Page 74 of Manner of Death
That Nan felt guilty was clear from the way she’d been treating him in the days since that disastrous interview—bringing good coffee in the mornings, asking about how he slept, whether or not he’d heard from Bashir. Which he hadn’t. That, coupled with no new bodies to derive clues from, had meant that Sawyer was obsessing over the cases they had to the point of forgetting to eat or sleep.
He needed to fix this. He needed to find the killer, to prove it was them beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that would be how he showed Bashir he was sorry for…well, not for telling the truth, because it looked like Tami was in a shit-ton of trouble whether she was a murderer or not, but for disrupting his life like he had.
Sawyer was going to fix it. He would find the truth, he’d catch the killer, and he’d explain everything to Bashir and then maybe…just maybe, Bashir would take him back.
Nobody’s going to take you back looking the way you do.
Sawyer sighed. His internal nagging voice used to sound like his sister; now it sounded like Nan. You look like a raccoon who went on a trash bender, the voice went on. Clean up your desk, go home, and get some actual sleep instead of driving around after potential suspects. Are you insane? Because that’s what insane people do.
Ha, no. That was what smart people did, and Sawyer was fucking smart, because it had already paid off.
He’d narrowed the field of suspects down from a pool of twenty to just four. Tami was still on the list, because she had to be, but there was so much that didn’t resonate there. Sawyer was almost certain that, while Tami was involved, she wasn’t the one doing the actual killing, if for no other reason than the sheer physical labor required would have been beyond her. Tami was a petite woman, and the largest of the victims had more than six inches and a hundred pounds on her. She could never have dragged Kurt up that trail, that was for certain.
Carlos Huerta was another suspect. He was smart enough to plan murders like this, Sawyer was certain of it, and he had the strength to do the physical labor involved. But Carlos, Sawyer had discovered over the couple of evenings he’d spent shadowing the guy, was a man of very strict routines. He did his job whenever it was required of him, including the emergency calls, but the rest of the time he spent in his favorite coffee shop or at home, playing on his computer. Coffee shop, home, home, coffee shop. He basically went back and forth between those two places, stopping occasionally for groceries or gas. That was it.
That didn’t make it impossible that Carlos was behind the killings, of course, but it did make it less likely. Sawyer couldn’t write him off, but his personal habits combined with footage from a YouTube channel that a friend of his posted of them doing an in-game raid together during one of the murders bumped him down to a second-tier suspect. That left two real potential masterminds.
Bashir and Boyce.
Of course, the very thought that Bashir was behind any of this was ludicrous. Apart from Sawyer being able to alibi him out for at least one murder, he just didn’t have the mind for it. He was incredibly smart, yes, but there wasn’t a sadistic bone in his body. This was a physician who worked with the dead because he had too much empathy for the living. Bashir was kind, understanding, charming, clever…he was great at his job, too. He was the whole reason they’d figured out these were murders in the beginning, in all honesty. Without his suspicions about the chainsaw “accident,” Sawyer and Kurt might not have looked for more evidence to support the murder theory. So, no, there was no way he was the killer, despite the intricacy of the kills, Bashir’s easy proximity to the bodies, and Tami’s obsession with him.
Which left Doctor Boyce, and quite honestly, he was the one Sawyer would have picked from the outset if he’d been left with nothing but these personnel files and none of the actual evidence.
The man had the bedside manner of a sociopath and the interpersonal acumen of a sea urchin. He was prickly, unpleasant, and entitled. He wasn’t well-liked at work, and he didn’t seem to have much of a personal life outside regular trips to the country club. He was a social climber without the ability to be, well, social. But he was smart enough to become a pathologist. He was tall. Fairly fit, too. He could be the one behind it all…but Sawyer had zero evidence of that.
So go find some evidence.
Sawyer hid his yawn behind his hand as he stood up. He stared at the files spread out across his desk. He ought to put them away, but he was so fucking tired already…he stacked them into a pile and tucked them into a drawer instead. It was eight o’clock on a Friday; Boyce was probably at the country club by now. They had theme nights every Friday at the bar, which he seemed to attend religiously if the valet Sawyer had discreetly spoken to was any indicator. Sawyer would go and verify that Boyce’s car was there, stay in the shadows long enough to watch him leave, and then follow at a safe distance to check into what he did next. If Sawyer was lucky, Boyce would go and attempt to commit a heinous crime that Sawyer could catch him in the middle of.
Now who’s the sociopath?
Sawyer sighed and poured himself a final cup of coffee from the office percolator before turning off the machine and heading out. His heart didn’t need this much caffeine, but his brain wasn’t going to last the next few hours without it. He sipped it desultorily as he walked out to his car.
His phone pinged. Sawyer checked it eagerly, but—not Bashir. It was Jessica instead. She was either trying to bury the hatchet or bury it in Sawyer’s back, but either way he didn’t want to talk to her right now. Honestly, the only person he wanted to talk to was Bashir, but he’d already texted the man twice with zero effect. He wasn’t going to persist and make him uncomfortable, especially when he had no new information to offer him. Speaking of…
Sawyer sighed but reluctantly sent a message to Nan letting her know his plan for the evening. He sent a quick text to Molly, too; she was trying to schedule a funeral for Kurt, but thanks to the open nature of the case, his body hadn’t been released yet. She’d asked him earlier for an update on when she might be able to lay her husband to rest before she passed away herself, and Sawyer promised her he’d look into it asap.
Huh…it might be a good enough reason to go see Bashir in person. Surely he wouldn’t turn him out of the morgue for checking on the body of his dead partner.
Wow, using Kurt as an excuse to get close to your crush. You’re a terrible person.
Sawyer sighed and turned on the engine, then turned the music way up to drown out the recriminations flooding through his brain. It was like a script he’d memorized but couldn’t let go of once the project was over.
You could have fixed it. You should have fixed it. You should have done better, been better—a better partner to Kurt, a better potential boyfriend to Bashir. Now you’re driving off, alone, to legally stalk one of the worst people you know in the middle of the night, and if it feels like just the right level of Hell for you, it’s because it probably is.
Sawyer turned up The Beastie Boys and sang along with no care for his awful pitch until he got close to the country club. There was a gate, but it was open, so he drove right through and made a few circuits of the parking lot until he spotted Boyce’s bright red Porsche 911. A two-hundred-thousand-dollar car, it stood out even in the midst of all the other expensive rides. At least it verified that the guy was here.
Sawyer parked at the far side of the lot where he could keep an eye on the car without being too conspicuous and settled in to wait. Thirty minutes passed, and he ran out of coffee. An hour passed, and he was yawning again, eyes watering as he struggled to stay awake. Five days of evening stakeouts and early mornings meant about four hours of sleep each night, and it was catching up with him now.
If this was a television show, this is the moment when you’d get killed. Guard down, tired, sitting alone in the dark… Someone would have snuck into the back of your car, and they’d reach around the headrest with a garrote or a knife and cut your throat.
Sawyer watched the scene play out in his mind’s eye. Mm, no, not a garrote, his headrest was too big to get around easily. A knife…or maybe shot through the back of the seat with a suppressed pistol. He pictured himself jerking with the force of the bullet, slumping down over his bloody steering wheel as he quietly gasped his last breaths with no one to appreciate them except his killer.
Ugh, he was going to freak himself out if he kept this up. Reluctantly, Sawyer checked the message from Jessica.
Chloe was fired from set today. I hope you’re happy.
Shit. Sawyer pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead as hard as he could. Of course he wasn’t happy that his niece had been kicked off one of her shows; he knew how tough it was to stay relevant in Hollywood. He also knew that giving his sister classified information so she could produce a show about active fucking cases was a bad idea.