Page 65 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
Our target finally slips through the forest. We’re far enough away to hear them coming and hunker down. They stay just inside the trees and then make straight for the hatch. We let them go in. We let them come back out again and leave. Then we ease toward the hatch, and I stand watch while Dalton goes inside, because I’ve had quite enough of crawling in the cold dirt for one day.
Dalton comes out. “Nothing.”
“That’s what I figured. He has what he wanted. No need to make any more demands.”
“Bring him in.”
* * *
In a proper crime drama, our suspect would be a surprise to everyone. He’d be that person glimpsed at the beginning of the show, maybe given a line or two, quickly dismissed … until all the pieces fall in place and he is revealed as the killer.
It can work like that in real life. But more commonly it’s like it is today, where the person in our interrogation chair is exactly who we expected to be there.
Louie sits in front of the desk. I’m behind it. Dalton leans against the fireplace mantel with his arms crossed. He’s just far enough out of Louie’s line of vision to make our suspect nervous.
“Whatever you think I did,” Louie begins, “I couldn’t have done it because I’ve been in custody for two days.”
“House arrest,” I say. “Which ended an hour ago, whereupon you were seen crawling under a storage building.”
He shrugs. “I was thirsty, okay? I wanted a beer, and someone said the bartender hides the beer there. They lied. It’s empty.”
“Not completely empty.” I take out the note I found in his pocket. “You took this.”
He shrugs. “I was curious. Weird to find a note under there.”
“Speaking of notes…” I lay the two other ones in front of him. “Look familiar?”
He doesn’t even glance at them. “Nope.”
“Huh. That’s strange, because while you were sitting here, I conducted another search of your room, specifically looking for this paper and a pen. I found them.”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s standard-issue paper and a standard-issue pen.”
“Maybe, but have you ever seen that trick where you write a note and the impression goes through onto the next page? No, I don’t suppose you have … or you wouldn’t have made that mistake.”
I’m bluffing. Yes, I’d found the pad of paper, but all I could pick up were a few scratched impressions. Still, that was enough to tell me he’d written a note on the pad, and his blanch tells me it was that note.
He shakes it off. “I was in custody, remember?”
“Both notes would have been planted before that. You kidnapped Max and then reached out to Dana with your demand.”
“What? There’s no demand…” He trails off on realizing he’s saying too much, but then, with a roll of his shoulders, he seems to decide there’s no point denying it. “There’s no demand, and I never said I had her kid.”
I push forward the second note. “Read the first line.”
His mouth sets. “It was a bluff, okay? I might have suggested I had him, but what I really meant was that you guys won’t be able to find him until she tells the truth. You need all the information. I told you there was more to her story. Why would I get involved if I’d taken the kid?”
“Begging for scraps.”
His face screws up. “What?”
“You were sniffing around for scraps. Trying to find out what we knew about her case. You claim it’s a cartel and we say ‘Ha! You’re wrong. It’s the Mafia’ or some such thing. That’s also why you were following us.”
“Following you where?”
“In the forest. First after Max saw a bear, and then after he went missing. You were trying to overhear what we knew. Was the bear something you could use? What exactly did Max see? We said enough for you to impersonate a bear-man and lure Max out—”
“What? No. I was out there looking for the bear.”
