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IT HAD BEEN a successful week. Nathan had made it through dinner with his parents last weekend, and now they’d left for Sanibel Island off the coast of Florida for three weeks of sun and margaritas on the beach. For which he was thankful. They could enjoy the sun, and he could enjoy the peace.
His mother had given him her usual talk about family responsibility and the fact that his law-enforcement career was both far too dangerous and far too beneath his potential. Nothing new there.
This morning, Ollie had given him her weekly lecture about finding a suitable wife, so at least that was out of the way, as well.
On the law-and-order front, there’d been no domestic disturbances, no major accidents out on the highway. A recent string of lakeshore-cabin burglaries had been solved when one of the owners arrived in midweek, found his cabin door ajar and turned his Rottweiler loose for an investigation of its own.
The two cowering teenagers, who’d driven all the way from Newbrook, had been more than happy to surrender when faced with the dog’s teeth. They’d confessed to the trailer-court break-ins, as well.
So why did Nathan feel a nagging sense of frustration?
The answer came to him as he watched Clay move a knight and neatly eliminate his bishop.
“Your move.” Clay lounged back in his chair with a triumphant gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “If you can.”
Nathan studied the board, considering and discarding half a dozen options. “I can always move—it’s just a matter of whether or not I want to speed up the end of the game.”
Clay gave a bark of laughter. “That’s what I like. A man who knows when he’s whipped and doesn’t prolong the agony.”
“I didn’t say I was defeated. In fact—” Nathan moved his remaining bishop and retired Clay’s queen “—I think you got a little rusty while you were off gallivanting in Chicago with your wife these past two weeks.”
“Anything interesting happen while we were gone?”
“No headline news. I did a little research on the Grover murder, by the way.”
“That’s old, old news.”
“While you were gone, I went through the case files, then stopped at the library to look at the newspapers from back then. When I walked in, Hanrahan’s daughter was just about to do the same thing.”
“Probably curious. She was a little mite back then, too young to know what was going on.” Clay gave a noncommittal shrug, but a muscle ticking along his jaw betrayed his sudden tension. “You won’t find anything now that we didn’t find back then.”
“Maybe not. But why would a quiet family man with no record, no history of conflict with his boss, suddenly turn on the man and kill him?”
Clay studied the chessboard for a long moment, then lifted his gaze to Nathan’s. “There’s logic to this game, but with some crimes, there isn’t any. You’ll never know why a guy was fine one day, then snapped the next.” His gaze chilled. “Grover and Hanrahan are dead and buried. Second-guessing a good investigation is a waste of time.”
“I’m not implying there were mistakes.”
“You won’t find any. Looks to me,” Clay added with a grim smile, “like life up here is a lot less exciting than down in Minneapolis, if you’re dredging up old cases for something to do.”
Maybe the old guy’s defensiveness came from pride, Nathan thought. Maybe it came from insecurity now that his career was over.
Or maybe he was right.
“The report says the Mitchell boys heard something out there and called for help.”
Clay shifted impatiently in his chair. “They’d been out at the sledding hill back of the plant with their friends and a case of beer. If the case had come to trial, the fact that they were drunk as skunks wouldn’t have helped their testimony much.”
“They didn’t see anything, though, right?”
“You read the case files. They heard loud voices, then two gunshots. Scared the stuffing out of them—they lit out in the opposite direction, skirted the eastern edge of the plant, and ran for home. Never did have another problem with them and their beer parties in those woods.”
“So there were no witnesses.”
“Nope.”
“And when you arrived?”
“I was working late, so I got to the scene five minutes after the call. Hanrahan was still there, kneeling by the body.”
