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“I don’t have the clinic key,” Pierre cuts in quickly. “It’s in the community center.”
“No one’s blaming you, Doc,” Gunnar says. “I’m asking if I’m understanding this right. Someone from the forest—from out there—tried to kill Bruno.”
“Not someone from out there,” I say. “Our dog followed the trail back to town.”
Now the chaos starts, everyone babbling, shock and anger and fear mingling. I glance over at Yolanda. I’ve been waiting for her to say we don’t actually think someone from town kidnapped Bruno, and even this second injury is accidental. But she only cuts her gaze my way, with a look that says I’d better know what the hell I’m doing, misleading her crew.
I clear my throat. When no one seems to hear me, Dalton shouts “Hey!” and everyone stops, looking at him like he materialized from thin air.
“Thank you,” I say. “To answer Gunnar’s question, we don’t know what happened. The solution might be more innocent than that. Which is why I’m standing up here asking for answers. If you were the person in the forest with Bruno tonight, and youdidn’tforce him out there, and youdidn’thurt him, then I need to speak to you. I’m hoping we can resolve thisquickly and efficiently, especially if it’s all a misunderstanding. We’ll get everything back on track—and be able to search for Penny again—once we can put this aside. Otherwise, I have an attempted-murder investigation to conduct.”
I glance over at Dalton, and he steps forward.
“Okay, you heard Detective Butler. We need to interview everyone, and we want to do it fast. We’re dividing people in groups. When your group is up, you need to come to the town hall and wait outside until you’re called in. First group is surnames starting A to F. Go wait at the town hall. If you’re G to K, head to work and come by at nine. L to P will…”
I reallyamhoping for a quick resolution to this. I want someone to have an innocent reason for meeting with Bruno. “Innocent” in the sense that—compared to being investigated for attempted murder—they’ll decide to confess. That’s the scenario I’ve set up. Scare them with the idea that we think someone kidnapped Bruno and tried to kill him, so the guilty party will come forward and say, “No, no, we were having a fling, and I just wanted to say goodbye before he left.”
Okay, I’d like to think Bruno wouldn’t be foolish enough to go into the forest with serious injuries to say goodbye to a lover, but I’m hoping it’s something on that scale. A secret, but not one they’ll keep when faced with a murder charge.
That doesn’t happen. I interview the first six people, with Dalton sitting there, silently judging as only Dalton can silently judge. That part works. He gets a lot of nervous sidelong glances, and I get a few confessions, but they’re not the sort I’m looking for. Someone admits they weren’t in their bed last night—they were in someone else’s. Someone else admits theygot into a disagreement with Bruno the day he disappeared—about him always going overtime in his shower slot.
Round two is much the same. Anyone who might have any reason to be nervous—they were out of bed last night or they had a recent dispute with Bruno—confesses it, just so we don’t think they’re holding anything back. One woman says she’s seen Bruno going into the forest a few times, but we already knew that. One guy says Bruno had a fight with Yolanda that night, but we knew that, too.
I also use the opportunity to get more on Penny, or Penny and Bruno, or just Bruno. Anything suspicious? Anything that might help me understand why Penny went into the forest? Or who Bruno might have been meeting?
The story on Penny never wavers from the one I got. She kept to herself, but she was open and friendly, just really hardworking. She didn’t argue with anyone about anything other than work. No romantic entanglements that they know of. Nothing between her and Bruno except work, and the usual architect-versus-engineer disagreements there.
As for Bruno, he’d been more sociable but only with the guys, as Kendra said. Polite to the women while avoiding them in social situations and being clear he was married, just in case anyone had any ideas. Some of the women had been amused. Some had been offended. Most just rolled their eyes and moved on. You always get guys like that on a jobsite, they said, the sort who seemed to think that ten seconds of social conversation was the first step to a torrid extramarital affair.
From what I’d heard of Bruno’s marital problems, he seemed to be simply going out of his way to avoid temptation. Dalton had plenty to say about that between interviews—mostly that if you’re that easily tempted, you’ve got bigger problems to worryabout—but for my investigation, it only suggests that Bruno didn’t sneak out this morning to meet a lover.
We’re starting on the third group when a woman raps on the door. She’s about fifty, with dark skin and short gray hair.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says. “Dr. Will asked me to come and get you.”
It takes me a moment to realize that “Dr. Will” is Anders. He’d probably just introduced himself as Will and she presumed, since he was working in the clinic, that he’s a doctor.
“Got it,” I say. “Thank you.”
“Do you want me to stay and give my statement to your partner? I know you’re getting everyone’s.”
“Come along, and you can give me yours on the way. Eric?”
“I’ll tell the next group to come back in thirty minutes.”
“Thanks.”
The woman who came to get me is Nanette. She’s one of the general crew. As for her statement, it’s the same as nearly everyone else’s—she’d been asleep and hadn’t heard anything. I ask her to please stick around the clinic, in case I need to get a message to anyone. Then I go inside.
Anders joins me in the waiting room. Our eyes meet, and he shakes his head. Then he pulls the door shut behind him and strides over.
“He’s not going to make it,” Anders says. “We’ve been working on him for hours, but between the puncture and the older injuries and the stress of going out last night…”
“Is he awake?”
Anders nods. “We sedated him for emergency surgery, butonce we’d done as much as we could, April had to call it. She brought him out of it. He’s groggy. We pumped him full of pain meds. But we wanted him to have the chance to say any final words.”
“Has he?”
