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The gun blasted twice more, and Penske’s body jumped with each shot.
And then she knew no more.
PART FOUR
The Unraveling
Chapter 14
Tanner Stahd’s been stabbed and is fighting for his life, McCrae thought in disbelief.
That fact still felt unreal, though McCrae had been called to the scene of the clinic stabbing and had spent most of last night processing the scene. After a quick few hours of sleep, he was now heading in to the station.
Twenty-four hours earlier, the day had started out fairly benignly, with a weak sun shining through McCrae’s kitchen window, causing his dog, Fido, to move from one warm square of light to another before the sun slid behind some serious rain clouds. By evening, the day had been shattered by the news that there had been a stabbing at the Stahd Clinic, devolving further when the victim was learned to be Tanner himself. Not since Bailey Quintar’s death had McCrae felt so uncertain and angry. Bailey’s death, along with Justin Penske’s, was never far from his consciousness, as it was for probably every one of their classmates who’d been at the reunion that night. It was in the forefront of his boss’s, Bob Quintar’s . . . Quin’s . . . as well, but their hands had been tied from the get-go in any effort to investigate their homicides; Bailey’s and Penske’s deaths had been ruled a murder/suicide by the special investigator, who’d swept in and taken over the case.
Now McCrae stood in today’s same weak sunlight with a cup of reheated coffee. He drew a long breath and thought back to the night before. Delta had been there, her dress bloodstained, as she stood by Tanner’s crumpled body. For a moment, McCrae had thought he was dead, but the ambulance had screamed in a few moments later and taken Tanner to the hospital. After taking her statement, McCrae had seen Delta to the hospital himself, then had gone back to the clinic and made sure, along with two of the four officers on staff at the West Knoll PD, that everything was secure for the night. The tech team was coming this morning to gather what evidence was on scene.
McCrae didn’t know how to feel about this attack on an old classmate. What had happened? Had Delta stabbed him? That seemed impossible, but until they learned something different, she would be near the top of the suspect list, if not actually at the top.
Fido gave up his sun-worshipping snooze to trot to where McCrae was standing, his tail sweeping the battered hardwood floor of the three-bedroom ranch he’d inherited from his father. Fido was a black-and-white, long-haired, medium-sized mutt with one blue eye and one brown. He’d been whining piteously the morning McCrae had entered Bailey’s apartment following her murder and had had an accident in her kitchen. McCrae had taken the dog outside for another brief potty visit, and after Fido relieved himself, he’d cleaved hard to McCrae’s side. The dog knew him from the times Bailey had brought him into the station. He’d attached himself to McCrae as if they’d always been together, even though the animal was clearly confused about what had happened to his mistress. McCrae’s chest had been tight as he’d recalled how he’d given Bailey a whole lot of grief about naming her dog Fido. He’d sworn that he would steal the dog away from her and change its name, but when Fido’s care was transferred to him, the name stood.
Bailey.
Pouring the remains of his coffee down the sink, McCrae felt the age-old pain of losing her once more. The attack on Stahd brought it all back. Five years since her death, and it was as fresh as ever. At the time, he and Bailey had both been working their way toward detective, but her killing had made it so that he was the only one able to reach that goal. It was decided that Bailey’s and Penske’s deaths were the result of a murder/suicide, but Quin had never been able to accept that theory, and neither had McCrae. Supposedly, Penske had shot Bailey in the heat of passion; there was ample evidence they’d had sex in the back seat of her car. The theory was they were both drunk, an argument had ensued that had culminated in Penske shooting her outside of the car, and then, in the next moment, consumed with shock and grief, he’d turned her gun on himself. The department had brought in Timothy Hurston, an outside investigator who, despite arriving with glowing credentials, had considered it a lover’s quarrel gone nuclear. Statements had been taken from bar patrons, but no one knew anything apart from the fact that Bailey and Penske had been getting pretty friendly with each other before they left together.
The problem was, it just didn’t ring true for Bailey. Dead drunk? Sex in the back seat of her car? Penske with her handgun? Something was off.
Penske and Bailey weren’t even an item before the night of the reunion. Bailey would have told him.
McCrae had argued that they needed a deeper dive into Bailey’s death, which Quin had fervently agreed with. But the powers that be had felt Quin was too unstable to know and ordered him to go on paid administrative leave for nearly six months before bringing him back and eventually moving him up to West Knoll’s chief. McCrae’s arguments had been ignored for the same reason: he was Bailey’s classmate, friend, and coworker and therefore was too close to the case. He’d been forced to curb his desire to correct what he perceived as justice gone wrong, but he’d never forgotten. He’d spent long hours secretly delving into Bailey’s death, even if the department considered it a closed case. Two pieces of information stuck out as important to follow up on: one, the bartender on duty at Lundeen’s the night of Bailey’s death, who had allowed interviews with the special investigator and had offered up that Penske had been pushing Bailey to drink, quit his job three weeks after the homicide and disappeared into the ether; and two, Bailey’s journal was missing. Quin had made a big fuss about the journal, had said she sometimes kept it in her car, but no amount of searching had turned it up. Quin had told anyone who would listen that his daughter had written down notes on crimes, which had, a number of times, helped catch the perpetrators, and that she’d also begun the journal after the death of her closest friend, Carmen Proffitt, a death Bailey felt had not fully been an accident. The special investigator had quizzed Quin long and hard on the journal as Quin was the only one besides Bailey who’d seen her notes, but he’d been unable to give any information that could be construed as conclusive, and therefore that line of inquiry was dropped.
McCrae, like Quin, knew how much that journal had been a part of Bailey, and how much Bailey had believed Carmen’s death was due to unnamed forces and pressures. McCrae had never really accepted Bailey’s theories; she’d damn near blamed everyone at the barbeque for Carmen’s death. But why had Penske killed her? Had Bailey learned something about him that had harkened back to Carmen? The special investigator had intimated that McCrae was just looking for something or someone to blame when he posed the question to him.
“You’re looking for zebras when there are just horses,” Timothy Hurston had said, with that superior smirk that McCrae had wanted to smack from his supercilious face. Instead, he’d begun his own underground investigation, which Quin understood and secretly encouraged. Bailey’s father had never gotten over feeling that more could be done, and McCrae had worked behind the scenes, mostly on his own time, trying to trace the bartender, James Carville. By coincidence, he’d just discovered a solid lead on the man’s current whereabouts when Delta’s call came through about the attack on Tanner.
His first thought had been: Are the two crimes related? How could they be?
His second: How could they not be?
Now he’d had time to think that over. Maybe he was seeing zebras instead of horses. Maybe Bailey’s death was unrelated. A romantic, alcohol-fueled interlude gone horribly wrong? Or maybe it had something to do with her being a cop? Penske, it turned out, had once had a relationship with Nia Crassley, the youngest Crassley daughter, who may very well have been underage at the time. No one was saying for sure, especially not Nia, but Bailey, who’d tried for years to corral the
Crassley miscreants, might have learned something that drove the last nail in Penske’s coffin, forcing him to kill her to hide his secrets. Or maybe one of the Crassleys was involved with Penske in a setup to kill Bailey. McCrae had tried to talk to them, preferably alone, though the Crassleys preferred to face the cops as a group. They’d either laughed their asses off at his theories or acted like they were all deaf, dumb, and blind.
One of the Crassleys had trapped Bailey in an alley once, determined to show her what it meant to be with a real man, but Bailey had wriggled her way out of that one with a swift knee to his groin and a couple sharp elbows to his neck. Grudges were held. But time had taken care of that particular Crassley. Little Dan, who was six-three and about three hundred pounds, had gotten himself shot in a road-rage confrontation in eastern Oregon where the man he’d flipped off on one of those long, empty two-lane highways had chased him down in his truck, run him off the road, and put a bullet in his massive belly.
Little Dan had not survived.
But there were a helluva lot of other Crassleys who were still around who didn’t much like the law and who remembered how Bailey had gotten the best of their dear, departed brother.
McCrae had posited that maybe there was more to Bailey’s and Penske’s deaths than met the eye, had gone at the Crassleys himself, but none of the higher-ups had been interested in listening to him, so McCrae had been forced to leave things alone. The DA had gone with Hurston’s murder/suicide theory all the way, and no charges were brought against anyone else. Bailey Quintar had been murdered, one of their own, and there was sadness and a thirst for revenge, but her killer was dead, too. That was the prevailing theory and answer, and there was nothing more to be investigated. It was Justin Penske who killed her. All by himself. No Crassleys or anyone else involved.
Convenient that Penske couldn’t answer any questions . . .
Fido had a dog door that McCrae had cut into his back door. It was big enough for the dog and maybe a very small person or child, which could be an issue if someone really wanted to get at him, but they would have to deal with the dog first, and Fido had grown territorial since Bailey had disappeared from his life. He guarded McCrae’s house as if it were Fort Knox, and though he was polite when people were over, he wasn’t willing to be won by a stranger just because they chortled and giggled over his name, like that made him cuddly or something. Fido didn’t trust anyone, and getting past his defenses took years. McCrae’s last girlfriend had lasted less than a year, and she and Fido had had a healthy respect for each other, but that was as far as it went.
“Hey, boy,” McCrae said as he gathered up his wallet, Glock, and keys. He didn’t need to wear a uniform these days. Mostly it was slacks and an open-collared shirt, though he kept a suit coat and tie in his locker at work in case he had to conduct an interview. People were usually both alarmed and respectful when an officer showed up in a suit. Anything less and they were likely to think the officer didn’t mean business.
Fido looked at McCrae balefully. The dog knew he was being left behind, as ever. He was not a police dog, and while McCrae was at work, the dog stayed home. The same as when Fido lived with Bailey.
