Black Moon: Hamarsson and Dempsey 3 Read online

  Black Moon

  Hamarsson and Dempsey 3

  Elle Keaton

  Dirty Dog Press

  Copyright © 2020 by Elle Keaton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover created by Black Jazz Designs

  Edited by Alicia Z. Ramos

  Please don’t steal my work.

  Created with Vellum

  Black Moon is dedicated to CCBelle and Shannon Marie who kept me going while I sweat imagined blood and literal tears over this manuscript.

  I don’t think I could’ve done it without you.

  Elle

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Dear reader,

  About Elle

  1

  Monday morning—Mat

  Sheriff Mat Dempsey released a gusty sigh. The semipeaceful feeling he’d been enjoying before the 9-1-1 call came in evaporated faster than the morning fog. Mat flicked a quick glance at the man standing beside him before his gaze focused back on what lay in front of them. He grumbled, “We have got to stop meeting like this.”

  This was a body in the waters of Hidden Harbor—again. The second this year, and the second Mat was able to identify with a single glance.

  “Duane Cooper,” Marshal Soper said, lips pursed.

  “Duane Cooper,” Mat affirmed.

  He tried not to feel resentful. The man was dead, after all. He’d had family who would mourn him. At least Mat thought so.

  However.

  However, even Mat, who was not a medical doctor like Marshal, had spotted what looked like a bullet hole in the chest when Foster Jennings had pulled Duane’s body out of the water and flipped what was left of him over onto his back. Meaning the department had work ahead of it.

  Water dribbled from the remains, soaking the sheet and the gravel underneath it. There wasn’t much glamorous about a waterlogged corpse.

  Ironically, if Cooper had been alive (and not on the run from the law), he would’ve been the one doing the retrieval, as he had for Chastity Reynolds—the body discovered in February. Instead the task fell to Foster Jennings, technically one of Piedras Island’s EMTs, who was certified in scuba and water rescue. Not that this was a rescue.

  Mat stared at the body. It hadn’t been in the water long; the fish and other underwater creatures hadn’t had a chance to make much of a meal of him. Duane had most of his fingers and toes still; one eye was missing, though. The remaining eye stared unblinking into the early-September sunshine.

  “Well, fuck.”

  “Sir,” Deputy Flynn, Mat’s most valued employee, muttered from where she stood, on Mat’s other side. In a weird sort of déjà vu, she’d been the one to receive the 9-1-1 call about Cooper. She’d also been the officer on duty when the call about Chastity Reynolds came in months ago.

  “I feel like ‘fuck’ is appropriate here.”

  Birdy shrugged but nodded.

  Marshal retrieved a pair of disposable latex gloves from the evidence kit in his trunk and pulled them on before kneeling next to the body. The thing about bodies and water was that water and aquatic life tended to get rid of any helpful evidence.

  Foster watched Marshal work for a moment. “I’m going to take off my dry suit. Do you need a hand getting him to the morgue?”

  Usually, Marshal transported DBs in his rust bucket of a Land Cruiser, but Foster had arrived in the island ambulance, which made things easier.

  Marshal looked up at him. “Sure. Thanks.”

  “I’ll be back in a few,” Foster said.

  Mat turned to Birdy. “Mrs. Tenny called this in?”

  “Yes, sir. She was walking her dog and saw the body in the water.”

  Mat could feel the press of the crowd of island residents behind him. News had spread quickly, as it always did, and those with nothing better to do were now rubbernecking from the other side of the yellow crime scene tape. Likely some of the people there did have something to do but had dropped it for the current spectacle.

  Reluctantly, he turned around to look. Mrs. Tenny was at the center of the crowd. He could see her gesticulating as she, no doubt, elaborated on how she’d discovered the body.

  “Flynn, get Mrs. Tenny to the station, and take a proper statement before she does any more harm. Did she recognize the body, do you think?”

  Birdy, who had started to walk away, stopped and looked back at Mat with a thoughtful expression. “No, I think she would’ve said.”

  “Okay. Tell Holstrom and Radden to try to disperse the crowd—and since we know that won’t happen, make sure they all stay on the other side of the tape. Send Jones up to the hospital to keep lookie-loos away. That’s the last thing Marshal needs.”

  As he gazed at the crowd of curious islanders, Mat caught sight of Stu Dennis, the local historian. Yep, everybody had come out to see what was going on.

  Mat turned his attention back to the marina. First Chastity and now Duane. What was it about the damn place? He reminded himself that Chastity had been strangled, and her body had likely floated on a current into the marina—although they didn’t know where she had gone into the water. Duane had been shot, had it happened here at the marina, or had he been shot somewhere else and dumped here? As far as he knew there hadn’t been any reports of gun fire but Mat knew as well as anyone the multitude of reasons why shots may not have been heard or mistaken for fireworks or a car back firing.

  He sighed and wished, not for the first time that week or even that day, that Niall was home. Not that Niall was part of the Piedras sheriff’s office, but as an ex-detective he had good insight. And Mat just plain missed his fiancé.

  But, after a long training period, Niall had been assigned his first big case with West Coast Forensics, the consulting firm he’d accepted a position at. Mat was excited for him, but Idaho seemed a long way away right now, and their bed felt empty without Niall in it.

  “I don’t think an autopsy is going to tell us much more about cause of death. But…” Marshal’s voice broke into Mat’s thoughts.

  “But what?”

  “I’d like to do one anyway. There are some things I’d like to confirm.”

  “Like what?” Mat asked.

  Marshal shook his head. “I’m not putting ideas in your head. If I can confirm my suspicions, you’ll be the first to know, Sheriff.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ll try to call you before five.”

  Foster, having changed back into his EMT uniform, walked over to where Marshal and Mat waited. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready,” Marshal said.

  Mat watched the two men load the body onto a metal gurney and cover it with another sheet before wheeling it over to the ambulance. Once the body was inside
, Marshal said something to Foster. Then he peeled off his gloves, tossing them in a hazardous waste bin in the ambulance before heading to where his Toyota was parked.

  “Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” Marshal called over to Mat as he climbed into his car.

  The crowd still milled around, but the hum of conversation had lessened, and Mat figured many were heading back to their usual morning routines. The diehards would stick around, though, and he wondered how long it would be before Stu Dennis cornered him to try to weasel some details out of him.

  It was going to be a hot day. Mat tugged at his collar, already uncomfortable in his uniform. The morning sun glittered off the green-blue water of Hidden Harbor; sailboats and motorboats bobbed in the current. A couple of seagulls and crows down on the rocky beach were fighting over rock oysters. A flock of terns swept along the water’s edge, a multitude of birds moving as one. The leader changed the angle of his wing, and the others followed. It was mesmerizing to watch. Mat wished the damn birds could tell him what they’d seen.

  The gate to the marina was still open. Foster had needed access to retrieve the body, and Tom Bellows, the dockmaster, had left it ajar.

  Mat crossed the parking lot to the marina office, a tiny building with a fresh coat of aqua blue paint. “I’m going to check the dock again,” he told Tom. “When I’m finished, please lock the gate; access is restricted until we release the scene.”

  Tom sighed and ran a hand across his billiard-ball-bald dome. “This is going to piss people off.”

  “Yes, well, we all would have preferred not to start the day with a dead body.”

  Tom had the grace to look embarrassed, but Mat understood his feelings. The Hidden Harbor Marina clients were demanding, and many weren’t full-time island residents. Tom had some difficult personalities to deal with.

  Mat’s footsteps echoed across the water as he slowly walked along the main dock and down each side dock, peering into the water and at the boats moored there. None of the boats appeared to have been tampered with; there was no handy blood spatter. A few of the moorages were open; Mat made a note to ask Tom who had been in and out recently, but he didn’t find anything immediately suspicious. After taking several pictures using his cell phone, he turned and headed back toward where he’d parked.

  As he carefully inched his cruiser past the crime scene tape, Mat rolled his window down. “I’m heading back to the station,” he said to Deputy Radden. “You stay here and keep the amateur detectives away from the scene. No one is to enter the marina, got it?”

  Patrick nodded. “Got it, sir.”

  Mat had just entered the station when his cell phone buzzed. He dug in his pocket for it. Even before he glanced at the screen, he had a feeling he knew who it would be.

  “Hey,” he said, tossing his keys onto the corner of his desk.

  “A body?” Niall sounded both astonished and outraged.

  “What? No ‘I love you’? No “I miss you’?” Mat teased.

  “Mat,” Niall growled, “you know I miss you. I was already suffering, and now I hear another body’s been found?”

  Ever since someone had tried to blow Mat up in the spring, Niall had been acting like a protective mother bear. At first Mat hadn’t minded; he’d been recovering, and being on the receiving end of a bomb was serious. But now, months later, it was beginning to grate just a little.

  He sat down in his chair and leaned back. “Yeah, another body. Tentatively ID’ed as Duane Cooper.”

  “Tentatively?”

  “It’s Duane. But, you know, official channels and all that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody got to him before we could; he took a gunshot to the chest. I’d say he’d only been in the water a few hours. Who’d you find out from, anyway?”

  “The first person? Your mother. But I also got a call from Stu and a text from Birdy. Then Shay called and wanted to know what I knew. That was all in about a ten-minute span.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Shay Delacombe was Niall’s recently acknowledged half brother. They were like two alpha wolves circling each other, not wanting—at least on Niall’s part—to admit they might want the relationship. Although in the last couple of months, Niall seemed to have lowered his guard when it came to Shay.

  Mat shared what he could with Niall. He may not have been a medical examiner, but as a young beat cop in San Fran he’d been on enough water recovery scenes to form his own opinions, and Duane was in far too good of condition to have been in the water long.

  When he finished, Niall grunted something unintelligible that could have meant “Good” or “Tell me more.”

  “Marshal took the body up to the morgue. He’ll let me know more as soon as he can. I mean, cause of death was the gunshot, but Marshal was a little evasive about something.”

  “I don’t like it,” Niall said.

  “Yeah, neither do I.”

  Their connection crackled. Mat heard the high whistle of some kind of bird—a hawk, maybe—and he wondered where Niall was.

  “Why kill Duane now?” Niall asked. “And where has he been all this time?”

  Mat had been wondering the same things. Where had Duane been? After the bombing, they’d all thought he’d managed to flee Piedras, but… it seemed not. Who wanted Duane dead, and why?

  “Go stay at your mom’s until I get back.”

  “What the hell, Niall.” That was going too far, as if Mat needed to run to his mother whenever something went a little sideways. He opened his mouth to argue, but Niall beat him to it.

  “Somebody already tried to kill you once. We all thought it was Duane. What if it wasn’t—or if he was working with someone? Then the fucker who wants you dead is still out there. And you are not safe.” His sentence ended with a growl.

  “Niall, there’s no reason for you to jump to DEFCON one here. Nothing has happened in the past few months, and there’s no reason to think anything will happen now. Maybe whoever was hiding him got sick of it and shot him themself.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line before Mat heard Niall utter the word, “Please.” The near-begging tone of his voice staggered Mat.

  “Okay,” he conceded, “but my mom’s house isn’t any safer. At home I have Fenrir and an arsenal of weapons at my disposal, and I’m a damn good shot.” Niall was overreacting; no way was Mat in danger because Duane Cooper had been offed. If anything, he was safer. “If you really want me to, I will—but I’d like to point out that if there were any actual danger, which there is not, I’d be putting Mom and Riley at risk.”

  Niall ignored him. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “You’ll be home when you can.”

  Mat clicked off and set his phone next to his keys on the desk. Having Duane Cooper show up dead possibly put a hole in the theory that he was the one who set the bomb in Mat’s cruiser—or, at least, that he’d been acting alone. If it hadn’t been Duane, who had it been? And if Duane had done it under orders from someone, who was the shadowy figure they hadn’t considered?

  2

  Monday—Niall

  “Can I talk to you in confidence?” Niall asked, at the same time wondering why he thought calling Shay back was a good idea.

  “Of course. What do you need to talk about?” Shay replied, confusion lacing his voice.

  Niall could hear the raucous calls of seagulls over their connection, and horns honking. Shay must be in downtown Seattle. “I just got off the phone with Mat.”

  After ending his call with Mat, Niall hadn’t put his phone away, instead immediately calling Shay. Niall’s hands were shaking. Why did this have to happen now, when he was on assignment hundreds of miles away from Hidden Harbor?

  He’d dragged his feet the rest of spring and into summer before finally competing the training and extra licensing for West Coast Forensics, hoping they would get a break and find Duane Cooper… and it had to happen now? Had the timing been on purpose? Had Duane’s killer waited until
Niall was gone to put a bullet in him and dump him in the harbor? There was little doubt in Niall’s mind that whoever shot Duane had either put the bomb in Mat’s cruiser himself or ordered Duane to do it.

  “Is this about the body that turned up in the harbor this morning?” Shay asked.

  “Yeah. The DB is Duane Cooper, and Mat says he was shot.”

  “Ah. I hadn’t heard that, just that a body had been found.”

  “And, for the record, it wasn’t me who put him there,” Niall clarified. Although more than once, back in March, when he thought he’d lost Mat, he’d been willing to take matters into his own hands. Niall had never thought of himself as vengeful until someone had tried to kill Mat Dempsey. “But I need a favor.”

  “What do you need?” Shay asked.

  “Do you have time for a minivacation on Piedras until I get back? With any luck, Leo and I will be wrapping up in a few days.” Niall hoped so. He was sick of this tiny mountain town in the back of beyond, Idaho.

  “Funny, that,” Shay drawled. “I’m closing down my practice here in Seattle and moving back to the island.”

  Niall was shocked. Shay had been a prominent defense lawyer in Seattle for at least a decade. And he was very good at what he did. Once or twice, Niall had come up against Shay and lost. One the other hand, maybe it wasn’t a surprise. Shay had been coming up to Piedras quite a bit recently.

  He shivered. Wind gusted from the northeast, where the Sawtooth Range jutted from the earth; the thin shirt he wore was no protection against it. It might be late summer, but, this morning at least, Graniteville, Idaho, hadn’t gotten the memo.