“Haven’t seen much of anybody,” I say. “Is there a problem?”
He shakes his head. “She’s just late for her shift, and I was really hoping for my coffee by now.”
“Go get it,” I say. “The horses will be fine.”
He nods and lopes off, and we continue to Phil’s house, where breakfast waits. We settle in, and we’ve just begun eating when Tamara calls in.
Tamara is—as Phil once was—a faceless voice on a radio. The only radio that can contact the outside world, and only this one particular number. The council isn’t there in the background. I used to think they were at least listening in. They aren’t.
Phil has explained how it works. While council members can be there by videoconference, they usually tell their liaison what to say and that’s it. All the times we argued with Phil, there was no council listening and considering and making judgment calls. Just Phil, under orders to deliver their word, listen to our inevitable complaints, and reiterate their stance. Phil was—and Tamara now is—the human equivalent of an AI teleservice bot. They can provide information. They can listen to us and attempt to give appropriate responses. But they have zero volition. Zero ability to make decisions.
Tamara’s first words, though, surprise me. “Before we get into the matter of this latest attempted murder, the council would like me to share information on Conrad. Specifically, his background. I am aware that Detective Butler believes he is there under a false cover story.”
“And Detective Butler is wrong,” Dalton mutters, too low for Tamara to hear.
“Detective Butler is correct,” Tamara says. “Conrad is indeed one of our special cases, where we chose to allow a nonviolent white-collar criminal into Rockton for a fee that allows us to accommodate true cases of need.”
“White-collar?” I say.
“Yes, we categorized his actions as such because they did not cross our threshold for violent activity.”
“There’s a threshold?” Dalton whispers.
I smile at him and shake my head. All she means is that whatever Conrad did, it’s low enough on the violence scale for them to reclassify it as white-collar crime.
“While resident stories are privileged information,” she continues, “I have been given permission to share Conrad’s as proof of our good faith. He was accused of blackmailing several former lovers with photographs and videos of an indiscreet nature.”
“Blackmail?”
“Yes, for money. It was also alleged that, in two cases, he blackmailed them for sexual favors, but he denied that. Our findings concurred. We would never have permitted a resident into Rockton with a known history of sexual coercion.”
Also not true, but we say nothing.
“His crime was blackmail,” she says. “Devoid of any violent actions.”
I want so much to say something. Conrad violated the trust of former lovers and threatened them with public humiliation. If a guy gave me the choice between a broken bone and my naked body splashed across the internet, I’d snap my arm for him. But I clamp my mouth shut.
“Blackmail, huh?” Dalton says. “Okay, I get that. It’s not like he could come here and pull that shit on … Wait…”
“We’re aware of what he has done.”
“Are you?” Dalton says, rising from the sofa, as if she’s more than a voice in a box. “He blackmailed our bartender and panicked him so much the guy tried to kill him. He also used that blackmail to induce a recovered alcoholic to have sex with him. Then he actively sought blackmail on any figure of authority, only to use what he had to wreak chaos in my town and put a huge dent in the ironclad trust we need to run it.”
“We understand that, Sheriff Dalton.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
Her voice sharpens, words bitten off. “We do. As you will see if you allow me to continue talking.”
Dalton grumbles, but it’s for show only. He’s made his point, and even if it fell on deaf ears, he feels better for having made it.
“All right,” I say. “So we’ve solved the case of who put up the sign and the case of who tried to kill that person. The question now is what to do with Conrad and Brandon.”
“Moot.”
There’s something oddly like satisfaction in her voice, and the hairs on my neck prickle. I’ve heard that tone before. I was being a pain in the ass to the lead detective on a case, convinced that he was ignoring evidence out of prejudice against a suspect. Monday morning, I went to update him on my progress, and he told me not to bother. I’d been reassigned. This exact same note had been in his voice as he said it, paired with a smug little smile as he’d awaited my reaction.
“The point is moot because…” I begin.
I hate saying the words. It feels like reaching out to a cobra, allowing it within striking distance. I’m making this easy for her when I should just shut down this meeting—feign an emergency or bad connection—and get the hell out of here. But I can’t slam the door and lock this particular cobra out of my life. I need to hear this. We all do.
“It’s moot because we’re shutting down Rockton.”
TWENTY
Silence. Three long beats of it before anyone can speak, and when someone does, it’s Phil.
“I beg your pardon?” he says.
He pulls off all the surprise and outrage we couldn’t manage. He makes it sound as if he hasn’t known this for two months now, as if he bought the council’s story that our decreasing numbers were a temporary adjustment.
Dalton takes my hand, and with every sentence Tamara says, his grip tightens. I barely hear her exact words, only the gist of it washing over me. That gist is that this is our fault. All our fault. Starting with Anders for telling the truth. Then on to Dalton and Phil for failing to mitigate the damage, and me for not arresting Conrad for breaking into Anders’s chalet, which would have meant Brandon never tried to kill Conrad or attacked Phil.
“Detective Butler was gathering the evidence needed to arrest Conrad without the whole damn town accusing us of scapegoating him,” Dalton says. “The only way she’d have done it faster is with a fucking confession.”
“Then you should have gotten a confession.”
“How? Beat it out of him? If we’d applied any pressure, we’d have been accused of being the power-hungry bastards he claimed. So which was it? You wanted us to get a confession? Or to mitigate the fucking damage?”
“It took too long,” she says briskly. “If Deputy Anders had consulted us before confessing, we could have bought Detective Butler more time to solve the case. It would also have bought you and Phil more time to calm the residents. As it stands, they’ve lost faith in you.”
“Based on what?” Dalton says. “The fucking poll you didn’t fucking conduct?”
Phil clears his throat. “Eric has a valid point, Tamara. I’m not sure how the council can assess the damage when I haven’t been asked to report on my conclusions. If I had been, I would have said—”
“Unnecessary.”