My jaw nearly dropped. Russo had just laid out all of my suspicions as if they were his own.
“We did a check on his house,” said Clegg. “Made a sweep around the exterior, looked in the windows, but we didn’t have cause or authorization to go inside. We saw the dogs. They look mean as hell. What breed are they?”
“Plott hounds,” I said before Russo could jump in. “Detective, when Gary Pulsifer and I last talked with Dyer, he mentioned going coyote hunting with a Smith & Wesson AR-15.”
“What caliber?” asked Clegg.
“He didn’t say.”
“Do you remember the model?”
I tried to transport myself back to that conversation. Tried to visualize Dyer standing outside the window of Pulsifer’s idling truck.
“Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Whisper,” I said.
For the first time since we’d met, Russo showed a real expression. He was astonished, whether at the specificity of my memory or about the implications of what I had just said, I couldn’t be certain. But his mask had finally fallen.
“I know that gun,” he said. “Dyer showed it to me. It’s chambered in only one caliber: .300 AAC Blackout.”
Clegg removed his phone from his pocket and began tapping in numbers. I didn’t have to guess who he was calling or why. The detective was going to ask a judge to sign off immediately on a no-knock warrant. Russo had just provided a cause for the police to break down Logan Dyer’s door.
33
In real life, suspicious deaths are rarely mysteries. A wife dies in what looks like a botched robbery; her husband probably did it. A child falls down the stairs and breaks her spine; look first to the baby-sitter. Most criminals are morons. They don’t have the mental capacity to plan elaborate schemes worthy of Professor Moriarty or Hannibal Lecter. With few exceptions, the simplest explanation for a crime is the correct explanation. The butler almost always did it.
Police officers are human. Sometimes, because we want our work to be more exciting, or because we have a need to demonstrate our brilliance to the public and colleagues (and especially our superiors), we reach too far in our theories. Catching the guy who robbed the bank without a mask probably won’t get you promoted. Catching the Night Stalker or the Green River Killer will turn you into a living legend.
Dyer was a loner who loved guns. He had recently been showing signs of instability, according to Russo. He had a legitimate grievance against his neighbor, Foss, for making it impossible to sell his family house and begin life anew somewhere else, where people didn’t associate his name with a fatal chairlift accident. Motive, means, and opportunity—what more did you need? Nothing, in the eyes of the law.
To me, this realization carried extra sadness. It meant that Adam Langstrom was almost certainly dead—likely the first of Dyer’s victims. The caginess with which Logan had evaded my questions about my missing brother suggested as much. Would we find Adam’s dead body inside the darkened farmhouse?
*
I returned to my truck to put on my ballistic vest and get a gun. I didn’t care that I hadn’t been cleared to return for duty. With officers spread across two counties, protecting sex offenders, Clegg needed every available man now.
For the sake of my truck, I moved Shadow back into his carrier. He whined and bristled his fur. He wasn’t some mythological creature, I had to remind myself. He was a living animal, and he was unhappy.
Then I called the IF&W office in Ashland again.
“Is Stacey back?” I asked the same woman I’d spoken with before.
“She stayed overnight in Clayton Lake. Do you want the number for McNally’s?”
It was a sporting camp outside the flyspeck village, not far from where the helicopter had gone down. Presumably, the owner was providing lodging to the investigation and recovery team.
I dialed the camp. A woman with a creaky old-sounding voice answered. “McNally’s.”
“I’m trying to reach someone who is staying with you. She’s a wildlife biologist with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Her name is Stacey Stevens.”
“Is she the pretty one?”
“Yes.”
“She’s not here, dear. She left to go back to Ashland a couple of hours ago.”
I thanked her and tried to decide what to do. Stacey was speeding along on a snowmobile in the dark on the Reality Road, as out of touch as a person could be. I dialed her cell phone and waited to leave a message.