Colton Baby Rescue. Marie Ferrarella
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Название: Colton Baby Rescue
Автор: Marie Ferrarella
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Вестерны
isbn: 9781474081955
isbn:
Carson headed over to his desk. Given the hour, the squad room was practically empty. “Will do,” he told the chief.
“Oh, and, Gage?” Finn called after him.
Carson turned around, expecting further orders. “Yeah, Chief?”
“I’m really sorry for your loss.”
The words were standard-issue, said over and over again in so many instances that they sounded numbingly routine, yet he felt that Finn really meant them.
“Yeah, me, too,” Carson answered stoically, then added, “Thanks.”
* * *
Carson had just finished making a preliminary list of all the women he could remember Bo having had any romantic encounters with over the last several years when J.D. Edwards, one of the crime scene investigators, came into the squad room. J.D. looked excited.
Temporarily forgetting about the list he’d just compiled, Carson crossed over to the man. J.D., in turn, had just cornered Finn.
“You’re going to want to hear this,” the investigator was saying to Finn.
The chief, seeing Carson, nodded at him, indicating that he join them. Carson was all ears.
“What have you got?” Finn asked.
“Lots,” J.D. answered. “First off, I found this under a wheel near where the body was found.” He held up a sealed plastic evidence bag. The bag contained a necklace with a gold heart charm.
Finn squinted as he looked at the necklace. “That looks familiar.”
“It should be,” the investigator said. “It belongs to—”
“Demi,” Carson said, recognizing the gold heart. “That’s her necklace.”
“And that’s not all,” J.D. informed them. The investigator paused for effect before announcing, “We’ve got a witness who says he saw Demi Colton running in the shadows around 6:45 p.m. near The Pour House.”
“Six forty-five,” Carson repeated. He looked at Finn. “I found Bo’s body at seven.”
J.D. looked rather smug as he said, “Exactly.”
“Who’s the witness?” Finn wanted to know.
“Paulie Gains,” J.D. answered.
Carson frowned. He would have preferred having someone a little more reliable. “Gains is a small-time drug dealer.”
“Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have seen her,” Finn pointed out. He looked at J.D. “How did he know it was Demi? It’s dark at that hour.”
J.D. laughed. “Not that many people around here have her color hair, Chief.”
Finn nodded. J.D. was right. “Okay, that puts her at the scene. Looks like we’ve got that evidence Demi kept going on about,” he told Carson, adding, “Time for that bounty hunter to do some heavy-duty explaining if she intends to walk out of here a second time. Let’s go wrestle up an arrest warrant.”
Carson didn’t have to be told twice. He led the way out the door.
It took a little time, but Carson and his boss finally found a judge who was willing to issue an arrest warrant at that time of night.
“Do me a favor, lose my number,” Judge David Winkler told Finn, closing his front door and going back to his poker game.
Tucking the warrant into his pocket, the chief turned toward Carson. “Let’s go. We’re not waiting until morning,” Finn told the detective as he got back into his vehicle.
Armed with the warrant, for the second time in less than five hours police detectives hurried back to Demi Colton’s small ranch house on the outskirts of town, this time to arrest her.
The house was dark when they arrived.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Carson murmured as he and Finn approached.
Carson knocked on the door. When there was no response, he knocked again, harder this time. Rather than knock a third time, he tried the doorknob. He was surprised to find that the door was unlocked.
Guns drawn, they entered and conducted a quick room-to-room search of the one-story dwelling. There was no one home.
“Damn it.” Finn fumed. “My gut told me to keep her in a holding cell and not let her just walk out of the police station like that.”
“Looks like some of her clothes are gone,” Carson called out to the chief, looking at a cluster of empty hangers in the bounty hunter’s bedroom closet.
“Yeah, well, so is she,” Finn answered from the kitchen. When Carson joined him, Finn held up the note he’d found on the kitchen table.
“What’s that, a confession?” Carson asked, coming around to look at the piece of notepaper.
“Just the opposite,” Finn told him in disgust. “It says ‘I’m innocent.’”
Carson said what he assumed they were both thinking. “Innocent people don’t run.”
The chief surprised him when Finn said, “They might if they think the deck is stacked against them.”
“Is that what you think? That she’s innocent?” Carson questioned, frowning. He supposed that there was a small outside chance that the chief might be right, but as far as he was concerned, he was going to need a lot of convincing.
“I think I want to talk to her again and find out just how her necklace wound up under the wheel of that car,” Finn answered.
In order to talk to the woman again they were going to have to find her. Carson blew out a long breath, thinking.
“Maybe her father knows where she is,” he said, speculating. “Won’t hurt to talk to him. Man might be able to tell us something.”
Although, from what Bo had told him about Demi’s contentious relationship with her father, Carson highly doubted that Rusty Colton would be able to give them any viable insight into his daughter’s whereabouts.
But, Carson speculated, the old man might know something he didn’t know he knew. They had nothing to lose by questioning Rusty Colton.
At least they would be no worse off than they were now, Carson reasoned as they drove over to The Pour House.
* * *
The bar’s door was closed when they got there, but the lights were still on. Carson banged on it with his fist until Rusty Colton came to unlock it. The tall, skinny man had his ever-present mug of beer in his hand as he opened the door.
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