threw you off your stride. It was the kind of thing that blew your gasket after a couple of hours, made you question every action. Crease owned his heart.
'You smuggling drugs into my county?' Edwards asked. He didn't wait for an answer. 'Over the Canadian border? What are you bringing down? Untaxed cigarettes? Whiskey?'
'Would you want me to?'
'Depends on my cut.'
Crease let out a laugh.
'I want to know what you've got stewing. I want to know why you're here.'
'I already told you.'
'You didn't tell me anything.'
'You weren't listening.'
'The hell I wasn't.'
You could go around like this all day long. 'Okay, you got me. We're not bringing drugs in but we are thinking of knocking over some llama farms. They go for top dollar in Jersey.'
'Still being wise.'
The chair wasn't that sturdy. Without the spike in his brain Crease could've busted free of it pretty easily, but his hands just weren't doing what they were supposed to be right now. Edwards drew his fist back and slugged Crease squarely in the mouth. It was a pretty nice shot. Crease spit blood on the floor and Reb went, 'Ugh, disgusting!'
Edwards said, 'You'd better start telling me what I want to know.'
Crease knew he could ride it out in the chair for a while longer, long enough to get his hands back, but he really wanted to know why the sheriff's department, including his father, had botched the Burke investigation.
Edwards got him by his front hair and tugged his chin back, ready to take another poke. Crease asked, 'Didn't you check into the sister?'
'What?'
'The sister.'
'What sister?'
'Burke's sister. Sarah. The girl's aunt. Living with the family at the time.'
'Who's going to clean up my floor?' Reb wailed. 'He stained my grandmother's throw rug. Goddamn it!'
Edwards let Crease go and turned to glare at Reb, like he might sock her too. His mind was taking him back. It took him a minute to remember. 'The spinster? We ran a check on her.'
'And didn't turn up anything?'
'No.'
'Nothing suspicious at all?' Crease swallowed a mouthful of blood. He didn't want to lose Edwards' attention. The hot splash down his throat got his heart rate stepped up a notch. 'No boyfriend with a gambling problem?'
'No.'
'How about later, after they put Sarah Burke away? That tell you anything?'
'She broke down. If you're really a cop then you've seen it before. They were a close family.'
'You ever listen to yourself talk or do you just hear a loud hum?'
Edwards slapped him with an open hand. It didn't even make Crease's head move. You slap a guy cuffed to a chair like that in front of your boys and you'd never live it down.
'She's in an outpatient home in Langdaff,' he said. 'The Sinclair Mayridge Home for the Needful. I visited her last night. She's crazy, but not as crazy as she wants to be. She's just got nothing to live for.'
'You're lying,' Edwards said. It was almost a question. 'Her gambler boyfriend, guy named Daniel Purvis. He's got to be dead, but check on him anyway.' Crease's gaze locked with the sheriffs. They were down to it now. 'You had so much on your plate at the time, with my father and the department investigation, and you being pissed off at him, that you let the case slip.'
'No, that's not how it happened.'
'You're an idiot. You should come to New York, you'd be running my department in no time.'
Edwards slapped him again, harder. That was better. Crease started to feel the heat working through him. He let out another laugh. His scalp tightened and began to crawl. His upper lip began to bead. The dried blood on his face loosened.
'Stop hitting him!' Reb shouted.
Funny since she was the one who nearly caved in his head, but you took sympathy wherever you could find it. 'Where's the money? Crease, tell him!'
'He doesn't have it,' Edwards shouted. 'His old man stole it years ago.'
'That's not what he said! He said his father tried to take it and-'
'Shut up, Rebecca!'
'Well, get him to talk!'
'A minute ago you didn't want me to hit him, and now-'
'I want that money. Do what you have to do! Or I will!'
'So help me I'll break your head, Reb!'
Edwards was getting twitchy, but really it was Reb you had to worry about. She was the one who wanted it more, and thought Crease was the way to get it.
Crease watched them arguing like a couple that's been married twenty years. They seemed made for each other. The two of them going back and forth about the measly cash. Reb started complaining that she could use the money to fix the place up and Edwards began yelling about Jimmy Devlin and her other dalliances. He actually used the word dalliances. It wasn't a word you ever expected to hear when you were cuffed to a chair, but there it was.
Crease picked up another sound too.
It was the subtle clack of the tilted screen door hitting the jamb. But the front door was locked. Crease strained to listen. He wasn't sure if he heard plodding footsteps going around to the back or was only imagining them. The whiff of rain strengthened. The pain in his skull lingered.
Whoever it was knocked over the stack of cordwood Crease had put out back. It wasn't loud enough for Reb and Edwards to quit snapping at each other. They had to burn out soon. They were just hissing like cats now, going on and on about past circumstances. Reb's bad cooking, the sheriff drinking too much to make it in bed. Crease shifted in the chair a bit and was able to see through the kitchen to the back door.
Cruez had slipped his leash. He was trying to make it inside, acting like a sneaky second-story cat burglar. He could barely fit through the door. He let out a soft grunt as he bumped into the jutting metal cabinet with the flour and sugar jars on it.
These people, jazzed up, jonesing, and jinxed to the max, but they didn't hear size sixteen feet come clomping in the kitchen. Crease swallowed down a groan of frustration. He wasn't sure how best to play this turn. Try to snap Edwards' attention back to the moment or look over at Cruez to see what he was after, maybe get him to help out here for a second. You could never tell with somebody like Cruez if the guy wanted bloodshed or just a pat on the head and a T-bone.
From this angle, Cruez could only see Crease, couldn't look at the rest of the room where Edwards was now pouting and Reb was ramping herself up to do much nastier things to Crease than she'd done when they were teenagers. He shouldn't have put down her cooking.
Cruez swept his eyes across Crease in the chair, not quite smart enough to put the whole scene together. All he saw was the target, didn't notice the blood on Crease's face, the way his arms were drawn back. Like this was how he might be relaxing on any weeknight. Jesus.
So it was obvious Cruez hadn't even taken the time to peek in a window. He'd just marched around the house thinking he was slick, expecting to find Crease and Reb settled in for the night. Out on the couch or upstairs in a knotted tangle. A smile started to cross his rough, lumpy face and got lost in crazy ways among the scarred features.
'I'm the right hand,' he said and started to pull his Magnum.
Okay, so that answered that question.
Crease shouted, 'Sheriff, this man wants to smuggle llamas over the Canadian border! Arrest him! I'll take
