Page 155 of South of Nowhere

“You were a bit huffy earlier, Officer Starr.” Prescott now fixed her with a look.

“And I apologize. But we were under fire.”

“Understood. I suppose.”

The sheriff took over. “And regarding your takedown of Gabris,wecouldhave liaised.” His back was perfectly perpendicular to the floor.

She said, “Thought about everything and decided we needed to move fast. Only had minutes to act.”

Tolifson added, “It was with my okay.” The man was full-on police chief now. Two nine-millimeter magazines on his left hip, both loaded. Forest green uniform, Sam Browne belt and all the accessories one would need to arrest a vehicle full of uncooperatives.

Moore asked, “Whatwasthe big hurry?”

Starr said firmly, “We had a reasonable belief that the person behind the Hinowah levee collapse and the related murder of Gerard Redding was in possession of a burner phone he used to communicate with the deceased suspect, Waylon Foley.”

For a law enforcement newbie, Debi Starr had certainly mastered formal cop-speak.

She continued, as if testifying in court, “We kept Foley’s death out of the press, and so it was likely Gabris hadn’t yet disposed of the burner he used to communicate with Foley. We planned to call the last outgoing number on Foley’s phone; whoever answered was probably the boss who’d masterminded the plan. Mr. Shaw’s theory was that Gabris was the most likely candidate. We followed him to a restaurant, called the number, and it paid off. His phone rang.”

Barrett had only four items on his desk. A laptop. A pad of yellow paper. A mechanical pencil. And a mug of coffee printed with a slogan:World’s Greatest Dadon one side;World’s Greatest Sheriffon the other.

“You had other suspects?”

“GraphSet Chips and Olechu Springs.”

“Never liked anybody connected with them,” Barrett muttered. “Outsiders.Andexploiters.”

Starr looked at Moore. “To be honest, sir, we did have a few suspicions about you.”

“Me?”

“Mr. Shaw’s sister found somebody had been in your house recently. We wondered if there was a reason you might want it destroyed, after your wife’s passing. My sympathies, by the way.”

“Thank you,” he said dubiously. “You thought I might…have had something to do with her death.”

“Not really.”

Hardly a phrase to take the sting out of being offended by the tacit accusation.

“Who was in the house, do you know?”

“Josh, our teenage son. It’s the reason I haven’t sold the place. He can’t let go of his mother. Someday he’ll move on.” The supervisor gave a faint laugh. “And if I was a suspect, I’m surprised you didn’t wonder about my business—I wanted to destroy the records in my mortgage brokerage company because I’d been, I don’t know, laundering money or skimming clients’ funds.”

Starr said, “Oh, that was part of it too, sir.” A nod to Shaw.

He said, “But I had my private eye in Washington, D.C., do a deep dive into your business. It was legit.”

There was very little that the beautiful and stern Mack McKenzie could not find when she put her mind to it.

The supervisor’s laugh this time was of astonishment.

Now Barrett picked up the pencil and in precise handwriting recorded the details of the takedown, as Starr recited them. Finally he finished.

“All right, Officer Starr, and Mayor or Chief. And you…” He looked at Shaw briefly then continued, “How’d you end up with Gabris?”

It was Shaw who answered. “Officer Starr and I were looking at the map of where the river was in relation to the bottling plant, and we noticed something else. Railroad tracks. I had driven my dirt bike here to meet with Gabris yesterday. I rode over some tracks—you steer a bike differently when you cross rails, so I was aware ofthem. The only railroad around here—running straight to his development from Hinowah. On the map, I followed the line north. They were the same tracks I’d seen beside a pond at the foot of Copper Peak, filling up with the runoff from the levee spillway. There was a freight train stopped there. The tanker cars had an oil company logo on the side but—”

Barrett squinted as he took in the ingenuity of the idea. “The cars were empty, and the crews were pumping the waterintothem.”

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