Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“This is what I’ve come out here about, Rita,” Harry lied. “Don’t want to get your hopes up, not certain how valid this information is, but got word Willie’s up north.”
Nothing showed on her face. Not surprise, not what he knew she was doing: running down the possible culprits who might have let this information slip.
“Up north?” she asked.
“Canada. Vancouver way.”
Again she gave him nothing, except, “Not sure what my boy would be doin’ up there. Got no family up that way.”
“Well, facing an assault charge with a fair few witnesses who say it was him, on top of a drunk and disorderly and destruction of property, figure, with his record, he’d go about anywhere to escape the law.”
There was a slight raise of her chin before, “Even an innocent man would flee, he fears his freedom taken away when he didn’t do anything wrong.”
Harry figured that was absolutely true, considering it appeared like Sonny and Avery Rainier did just that.
Harry lifted a boot and rested it on the step in front of him, but made no other move to get closer to her.
And then he did what he’d never done since it happened, something he was willing to use to get Willie Fucking Zowkower in one of his cells and on a path to justice for putting a man in the hospital and pulling shit with Lillian.
“Winnie and me,” he started quietly, and Ma Zow came out when he saw her take a soft, indrawn breath and the skin around her eyes gentled, “we didn’t have the time to start a family. But the way I loved her, I know the babies we would’ve made would be everything to me. Since I know I’d do the same for Winnie, I figure I’d do it for our kids, that being anything to keep them safe. Now it might go against the grain for you, thinking what’s safest for your boy is for him to turn himself in and answer for what he’s done.”
When he saw the gentle seep out of her features, he changed tacks.
“Or follow the path of justice that man who spent three days in the hospital deserves and find himself exonerated and free to be with his family if he didn’t do it. But things can get messy when we gotta call in other agencies, Rita, like me phoning up to Vancouver to get them to be on the lookout for your son. And if they find him, extradite him down here. Judges tend to get crotchety when someone strains the resources of an already thin law enforcement arm with an unnecessary and prolonged chase, paperwork, and all that shit. Things ease up a whole lot when someone comes forward to answer a few questions, or admit what they’ve done, apologize for it, and face up to the consequences of it.”
It was a day of surprises, he noted, when it looked like she was considering this.
He gave it a beat.
She said nothing.
So he sighed and shared, “My next step is a call up to Vancouver. You think on what I’ve said. We’ve got our eyes peeled and we’re gonna widen the net. One thing I reckon, we’ll have Willie home soon.”
Only then did she give him something.
Her mouth tightened as Harry took his foot off the step.
“You take care of yourself, Rita,” he bid.
“You do the same, sheriff,” she replied. And he had to hand it to her, there was warmth in her tone, like she meant those words.
Then again, maybe she did.
He jerked up his chin and headed to his cruiser.
Rita Zowkower remained on the porch even, Harry saw in his rearview mirror, as he drove down her lane, turned at the end, and only then did he lose sight of her.
FIVE
The Best in The Business
Harry
It was taxing even Harry’s patience to sit at his desk and re-read the Dietrich robbery file, especially the notes of the interviews Dern conducted with Lillian.
Harry had read them before he met her, and they felt dirty to him then.
He read them now in a different light, and now they read as filth.
Dern had personally interviewed her at her home, which had to be daunting for Lillian, especially since he’d done it when her parents were at the station being interrogated, and she’d just been up all night doing a shift at work.
After her parents had run, Dern had then pulled her into the station, when that was entirely unnecessary.
It also was straight-up intimidating to a teenage witness who had no apparent connection to the crime outside her relationship with two suspects who had such a slender link to the offense, it couldn’t even be described as a thread. Further, she’d never been in trouble with the law and was vulnerable, considering her parents were the surprise suspects in a crime and had disappeared.