But Not For Love, page 19
part #9 of Clint Wolf Series
“Well, did y’all catch the killer?” Susan pressed, her voice breaking up slightly when I hit a bump in the road. I slowed as the Tahoe jostled violently along what looked more like an animal trail than a county road.
“It’ll be rough for the next mile,” Abel explained, pointing ahead, “but then we’ll be there.” He turned back in his seat and shook his head. “No, we never caught Pratt’s killer, but there was no way it was Sheriff Chandler, because the man in the video was too small. But then weird things started happening. Before Pratt was killed, the sheriff was running and gunning trying to catch Garner. But then not long after we found Pratt’s body, he suddenly called off the search for Garner. He said he had good reason to believe Garner had perished in the mountains and that we were wasting our time—”
“Is that his house?” I asked, cutting Abel off when I saw a faint glow of light through the trees up ahead.
The large man turned back to face the front. In my peripheral vision, I saw his shoulders slump when I pulled into the clearing.
“Where the hell could he be?” Abel asked. “I thought he’d come straight home. Dear Lord, this isn’t good…”
I parked in front of the house and we all dismounted. I shivered when the biting cold hit me, cursing myself for not packing a coat. Susan waited by the Tahoe while I followed Abel to Sheriff Chandler’s house. It was a stout little log cabin and the only sign of life was the yellow rectangle of light coming from a front window.
Abel peered into the window. “He’s definitely not home.”
“Does he live alone?”
“Yeah.”
We stood on the thick wooden porch, each lost in our own thoughts when Susan hollered from the vehicle. “I’ve got him!” She held my phone high in the air. “He’s about three miles away near some river east of town.”
Abel cocked his head to the side as he stared at my wife. “How on earth could she possibly know that?”
I sighed. “I’ll explain on the way.”
CHAPTER 38
“I can’t believe you placed a tracking device on my sheriff’s vehicle,” Abel said, fixing me with hard eyes. “That doesn’t inspire much trust between our agencies.”
I was driving as fast as the rough and winding road would allow—which was about forty miles per hour—and could only see Abel in my peripheral vision from the glow of the dash lights. I thought about explaining the difference between a tracking device and a cell phone, but figured he wouldn’t be amused. It was best not to piss the man off more than he was already, since we would need his help to convince his sheriff to tell us what the hell was going on—that is, if we could catch the man before he killed himself.
Once we left the mountain road and reached the limits of the small town, I could see Susan through my rearview mirror. She was holding on to the headrest with one hand while she held my cell phone with the other. Although Abel had taken over and claimed to know exactly where Sheriff Chandler was heading to end his life, Susan kept glancing down at my phone to make sure we were heading in the right direction.
We were about to reach the eastern end of town when my cell phone dinged to indicate I’d received a text message. Before I could glance up at the mirror, Susan let out an audible gasp.
“It’s true,” she said, “the sheriff was lying about the fingerprint.”
I felt Abel jerk around in his seat beside me to stare back at Susan. “Look, you little bitch, I don’t appreciate you calling my sheriff a liar—”
Without thinking, I immediately pressed the brake pedal and we all lurched forward as my Tahoe skidded to a stop. I turned slowly to face Abel, trying to keep my anger under control.
“I’m going to say this very nicely,” I said, glaring at Abel. “If you ever speak to my wife in that manner again, I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat and then stomp the life right out of you. Do I make myself clear?”
Abel gulped, but tried to maintain some semblance of control. “Are you…do I understand you correctly, that you’re threatening a law enforcement officer?”
“You’re damn right I’m threatening you.” I leaned closer to him. “And I’ll make good on that threat if you ever speak to her in that tone again. Do you understand that?”
“It’s okay, Clint,” Susan said quickly from behind me. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it—right, Detective Adams?”
“Um, right,” Abel said slowly, not taking his eyes off of me. He looked like a man who had come face to face with a rattlesnake and wasn’t sure if it would strike or not. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
After staring at him for another long moment, I relaxed and continued along the highway. I heard Susan sigh behind me as she settled into her seat.
“Mallory just texted to say the fingerprint card in Sheriff Chandler’s possession matched the print we recovered from the glove,” she said. “Our killer is definitely Walter Garner.”
It was Abel’s turn to sigh. “I don’t know if I want to know how y’all got a copy of the print card—”
“I took a picture of it while you were tending to Susan and the sheriff was getting a bucket,” I said simply. “And there was nothing illegal about it. The sheriff left the print on the table in plain view.”
“Yeah, what’s illegal is him interfering with a murder investigation,” Susan retorted. “Any idea why he would do that?”
After a long moment of silence, Abel said he had no clue why the sheriff would lie to cover for Garner. “Considering this new information, a few things are starting to make sense now. For one, I now know why he claimed Garner was dead—it was so we could get off his trail. If he was dead, there would be nothing more to find, so everyone would stop looking. I also think he might have had something to do with Garner breaking through our net that one night when we thought we had him cornered. In the pit of my stomach, I always kinda knew something was off, but…”
“But what?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“But why would he help that murdering bastard? What does Garner have on him?”
I had an idea, but I kept it to myself as I turned down a dirt road that appeared to lead toward the banks of a raging river. Susan had the same idea, and she let it be known.
“If Sheriff Chandler is helping Garner,” she said, “I bet it has something to do with the murder of his son-in-law. My guess is he paid Garner to kill the little wife-beating prick, or he let him escape in exchange for the job. If that’s the case, your sheriff hasn’t been protecting Garner all this time—he’s been protecting himself.”
I took my eyes off the road for a brief moment and checked on Abel. His lips were pursed and he was nodding his head slowly. Based on his expression, I figured he’d suspected it all along, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“There!” Abel pointed toward a break in the trees. “That’s his truck.”
My high beams lit up the small rocky parking area and we could plainly see that Sheriff Chandler’s vehicle was the only one there.
Abel pointed toward the river as he stripped off his seatbelt and reached for the door handle. “Down there is where we found Gill Pratt’s body. It makes perfect sense now why the sheriff would come here to end his life—he had something to do with Pratt’s murder.”
Susan and I exited my Tahoe in a hurry, but Abel was faster than we were. He rushed across the lot—his boots crunching on the loose rock underfoot—and jerked open the driver’s side door of the sheriff’s truck. His face fell and his round shoulders slumped. Susan and I pulled up short beside him and peered into the truck. It was empty.
“Where the hell is he?” Susan lifted her head and scanned the darkness around us. “Do you think he went down to the river?”
“He must’ve gone where Pratt’s body was recovered,” Abel said. “Can I see your flashlight?”
When Susan handed it over, he set off toward the tree line with Susan hot on his heels. I stopped momentarily and stepped up on the rear tire of the truck. Feeling around in the dark, I retrieved Susan’s cell phone from the bed and shoved it in my pocket.
The freezing wind whipped against my face as I jogged to catch up with the bobbing beam from the flashlight. Abel was calling out frantically for the sheriff as they hurried ahead of me toward the riverbank, but no one called back.
Stout branches stung my frozen face as I squeezed through the narrow opening in the trees. I could hear the roar of a river nearby. I stumbled often in the darkness—my feet catching on rocks and roots that jutted up from the ground—and was relieved when I finally caught up to Susan.
Abel’s breath was coming in labored gasps as he continued to call out for his boss. Feeling his pain, I joined him.
“Sheriff!” I hollered. “Sheriff Chandler, are you out here? Please answer us!”
The closer we got to the raging river, the greater the feeling of dread grew in my gut. If he was really serious about killing himself, he would’ve probably done it by now—rather than standing around in this miserably cold weather—and if not, our yelling might prompt him to pull the trigger.
I was about to call out a warning to Abel that we might want to stop yelling when we broke through the trees and found ourselves on the rocky banks of a wide and raging river. It was even colder down by the water and I shivered involuntarily as I followed Abel’s beam of light up and down the waterway.
The moon shone bright above us and it cast an eerie glow around the area. It helped us distinguish some shapes from others, but it was no easy task. I was just thinking we could use Gretchen Verdin’s tracking skills when Susan shouted and pointed toward the right. Abel shined the light in that direction and I gasped when I took in the scene.
The raging water was loud, so I didn’t know if Susan and Abel gasped, too, but we all bolted forward into a stumbling run.
CHAPTER 39
“What in God’s name are you doing, Sheriff?” Abel screamed as loud as he could.
Sheriff Chandler, who was wearing a thick coat and chest waders, was standing atop a large boulder at the water’s edge. His head and hands were raised toward the sky. On the ground beside him were a fishing line, a chair that was knocked on its side, and an empty bucket. He whirled around when he heard Abel’s voice, lost his balance, and began to fall backward.
Before Abel or I could do anything, Susan leapt into action. Although she was pregnant, she didn’t hesitate, and cleared the distance between her and the sheriff in a flash. Being a professional fighter, she was light on her feet and—as the sheriff teetered on the edge of the boulder—she dipped and dashed between the rocks with ease. Just as the sheriff was about to fall backward off the boulder, Susan latched onto the front of his chest waders and used all of her bodyweight to jerk the man toward her.
The sheriff stumbled forward and face-planted on the ground beside Susan, who had broken her fall with her left arm and leg. Sheriff Chandler let out a grunt that could be heard over the noise of the river. Susan rolled to her feet and I rushed to her side.
“Are you okay?” My hand went instinctively to her belly. “Do you feel any pain?”
“I didn’t turn into fine China when I got pregnant.” She grinned and her eyes shined brightly in the moonlight. “I’m still the same tough cookie I was two months ago.”
I sighed and nodded, looking past her to the sheriff, who was struggling to his feet and cursing as he did so. He didn’t like the interruption and he seemed agitated.
Abel had finally made it to us and he reached out to help his boss, but the sheriff pushed him away.
“What’s going on, Sheriff?” Abel was clearly relieved to have found the sheriff alive, but he seemed confused now. “I thought you were coming out here to kill yourself, but it looks like you’re trying to catch a few fish. It’s late and cold—why would you be out here fishing?”
Sheriff Chandler glanced around the dark area until he saw a large tree lying on its side. Without saying a word, he trudged to the tree and took a seat on the trunk.
“How’d you know I would be here?” the sheriff asked in a low voice.
“I didn’t.” Abel shot an accusing thumb in my direction. “He put a tracking device on your truck.”
It wasn’t a tracking device, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
“We know what you’ve been doing, Sheriff,” Susan said softly, moving closer to Chandler. “We know you’ve been covering for Walter Garner.”
“I can’t go to jail.” Chandler seemed willing to speak with Susan, so Abel and I backed away to give them some semblance of privacy. “If I go to jail, my daughter and my grandkid get nothing, don’t you see? There would be no one to look after them.”
“Killing yourself would only make it worse.” Susan took a seat beside him. “You wanted your death to look like an accident, didn’t you? A drowning death, so they would get the insurance money, right?”
Sheriff Chandler grunted in amusement. “You’re a smart one. We only have three detectives, but one’s fixing to retire. Maybe you should come to work for me.”
“Does that mean you’re thinking about hanging around a little longer?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking.” He ran a weary hand across his face. “I just want to go home and rest now.”
“First, I need your help.” Susan scooted a little closer to Chandler. “You need to help me stop Walter Garner. I need to know everything that happened between you two. I need to know how to find him.”
“I don’t know how to find him.”
“Does he have family here who might be in contact with him?”
“No, he’s got no one left since his mother died.”
Susan was thoughtful. “Let’s start with what happened between you and Garner and how it related to the murder of Gill Pratt, and then we’ll talk about how you can help me find him.”
Sheriff Chandler was quiet for what seemed like forever. He finally sighed and said, “There’s not much to tell.”
“Well then, let’s hear it.” Susan folded her arms.
“It was back during the search,” Sheriff Chandler began. “We received a tip that Garner was laying low somewhere out here by the river, so I formed up a posse and we got here as soon as we could. We had the whole place surrounded. I was determined to end it that day—one way or the other.” The older man shifted on the tree trunk and pointed toward the river. “It was right over there when I cornered him. I had him dead to rights, my gun pointing right at his face. I remember it like it was yesterday. I told him he was a coward and I begged him to make a wrong move so I could kill him. He didn’t say anything and I was about to pull out my radio and call for backup when he finally spoke—and he said something that made me freeze in place.”
“What was it?” Susan asked when Chandler stopped talking. “What did he say?”
“My daughter’s name.”
CHAPTER 40
From where Abel and I were standing, I could see Chandler staring off in the distance, as though he were reliving the moment.
“Wait, what?” Susan asked. “How’d he know her name?”
“He said he knew the man who hurt her, and he said he could punish Gill for me. It shocked me that he knew my daughter and I just stood there frozen for a minute, holding my radio in one hand and my pistol in the other.”
I could see the back of the sheriff’s head and it appeared he was staring out over the water.
“While I was standing there wondering what to do, he started crying and confessing his crimes to me,” the sheriff said. “He said he didn’t like hurting people, but he said Tammy and Ian had to die so others might live. He said he had begged God for His forgiveness and he felt that it had been granted. As I watched him sitting there crying, I didn’t see a monster who had committed a senseless act of violence. Instead, I saw a young man who had the courage to do what needed to be done for his family, and it was then that I realized I was the real coward—I was the one who lacked the courage to do what needed to be done to keep my daughter safe. I wanted to murder Gill Pratt, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sure, I slapped him around a bit, but that was just stupid.”
“Isn’t that why the judge released him on his own recognizance?”
“It is. I blamed myself for setting him free to remain a threat to my daughter and her unborn baby.” Sheriff Chandler turned and looked at Susan. “I was going to call it in, but then he told me Gill deserved to die for what he had done. He told me Gill had to die so that my daughter could live.”
“Did he offer to kill him?” Susan asked quietly when Sheriff Chandler stopped talking again.
The sheriff nodded. “He told me if I let him go, he would punish Gill and then he would leave town forever, never to return. I told him it wouldn’t work, that he would get caught and then he would implicate me, but he swore this would never come back on me.”
“How’d you get him through the net y’all had set up?”
“Abel must’ve told you about the net.”
Susan nodded. “He did.”
“I had about fifty civilians—armed to the teeth—surrounding this entire area while I took a team of ten of my best deputies into the forest to conduct the search. The civilians had every exit covered and there was nowhere Garner could go, so it made things easier for me and my officers. Even if we couldn’t catch him, we’d at least flush him and he’d run into the surrounding net. Anyway, we spread out and I came to this little area right here—”
Sheriff Chandler suddenly broke out in a fit of coughs. It sounded like he couldn’t breathe for a moment there, but Susan talked him through it and he slowly recovered. He let out a long breath and wiped his eyes, then continued in a hoarse voice.
