“Why the fuck not?”
“Because he knows I know,” I replied. “And I’m not going to let him stay by himself.”
“You’re damn fucking right, you’re not.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him. “But I want to know what you know about them. What they did. Last winter, I mean. Because I want to at least know what I’m up against. What kind of people they are.”
Hart was quiet again. “Fucking scum of the earth,” he half-snarled. “They fucking knocked him out, then dragged him inside and… hung him. With a belt they bought at a fucking Target or Wal-mart or some place.” His voice broke, and I swallowed. I’d never heard Hart this emotional. “And then the fuckers came back for El. He’d gone out to shift, they grabbed him, still in fur. He got one of the bastards good, but there were four of them.”
He fell silent, but it was the kind of silence that was pregnant—the kind he needed to collect himself, so I waited.
“I don’t know what happened between then and when Taavi found them,” he said, and his voice rasped and trembled. “But they’d already strung him up. Taavi and I chased them off, and I held him up until Smith got there.” I heard him swallow. “He almost—” He broke off. “It was pretty bad,” he said softly. “Rope burns down to the muscle. Swelling. Bruising. He sounded awful for weeks.” Hart cleared his throat. “What else do you want to know?”
“Who were they?” I asked him. “The four men.”
“Lance Hasenfuss, who was on the Shawano PD. Leon Reynolds, the ME. Keith Baker, a contractor who was Reynolds’s brother-in-law. And Dopfer, former Green Bay PD.”
“And they were all friends?”
“Friends-ish,” came the answer. “Baker and Reynolds were family. Hasenfuss’s wife and Baker’s wife were friends. But this Buettner guy didn’t surface on anything I ever saw.”
“His fiancée is Dopfer’s sister,” I supplied.
“So he certainly knows Dopfer, and might be friendly with the rest. Fuck. Mays, this is too big a deal for you to handle.”
I was worried about the same thing, but I didn’t know what to do about it, since Smith hadn’t offered any additional protection. “So what do I do about that?” I asked him.
“Smith knows?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“So what the fuck’s he doing?”
“Highway is patrolling the area, but Elliot refused having anyone posted at the house.”
“He—fuck. Why thefuck—” I knew the moment he figured out the answer. “Because of fucking Hasenfuss and Dopfer, is fucking why,” he answered his own question. “Fuck.”
“Tell me what I should do, other than not leave him alone.”
Hart blew out a breath. “Tell Smith to call the FBI. Fuck,I’lltell the rumbly bastard to call the FBI. They worked this case, too.” Another pause. “Do you trust the current ME?”
“I don’t think he’s a bigoted asshole,” I answered honestly. “But he’s a complete douche.”
Hart snorted. “So probably not a good option for help.”
“Not even a little,” I confirmed. “But I’ll ask Smith about the FBI.”
There was a pause, and I wasn’t sure what to say, but then Hart spoke again. “Take care of him, Seth,” he said, and I could tell from the fact that he’d used my first name that he was absolutely serious.
“I’ll do my best,” I told him, although now I was even more terrified than I had been before.
As promised,I’d texted Elliot when I left work. I’d contemplated telling him to pick up take-out, but then I’d have to tell him why I no longer wanted groceries… and, besides, I was pretty sure that nobody was going to try to kill him in a grocery store. It wasn’t a guarantee, of course, but public places very much frequented by people buying food for dinner or a party on a Friday night around five really weren’t high likelihood sites for murder.
That was the argument I was using to keep my anxiety levels from being catastrophically high, anyway.
Let’s just say I was incredibly relieved when I heard his familiar tread on the outside stairs, and I met him at the door.
And then remembered that I’d told Hart all the details about the ongoing threats against him, which hehadn’ttold Hart, and he might not actually be terribly pleased with me.
