Caleb promptly repeated it.
'Now what? ' Cole asked as he tightened his hold on Jessica. She had
willingly gone to him, and he wasn't going to let go.
'What's going on here? ' Daniel asked, his anger mounting as he
spoke.
'Know what I think? ' Cole said. He squeezed Jessica before adding,
'It was damned crowded under that desk. '- v he office in the front of
the jail was crowded with lawmen. Marshal Jack Cooper, head of
operations in Salt Lake City, and two young deputies named Spencer and
Cobb, had just arrived in Rockford Falls. The three men had ridden
hard and were parched and covered with a layer of dust.
Cooper was a good friend of Daniel's. The two men had worked on
several investigations in the past, though admittedly none of them had
involved women, and all of the cases had been far less convoluted.
Like Daniel, Cooper was no stranger to danger or the bizarre behavior
of criminals.
He once escorted a smooth-tongued self-proclaimed reverend who had
brutally killed and mutilated sixteen redheaded men because he believed
the color of their hair indicated that they were spawns of the devil.
The crazy loon constantly misquoted scripture, insisted that he heard
God's voice every day at noon on the dot, and refused counsel. The
Lord, he declared, would step forward and testify on his behalf.
Ironically, the judge who heard the case just happened to have carrot
orange hair, and it didn't take him any time at all to recommend to the
jury that the guilty man be hanged.
Cooper had done and seen it all. Deeply tanned with creases at the
corners of his brown eyes and prematurely silver-tipped hair, he looked
more like a senator than a lawman. Nothing ever fazed him. After
reading Daniel's notes, he tossed the pad on the desk and sat down.
The two deputies leaned against the wall behind him.
'It seems to me that you're letting these three women run your
investigation, ' he remarked as he stretched his long legs out and
crossed one ankle over the other.
Cole heard the comment as he came in the door. He had just returned
from the hotel.
Daniel introduced him to Cooper and his deputies. 'This is Marshal
Clayborne, ' he said. 'He's new to the job.' The deputies rushed
