He finished the call to Hargreaves and turned in his seat to look at Osgood. “Can you tell me what happened?” They would need to take a formal statement, and maybe he shouldn’t be the one asking questions now, but Swinn wasn’t here and he didn’t want anyone trying to convince Osgood to change his story.
“Detective Swinn and Detective Reynolds took Ms. DeVine to Sproing to answer some questions,” Osgood said. “But not before Ms. DeVine made it real clear that we weren’t allowed to snoop around inside her house or car or the cabins. And some of them heard her say it.”
Snoop. An interesting word for a cop to use. What it said to him was the baby cop had felt uneasy about Swinn’s orders.
“There was a girl with Ms. DeVine, a girl with black hair,” Osgood continued. “I think she was one of them.”
“She’s one of the Crowgard.” He studied Osgood. “They’re called terra indigene or earth natives or Others. Talking about us and them is part of what caused the trouble and got a lot of people killed in the past year.”
“Yes, sir.” Osgood said nothing for a minute. “Once Detective Swinn left, Detective Calhoun told me to stay out front while he and Detective Chesnik took a look around back. I was checking out the wooden chair near the front door. Nice chair. I was thinking my grandma would like one like that when there was a . . . well, a scream from around back. Baker told me to stay put and ran around to the back of the house. The three of them returned in a minute. Calhoun and Baker had Chesnik between them. There was a necktie tied around Chesnik’s leg, and his pants leg was soaked with blood. They yelled something about him being attacked and needing to get him to a hospital. So they put Chesnik in the back seat and Calhoun started driving down the gravel road.”
“What was Chesnik doing when he was attacked?”
“I didn’t see anything. I was out front.”
Good guess that the next CIU team to come calling would find someone had tampered with a lock but didn’t manage to get in.
“I heard the car crash into something,” Osgood said. “I thought maybe Calhoun had been driving too fast on the gravel and hit a tree or something, and I started down the road to see if I could help. But Baker must have heard something in the trees over there because he headed away from the house and drew his service weapon, and I wasn’t sure if I should stay and help him or go and help Calhoun. And then . . . then . . .”
“What did you see?” Grimshaw asked when Osgood stopped talking. “Officer! What did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything!” A note of hysteria. “One moment Baker was running away from the house and had his weapon drawn and the next . . .” Osgood swallowed convulsively. “Something grabbed him and twisted him like it was squeezing water out of a wet rag.”
Osgood scrabbled at the door. Grimshaw released the locks in time for the young man to bolt out of the car and stagger a few steps before he bent over and puked.
Grimshaw’s mobile phone rang. Keeping an eye on Osgood, he answered. “Grimshaw.”
“The driver is still alive but has severe head and neck injuries,” Julian said. “I don’t think he’ll make it, but the EMTs are here. So is the Sproing volunteer fire department. They said someone called them and the EMTs and told them to get over to The Jumble. My guess is it was one of the Sanguinati who were at the bank. The volunteers and EMTs are working to get the driver out of the car so the ambulance can take him to Bristol Hospital.”
The driver. That would be Calhoun. “Long drive for a seriously injured man.”
“Nothing closer. One of Sproing’s doctors is also here. He’ll do what he can to help the EMTs stabilize the patient, but he says the man needs more help than he and his office can provide.”
“And the other detective?” When Julian didn’t answer, Grimshaw’s voice sharpened. “Julian?”
“Something shredded his legs.”
“Elders?”
“Not for me to say.”
Yeah. Especially out in the open where you didn’t know who, or what, was listening.
“What about you?” Julian asked. “You find the baby cop?”
“He’s puking his guts out at the moment, but doesn’t appear to be physically injured. The other man, Detective Baker . . .”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead. Spinal injury.”
He heard Julian suck in a breath.
“I’ll walk up and meet you.”
He wanted to tell Julian to stay put, but he realized if Julian Farrow felt all right about coming farther into The Jumble’s land, they weren’t at risk—until someone did something stupid.
CHAPTER 11
Vicki
Sunsday, Juin 13
I went to the sliding screen door that opened out on a multilevel deck that overlooked the lake. There was a variety of very nice—and very expensive since it was handcrafted—outdoor furniture that I wished I could afford for my screened-in porch. Then again, Aggie thought my secondhand stuff was pretty fancy, so I guess it was a case of “eye of the beholder.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t be there?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at Ilya Sanguinati. “Those sirens sounded like they were at The Jumble.”
The Jumble was my responsibility—at least until I lost control of it—so I should be aware of what was happening. On the other hand, if I wasn’t there, I couldn’t be blamed for whatever had happened. Right?
“I’m sure you shouldn’t be there,” he replied. “The police caused a problem, and they’ll have it fixed before I escort you home.”
He seemed real certain of that. I was almost as certain about something else.
“Someone died,” I said.
He looked up from the papers he had spread over a square coffee table that was bigger than my kitchen table. “Yes.”
“It wasn’t the young officer, was it?” In the thrillers I read, the young, less experienced officer was always the first one killed so the rest of the men would realize there was danger lurking nearby.
“No, it wasn’t the young one.”
“And Officer Grimshaw is all right?”
He studied me. “Is that important to you?”
There was nothing in Ilya Sanguinati’s voice to indicate anything but mild curiosity, but I had a feeling Grimshaw’s future depended on my answer.
“He was kind,” I replied. “And he’s a police officer you can depend on when you need help.” Unlike Detective Oil Slick, I added silently.
I had revised my opinion of Officer Grimshaw during our second encounter, when his presence had helped me deal with Detective Swinn and the discovery of the theft of the items in my safe-deposit box. When he came to The Jumble, I was plenty nervous about leading him to a dead body, but he might have been nervous too and sounded a bit testy because of it. After all, cops really didn’t like coming to Sproing because at least two of them had ended up inconveniently dead after responding to calls around here. At least, that’s what I remember from the carefully edited news reports that were on TV a while ago. And now, if I understood what Ilya meant about a problem the police had to fix before I went home, they had at least one more reason to avoid the village whenever possible.
I returned to one of the chairs around the coffee table, determined to understand the papers the dead man had carried with him, but I kept looking at the items neatly lined up near the table. A knapsack and a thermos; a silver pen and pencil set; a silver business card holder; and a money clip, sans money.