The Bad Boy of Butterfly Harbor(36)

Fletch had defied his orders—somewhat—by calling for an EMT unit. They’d been on scene in minutes, setting Winters’s broken nose, writing up a report and addressing the three-inch gash in Luke’s scalp. He’d ignored their insistence he go in for X-rays. He’d already spent enough time in hospitals, the past eighteen months especially.

“Knew that boy of mine wasn’t no coward.” Winters’s eyes rolled back in his head. Luke took more pleasure than he was comfortable with in slamming the cell closed. Immediately, Karma herself visited as the noise echoed in his own head to the point he swayed. With white knuckles, he gripped one of the cell’s bars as he stared at his first arrest as sheriff. “You can’t hold me here!” Winters bellowed as he collapsed on the wafer-thin mattress.

“Sleep it off,” Luke ordered and closed the door into the holding area. “What’s going on here?” He frowned at the new batch of cables and tech manuals open around Ozzy’s desk.

“Troubleshooting,” Ozzy mumbled. “I swear it was working great this morning. But when I got back from lunch, I tried to log in and the entire system’s locked up. Some malware program I’ve never seen before. Don’t know how it got into our system. The only emails I’ve opened have been from state agencies.”

So much for running the registration on the gun he’d found in Kyle’s pack or familiarizing himself with Rex Winters’s file to see if he’d violated any stipulations in his former dealings with the law.

“What are we going to do about Kyle?” Fletch asked, handing Luke a couple of aspirins and some water. “He assaulted an officer.”

Luke ignored the question but downed the pills as he withdrew to his office. He came up short when he noticed the transom window slightly ajar, mud caked on the ledge. He pulled the latch shut, pushed it open with one finger. He frowned. Circling to his desk, he saw another clump of dirt near his chair, another under his desk.

“Boss?” Fletch asked as Luke headed outside. “What now? You should be sitting down.”

“Need to check something.” Luke walked behind the station, shoved himself through the thicket of bushes to a small clearing. The ground was lower here, but not so low someone couldn’t reach the window. In fact, he didn’t have to do anything except look straight ahead to see into his office.

He poked his fingertips under the frame of the window, which popped open with little pressure. He bent down to examine the ground and the fresh footprints, two sets, along with a couple of bicycle tracks and uneven indentations.

“You going to share with the rest of the class?” Fletcher asked from behind him.

“Someone was in my office while we were gone.” Luke squatted down to peer under the raised foundation and spotted a large tree trunk lying on its side, something wedged under it. He dug into the ground and pulled out a filthy, familiar butterfly, minus its chain.

Luke pushed himself up, then braced his hand on the wall for a second, squeezing his eyes as the world tilted around him. “Those footprints, there.” He pointed behind him as the nausea churned.

“Couple of kids, maybe.” Fletch moved closer. “Not very big at all.” He put his own sizable boot next to one, pulled the window open until it stopped. “Yeah, definitely kids. An adult couldn’t squeeze in this opening. Someone playing tricks on you?”

“Sure looks that way.” Luke walked back inside as the pranks over the past few mornings began to make sense. “Ozzy, I need you to check my computer.”

“For what?” Ozzy blinked as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

“My email. Just do it, please.” He waved Ozzy into his office and waited while his deputy accessed the system. “Check the trash and spam folders. Anything there?”

“Hang on.” He inserted a USB drive. “I’m going to run a restore program...bingo! The malware file was sent from your email address.”

“Thought so.” Luke’s headache got worse. He shoved the butterfly into his pocket. “When?”

“Two hours ago.” Ozzy squinted at the screen. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Because I wasn’t here two hours ago. Were you?”

“No, sir. I ran to the diner for lunch. But I wasn’t gone long.”

Long enough.

“It’s going to take some time to get the system up and running again. And it looks as if the program deleted a bunch of emails. I’ll see if I can restore those, as well.”

“Can you do it from your computer?” Luke asked.

“Yeah. I’ll get remote access. Don’t worry. I’ll get it fixed.”