When I was beside Baylor’s cruiser, I buzzed my window down.
“I’m bored, Clint.” He rubbed a hand through his crew-cut hair and yawned. “There’s nothing happening in town. I saw the mayor on Washington Avenue earlier and asked her why she thought it was so dead. She said she didn’t know, but she hoped things would pick up.”
I smiled as I looked down at Baylor. He was a transplant from Sylva, North Carolina and had been in town for a little more than four years. Although new to the area, he had acclimated well and the townspeople now saw him as one of their own. In addition to fitting in with the townsfolk, he had also proven his salt as a police officer.
“Enjoy the quiet days,” I said, wincing when I realized I sounded too much like some of the old detectives I’d worked with in La Mort years ago. I decided it was too late to turn back, so I continued. “Once things start falling apart, you’ll relish the boring days.”
Without looking at me, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know, maybe Amy’s right.”
I cocked my head to the side. “About?”
“She said you were getting too old for this shit.”
We both started laughing. Amy Cooke was the one detective I supervised, and she liked to mess with me about my age. She and Baylor had started dating a couple of months ago and it now seemed her antics were rubbing off on him. I suddenly sobered up and frowned.
“How is she?”
He frowned, too. “You know Amy. Her body isn’t healing as fast as she’d like it to. The good news is that she’s not using the wheelchair anymore, but—most importantly to her—the bad news is she’s not running through the swamps or kicking people in the face yet. They’ve scaled back the physical therapy to three days a week now, but it’s more aggressive. They think she’ll regain most of her strength within the next few weeks.”
Amy had been the target of a brutal ambush two months ago that had left her hospitalized in critical condition. By all accounts, she should’ve been dead, but her dogged willingness to live and the excellent work by the first responders and ER doctors had all contributed to her survival. While her doctors had predicted a full recovery, they had also cautioned that the road back would be a long and painstaking one.
“Is she still self-conscious about her voice?” I had spoken to her Friday and her voice was still a little raspy from the bullet wound to her neck. She kept apologizing for the way she sounded.
“She is,” Baylor said with a grin, “but I keep telling her it sounds sexy as all hell—especially when she’s mad. The scar’s been reduced to a dimple. The doctors did a great job sewing it up. You’d never know a 5.56 bullet ripped through her throat and almost killed her.”
“Is she worried about the scar?”
“No!” He shook his head in exasperation. “She’s actually proud of it. She says every time she sees that dimple it reminds her of our first date.”
I laughed at that. Baylor and Amy had not actually been on a date when she was shot, but they had been working together that day and had talked about starting to date. Personally, I was glad to see them together. They were both good people and they deserved each other.
“Why don’t you tell her to come by the office on the days she doesn’t have physical therapy?” I suggested. “She can do some follow-ups by phone and can help me dig for info on the computers.”
“Oh, she’d love that!”
“Well, good,” I said, reaching for the gearshift. “I’m heading to the house. Tell Amy I’m looking forward to seeing her next week. I’ve got a handful of theft cases to follow up on, and I could use the help.”
“You’ll have one more.” Baylor lifted a theft report from the seat beside him. “Red McKenzie made a report this morning that one of his trail cameras had been stolen. I walked out to where it occurred, but I didn’t find anything. He doesn’t have a suspect, so I had nowhere to go with it. I go off shift for two days, so I figured I’d forward it to you in case something comes up while I’m off.”
“A theft case—now that’s some action, isn’t it?” I asked with a smile. “It’s better than getting a cat out of a tree.”
Before he could respond, his police radio scratched to life and Beth Gandy asked for his location. Beth was our weekend dispatcher. She had suffered a tremendous loss when her son had been murdered four years ago, and that was how I’d met her. She had later come to work for us on the weekends. She’d worked the night shift a few different times when we were between dispatchers and had even taken Lindsey Savoie’s place during the day shift, but she always returned to the weekend shift, which was her favorite time to work.
“I’m in Mechant Loup East,” Baylor replied. “On Waxtuygi Road.”
“I need you to proceed to Orange Way.” Beth paused and a bit of static came through the speaker. “We received a report of a…um…I’m not sure how to categorize this one.”
Another pause and more static. Finally, she came on and gave the details in plain English. We always tried to use radio codes as much as possible for the sake of brevity and privacy, but most of the townspeople who owned scanners already knew what most of our codes meant.
“It seems that a mail carrier was delivering a package to Carol Richardson’s
