Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

sent out a Mayday to the Coast Guard, the Troopers – all ships at sea. I’m not so sure he wouldn’t have jumped in after her. And he certainly would have dragged the first person he met back to the spot he last saw her.”

Van Dyke’s nose turned up in disbelief. She shook her head. “Why all the theatrics then?”

“Oh, he’s definitely hiding something,” Cutter said.

“Still,” Van Dyke said. “If Donita Willets is still alive, then why didn’t he just go home and keep his mouth shut?”

A wide smile spread over Lola’s face as she caught up with Cutter’s line of thought. “Because he wants somebody to think she’s dead.”

Irate pounding came from the back door. It had to be Charles Beason. Only he would have the brass to demand entry to a police station where he didn’t work. He blew in like the enemy side of a claymore mine as soon as Van Dyke opened the door.

He focused his anger on Cutter.

“I just heard.” Beason’s head was shaking like it might fall off the end of his neck. “You let him go!”

“His attorney got him out with a writ,” Cutter said nose to nose with the FBI supervisor. This wasn’t going to be the ass-chewing Beason thought. They were both supervisors, but Beason liked to slip in the fact that FBI supervisors were GS 14s while those of Cutter’s ilk were lowly 13s – for now. “We weren’t here yet,” Cutter said. “But even if we had been, you didn’t provide me with a warrant.”

“So this is my fault?”

Cutter didn’t move. “According to you, Fawsey was scared and wanted to cooperate on his own.”

“If you worked for me—”

Now Cutter gave a slow shake of his head. “Charles,” he said. “If I worked for you, I’d be in jail.”

“Okay, boys,” Van Dyke said. “If you two are done pissing on your territorial boundaries, how about we make a plan and decide what to do next?”

“All right,” Beason said, still fuming. “What is it?” He was used to throwing his weight around without having anyone to throw it back.

Cutter gave him a quick rundown of his theory, relaxed again, like they were all part of the same team.

Van Dyke had come on board with the idea that the Willits girl was alive. “Levi does seem to be more insistent that we’ll never find her than any details of how she died.”

“That’s an odd thing to be so sure about,” Lola mused, more to herself than Beason. He didn’t listen to people of her lowly station anyway.

Beason rubbed a hand over the dark stubble on his face, exhausted, which explained but gave him no excuse for being even more of an asshole than usual. “So you think he’s hiding the girl to protect her from someone?”

“I believe we need to look at that possibility,” Cutter said.

“Why didn’t he just bring her in?” Beason asked, still not buying in. “This town is crawling with FBI agents.”

“There is that,” Van Dyke said.

“Hang on a minute,” Lola said. “This kid is a senator’s son. Senators can run in some pretty shady circles to get themselves elected. Maybe it’s one of his daddy’s friends that he’s scared of. Maybe he’s so used to important people being dirty that he wasn’t going to chance turning his girlfriend over to the authorities until he does his due diligence. I mean, Daddy did writ him out in the middle of the night right before he was going to cooperate. Maybe someone doesn’t want him to talk because whatever the girl knew… or knows… he knows too.”

“That’s not good for him,” Van Dyke said.

“I know, right?” Lola said. “There’s no way Levi Fawsey is going to convince the people he’s scared of that Donita Willets fell overboard. They’re apt to be a little rougher in their interrogation methods than we would have been. And he flipped in about ten seconds for us. At the best they’ll ship him off somewhere, out of our reach. Worst case, he tells them where she is and they kill him and Donita both.”

Cutter and Van Dyke nodded at the logic. Lola’s theory made enough sense that even Beason listened to her – for now.

Cutter checked his watch. It was almost three in the morning. If Donita Willets was still alive, they had to get to her first.

Day Three

Chapter 29

It was a quarter to four by the time Cutter got back to the Sheraton and his head hit the pillow. His alarm woke him at six fifteen. He’d learned in the army that if he couldn’t get four hours, then he woke up more alert from a two-and-a-half-hour REM sleep cycle than trying to milk out another half hour.

He grabbed a quick shower, then dressed in water-resistant Fjällräven pants and a gray lightweight wool shirt. His meeting wasn’t until seven, and it was in the restaurant downstairs. He didn’t have to hurry, but he wanted to call Mim before she left for work.

Six thirty-five. He’d give her five more minutes. That gave him a chance to check his gear.

Among other things, his daypack held an extra set of black merino wool long johns, Ethan’s mammoth ivory 3DK sheath knife, and an extra pair of wool socks. He didn’t want to come back to the room no matter where the hunt for Levi Fawsey and Donita Willets led.

He pulled on his Xtratuf rubber boots, which felt more like slippers than the work boots he was accustomed to, and then peeked out the curtain to check the weather. Lights twinkled in the darkness behind the Hangar restaurant and the boats along the wharf. Rain zipped through the bright halo around each streetlight below. Fog and darkness completely obscured the Gastineau Channel and Douglas Island beyond.

Exactly the way he’d left it.

Earbud in his ear, he took out his pocketknife and the small chunk of wood he’d been working on, and then slid down to sit on the floor to carve with his back against the wall.