Page 57 of A Deeper Darkness
No one charged out with a shotgun, so that was a plus.
The deputy had been clear that Mrs. Everett didn’t like to be surprised. Still, everything felt wrong. All three of them were seasoned professionals, though the deputy was young. They’d all seen their share of the surreal. So the fact that all three had the hair on the backs of their necks standing on end was something to pay attention to. Something was off, and Fletcher was pretty sure he knew what that was. He squared his shoulders, went up on the porch and knocked himself, three hard raps with his balled-up fist. “Police, Mrs. Everett. Open up.”
There was still no answer.
“Force it,” he said to the deputy.
“But…”
“No buts. We have a warrant. Get it open, Deputy.”
The young man just shrugged his shoulders and went to grab the battering ram from his trunk.
The Department of Defense had cooperated fully with the “official” inquiry into the deaths of Edward Donovan and Harold Croswell. They’d provided name, rank and socials, all they were required to by law, and very little else outside of the men’s discharge papers.
DOD had also cooperated with the “unofficial” inquiry made into the records of five soldiers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, Bravo Company, though the powers that be probably weren’t aware of that fact, and Fletcher hoped to God they never would be. He liked living as a free man.
Felicia’s lunch with her oldest friend, Joelle Comprant, had been fruitful to the extreme. Giddy with the knowledge she was going to be a fairy godmother, not once, but twice over, Joelle had been more than happy to dive into the personnel records—it was her job, after all. She’d broken just about every rule she’d promised to uphold by making printouts of all the records she could get her hands on, but Fletcher was a man of his word. He’d guaranteed Felicia that Joelle would never, ever be compromised, that he would resign without his pension before her name would ever leave his mouth in conjunction with this case.
He and Felicia had formed some sort of new bond, as well. On the plane down to Roanoke, when he told Hart that she’d actually offered to increase his visitation time with Tad, his partner had grinned.
“All she ever wanted was to be a part of your life, Fletch. You kept the job so separate from her that she felt unwelcome, and left out. By asking her for help, you thawed a long-frozen icicle. Learn from it.”
“Why didn’t you ever say that before?”
“I did. You just never wanted to hear it. Ginger and I were talking—”
“You told Ginger?”
“Dude. Unlike you, I plan to keep my wife around for a while. Of course I tell her. I tell her everything. That’s why she loves me. And puts up with my bullshit.”
Fletcher had just shaken his head, wondering what in the hell he was going to do with everyone in his life. Maybe he’d been too dumb and too blind to listen to them before, who knew. But he was determined not to fuck this up again. Tad was everything to him, and if he could get more time with the boy, he’d move heaven and earth to do it.
Just as soon as they figured out what the hell was going on with Edward Donovan and the men from Bravo Company he served with.
There were two people left alive from the picture in Donovan’s office. The illicit DOD records confirmed the obvious: the five men had served together in Afghanistan.
But the man they were here to see, William Everett, hadn’t gone gently into that good night upon his return home. A little extra digging showed he was on a watch list the Secret Service kept of possible threats to the executive branch. Mr. Everett didn’t like the fact that American lives were being lost in an unwinnable war, so he availed himself of his considerable skills as a writer to let the President know exactly what he thought about the current administration’s foreign policy agenda.
Homegrown terrorists, the folks at Homeland Security liked to call them. Ironic, really, that the government would turn on the very men and women they’d relied on to keep them safe. Still, Everett had been low on their totem pole of possible threats. He was just an angry soldier who liked to send letters.
Except that now he was a suspect in the murders of two of his fellow soldiers, on home soil. He became the subject of record by default—their other possible, Alexander Whitfield, was a ghost. He’d come back from the war, mustered out and literally dropped off the face of the earth. It was going to take considerably more time to dig up his whereabouts.
And so they’d caught a flight to Roanoke and driven northwest. The last known address for William Everett had led them directly to this little cabin, outside of the small, picturesque town of New Castle.
The deputy approached the rickety porch again, this time with the cylindrical metal ram in hand. The door didn’t look too stable, would probably only take a kick, but Fletcher wasn’t in the mood to pull splinters out of his shin should it collapse too easily. No, make the locals work for it.
He and Hart raised their weapons to cover the young deputy, who gave a halfhearted swing. The door withstood the force with only a minor shiver. Fletcher cleared his throat and the deputy rolled his eyes and gave it a good thrust. The door spun open, flashing back, and the great gusting scent of decomposition wafted out.
“Jesus,” the deputy said. He dropped the ram on the porch and covered his nose and mouth with his hand. A few flies bumbled out the door, escaping into the open air.
Fletcher caught Hart’s eye.
“No one smelled this when they came out last night?” Hart asked the deputy, the insinuation clear.
The deputy was still young enough to be intimidated by Hart’s steely glare, and the knowledge of what he was about to have to deal with. “I doubt anyone got close enough, to tell you the truth, sir. Like I said, old Mrs. Everett can be a might tetchy. And she’s got wicked aim. They probably called out to the house and, when no one answered, came on down the mountain.”
Hart muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “incompetent hillbillies” and Fletcher shot him a look, glad the kid hadn’t heard. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the one who’d screwed the pooch.
