He shrugs. “It’s not like I’m checking on her. But since I got that report about the herbs, I started walking past on my way to get coffee in the morning. Two days this week, she wasn’t there. Yesterday it was past eight when she arrived. I saw her coming out of the forest, like she’d been out walking when she should have been working.”
Yesterday.
I don’t look over at Dalton, and I try to keep my expression neutral. “Okay, she was late a few times this past week.”
“She tries to cover it up—saying all the plants were watered—but I can tell. She’s slacking, and I need to cover for her, which I was doing, because I didn’t want to snitch. But if she’s now getting half shifts? That’s too much.”
I could point out the illogic of this reasoning, which makes it sound as if Muriel earned those shorter shifts, but I understand what happened here. Arturo was cutting her slack, possibly presuming she was having personal difficulties. But now that she’s getting a perk, it just added to his frustration and tipped the balance.
What matters is that there’s a dead body in the clinic, a man who seems to have died sometime between midnight and fiveA.M.two nights ago. And that’s the same day Muriel was particularly late getting to her shift, after being MIA a couple of mornings earlier this week.
I get dates for every time Arturo knows she was late. There are three instances. The first was when the kitchen worker came looking for herbs earlier this week. I take the kitchen worker’s name to verify. Then she was late twice more—yesterday and the day before that.
I make notes. Arturo doesn’t seem to see anything odd in that. He’s just relieved that I’m paying so much attention to his complaint.
When we leave, I tell him that he can take the first greenhouse shift tomorrow, and he closes his shutters while we’re there and says he’s going to sleep early, so his light will be off.
See how amenable he can be? He just needed us to hear his complaint and take him seriously. I cut Dalton off before he says anything about that.
We head outside and say nothing until we’re inside the forest on the town’s edge.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Dalton says. “Muriel goes from being a model employee to slacking off and coming in late… including the morning we found Blake.”
I nod and say nothing. I’m deep in thought, working it out.
Dalton recognizes my look and waits patiently until I say, “Help me think it through. If Blake and Gretchen came for a resident—like Muriel—that wouldn’t explain her being gone multiple times over the past week.”
“Unless she was negotiating. They made contact. She tried to talk them out of…” He shrugs. “Whatever.”
I nod. “If they were hired to come after her, they might be open to a counterpayment. But that’s a week in the forest. Very slow negotiating in a hostile environment.”
“So they didn’t come to kill her. They came to communicate with her. Our first fear was that Blake and Gretchen were spies. Having someoneinthe town spying is better.”
“That would explain the earlier sporadic absences. Muriel seems to have been ‘slacking off’ in cycles, likely because she’s coming in late. Those could indicate regular meetings with her handler. Muriel is snuck into Haven’s Rock, presumably by the old Rockton interests, who would know exactly what Émilie needed to grant entry, though we could be looking at an unknown party. Either way, they give Muriel time to settle in, and then they start sending her handler for regular check-ins. But a ‘check-in’ doesn’t take a week.”
“Maybe she’s not holding up her end of the deal. It’s happened before.”
He’s right. We had multiple “spies” in Rockton. Residents who were admitted on the understanding they’d report back to the council. One actually was Anders, who’d been told Dalton was a corrupt sheriff. Once he saw the truth, he flipped allegiances and gave the council meaningless intel. Mathias was also supposed to spy… and just never bothered. Then there was Émilie’s own spy, her granddaughter Petra. In that case, the “spying” had been mostly an excuse to convince Petra to take refuge because, in another life, Petra had actually been a field agent for some branch of the American government.
“Muriel would make a good spy,” Dalton muses. “At first, you’d think she’s too quiet, the sort of person you barely notice in the room. I’m not sure I could pick her out.”
“Which is perfect spy material. Petra had a similar vibe. Hardworking. Easy to get along with. Personable. Didn’t stand out in any way.”
“Fuck.”
I lift my hands. “I’m not saying that’s what we’re dealing with. Play it through. If Muriel decided she didn’t want to keepspying—and they sent Gretchen and Blake to get her back on track—why would Muriel kill Blake and then come back here?”
He shrugs. “What if Blake and Gretchen were the only link between Muriel and the council? The old Rockton council hires an outside firm to run the operation, in a double-blind.”
“Muriel goes rogue and kills both of them, and the council has no idea who their spy was.”
“Blake’s body was hidden, and we can’t find Gretchen. How long would it take for the council to even realize things had gone wrong?”
I pause, thinking it through, and then say, “Yolanda would say we’re getting paranoid.”
“Yeah, because she didn’t live in Rockton. The council played this sort of shit and worse. Step one, we talk to Muriel. Confront her about shirking work, get a read on the sincerity level. Then take it to Émilie. I’m damned sureshewon’t think we’re overreacting.”
I swap out partners here. I want backup—in case Muriel is dangerous and so I have a second opinion on her sincerity. But I also want to put her at ease, make her think we are—reluctantly—following up on a complaint and trusting she has an explanation. That means my backup is Anders.
