Cypher is now moving away from the edge as fast as he can, sputtering with laughter.
“We also have the note,” I say, “which handwriting analysis will match to the notes left on the door of the Roc. Plus boot prints, which I’m sure match yours. Conrad isn’t going to sleep forever. He’ll wake up and identify you as his killer.”
“But he didn’t see me. I snuck up behind him.”
Dalton drops his head face-first into the dirt.
“All right,” I say. “So having established that you are the killer—”
“Wait, no. I never killed anyone. He’s still alive.”
“Attempted assassin. Is that better?”
Pause. “I like assassin.”
“Which is what you are,” I continue. “You cleverly lured Conrad in and then tried to stop him. Like a vigilante hit man.”
Cypher looks over sharply, offended at the comparison.
I ignore him and continue. “Were you trying to stop Conrad from ruining other lives? Did he threaten someone specifically?”
“He threatened me. He’s been blackmailing me for weeks. Even before he said that stuff about Deputy Anders. He told me he knew what I’d done, and if I didn’t give him booze, he’d tell the whole town.”
Booze. Shit. I remember the wineglass on his front porch and the fact that he’d wooed Gloria with alcohol. I’d assumed he’d gotten the extra legally. If I’d dug deeper …
Well, if I’d dug deeper, I might have only set Brandon off sooner, and Conrad would probably appreciate skipping his premature burial, but I feel less bad about that than I should. If I questioned Isabel about Conrad having extra alcohol, she’d have questioned Brandon, and that might have been dangerous for Isabel.
Brandon is still talking. “He paid me for the bottles. He had extra credits, so the only problem was the limits. That meant Isabel didn’t notice anything wrong. All the credits were there. But when that sign went up about the deputy, I knew it was Conrad. I confronted him and said if he kept blackmailing me, I’d turn him in. But then everyone started talking about him like he was some kind of good guy, and it went to his head. He started saying he’d expose my secrets unless I did what he said. First, he made me break into Deputy Anders’s place with him. Then he said I’d have to get him as much free booze as he wanted. Otherwise I’d be next on his hit list.”
“And you couldn’t have that.”
“Of course not!” His voice rises. “I saw what happened to Deputy Anders. Everyone hates him.”
“Everyone would hate you if they knew your secret.”
Down south, we’d call this leading the witness. Hell, down south, a lawyer would have told him to shut up ten minutes ago. Fortunately, Brandon is the kind of guy who never asks for a lawyer.
I have no idea what Brandon’s true backstory is, and I want it, if only so I can figure out where Conrad was getting his intel. My best hope of getting those answers is from this guy, before he hurls himself over the edge and twists his ankle.
“Of course they’d hate me.” Brandon’s voice rises. He’s infuriated by this line of questioning, possibly because my tone suggests, very gently, that he may have overreacted. “I ripped off hundreds of people. Innocent people.”
Dalton and I exchange a look.
“That’s … not good,” I say.
“It wasn’t my fault. I believed the guy. It sounded like an awesome investment opportunity.”
“They always do,” I murmur.
“It was easy getting people to buy in. I didn’t even need to understand the money stuff. I just drove around in a nice car and told all my friends that I’d invested money in this thing, and then they put in money, and it doubled, like the guy said. They sent their friends to me, and I set them up with the guy and it all seemed great. Right up until the cops busted him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then he sent me here. Paid a lot of money to protect me from getting arrested.”
Prevent him from being a witness. From naming names. From running off his mouth and getting “the guy” in even deeper trouble.
Brandon isn’t exactly a dangerous offender. His story, sadly, makes sense, though. Well, up to the part where he’d been so freaked out over exposure that he’d tried to kill Conrad.
This is one reason Isabel picked him as her new bartender. Everyone liked Brandon. That’s what he had going for him here. Popularity. If his story had been made public, it’d hardly be catastrophic, but to him, it’d be a death knell.
He doesn’t see the difference between his crime and Anders. He only sees his certainty that he’ll be hated for it. Like Anders, he’d go from homecoming king to town pariah.
“Do you have any idea how Conrad obtained this information?” I ask.
“No!”
“Did you tell anyone your story?”
“What? No. I’m not stupid.”
“Maybe by accident?”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone. The guy said if I did, he’d kill me. You notice I’m not even using his name? He made it very clear what would happen to me if I said anything. He knows people who can do terrible things.”
Ah, here is the true root of Brandon’s panic. He’s been threatened with death if his story comes out. While I doubt “this guy” even knows a hired killer, all that matters for Brandon is the threat. He believed his former boss about the investments, and now he believes him about the horrible death that awaits if he opens his mouth.
“No one knows, then?” I say.
“No. The guy said if he paid enough money, the people who run Rockton wouldn’t ask for details or ID or anything like that. Money was enough.”
Money is always enough. In this case, I can’t imagine Brandon’s “guy” forked over millions. He’d said enough to convince the council that it was a white-collar crime rather than a violent one, and a hundred grand or so would have bought Brandon’s way in.
That does, however, pose a problem.
“Have you had any dental work done?” I ask.
“What? No. I got that all taken care of before I came here, like they told me to.”
A thought occurs to me. “What exactly did Conrad say to you? When he started the blackmail.”
“That he knew what I’d done. That I thought I’d gotten away with it, but I hadn’t, and if I didn’t sell him more booze, he’d tell everyone.”
“Did he give any details?”
“About how he’d tell everyone?”
Dalton sighs, softly this time.
“About what you’d done,” I say. “To prove that he actually knew something.”
Silence.
“You think he was bluffing?” Brandon says finally.
Dalton thumps his head against the ground. Cypher throws up his hands.
I shush them and say, as gently as I can, “Did he ever say anything specific about what you’d done?”
“Well, no, but that was the point, right? I was paying for him to keep my secret, and there’s no point in telling me what I did—and risking someone hearing—when I already know what I did.” He pauses. “He was bluffing, wasn’t he?”
Ironic, really, that Conrad’s lies nearly got him killed by his target. He’d wanted to freak Brandon out, and he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.