Page 47 of Love Always

“How’s Laurel doing?” he asks before we get started.

“She was wiped yesterday. I mean, she’s not used to this. Must’ve been horrible for her.”

“Did the police put her in touch with anyone for counseling?”

“Yeah the detective gave me a card.”

“I’m very, very concerned that girl was here two nights ago and she came with Laurel and that she was seen doing this.”

He presses a button and one of Jackson’s pictures he shared with me by the fireplace explodes on the screen. It makes it all more ominous to see it enlarged and not just on his cell phone after a beer.

“Mateus, you’ve read Chris Proctor’s file, right?”

I nod.

“What’s the chance he’s the guy who shot Colleen?”

“I’d say not much.”

Jackson scratches his head. “The cops are not going to like the timeline. And he’s still missing.”

Bryce, who looks like he’s had about as much sleep as I have, slurps some coffee out of a paper cup.

Jackson continues. “Chris Proctor goes missing after meeting the victim. She’s found dead and he’s missing? It stinks.”

Bryce asks the question I was about to. “Do the parents know about Colleen? Do they know Chris is attached to a murder victim?”

Finn shakes his head. “No and I’m getting ready to go to Detective Carlson,” he holds up Carlson’s card, “with all of this. There is a connection, and we can’t protect our client if he is involved in a murder.”

I wipe my face. We have more flexibility than the police. “I can’t say with precise percentages of course, but I’d guess the odds of him actually doing it are about one in fifty. Can we just hold out a little longer?”

Finn sighs and picks up his own mug of coffee. “If Carlson figures this out or pieces Chris and Colleen together before we go to him, it makes us look bad. It looks like we’re hiding information. I’m not in the business of not working with police. We need to treat them as allies.”

I sigh. “Okay, here’s my take on Chris Proctor. No history of violence, not even in school records. Detentions were for things like wearing the wrong gym clothes, walking down a closed hallway during lunch, talking back to a teacher, coming to school late too many times in a row. Stupid stuff. He was never enrolled in any anger management program at the schools he went to—and he went to a couple of really good schools. The last one was Andover.” I pause and continue. “The only mark against him is as a user. He was first arrested underaged and those files are sealed. He’s been through four different treatment programs, both residential and nonresidential. The last one was at the Brattleboro Retreat, and he was released five months ago. According to his parents, he administers a test once a week via video chat, he’s in talk therapy with two different counselors, one for addiction, one for life planning.”

Feeling an opening, Jackson sits up. “It still looks like he fled the scene. What if it was an accident? Maybe she had the gun and he grabbed it and it went off.”

Jackson’s young and eager. But Finn is having none of it. “We are only sticking to facts right now. There will be no what-ifs. We’re not what-iffing this morning.” Instead of being put out, Jackson just rolls with it and offers a thumbs up. The guy is always positive.

Finn turns back to me.

“My point is, if she did drop off drugs and that was what was in the little box, he is not the type to kill her because it wasn’t enough or the wrong stuff. Other than that, there’s no motive. They were romantic, at least he wanted it to be romantic. She was his contact and I think he was in love with her, or thought he was,” I quickly relate my conversation with Chris right before the altercation with Kevin Barr in front of the restaurant. “I think the chance Chris hurt her is pretty much zero.”

“Right,” says Finn. “Okay. I’ll hold off on turning over this photo and the others until noon. That gives us a few hours to try to track him. He didn’t take his phone, or his car, so he left on foot.

“Or he was abducted,” I remind them.

“There’s been no contact from kidnappers. I think the broken glass out the bathroom window was his doing. He left. Why he didn’t take his phone is just a fact right now,” Finn puts up his finger to stop Jackson from speaking. “No speculation.”

Undaunted, Jackson grins. “Okay, boss, I’ll save it for later.”

΅

I walk across the dirt road to the pavement, down to the wharf, and then cross into Weaver’s. I shut off the phone alarm reminding me I should be hungry.

The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since I walked in the other direction. Zipping up my coat, I shove bare hands into pockets, then up the three steps to the blue door and the comforting tinkle of the bell as I pull it open.

Immediately the smell of eggs, toasted bread, and maple syrup wafts and I head to the breakfast bar. At lunch it’s lunch bar. There is no dinner bar—and they don’t serve after two pm.