“It was personal to start with,” he said. “You knew the original victim.”
“Not that well,” she argued. Reuben Braswell had been low on her list of useful people. “But now Shawn has brought Reuben’s finger specifically to our house, wanting to make a point. What is that point?”
The three of them were silent.
“I don’t know,” Mason said slowly. “Dr. Trask told me a middle finger was missing, so maybe it’s a big fuck-you to us. But if I was Shawn, I’d be as far away from this town as possible.”
Ava agreed. Why was Shawn Braswell still in town?
23
The next morning Mason strode down the office hallway to the detectives’ area. He’d slept like crap. This frustrating case zigged every time he expected it to zag.
Someone was at my home.
Had he led danger to his own doorstep?
Last night he and Ava had lain awake for several hours, pretending to sleep. She’d finally drifted off, her breaths deepening and slowing. Mason had stayed awake for another hour, his thoughts wildly veering down every tangent in his case.
He set his hat on an extra chair near his desk. For the first time in days, he didn’t feel ill when he looked at Ray’s empty space. His partner was on the mend, and Jill hoped to have him out of the hospital by tomorrow. It gave Mason peace—a very small sliver of peace. He’d have more when he found the person who had pulled the trigger.
He logged in to his computer and looked up as Nora entered the big room. Last night they’d made plans to meet this morning to thoroughly review the case evidence. They needed to find Shawn Braswell’s current location.
“Good morning,” she said. Her eyes lacked their usual intensity, and she seemed pale.
Someone else didn’t sleep well.
“Morning.”
She sat heavily in Ray’s chair. Her own desk was on a different floor due to the crowded office conditions. “With all the turmoil yesterday, I forgot to tell you that Kaden Schroeder’s father never showed up at his home.”
Mason went still. “And when you called him?”
“Line disconnected.” Her gaze was flat.
“The same number I’d used with him yesterday?”
“Yep. I double- and triple-checked.”
A dozen possibilities engulfed him. “What . . .” He couldn’t sort his thoughts.
“I know. Believe me, I’ve been trying to figure out why he would vanish.” She rubbed her eyes. “Did Tony disconnect his line, or did something happen to him?”
“If something happened to him, a call would still go to voice mail,” said Mason.
“True. It’s most likely he purposefully did it.”
“Was he even in Bend?”
“Who knows? And I can’t find any record that shows Tony Schroeder has a brother.”
“Shit.” Mason turned to his computer. “Tony sounded genuinely crushed when I told him about Kaden’s death yesterday. Was it an act?”
“We don’t know that you actually spoke with his father,” Nora said dryly.
“What if someone also killed Kaden’s father?” murmured Mason as he tapped on his keyboard. “What if Kaden and his father were targeted?”
“Before or after your phone call?”
Mason grimaced in frustration. The questions were coming too fast.
“Just covering all the possibilities.”
“I know.” He focused on his screen, where he’d pulled up Tony Schroeder’s driver’s license. “Age forty-three, six-one, one-eighty-five. He has short, dark hair in this photo.”
Nora raised her brows. “Who else fits that description?”
“Shawn Braswell.” Mason stared at the photo, trying to mentally match the jawline to the only part of the man’s face visible in the church videos and the one from his home last night. Did we jump to the conclusion that Shawn Braswell was the man in those videos?
“Was Kaden misleading me about the Mustang?”
“Shawn Braswell owns a silver Mustang. There’s no doubt about that.”
“What does Tony Schroeder drive?”
“A six-year-old Ford F-350. Kaden’s Toyota pickup is in his father’s name too.”
“Put a—”
“I already put out a BOLO for the Ford.”
“And the phone number?”
“Burner phone.”
“Of course it was.” Gillian Wood’s voice rang in Mason’s head as he recalled her statement that Reuben Braswell had been a burner-phone fan. “Doesn’t anyone trust anymore?”
“Trust big companies with personal information? No.”
“You saw all these priors for Tony Schroeder?” Mason scanned his screen. Tony had been arrested a number of times for breaking into vehicles and homes. Two DUIs. An assault. Possession of a stolen weapon.
“I did,” said Nora. “They’re all in Central Oregon counties. He hasn’t been in trouble since he moved to this side of the Cascades. But that means we have prints on file for him.”
“Which we can compare to any prints found at the Braswell murder.”
“Tony and Reuben were neighbors. If Tony’s prints show up in Reuben’s home, it could mean nothing.”
“Depends where the prints are found.” Mason eyed Tony Schroeder’s possession-of-a-stolen-weapon charge. It was three years old. “Your thoughts on the weapons charge?”
“Said he bought it from a friend . . . who conveniently moved to Mexico.”
Of course. “On the phone Tony said he didn’t know anything about the weapons in Kaden’s room.”
Nora held up her hands and shrugged. “Who knows what he lied about on that call.”
“Or maybe he lied about nothing.”
“And someone else didn’t want him talking with us.”
“Did the medical examiner say when they’d get to Kaden?” Mason wanted all the answers. Now.
“Sometime this morning,” said Nora.
“We need to go back to the Schroeder home. I want to look it over again now that we know his father has vanished.”
“What started as only the murder of Reuben Braswell grows in scope every day.”
“Every hour, it feels like,” said Mason. “First the courthouse murders and then Kaden’s and now the question of what happened to his father.” He consulted his little notepad. “Did we hear if there were any large transactions in Kaden’s bank accounts?”
“No cash withdrawals of more than sixty dollars in the last six months.”
“The ATF robbery was only a couple months ago.” Mason tried to think of other ways Kaden could have purchased the weapons. “Maybe he traded something for them. He would have paid way more than sixty dollars for those five guns.”
“Maybe they weren’t his weapons,” Nora said quietly.
“Maybe they were Reuben’s . . . Maybe he stole them from Reuben . . . Could he have gone in the house after Reuben was killed and taken the weapons?”
“I don’t think the window between Reuben’s death and the arrival of the local police was long enough. There’s a good chance Gillian scared off the killer when she banged on the back door.”