t know any such thing. How do we know you didn’t kill both Mayor Dupont and Officer Richardson? Our records indicate Richardson might have been into something that has to do with these drug dealings.”
Sam was surprised the FBI had such information, but they didn’t know the half of it. Richardson had something to do with the drugs, all right. He was in the middle of the whole ring. Sam didn’t enlighten him, though. The less Holden Joyce knew, the better.
“Oh, so you’ve got nothing to say now, huh? And it’s no surprise. You’ve gone rogue before. You and your friend Gervasi. Now it seems you’d have reason to go rogue again, especially if your department is corrupt.”
“Now wait a minute.” Bev held up her hands. “This is all conjecture and assumption. We’re cops. We work with clues and logic.” She leveled Holden Joyce with an angry look. “And you know how I hate unfounded assumptions.”
“Assumptions are simply theories that need to be proven,” Holden said. “Maybe Chief Mason here is trying to frame this garbageman. What kind of a garbageman deals drugs? And the guy lives in a dump. Mason probably has a whole array of people he can use as fall guys here. Maybe Dupont was onto Mason and that was what the meeting was about.”
Bev’s face turned red. “Listen, Joyce. When you have some physical evidence that proves your accusations, then you come here and give it to us. Until then, this is all just guesswork. I don’t think Sam would be working this case like he is if he were the drug dealer.”
“We do have one piece of physical evidence,” Holden said.
“What’s that?” Bev asked.
“The hair that was found inside the chamber of the gun. The only way it could have gotten in there was when the killer was loading the bullets.” Holden pointed to Lucy, who lolled in the sunshine, glaring at him. Her ears were straight up on high alert. Her body appeared to be relaxed, but Sam knew she was ready to jump at Holden if he even looked at Sam crossways.
Bev snorted. “Nice try, but that hair won’t help you in this case.”
Holden scowled. “Why not?”
“It’s feline hair. From a cat.”
Holden’s glare drifted from Bev to Sam to Lucy. He grabbed the photos off Sam’s desk and shoved them in the manila envelope. “Be that as it may, don’t forget we’re working this case hard.” He turned to Sam and jabbed his index finger in Sam’s direction to punctuate his next words. “And we will get to the real truth.”
He turned and stalked out without another word.
Bev stared after him, her arms folded across her chest. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s trying to frame you.” She turned to Sam, her eyes still narrowed. “Unless his accusations have some foundation in truth?”
Sam shook his head. “No. You already knew I had been grooming Jesse as a contact. That’s him in the photos, and the meetings were when he gave me information on drug drops during the summer. You don’t think I’m really involved in this, do you?”
Bev studied him hard before she spoke. “Not sure. I know I think Holden Joyce is a blowhard. I’ve run up against him before. He makes a lot of assumptions. I can’t stand the guy.”
“That makes two of us.”
Bev turned narrowed eyes on Sam again, her voice low and serious. “But that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong. We’ll follow the clues and play it by the book. On this case, we have to do things the right way.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sam said, ignoring the vibration of the phone in his pocket. It was probably Mick texting about the grandson, something he didn’t want Bev to know about, especially because he agreed to go by the book.
Jo appeared in the doorway, looking over her shoulder to the squad room behind her. “I just passed Holden Joyce rushing out of here. What’s up with him?”
“He’s got a hair up his ass,” Bev said.
Sam’s phone vibrated again as Kevin, Wyatt, and Reese all crowded into the doorway. Great. Just when he wanted to get out of here and read Mick’s text, the whole crew was in his office. At least Reese hadn’t brought doughnuts. Doughnuts would cause people to linger, and he wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible.
“I don’t like that guy,” Reese said. “He gave a talk in one of our classes at the academy. What a jerk.”
“Yeah, he likes to push his weight around. I know the type,” Wyatt said.
“Don’t like him either,” Kevin added.
It was getting crowded in the office. Sam tried to inch his way toward the door. “It’s unanimous none of us like him. But one thing’s for sure. He’s getting hot on this case.”