Stubborn cowboy.
But he was her stubborn cowboy.
“Tell me what you found this morning,” she said after a few peaceful moments of silence. Neither had mentioned the fact that her name had been in the same document as the bomb threat. She’d felt the question float between them a few times at the hospital, but all their energy had been centered on Ray. Neither wanted to delve into the oddity.
He sighed and took a long draw on his bottle. “Reuben Braswell, age fifty-two. Found dead in his bathtub by a patrol officer after a neighbor reported seeing blood on his kitchen floor.”
“Wait. How—”
“I’ll come back to that. It’s not that relevant.” He frowned, his forehead wrinkling. “I think.”
Ava mentally shelved her question.
“Braswell had been bludgeoned in the head in the kitchen and then dragged to the bathroom, where he was hit again in the face and mouth.” He lifted the beer to his mouth and brought it back down without drinking. “Someone removed eight fingers while he was in the tub.”
Ava sipped her wine, no longer tasting it, picturing the tall man. The abuse was bad, but she’d seen worse. Much worse.
“One finger might be missing. I’ll ask Dr. Trask in the morning if she found the eighth.”
“Gianna was there?” Ava liked the petite forensic pathologist.
“Yes. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her much because one of the crime technicians found the bomb plans.”
“With my name in the same document.”
He nodded and squeezed her hand. “Did Braswell ever mention a bomb threat?”
“No.”
Mason nodded again. “I didn’t think so.”
“I did walk out on our last meeting. He had given me nothing and was being inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate how?” he asked, turning to look at her, his dark gaze sharp.
“Your knuckles are dragging.” She raised a brow at him. “He made comments about me getting married. It was none of his business.” Mason didn’t need to know he’d grabbed her arm; she’d handled it.
“Hope you made that clear to him.”
“Of course I did, and then I left. That’s the only time I can think of when he might have wanted to tell me something but didn’t get the chance.”
“We thought the threat was real.” A shudder ran through him, vibrating into her skin. “Did we jump to conclusions too fast?”
Ava slid to the edge of her seat and turned to face him. “Don’t you dare take any blame for what happened today. Not a single percentage of it. The only person to blame is the one who pulled the trigger.”
“Might have been more than one shooter.”
“Not important at the moment.” She waved away his concern with the hand holding her wineglass. “What exactly did you find in Reuben’s home?”
He scratched his chin. “Detailed layout of the courthouse. Then there was the handwritten diatribe.” He took a sip of beer. “I’ve seen and heard a lot of shit directed at law enforcement, but this was brutal.” He slowly shook his head. “You could feel the anger coming off the page. This guy hated cops and anyone to do with them.”
Ava tilted her head. “He was paranoid and a conspiracy-theory believer. He always thought he was being watched—believed I had other agents planted in the room when we met.” She frowned, thinking hard. “He might have told me he thought he was being watched at home? I’m not sure.” She blew out a frustrated breath, wishing she remembered more. “He had weird ideas, but for the most part he seemed harmless to me.”
“Those are the ones that surprise you.”
“That’s been true several times.”
“Anyway, your name was in the lengthy diatribe. For as angry as he was with law enforcement, he said you were different. That you were one of the good guys.”
Ava didn’t know what to say.
“Said you were a one-of-a-kind cop. You looked out for the common man and your fellow law enforcement members.”
“I have no idea what I did to deserve his praise. All I did was meet with him a few times and try to stay patient.” She thought for a moment. “I gave him some resources for a friend of his who was in a domestic violence situation. That wasn’t a big deal. He could have found them on the internet.”
“He went on to describe in minute detail his plans to plant a bomb at the courthouse. It would be right after lunch when everyone had returned. He wanted the courthouse full.”
“Wow. Are you sure this was Reuben’s handwriting?” She couldn’t see a killer in the man she’d met at Starbucks.
“It matched the cramped style on the Post-it notes stuck to the maps on the walls and the checkbook carbons found in a desk drawer.”
“Okay.” Her mind spun, searching for different possibilities that could explain how the angry ranter and her informant were the same person. “Either he has some sort of mental illness or he’s an excellent actor.”
“He indicated he wasn’t alone in his thinking. A like-minded group was mentioned. His tone changed when he wrote about them . . . it felt respectful and admiring.”
“He told me he was friends with people in antigovernment factions. It was one of the reasons I continued to meet with him. Many groups stir up hate toward law enforcement. Too many.”
“But if Reuben was killed before he could carry out his plans, then who else knew about them? And did they decide to shoot when they saw us rally to the courthouse?” He met Ava’s gaze. “Or did they plan it before?”
“You’re saying the plans were left for you to find.”
“It’s possible.”
“Discovering Reuben’s murdered body was to bring law enforcement into his home, where the bombing plans would be found?” Ava felt the theory was a stretch. A big stretch. “That means someone had to report the death in time for police to respond, the plans to be found, and the courthouse to be evacuated—all before the stated time of the bomb detonation. That’s a lot of wobbly domino pieces to line up.”
“Reuben had a thing going on with a female neighbor,” said Mason.
“A relationship?”
“Sounded like it was purely physical. She was the one who called the police about the blood in the house.”
“Was she expecting to meet Reuben at a certain time today?”
Mason winced. “I didn’t ask.”
“To make the dominoes in your theory fall in line, someone had to know when she was coming.”
He held the cool beer bottle against his forehead. “This is making my brain ache.”
“Mine too. I heard no bomb was found in the courthouse. They used explosives dogs to search the building and surrounding area.”
“I think we both knew they wouldn’t find anything.”
Silence settled between them. The deadly massacre had struck too close to home. To consider that it’d been carefully orchestrated to take innocent lives hurt her heart.
Why is there so much anger?
“Who will head up the shooting investigation?” she asked.
“Well, the Clackamas County sheriff was running the evacuation and bomb scare, but he has to expect the FBI will assist him in the investigation at some point.”