Partly because they were her competition.
Still, the pound of crank in my pocket proved some of her story was true. Downstate gangs were operating on our ground and with deer season only weeks away, half a million hunters would soon be invading the north. If they stumbled across the crank labs, it could turn into World War Three. A disaster.
Especially for the Gauthiers. The last thing Emmaline wanted was an army of cops in the state forest. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That made us allies. For now, anyway.
Had she offered the same deal to Sherry? Probably. Emmaline wouldn’t have wanted her family name in the news. Trading up to a bigger story worked for both sides. It’s a deal Sherry would have jumped at. Her ticket to the big time.
But had her eagerness gotten her killed?
Miss Emmaline thought not, because they hadn’t closed their deal. She hadn’t given Sherry the map with the lab coordinates so she wasn’t a danger to anyone yet. I didn’t think so either, but for a different reason. Sherry wouldn’t have gone to that lonely turnout to meet anyone she didn’t know. Certainly not a Gauthier or anyone connected to downstate gangs. Whoever she’d met there was someone she trusted.
My phone buzzed, breaking into my thoughts. I checked the screen. It was a text, from Zee. Sherry’s apartment. We need to talk. Now.
I knew the way.
Sherry’s condo is part of a new, ultramodern complex built on the bones of an old lumber baron’s mansion, a block from Old Town, the original heart of Valhalla. The place felt like a rabbit warren to me, too many people packed into hyper-efficient little boxes. Sherry said she liked hearing her neighbors fighting at night or gargling in the morning. Said it made her feel like she was part of a family.
To me, the place was a glorified motel with yuppie transients for tenants. It would only feel homey to a foster child who couldn’t tell the difference.
The front door was ajar. I eased in, then stopped, frozen by a sudden flood of memories. The faint scent of Sherry’s perfume. The bland, beige IKEA furniture that had come with the place, and would soon pass to someone else. Sherry should have been sitting at the Swedish birch-and-glass desk, scanning her laptop for breaking stories.
But now she was the story. And my partner Zina Redfern was at her desk, riffling through her papers. The laptop was gone, probably being analyzed in the basement lab at Hauser Center.
Zee swiveled in the chair to face me. She wasn’t happy.
“I called the office,” she said. “The desk sergeant said Rob Gilchrist talked to you, then you disappeared. Without saying where.”
“Gilchrist didn’t know anything useful. He’s not the guy.”
“Damn it, that’s not your call, Dylan. You shouldn’t have talked to him at all—”
“You could have chewed me out over the phone and saved me a trip, Zee. What have you got?”
“Officially, the investigation is progressing. Off the record, you’d better take a look at this.” She handed me a thin sheaf of papers.
I glanced through them. Colored bar graphs and percentages. The business heading on the front page was BetaPhase Genetics. “What is this?”
“A DNA test, of sorts,” Zee said, watching my face. “It’s not for paternity. It’s for genealogy.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sherry apparently learned she was pregnant about ten days ago, and had her doctor administer this test. For paternity, you have to supply DNA from the father. For genealogy, nucleotides from the fetus are enough to do the trick.”
“I still don’t—”
“The test can determine the father’s ethnic heritage without his cooperation,” Zina continued. “It’s obvious what she was looking for. Gilchrist is Nordic. Apparently the other candidate wasn’t. The test results are at the bottom of the page.”
I checked it. It was a ragged bar graph, a mix of northern and southern European. The only bar that stood out was Native American, 24 %.
“That would be you, right?” Zee said.
I stared at the graph, didn’t say anything.
“The baby’s ethnicity was Native American to the twentieth percentile, so the father would be roughly double that. Forty percent, give or take. That means he’s almost certainly Metis, Dylan. You’d better talk to me.”
I still didn’t say anything. I felt like I’d been kicked in the belly.
“Look, this test isn’t definitive,” Zee pressed, “but a paternity test will be. If something happened with you two, you need to get in front of it—”
“Nothing happened.”
It was her turn for silence. “So... this isn’t you?” she said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Did you find anything else?” I asked.
“Sherry had an appointment with her OB/GYN for Thursday.”
“For a checkup?”
“More than that. Her doctor pleaded patient confidentiality, but I bluffed her. Off the record, Sherry was scheduled to terminate her pregnancy. That’s what I’ve got. What have you got?”
I thought about lying to her again but knew I’d make a hash of it. I walked out, instead. So enraged, my whole world seemed to be bleeding red around the edges.
Every cop has a neutral look, a mask we wear on duty. It’s called a cop face. It’s supposed to conceal emotions, from fear to fury. Mine must have slipped as I pulled into Max Gillard’s driveway.
He was raking a few errant leaves from his bedraggled front lawn as I rolled up. His welcoming smile turned cautious as he walked over to greet me. He glanced around to be sure the neighbors weren’t watching — then he pulled an ugly brute of a revolver from the small of his back, aiming it straight at my head.
“Get out of the car, Dylan.” He tossed the rake aside.
“What are you doing, Max?”
“It’s game over and we both know it. Now get out, walk ahead of me into the garage. Don’t do anything sudden. Or stupid.”
He eased the hammer back to full cock to underscore the point. A quick read of his eyes changed my mind about trying to bluff him. The gun muzzle gaped wide as a railroad tunnel.
I marched ahead of him into the garage. He hit a button, the garage door closed, then it was just the two of us in an empty box of a room. A tool bench along one wall, a concrete floor. A dangerous place.
Desperate men often kill themselves in garages, a final courtesy to their families. Easier for the survivors to clean up the mess.
The same would be true for a murder.
I turned to face Max.
He looked red-eyed and haggard, like he hadn’t slept in a month. Needed a shave. He was wearing a U of M T-shirt and faded jeans. Despite the weather, he was barefoot. I didn’t know what to make of that. But the weapon in his fist was rock steady, aimed at center mass. Military style. Any wound would be fatal at this range.
“I’ve covered enough crime scenes to know the drill,” he said, brushing his thinning hair back with his free hand. “I know the head games too, so skip the bushwa. I’m at the end of my rope, Dylan. I’ve got nothing left to lose. Clear?”
I nodded.
“Tell me what you know.”
“I know you killed Sherry, Max. I didn’t until I drove up, but I do now. I don’t know why.”
“It was a mistake. A bad one all around.”
“She was pregnant. It was your child, wasn’t it?”
“Another mistake,” he said grimly. “We weren’t really involved.”
“Apparently you were.”
“Not the way you think. We were on an out-of-town assignment, closed up the hotel bar, both of us pretty hammered. Maybe she felt sorry for me, I don’t know. It was all wrong, but I was so desperate...”
He waited for a comment. I didn’t say anything.
“It was never about sex with her, anyway,” he said. “It was just another way to be the center of attention. Even for a few hours on the road with a has-been cameraman. It didn’t mean a thing.”