Page 78 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“Yep,” Sawyer said, and Dakota shuddered.
“How do we find out who did it?” Blake asked.
Sawyer looked at him, impassive. “You got cameras on that area?”
“No.” Something Blake would remedy tomorrow.
“You’d do it from a boat,” Russell said. “At night, maybe.”
“Not at night,” Blake said. “You’d need lights to do it, and we have security patrols walking the property. They’d see lights. No. It’d be somebody in a fishing boat, a small one. Outboard motor, and you stop for a minute when nobody’s around and wedge that net in. A rowboat, even. A kayak. Could be anything. Sunday, early in the morning. Who’s going to see that?”
“We can ask,” Sawyer said. “We’ll be interviewing everybody on your security team.”
“You’ve got it,” Blake said. “Whatever you need.”
“More likely to get to it a different way, though,” Sawyer said. “Who’d want to mess with the resort, or with you? Obvious place to start is the no-resort pukes who put up a fight early on. The Earth Firsters who spike trees so the logger’s chainsaw skips and he cuts off his hand. They care more about trees than people. A pig is a dog is a boy, and killing a frog is murder. We’ll be talking to them.”
Blake scratched his cheek. This was a whole lot more cooperative than he’d expected Sawyer to be, but he needed to go easy. “Maybe. But I made a big donation, jumped through a lot of hoops to defuse that kind of protest. I donated that mountain, too, and I’m building that trail.”
Sawyer snorted. “Think that’s going to convince them? They’re fanatics. They don’t want a trail. They want wilderness. The only good land use isnoland use. Any other names for me?”
“I fired Jerry Richards as my head of security a few weeks back,” Blake said. “He didn’t take it well, and I hear he hasn’t found a job since, and that he blames me for it.”
Sawyer nodded. “I heard that. And, yeah, it didn’t look good for him. I heard not everybody on his team was happy about it, either.”
“Tough,” Blake said.
“Of course,” Sawyer said, “Jerry’s an ex-cop.”
Russell muttered, “Which means what,” which earned him a stare from Sawyer.
“And,” Blake said, tightening his hold on Dakota’s hand, “there’s your nephew Steve. I fired him, too, or the next best thing. I’ve had a couple run-ins with him since, and a lot more recently than Richards. Hostilities haven’t ebbed, let’s say.” Dakota’s hand jerked under his, but he didn’t look at her.
If Milo knew about Dakota and his nephew, he didn’t show it. “Like what?”
“Took his team off the job painting the resort,” Blake said. He’d bet Sawyer knew that. “I gave that job to Dakota and her partner.” He’d bet he knew that, too.
“Uh-huh.” Now, Milowaslooking at Dakota.
“A couple weeks ago, I questioned him about Russell’s accident last year,” Blake said. “That happened on my job, but he was the contractor. He didn’t like the question. And then, the other night—last night, I guess—he was nasty to Dakota at a party out at the Schaefers’, and I called him out on it. Him and his wife.”
“Nasty how? Called them out how?” Milo asked.
“They made personal comments. I made personal comments back.”
“Steve’s a good man,” Milo said, not sounding nearly as relaxed as he had been. “And last night? There’s no time in there for something like this. Somebody thought this out. Anyway, Steve? He’s always done well, kept his nose pretty clean. High school, quarterback of the football team. College, fraternity and all that. Business, too. He’s got a clean record, other than a traffic ticket or two when he was a kid. I’ve known him his whole life, obviously.”
“Uh-huh,” Blake said. “Football players can do some bad stuff. I should know.”
Milo shrugged. “He did the usual dumb things, sure. Some parties, some drinking, some wildcatting around like every young guy does, but nothing since then. He’s still with his high-school girlfriend, and that says something. I don’t see him setting a mantrap, no matter how pissed he was.”
Dakota’s hand was rigid under Blake’s now. He didn’t look at her. He said, “You asked who’d want to do it. Those two are at the top of my list. I’d appreciate it if you’d check them out.”
Dakota spoke at last, and now, Blake was the one who was tensing. But all she said was, “I think you should ask yourself something else, Blake. If somebody did this, what else might they have done? What might they do?”
“Obviously,” he said, “I’ll increase security and add cameras. I’ve already thought of that.”
“No,” she said. “I mean, those are good ideas, but what else could they have set up for when the resort opens? This might have looked accidental, especially after a couple more months. If somebody had been caught by that net, or been snagged by a hook, maybe gotten scratched—who knows how raggedy and accidental that net might have looked by then? If the point was to have accidents happen at your site, though, what else?”
