Page 83 of Manner of Death
“Tell the firefighters to be careful,” Sawyer said. “I’ll be in soon.”
“No, you’re absolutely not coming in. I’ll update you as soon as I have something to tell you. Got it? Stay where you are.” She ended the call, and Sawyer turned his head to look at Bashir, who was awake and clearly apprehensive.
“What was that about?”
“I think someone tried to kill me. Again.”
Chapter 23
In retrospect, maybe lying to Sawyer hadn’t been such a good idea.
Bashir and Nan—they were on a first-name basis now—had convened outside Sawyer’s room on day one and agreed that they needed to keep as much as possible out of his sight. Everything was need-to-know, they decided, and a battered, hospitalized cop didn’t need to know a damn thing. The less he knew, the less he’d try to claw his way back to work when he needed to be resting and recovering. And he was on just enough painkillers that he readily accepted the stories they fed him, especially while that infection had been kicking his ass.
So Sawyer believed that Tami was effectively on house arrest—that she’d agreed to stay in town and was being heavily surveilled—because that raised fewer questions than telling him she’d been booked and denied bail. She was currently sitting in the county jail, having been charged with accessory to murder and obstruction of justice.
Withholding those details meant not having to explain the reason she’d been charged with accessory and obstruction rather than murder, which further meant not having to explain that she’d saved her own ass by pointing the finger at… Bashir.
He was the one who’d blackmailed her. He was the one who’d put her up to ordering and receiving the snake venom. He was the one who’d tasked her with stashing bodies and weapons and victims’ cars.
Her story sounded incredibly convincing even to his ears, but she couldn’t back it up with anything concrete. At the moment, her statement was the only thing connecting Bashir to any of the murders, and the D.A. had made it abundantly clear that he was not to leave town while the investigation was underway. He’d had to surrender his passport, and every Consulate General of Canada in the U.S. had been notified that he was a person of interest in a string of murders, just in case he tried to use those channels to get his home country.
And Sawyer was doped up and concussed enough that he didn’t question how Bashir was able to take vacation time right in the middle of all this chaos. That saved Bashir from explaining that he was suspended from his duties as Medical Examiner until the investigation was complete, that all of his autopsies in this case were now under severe scrutiny, and that his license was on the line.
Bashir didn’t feel too bad about keeping all of that off Sawyer’s radar. The sleight of hand was deceptive and dishonest, but it kept Sawyer from wasting energy stressing about the situation when he needed to focus on healing. And he couldn’t lie—it bruised the shit out of his ego to be under this microscope. He wasn’t even sure what rankled more: the part where they thought he was a murderer, or the part where they were questioning his work ethic. Let Sawyer in on that if he didn’t absolutely have to? Fuck that. Fuck this entire shitshow.
So, no, he generally felt okay about feeding Sawyer some heavily modified versions of what was going on.
The one place where he worried now that he’d misjudged the play, though, was when it came to Boyce.
Believing Boyce was on vacation had allowed Sawyer to sleep last night. Okay, so had the hefty dose of Percocet, but believing the man who’d likely tried to kill him was out of state probably helped, too. If nothing else, it would keep the nightmares at bay; painkillers caused vivid dreams under the best of circumstances, and believing there was a murderer lurking just outside could only make that worse.
“Sawyer.” Bashir sat down at his kitchen table and pushed one of two cups of coffee toward him. “There’s… I need to level with you about something.”
Sawyer wrapped his good hand around the mug but didn’t drink. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not, but you didn’t become a cop to only hear things you wanted to hear.”
His lips quirked. “I can’t argue with that.” He brought up the coffee for a cautious sip. “Go on.”
Bashir drummed his nails beside his own untouched coffee. “I already texted Nan, and she’s on top of it. But, um…” He swallowed. “The person who caused the carbon monoxide leak in your apartment is probably the same person who tried to run you off the road.”
Sawyer’s eyebrow rose. “So… Dr. Boyce.”
“Yeah.”
“Great.” Sawyer made a face and sat back. “He’s back in town, then.”
“Well…” Bashir chewed his lip.
Sawyer inclined his head. “What?” Then he narrowed his eyes. “Wait, you needed to level with me? Are you—what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that Dr. Boyce never went on vacation. As far as we know, he never left town.” He exhaled. “To tell you the truth, no one’s been able to get eyes on him since the night you got hurt.”
Sawyer’s lips parted. “Wait, so he’s just—he’s been running loose here in town this whole time? Why the fuck did you tell me he was on vacation?”
“So you wouldn’t worry.” Bashir shrugged apologetically. “Would you have been able to sleep knowing he was—”
“You can’t just keep me in the dark!” Sawyer snapped. “What if he’d—”