Read Online Dark Web by T. J. Brearton - Free Book Online

the job, felt he did not.
    Trooper Bronze opened the door to the police cruiser and looked out at Swift. Bronze would drive him to the substation, a few miles away. Another trooper would bring his own car along later.
    He slid into the warm vehicle and felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Expecting a call, either from the captain or the lieutenant, he pulled it out. It was another email message.
    He grunted and asked Bronze, “You know how to deactivate email alerts on these damn things?”
    “Sure. I’ll fix it for you when we get there.”
    Swift sighed and gave the screen a series of touches with his fingertips, figuring out how to open the email. It wasn’t that hard, actually.
    “What a night,” he said. He could still feel the adrenaline racing.
    “You got that right.”
    There were two new messages, both from the same address. He thought he vaguely recognized the email address as having something to do with his bank.
    The first one was about suspicious activity detected on his account.
    He frowned and shook his head. Just what he needed at the start of a new case. He opened the next email.
    This second one told him to take defensive action, with instructions on how to prevent future incursions
    “For God’s sake,” he muttered. Bronze glanced at him as he pulled away from the crime scene, engine roaring, lightbar flashing, tires kicking out fans of snow.

PART TWO
    THE SUSPECTS

CHAPTER TWELVE
    The State Police substation just outside New Brighton was a squat, one-story building with a few small offices and a single interrogation room. The main space featured basic equipment, including a copy machine, a paper shredder, an emergency medical cabinet, and a breathalyzer with its attending Datamaster . There was a kitchenette in the corner with a sink, refrigerator, and coffee maker. The interrogation room was a simple ten-by-twelve box, the walls institutional green, with a pane of one-way glass into a neighboring room the size of a walk-in closet that smelled of mice. There was no closed-circuit television; to watch a suspect sweat it out in the box, you sweat it out in the cramped space next door.
    State Police Captain Tuggey was waiting as Swift came in. He watched wordlessly as Swift shrugged off his jacket and hung it up. He motioned the detective to sit down opposite him.
    The bitter aroma of coffee percolating on the kitchenette counter filled the air. It looked to Swift as though Tuggey had dressed hastily. There was some black soot on his fingers, his white shirt was smudged with what looked like creosote and Swift could scent wood smoke. Tuggey had a large ranch-style home ten miles away. Probably his wife had asked him to stoke the stove before he left. Life had to go on, even when you were a cop’s wife.
    “Mayor called half an hour ago,” Tuggey said.
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Yeah. Lieutenant is en route. Know what the mayor said?”
    “Tell me.”
    “‘How long you gonna keep this road blocked off?’ That’s what he says.”
    Swift blinked. He remembered his conversation with Silas.
    Tuggey puffed his chest out. “‘As long as it takes,’ is what I told him. But you got out pretty fast.” The captain looked his hands, turning them over, examining the backs and fronts and in between the fingers.
    “Cap’n Tug, Silas wanted to take her time, as she should, but we soon saw that the body was going to be our best evidence . . . and the three kids picked up in the car back on the interstate . . . Besides finding a piece of cardboard and some deer shit, there was nothing else at the scene.”
    “Fuck,” Tug said softly. Profanity was unusual for the captain and he seemed to think that swearing in a low voice somehow reduced the level of venal sin. Swift watched Tuggey search the objects on his desk, as if the answer lay in the jar of miscellaneous pens or scribbles on the pad of paper.
    “So, what’s the play?”
    “For now? I want to see what I get from our three teenagers. Or, is it two