Silver Sight (Completed)

Chapter 4

All air sucks out of his chest. Cooper turns accusing eyes to Aaron who has the decency to at least look surprised.

"That's impossible," he says. "Your department and the State of Montana declared her dead."

Paxton leans back in his chair and pins them both with a serious stare. "You must see how this looks. You, Chief Alo, Silver Sight's spokesperson, her closest relative other than her maternal grandmother. You, Cooper, the ex-boyfriend, the only one who Silver Sight will talk to. Does that not seem suspicious to you? Both of you very close with Silver Sight and Ruelle. You tell me, what should I be thinking?"

"Clearly something else must be going on," Aaron says, moving forward in his seat and looking Paxton in the eye.

"Like what?"

"Yeah, like what?" Cooper cries. "You think someone's kept her finger just to draw this message and throw off the cops? Formaldehyde would be needed to keep a finger like that intact, it would have been evident in the blood sample."

"She can't be Silver Sight. She wouldn't have done that to either of us," Aaron hisses to him, before turning back to Paxton. "Can't it be possible that someone's kept her prisoner and made her do this?"

He regards them carefully before sitting back in his chair. "We're obviously going to investigate all theories, but finding Silver Sight has become our number one priority." He stands quickly and then pins them both with a stern glare. "I don't think I have to tell you not to leave town, correct?"

Paxton leaves them and Cooper turns to Aaron. He can only stare at him.

It's not the first time he's been a suspect in an investigation. But it's Aaron's. He seems perturbed by this. He seems angry and insulted. All the things most people who are innocent of a crime feel when they first realize that the police are looking at them and only them. But there's something else. Something that only Cooper can see because he grew up with Aaron and he knows his faces.

He sees fear.

[-----]

When Cooper didn't return and wouldn't pick up her phone calls, Carol resorted to going around town.

Originally she told herself that it was just to get familiar with Cooper's home town. After all, if they ended up staying together, she'd probably be down to visit her father-in-law with him quite frequently.

Even though she knew Cooper rarely returned home. She knew that if he had to he'd want her to come with them, especially if they were together and eventually got married like she assumed they would.

However, going around town looking at the mom and pop stores proved to be boring. She didn't want to gamble back at the casino, and Cooper's dad had gotten into his blue pickup truck and drove off early that morning. Carol was alone in a town where she knew nobody and had nothing to do.

She thought shopping would cheer her up but there's a surprising lack of stores for shopping in that town. Or at least, there aren't many stores she'd be interested in. She steps into a crystal shop, selling all sorts of items described as tribal healing remedies.

She finds stones that promote healthy dreams and she thinks about buying them for Cooper. She wonders if a dream catcher would work too. Then she thinks about asking the teenage looking store clerk whether or not they had something for banishing unwanted memories so maybe Cooper can forget about her all together.

She's about to go up and ask but the teenager is on the phone and she's talking about Cooper.

Carol knows this because she's referred to someone as the "Booth-Boy" which is obviously Cooper. He has no brothers and there's no one else in town with the last name Booth.