Sam poured the dry dog food the vet had recommended into Lucy’s bowl then looked around the cabin. Grandma hadn’t been much for decorating. She’d hunted and fished right alongside Sam’s grandfather. In fact, one of the big taxidermy rainbow trout hanging on the wall was one she’d caught in the Sacagewassett here in town.
The warm log walls were dotted with other taxidermy and paintings of lakes and mountains in sunset pink, orange, and blue. The furniture was mostly hickory or birch. An oak china cabinet housed about the only items that couldn’t be described as rustic: some of Grandma’s old blue china. The cabin might not make Architectural Digest, but to Sam, it was perfect. It was home. Though it was a little messy right now. He supposed he should pick his socks up from under the coffee table and put away the T-shirt draped over the kitchen chair. Sam didn’t socialize much with Jo outside of work and unwinding at Holy Spirits, the downtown bar built from a decommissioned church. Heck, he didn’t socialize much at all, which was why the place was a mess. He never really had to pick up for anyone.
He’d just finished sprucing up and pouring some chips into a bowl when a soft tap at the open screen door brought his attention to the front of the house. Jo stood tentatively outside the door, holding a six-pack of Sam’s favorite Moosenose beer.
The fading sunlight made her copper curls shine. Sam felt a rush of emotion. He was a solitary guy and didn’t have many friends. Jo was one of the few people he trusted. One of the few people he could share things with. And now that they were in this mess together, it solidified that bond even more. He felt closer to Jo than he had to either of his two wives. That was probably because their relationship was purely platonic. Once you got romantic, things turned squirrelly. Luckily, that would never happen with Jo. For one, it wouldn’t be appropriate because she was his second-in-command. Two, he couldn’t risk losing her.
“Come on in,” Sam said. Jo swung the door open and strode into the cabin, a smile flitting on her lips as she looked around.
“I always liked this place.” Jo handed the six-pack to Sam, pulling one of the tall green bottles out for herself. “I think your grandma had style. It’s comfortable.”
Sam glanced around. Most women thought the cabin was a man cave. His ex-wife had refused to come here at all after Sam had inherited it. She preferred to stay in a fancy Victorian closer to town. As soon as the divorce was final, he’d sold that place and moved to the cabin. But it figured Jo would like it. She wasn’t like most women. She was practical and earthy.
“Thanks. I like it.” Sam gestured toward the couch, and Jo sat. Sam took the chair beside the couch and popped the top off his beer before handing the opener to Jo. Lucy trotted to Jo and sniffed and wagged her tail as Jo ruffled her behind the ears.
“So, I guess we’ll need to conduct a full investigation after all,” Jo probed.
Sam leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs, the beer clasped in both hands. “Yeah. I guess we should have known that suicide thing wouldn’t fly. Probably never should have moved the gun.”
“I don’t think that will be too much of a problem. Who’s to know that the killer didn’t put it there?” Jo took a sip of beer. “What I don’t get is why the killer left the gun in the first place.”
“I think Thorne is up to something. Maybe there is something on the gun and he’s trying to frame someone.”
“Yeah, like us.”
“The gun is still at the crime lab. Ballistics reported it was the weapon that killed Dupont. So far, there’s nothing else. But we don’t know what else Thorne has in store.”
“That’s why we need to solve this fast. We need to be able to maintain control of the investigation.”
Sam picked at the label on his beer. “Might be hard with Kevin and Wyatt. We have to be careful about which aspects we investigate and which they investigate.”
Jo sighed and pushed up from the couch, running her hand through her mass of curly hair. “You know, it shouldn’t be this hard. We didn’t do anything wrong. We were only trying to protect Tyler’s reputation.”
“I know. And then to find out he’s related to Thorne ...”
“Did you ever get the report on the DNA from the lab? Could we be wrong about that?” Jo asked.
“Funny thing. There is no report. I talked to someone I know at the lab, but they couldn’t find anything. Somehow, it seems to have disappeared.”
“Thorne.”
“He has people everywhere.” The thought made Sam nervous. Where else had Thorne placed his people? “Look, I wouldn’t worry too much. I won’t let you get into trouble. You haven’t done anything.”
Jo turned, her face screwed up in a frown. “Well, I did forge the logbook so it would look like Tyler had written in that stop. And I don’t need anyone covering for me. I take responsibility for my actions.”
Sam should have known better than to expect Jo to let him take the blame. “What I meant is that no one is going to know you wrote in the logbook. I don’t think that will even come into the picture, and if it does, he did make the stop. His body was found there. No one will scrutinize that logbook.”
“Yeah. He made the stop, but apparently not for the reasons we thought.”
When Tyler’s body had been found, they’d thought he’d pulled over to help someone change a tire and stumbled across a drug deal. The car with the flat tire was still at the side of the road. They’d found drug residue in the ashtray and a partial fingerprint. They’d never been able to trace that fingerprint to anyone. Now it looked as if Tyler had been up to something else entirely, although Sam had no idea what.
“What do you think he was doing out there that night?” Jo asked.
“Who knows? Maybe meeting with his contact.”
“But then why was he killed? Why was the car left there with a flat tire? Sounds like a setup to me. Do you think maybe he knew too much and Thorne wanted to get rid of him? His own son?”
“Good question. Maybe there’s a rival drug gang, and that’s who killed Tyler. If Tyler was working with Thorne, a rival gang might have wanted to get rid of him.”
Jo plopped down on the couch again and grabbed her beer. “Well, either way, it doesn’t bode well for us. Especially for you, with that donation from the Fallen Officers Fund you gave to his mother.”
Sam grimaced. Tyler had supported his mother and his disabled sister. When Tyler had died, Sam had written a check out of his retirement plan to Tyler’s mother, pretending that it was a donation from the Fallen Officers Fund. Of course, that was before Sam and Jo had discovered a large deposit in Tyler’s bank account. His mother had thought that deposit was back pay, but now Sam knew better. Either way, if people started looking into Tyler and discovered Sam had written a check to his mother, it could be trouble.
“What’s done is done. We can’t go back and change it. All we can do is damage control now,” Sam said. “I wonder about Tyler’s mother and Thorne, though. I can’t quite picture that.”
Jo raised a brow. “I know, right? You never know. That was a long time ago. Maybe Thorne was nicer then. I wonder if Tyler knew that Thorne was his real father all along or how he even found out. Seems like Thorne must have doubted it if they needed DNA testing.” She shrugged and took another swig. “So how do you propose we do damage control?”
“First, we want to make sure we control the aspects of the investigation that might expose anything that could be misunderstood as wrongdoing on our part.”
“Like moving the gun at the crime scene?”
“Yeah. That wasn’t good judgment, but I don’t think anyone needs to know I moved it. Like you said, the killer could have done it.”
“I think we can probably get Kevin and Wyatt on board with keeping quiet about anything that sheds a negative light on Tyler’s reputation. As long as it’s not pivotal to the investigation of Dupont’s murder, I think we may be okay.”
“Right. And how could it be pivotal? Tyler’s been dead for months. The two are unrelated.”