‘Duh.’
‘
Annie glowered at him. ‘You know what scares me, Harley? Your pervasive enthusiasm for this kind of thing.’
‘Hey, what can I say? I love my work.’
Grace nudged Harley out of her chair and sat down. ‘A .22 to the head, just like the rest of them.’
‘Come
‘Forget it,’ Annie said. ‘You’re outvoted.’
Harley threw up his hands. ‘You’re all a bunch of pussies.’
‘It has to make sense, Harley. We have to stick to the pattern,’ Grace said.
‘Mitch ought to have a vote. Where the hell is he?’
‘Airport,’ Grace reminded him. ‘And even if he voted with you, that would still be three against two.’
‘Goddamn pussies . . . oh, man . . .’ He was watching Annie take off her cape, getting his first glimpse of quivering lime green fringe. ‘Oh, man.’ He repeated, staring at her, pulling at the collar of his T-shirt. ‘Would you look at that stuff
‘Are we done? Can I do it?’ Roadrunner was rising to his full height after touching his toes. It was like watching a stork unfold.
‘Go for it,’ Grace told him, watching as the man’s preposterously long legs and arms found their rhythm and propelled him over to his computer. There was a support beam just in front of his work station, six and a half feet above the floor. Roadrunner had to duck.
5
Sheriff Michael Halloran watched as Danny Peltier pulled the twelve-gauge out of the cruiser’s trunk rack and checked the load.
‘What the hell are you doing, Danny?’
‘Inspecting arms, sir.’
Danny was fresh out of officer certification school, and although the phrase ‘eager beaver’ came to mind, it was woefully inadequate. For at least a year he would clean his unfired weapon two or three times a week, polish his badge and boots nightly, and iron creases in his pants that would cut lemons. But that would wear off eventually, and soon enough he’d start to look like the rest of them.
Halloran watched him, sipping too-hot coffee from a cup, trying to shake the feeling that he was forgetting something.
‘Doesn’t look like this weapon’s been fired in some time, sir.’
‘Not since crowd control at the high-school homecoming dance.’
Danny’s head jerked around to look at him. The grin, when it finally came, spread slowly across his face, moving all his freckles. ‘I guess you’re a kidder, aren’t you, Sheriff?’
‘I guess I am. Mount up, Danny. It’s a fair drive.’
‘Yes, sir.’
There were over a dozen cruisers in the lot this morning, exhaling exhaust into the morning chill. This was a rare thing in a county that kept only eight patrols on the roads at any given time. Most of the third-watch deputies would pull a double shift today, canvassing the members of Father Newberry’s parish, interrogating the faithful for a hint of madness.
Halloran was wondering how he was going to squeeze the overtime out of an already pinched budget when Sharon Mueller rapped angrily on his window with a gloved knuckle.
He looked out at a pair of fierce brown eyes in a cold-reddened face and wondered what had tripped her trigger today. Not that he’d grow any older waiting to find out. The concept of stoic silence eluded her completely. She was short-tempered, painfully straightforward, and had a tongue that could slash a grown man to ribbons. Last year she’d cut her brown hair very short. Around the office they called her the rabid elf.
Still, for reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, Sharon was one of the many things that made Halloran glad he wasn’t bound to the dogma of confession anymore. If he’d ever once looked at her without having impure thoughts, he couldn’t remember the occasion.
She rattled a piece of paper at him when he rolled down the window and bent down to get in his face. He smelled soap. ‘Simons put fifteen people on my list, scattered all over the damn place. At this rate I’m going to spend more time on the road than questioning people.’
‘Good morning, Sharon.’
‘Everybody else gets a block of people in one tight area, which makes perfect sense, but me he sends to all four corners of the county, and if that isn’t gender discrimination I don’t know what is, and aside from the fact that I resent it, it’s just plain stupid . . .’
‘I told him to do that.’
That took her back a little. ‘Huh?’
‘You’re the best interrogator I’ve got. I told Simons to give you the ones the Kleinfeldts tried to have banned from the congregation. I know they’re scattered and I’m sorry about that, but if there’s anyone in this county with even half a reason to want them dead, they’re on your list.’
Sharon blinked at him. ‘Oh.’
‘You all right with that?’
‘Sure, Mike . . .’
Danny was instinctively careful, waiting until they were out of the lot and on the county road before he asked his question. That was a good sign, Halloran thought. The kid might make a fair deputy, given time. ‘Seriously? Sharon Mueller’s your best interrogator?’
‘She is that. Works child protection, mostly, and if you can get a six-year-old to tell you her daddy’s climbing into bed with her every night, you can get an adult to tell you almost anything.’
‘Oh.’ A single syllable, and then silence.
‘Sometimes the job sucks, Danny.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
Highway 29 flattened out and stretched for about five miles before it climbed a ridge on the edge of the state forest, and that was where the wind always hit you. As far as Halloran was concerned, it was about the ugliest piece of land in the county, especially this time of year: treeless and flat with the cornfields cut to dead brown stubble, as if something big had come along and sucked all the life out of the earth. He punched the cruise up to seventy and kept his eyes on the center line.
‘Going to have an early snow,’ Danny murmured, as if there were finally enough miles behind Halloran’s mention of incest to make talking safe again. It was still a touchy subject in this part of the country, and not all the media blitzes and public awareness campaigns in the world would change that. Some people – good people, mostly – just didn’t want to believe such things happened.
‘How can you tell?’
‘Highway Department’s two weeks late putting up the snow fence along here. Almost a sure-fire guarantee we’ll have an early blizzard.’
‘Just what we need,’ Halloran said, and that was enough small talk. ‘You know what we’re looking for out here, Danny?’
‘Yes, sir. Information.’
‘That’s right. Paperwork, mostly. Anything at all that’ll tell us something about the Kleinfeldts. Phone records, credit card receipts, legal papers, like that.’ He slowed the car at Steiger’s House of Cheese and Video and turned right onto a narrow strip of washboard gravel. ‘The more we know about the victims, the better chance we have figuring out who might have wanted them dead.’
Danny unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit, folded it in thirds, and pushed it into his mouth. ‘Diaries, journals . . .’
‘They’re good.’
‘ . . . calendars . . .’
‘Anything.’
