Chapter 16

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Callum Webb had been the sheriff in Oak Creek for as long as Colton could remember. He'd worked with Ian DeRose and Zodiac Tactical—stories Colton had heard all his life—before moving here.

He'd had a wife at some point, but she had died. Colton had been a self-involved adolescent at the time, so he couldn't remember much in terms of details, but he thought it was cancer.

The man had always been grumpy Sheriff Webb to Colton. The one he and his friends had to keep an eye out for when they were planning stuff as teens they knew would get them into trouble. Hell, Callum had been the one who had delivered Colton and Bear back to their parents when they'd gotten caught underage drinking.

All half dozen times.

In Colton's mind, Callum had rarely been more than a one-dimensional law enforcement figure. Someone set in place to keep all others from having any fun.

But looking at him now as they studied this new letter from the stalker, Colton realized Callum wasn't one-dimensional at all. That vision of him had been Colton keeping the older man trapped in the past—filtering him through a child's eyes.

Hell, Callum wasn't even that much older than Colton. He'd always assumed that Callum was his parents' age, but really, the man split the difference in the Oak Creek generations. There was no way he was any older than his midforties.

"So, this is the first time there has ever been a knife. That means something, right?" Rick asked, pacing back and forth excitedly. The younger man might have been hesitant to bring in law enforcement before, but now that the sheriff was here, Rick had all sorts of stuff to say. He pretty much hadn't stopped talking since Callum had arrived.

"Like a… What is it called…?" Rick continued. "You know, when things are getting worse and worse."

"Escalation," Callum muttered without looking at Rick.

Rick snapped three times and then pointed his fingers at Callum. "Yes, exactly! The stalker is obviously escalating. I have a lot of theories. Maybe it's someone who knows Colton. Right? An ex-girlfriend or something. That would make sense. Or?—"

Callum stepped back from his study of the note that was pinned to the door with the knife.

"Nick—"

"Rick," the other man corrected, "but it's cool, man."

Callum gave a tight nod. "Rick. Look, you've obviously given this a good deal of thought."

Rick nodded, fairly buzzing with excitement. "Yeah, I have. I really have."

Callum slapped him on the shoulder. "I need someone like you, someone who has really thought through this situation, to be a sort of unofficial deputy for me. Do you think you're up for that?"

Rick's eyes got wide. "Yes. Yes, sir. I definitely am."

"That's good to hear. I'm wondering, since you're so close with this case, if you'd be willing to walk around the property and look for anything out of place. The stalker had to get here somehow and maybe left a clue that could help us. Would you be willing to scour the area and look for anything you think might be of any importance? "

Rick took a step back, still nodding. "Absolutely. You can count on me. Do you, like, need to swear me in or anything?"

Callum shook his head. "I don't think that's necessary for this. And I don't want to waste time. Time is of the essence, right?"

"Yes, sir. Yes, it is. I'm going to start right now."

Rick bounded off the porch.

"Be thorough and methodical," Callum called out. "Start very far back and work your way slowly closer."

"Yes, sir!" Rick didn't slow down as he said it, running around the back of the house.

Callum crossed his arms over his chest once Rick was out of earshot. "Okay, now we can try to figure out what's going on here."

Colton chuckled. "You got rid of him on purpose."

Callum shrugged. "That kid has way too much energy, and I need to think."

"Why didn't you just tell him to get lost?" Tony asked.

"Kill two birds with one stone. Maybe he'll actually find something useful. You never know."

The older man was astute, Colton had to give him that.

"Is that what you were doing that time Mrs. Boyd's dog got lost, and we all wanted to help you find it?" Colton could remember Callum lining them up and assigning them all sections of town to search.

"Did we find the dog?"

"Yeah."

Callum grinned and looked years younger. "Then I stand by my methods."

They all turned back to the embedded note on the door, much more serious.

"I don't want to make a big deal out of this, Sheriff," Colton said. "Not right now, not while the camp is going on. Those kids are what is important."

"Understood. This has nothing to do with them, and the Linear Tactical property is expansive enough that there shouldn't be an issue. "

"Rick was right about one thing he said." Tony pulled his ever-present digital notebook up so Callum could see it. "There have been multiple letters, and this really does seem like an escalation."

Callum took a moment to look through the copies of the letters on the tablet. Then he turned his attention back to the note.

"First of all, just because the letters are about love and they are drenched in perfume does not mean this is a woman. It could be a man covering his tracks."

Colton nodded. "That makes sense."

"But it could be a woman, right?" Tony asked.

"Yes, and honestly, it probably is. But I just wanted to make sure we noted that that might be an error. But for now, we'll refer to the perp as a she."

Colton looked over at Tony, who shrugged and nodded.

"Okay," Colton said. "She, unless proven otherwise."

Callum crouched down to a small bag near his feet, pulled out a camera, and began taking pictures of the note and the knife.

"Shouldn't you have a crime scene team or something?" Tony asked.

"This is a small town. I am the crime scene team. We have one for TetonCounty, but I don't know that this merits a call out to them."

Callum finished taking his pictures, then put on a pair of gloves and pulled the knife out of the wood of the door.

"It wasn't in very deeply, so that's another sign that it may be a woman." Callum marked the hole the knife had made with a Sharpie marker. "But a tall one."

"How can you tell?" Colton asked.

"Think about where you would put a message up. Knife or not, you would put it up in what would be your direct line of sight. This letter is a little high, so we can pretty much eliminate shorter women as suspects."

"How do you know she didn't just reach up and stab the paper?" Tony asked .

"Because of the angle of the knife—pointing down. If she were reaching, it would've been pointing up."

"That's pretty damned impressive detective work," Tony said.

Callum kept working. "I wasn't always a small-town cop. So, I do know a thing or two."

"The fact that you knew how to handle Rick is impressive enough for me." Colton looked out and saw that the younger man was walking slowly and methodically, looking for clues.

Callum chuckled.

"That knife looks pretty small, right? Like something a woman would use," Tony said, studying the knife Callum was holding in his gloved hands. "As much as a knife could be masculine or feminine."

"I agree," Colton said. "It's definitely not something that screams manly."

Callum nodded. Then he placed the knife in an evidence bag. "We'll check it for prints, of course. Although, if the stalker is dumb enough to leave their prints on something like this, then you probably don't have anything to worry about to begin with. Can you show me those other letters again?"

Tony got out his tablet and showed Callum the rest of the notes that had been found over the past two months. The sheriff studied them carefully, asking questions about where each one was found and the circumstances surrounding them. When he reached the last one, he leaned back against the porch railing and scrubbed a hand down his face.

"I'm afraid your excitable friend is right. This is an escalation."

"Because of the knife being stabbed through a picture of me?" It definitely had gotten Colton's attention. The letters had been a sort of flattering annoyance up to this point.

"Yeah, a knife is never good, but honestly, there's something about this picture that is suggesting the escalation more than just the knife."

"What about it?" Tony asked. "She sent a couple of other pictures with the letters. You saw those, right? "

"Yeah." Callum held up the photo from today from inside a clear evidence bag. "But those other pictures were different."

"How so?" Colton thought of all three images. "They're all of me. All relatively recent."

"I know. As a matter of fact, objectively, you look better in the other two photos than you do in the one for today."

Colton couldn't help but laugh. "Thanks."

Callum gave a wry smile. "I just mean that those other two photos are you at your most picture-worthy best. You look like the superstar you are known for being."

"It's not like he looks bad in today's picture," Tony said.

Callum shook his head. "No, not at all. I'm sure you probably can't take a bad picture of anyone in the Harrison family. But in this picture, Colton's focus is different. Do you happen to know when this was taken?"

Colton took the evidence bag Callum was holding out and studied it with Tony. "You're wearing a collared shirt. That doesn't happen too often."

Callum was right. The picture was not typical of the ones taken of Colton. "This was at the wedding. The one the night before the accident."

Tony shook his head. "I don't think so. You were wearing a suit. In this shot, it's just a button-down shirt."

"I took off my jacket. Toward the end of the night."

All the pieces fell into place. Colton knew exactly when this picture had been taken, and he knew exactly why he had the slightly predatory look on his face that he did.

He'd been looking at Ella. Getting ready to make his move. He'd known what he wanted, and he'd been about to go after it.

But none of this was something he wanted to share with the other two men. It felt like it would be a betrayal of Ella's trust and their night together.

He had no idea how the stalker had gotten this photo, but he understood now what Callum was talking about .

"In this picture, I'm looking at something real and important to me. In the other two pictures, I was just putting on a show."

He looked up from the picture to find Callum watching him, nodding.

"I agree, and I think your stalker friend saw that too." Callum held up the other bag with the knife. "And she definitely didn't like it."