This Fallen Prey (Rockton 3)

"It's fine," he says. "We've got this."

He sits on the ground and rubs her with his good hand as she dances on his lap. Then he raises his arm for me to toss him the ball. I do, and I retreat to the deck to watch them play fetch. Except Dalton has never actually known a dog, so his version of fetch is, well, unique. He throws the ball, and they both run after it, which usually results in a football tackle. That's more his style, getting in there and working off energy, and Storm loves it, so I wouldn't argue . . . if he didn't have his arm in a sling.

When I try to intercede again, though, he waves me off, and he is being careful, so I settle on the deck. I watch him shrug off his day and become the guy he can be only in the relative privacy of our backyard. The guy who slides on the grass and tackles a dog and gets a faceful of fur and comes up sputtering and laughing and crowing in victory, too, as he waves a slobbery ball over his head.

I think of Phil's thinly veiled threat to exile Dalton, as if he's committed some terrible crime. That "crime" is devoting his life to this town, risking his life today to protect a man who did not deserve protecting. Dalton might stride through Rockton like he owns the place, but it owns him, too, and it owes him better than this.

I never want to lose the guy I see tonight, playing with a dog. This problem isn't mine to fix, and it's patronizing to try, but sometimes I peer down Dalton's life path, to a future where he becomes the front he shows others--harsh, tough--and then continues along that road until he reaches bitter resignation, no longer even bothering to fight back, because he knows it won't do any good.

I fear for a future where Dalton is no longer Rockton's protector, its best advocate, its biggest cheerleader. A future where he's just a guy doing a job, putting in his time here because he has no place else to go, hating the town and himself for that.

I want to tell myself I'm overreacting. I see him playing with Storm, and I want to say, See, even amid all this, he's fine. But I know Oliver Brady will not be an anomaly. Phil hinted at that today. If Brady survives his stay here, there will be others. If he doesn't? I don't know what happens then, but I fear that outcome would be even worse. For Dalton. For Rockton. For all of us.

14

That afternoon, I run fingerprints from the gun locker, which is a far cry from the way I used to do it down south. I'm a technology-era baby. From my earliest experiences in a police department--when I told my parents I was volunteering at the Y--I saw fingerprints run on computers. I remember my disappointment at that. It seemed so dull compared to what I'd read in old crime novels. I also remember, when I became a detective, looking back and rolling my eyes at my younger self, unable to imagine the work involved in manually processing fingerprints.

Now I can.

It might be possible to process them by computer. Dalton has a laptop for when he goes down south on business. It will run here if I charge it from the generator. I could buy a scanner and input the townspeople's fingerprints into a database and then find a program to compare them to crime scene prints. But honestly, with a small and constricted population, that's more work than manually processing.

So, in this, as in many other aspects of my job, I have become that Victorian-era detective. I have my fingerprint powder and my index cards of exemplars. And I love it. Sure, there's some misplaced nostalgia there. The public is better served by modern crime-solving methods. Yet I'm not sure that applies in Rockton, and I feel more like a detective when I dust prints from the gun cabinet, see whorls and ridges and say "That one's mine, and that's Will's, and Eric's, and Kenny's . . ." without needing to consult my cards.

I've lifted all the prints and brought them home. I'm stretched out on my stomach on the bearskin rug. Storm has her head on my legs. She snuffled the cards once, withdrawing at an "Uh-uh" from me, though not before leaving a string of drool.

While I eliminated most prints at the site, I still lifted them to pore over here. Yet I'm not seeing any other than the ones I'd expect.

"The problem," I say to Storm, "is overlapping prints. A computer is so much better at analyzing those." I lift a card. "All I see is a mess of whorls. It's like a reverse jigsaw. A very imperfect science. I hate imperfect."

"Does she ever answer you?"

Dalton's voice drifts in as the front door clicks shut.

I wait until he appears and say, "She's not supposed to. She's my Watson."

He lowers himself beside me. "I thought I was your Watson."

"Watson is the guy Holmes talks at. A sounding board to hear his theories and tell him he's brilliant. You can do that last part if you like."

"Better stick with the dog." He reaches for the card I'd been examining. "Is it even possible to separate these?"

"With computers, there are algorithms. Even those are still works in progress. I can separate out the ones at the edges, but not once I get into the middle. I'm not sure this isn't just busywork anyway. I've got enough smeared prints to suggest whoever took the gun used gloves. The stock is totally wiped down."

"Which supports the theory that we're dealing with a pro."

"No, just a non-idi

ot. The fact fingerprinting works in any of our cases shocks the hell out of me. It's not like it's difficult to find gloves around here."

He stretches his legs. "Think there's any chance Phil's right? That this could be the woman who flew Brady in?"

"On paper, she looks good. Trained soldier. Mercenary. She admits she removed his gag. If he got the chance he'd have offered her money. No doubt about that."

"Because he knows she's a mercenary."

"Right. But how mercenary? Adjective versus noun. Just because she uses her army skills to make a living doesn't mean they're for sale to the highest bidder."

"Yeah." He scratches Storm behind the ears. "And there's no chance she snuck into town without being noticed."