Walt focused intently on the small log cabin in front of him.
One of twelve homes in a subdivision dating from the 1980s, it was log with forest green trim and asphalt shingles. Two mountain bikes sagged next to the front door, along with a pair of work boots and a dog bowl. The F-150 was parked in the driveway. Lisa’s house was one to the left, a charming home with wooden flowers painted primary colors in a line across the lawn. Strung between two of the flowers was a small sailcloth banner reading Alturas Day Care. When she wasn’t taking care of his kids, she was running the day care.
Walt didn’t see Lisa’s house. He barely saw the Fancelli place. Instead, as Brandon sat quietly in the seat beside him, his arm in a sling, Walt saw only the horror of what Lisa had witnessed; he heard the slapping of the bed frame against the wall as she had heard it; he felt sick, as she had felt.
“It’s not like he’s going to give us a hard time, you think?” Brandon ventured.
“We need him.”
“How’s that?”
“Our witness, Maggie Sharp, puts his truck there that night.”
“So this is or is not a take-down?”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“What the hell, Sheriff?”
“We need to work it.”
“And I’m here because…?”
“You love this stuff.”
“True.”
“And I have a warrant, a search warrant to execute. But for now we have to execute it without his knowing what’s going on. Keep him thinking it’s about bird feathers.”
“So plain sight for now.”
“Exactly.”
“Which is where I come in.”
“Now you’ve got it,” Walt said.
“And you sweet-talk him.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“And if it doesn’t get that far? If he bolts on us?”
“We can’t afford that,” Walt said. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why it’s you and me instead of anyone else. We can’t scare him. We can’t let him know the real reason we’re here, or the card we can play. It’s not an arrest. We’re lucky to have found him. You’re the only one I trust to understand how to play that. The other guys, knowing the crime, might allow that knowledge to get the best of them.”
“I understand.”
“So be cool in there.”
“Despite the fact this guy’s a bastard of the first order and I’d like nothing more than to make his arrest as uncomfortable as possible. Maybe dislocate a shoulder or two.”
Walt’s guys occasionally played the resisting arrest card, the same as in any other cop shop, took their frustrations with the system out on the suspect, made sure the arrest was as painful as possible, since the system tended to coddle suspects: jails with television and fresh food; an hour a day outside; gym equipment. A few of the suspects deserved the black hole and everyone knew it. Arresting deputies felt it their responsibility to punish the person right to the edge of what was tolerated, and sometimes a touch beyond.
“Not this time, Tommy.”
“Understood.”
“You’re the one guy I trust.”
“Got it.”
Brandon took the back side of the home, going around the far side, looking for windows without screens on his way to cover the back door. He stood at the corner with a view of a potential escape window, but within a few steps of the back door. He clicked his radio once.
Walt, waiting at the front door, heard the radio click and knocked and rang the bell within a second of each other. The Wood River Valley was not a place residents checked outside before opening their doors. A beautiful girl opened the door. She wore a loose shirt which obscured her figure.
“Your father here? Dominique Fancelli?”
Maybe it was Walt’s use of his formal name. She stood staring, clearly unable to speak. She nodded. “Stepfather,” she finally managed.
“Would you tell him the sheriff’s here, please? Sheriff Walt Fleming.”
“’Kay.” She filled her lungs. “D… a… d!!!” She then hesitated, swallowed, and added, “Sheriff ’s here to see you!”
Walt thought her face grew more ashen as the clomp of footfalls approached. More sullen. He understood the risks involved by his coming here. If there was any suggestion, any indication she had spoken to the police about her situation, it could mean a beating or even death. Walt’s mission was to get as much as he could from the man, and then to separate the two and make sure things remained that way. As Fancelli arrived at the other side of the screen door, Walt reached up and pushed the button on his radio mike twice. Brandon now knew Walt had made contact. Even so, his deputy would not leave his post until and unless a second signal was sent.
“Dominique Fancelli?”
“Yeah?”
Walt did not need to introduce himself. “I have a few questions concerning your Ford F-one-fifty.”
Dionne’s face relaxed considerably. The furrow left Dominique’s brow. “Is that right?”
“You mind if I come in?”
Fancelli pushed open the screen door, but he stepped outside instead of allowing Walt in. Walt thought the move shrewd and an important indicator of who he was dealing with.
“Shut the door,” Fancelli told his daughter.
The girl did so, but her expression, behind her stepfather’s back, was one of intense curiosity and no small degree of fear.
Walt elected to play his Brandon card. He clicked his handset three times, and Brandon rounded the far corner of the house and approached them. Brandon slowed at each window, looking inside. Even wearing the sling, Brandon’s size and demeanor were intimidating. He was a person you paid attention to, kept one eye on, in any given situation. The big dog, poised in the corner, his eyes taking in everyone in the room. He approached the front of the F-150 slowly and, when he had Walt’s attention, nodded slightly. That motion affirmed he’d seen evidence of the bird strike and filled Walt with additional confidence.
Fancelli was appropriately distracted. “What’s up, Sheriff?”
“Deputy Tommy Brandon,” Walt said, introducing the two.
Tommy nodded at the man, but kept six feet away. If a stare could burn, Walt thought.
“What’s going on?” Fancelli greeted Brandon.
Brandon said nothing in return.
“Mr. Fancelli-”
“Don.”
“We’re occasionally put in the position of seeking a statement from a civilian, a citizen, on a voluntary basis. We’re not asking that you get involved, but to be forthright, it’s not out of the question that at some future date you might be deposed or even asked to give testimony at a trial. If you were opposed to that, we would do everything in our power to protect you and prevent that from happening.”
The effect was as he’d hoped. First, he’d distracted the suspect into believing their arrival at his front door had nothing to do with his own actions; second, they’d instilled in him a sense of their dependence on him, lending him a false self-confidence.
“What’s this about?”
“We believe your Ford F-one-fifty may have swerved off the highway on the night of the twelfth, or early morning of the thirteenth.”
Fancelli managed a convincing deadpan, though his eyes darted nervously between Walt and Brandon. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said.
Walt concealed his calming exhale, having worried he might have to fight the man on this part of the story. “We had a witness,” he said, just to place one nail firmly in place.
“Is that so?”
“ID’d your truck,” Brandon said in his deep baritone.
“A fox was into some roadkill. Swerved to miss it and lost control.”
“It happens,” Walt said, secretly impressed the man could seem so nonchalant. He was learning more about Fancelli than Fancelli would have wanted him to know. This was the testing phase: the chance to probe the suspect in an effort to decode him. Find the right code and you could unlock all the walls erected in front of the truth.
“So you were driving,” Walt said, continuing. “You were behind the wheel?”
“It’s my truck.”
“You came to a stop and you left the vehicle,” Walt said, watching as that piece of information caught Fancelli off guard. “Now, most guys I know would move to the front of the vehicle to see if there was any damage done.”
“I didn’t hit anything,” Fancelli volunteered. “I said there was a fox in the road and that I swerved to avoid him.”
“Yes, you did,” Walt said. “My point was that most guys would get out of the vehicle to check for damage. I mean, why get out at all? Why not just drive back to the highway?”
“I still don’t get what this is about.”
“Did you leave the vehicle running?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Your headlights. It has to do with your headlights.”
“My headlights are fine. Both headlights are working.”
“That model, F-one-fifty, even if the engine’s turned off, the headlights remain illuminated for sixty seconds. It’s a safety feature to let you reach your door.”
“What’s with the headlights, Sheriff?”
“You got out of the vehicle and walked back behind it.”
“This,” said Brandon, “according to our witness.”
“Yeah? So what? Scared the shit out of me, running off the road like that. I had to take a leak. You think I was going to take a leak in the headlights? So I got away from the truck. Big deal.”
“Makes sense to me,” Walt said to Brandon, who nodded. “It’s of no never mind to us.”
“Could have fooled me,” Fancelli said.
“The point being you were behind the truck-”
“And the headlights were on,” Brandon said, chiming in.
“Yeah? So?”
“So,” Walt said, “you approach the truck from the rear as you return to the cab. Can you see that?”
“I suppose.”
“We’re interested in what you saw as you returned to your truck.”
“You lost me.”
“If you saw anything, anyone, in the general vicinity of your truck as you returned to the cab.”
“Such as?”
“Anything at all unusual?”
“Not that I recall.”
“We need you to think about this. Need you to tell us anything you might have seen that might have struck you as out of the ordinary.”
“I didn’t see anything. I took a leak, got back in the truck, and drove back to the road.”
Walt kept his shoulders from slumping with disappointment. He retained his impassive, slightly bored expression-a public servant doing his job.
“Are you a bow hunter, Mr. Fancelli?”
“What of it?”
“Would you have applied for bear tags for the past three years?”
“No law against that, is there?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Walt said.
“Okay then.”
“Did you take the Ford into Wood River Glass for a windshield replacement on the afternoon of the thirteenth?”
Fancelli’s veneer cracked. His brow tightened, his eyes narrowed, and he dismissed Brandon as if he wasn’t there. His full attention was now fixed on Walt. He’d identified the enemy and he tracked it with a hunter’s eye.
“What’s going on here?”
“Do you remember what you told the mechanic? The worker at Wood River Glass? What you told him had caused the damage to your windshield?”
“I ate a rock.”
“Are you aware that shops like Wood River Glass take pictures of damage for insurance purposes?”
“No.”
“Some do,” Walt said. “The ones that want to get paid.”
“So?”
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘Why do it the hard way when there’s an easy way’?”
“What’s your point, Sheriff? I gotta get back inside.”
“You sure it was a fox, Mr. Fancelli?”
“Maybe I’m mixing it up with another time I was run off the road. I think that’s right. Did I say fox? It was a bird. A bird hit my windshield.”
“What kind of bird?”
“How would I know?”
“Maybe it landed somewhere behind your truck?”
“Maybe you saw it,” Brandon said, “when you were taking that piss.”
“There was a dead hawk there,” Fancelli said. “You think it was the same bird? What does any of this matter anyway?”
“We’d like to see your arrows, Don,” Walt said. “You hand-make them, don’t you?”
“How the-? What do you care about my arrows? Someone shoot someone or something? It wasn’t me.”
Walt withdrew the search warrant and handed it to Fancelli. “We have a warrant to search the premises.” He nodded to Brandon, who pushed past Fancelli and entered the home.
Walt caught a glimpse of Dionne. She’d been standing right by the door, listening to everything said.
“There was a body!” Fancelli blurted out.
Walt tensed. “Excuse me?”
“There was a body in the bushes. A guy. Big son of a bitch.”
Brandon stopped and turned, now inside the house.
“Where are we talking about?” Walt asked.
“In front of my pickup. That night.”
“You saw a body?”
“I did.”
“And did you call it in?”
“I didn’t. No.”
“Because?”
He looked confused. “We could cut a little deal, right?” Fancelli proposed. “I saw the body. I’ve got what you want, so maybe you cut me some slack.”
“Regarding?”
“You know damn well.”
“I need to hear it from you.”
“The feathers. I took some hawk feathers. Okay? Thing was dead. It’s a stupid law anyway, you ask me. I took a couple flight feathers. Your warrant. That’s what you’re looking for, right? My arrows. You won’t find them in there. I’ve got a workshop in the garage. My gear’s in the garage. I tell you about the body, you cut me some slack on the feathers. Deal?”
“We’d have to see the feathers first,” Walt said.
“Sure, no problem.”
Fancelli led Walt and Tommy Brandon to the small garage in back, and inside to a corner workbench where an array of material was collected. The air was stale. Some moths worked frantically against the glass, trying to escape.
“So let me get this straight,” Walt said, inspecting a piece of one of the hawk feathers not yet used, “you didn’t call in the body because you’d taken the hawk’s feathers and didn’t want to get involved.”
“Listen, I thought about calling it in to nine-one-one or something. But you guys trace all those calls, right? Am I right? I just didn’t want to be involved.”
“The hawk feathers were more important to you than the dead man.” Walt made it a statement.
“I know that sounds stupid.”
Walt waited for Brandon to be in position behind Fancelli with his one good hand.
“Dominique Fancelli,” Walt said formally. “You’re under arrest for violation of the Fish and Wildlife Act.”
Before Fancelli could think, Brandon had a strong hold of one arm. He turned the man effortlessly toward Walt, who cuffed him.
“What the hell is going on here? I thought we had a deal!”
Walt spoke over the noise. “Call in the team. I want them to take this house apart, nail by nail.”
Fancelli suddenly looked terrified.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“My job,” Walt said, catching sight through the garage door’s rain-gray windows of the forlorn face of Dionne Fancelli, who looked as if she wanted to disappear.