Wolf said nothing. It was best to refrain from engaging the demon that took over when Lorber was low on sleep and food.
Two forensic technicians pushed Mary Dimitri’s bagged body out on a gurney and wheeled her to Lorber’s van.
“If Hammes’s prints are on that bottle,” Lorber said, “they’ll show up immediately in the databases. I’ll get that going when we get back to the lab.”
“Have you talked to Daphne lately?” Wolf asked. “She’s still up at the mine, right?”
“She is, and I have not.”
“Okay, thanks. Keep me posted.” Wolf turned to join the deputies at the side yard.
Rachette paced past him, his cell pressed to his ear. “… just have that one dude pitch. What’s his name? Jepson? Jefferson?…oh yeah…I know…I’ll be there next week, though…make sure to tell him to keep his right shoulder level when he’s swinging…”
Yates, Nelson, Chavez, and Cain stood silently, watching Mary Dimitri’s body being loaded.
“Any news from Lorber?” Yates asked.
“Nothing yet.”
Rachette walked up to them, pocketing his phone. “What did I miss?”
“Who was that?” Wolf asked.
“Charlotte.”
Wolf looked at his watch—6:15. “TJ has a baseball game tonight. Is that what you two were talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“You missed last week’s game, too, because of training.”
Rachette nodded. “Yeah. Well, cop first, right?”
Wolf felt the other eyes on him. He felt Deputy Cain’s eyes on him. “Why don’t you head back and catch your son’s game.”
“No, sir, it’s okay.”
“That’s an order. Yates, you head back with him. Nelson and Chavez, you two stay here.”
“What are you going to do?” Yates asked.
“I’m heading to the casino to find out when Mary Dimitri was last seen at work and who she might have been with.”
“You sure you don’t need help?” Rachette asked.
Wolf shook his head. “No. Go.” He looked at Deputy Cain. “Thanks for your help today. You can head home, too.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
He wanted to say no, almost said it, but then nodded. “Yeah. Okay, thanks.”
The other men were staring at them in silence.
He waved a hand. “Get out of here.”
As Wolf walked to his SUV, Cain asked, “Should I ride with you?”
“Uh, yeah sure.”
She started toward his SUV when Wolf shouted “Wait!” He ran past her and opened the door, scooping all the trash— fast food bags, wadded-up napkins, and three stray French fries—into one bag, and put it in the rear.
When he got behind the wheel she was already seated in the passenger seat. He was acutely aware of her scent battling it out with the smell of old food and months of general use.
She lowered the sun visor and looked in the mirror, touching the numerous bandages on her face.
He fired up the engine and cracked the windows. “Sorry about the…” He let the sentence trail into nothing.
“The what?”
“The smell of my car.”
She smiled. “I’ve smelled worse. My ride’s not the cleanest either.”
“I had my head inside of it yesterday. But I appreciate the lie.”
Wolf turned the SUV around and headed toward Dredge’s Main Street.
“Left here,” she said, then checked her cell phone and put it in her pocket again. Her hands patted out a beat on her leg.
“You sure you don’t need to go home?”
“No. I’m fine.”
He nodded, letting silence take over for a bit.
“How long have you lived in Rocky Points?” she asked.
“All my life. I was born in the county hospital.”
“Oh, wow.”
“What about you?” Wolf asked. “Where are you from?”
“Summit County. My father was a deputy with the sheriff’s department. We lived in Breckenridge.” She pointed out the window to the north, where a wall of mountains separated them from her childhood home.
“You said you worked up in Bozeman?”
“I was with the Gallatin Sheriff’s Department for nine years.”
“Nine years. Wow. So, what brought you here?” he asked.
“My father’s not doing too well, and my mother passed away a few years ago.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. What’s wrong with him?”
“Dementia. Alzheimer’s.”
He thought about his own mother down in Denver, also battling the early stages of dementia.
“You left your job in Bozeman to take care of him?”
She stared out the window. “Yeah.”
Silence enveloped the cab for the next block, until Wolf said, “That’s noble of you. You must love him very much.”
She said nothing in response, but took a deep breath, and Wolf heard tension in the exhale.
“You probably want to turn here,” she said. “And park on that side there.”
“Do they ever use this many parking spots?” Wolf asked, as they coasted through an asphalt lot the size of a football field. “Doesn’t seem like they would get this many visitors from Denver. It’s nowhere near I-70.”
“Not that I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Right here, in front of that entrance. The casino and lounge is through there.”
Wolf parked and they got out. He stretched his back, studying the casino ahead. As he’d noted before on the drive in, it was brown stucco, accented with huge lodgepole pines framing the entrances and banks of glass windows reflecting the surrounding mountains.
“Here we are,” Cain said. “The Motherlode Casino.”
“After you,” he said.
Piper Cain could feel the sheriff’s eyes on her as she led the way through the parking lot toward the casino. The wind was relentless, whipping her hair into a frenzy behind her. It was going to take forever to get the knots out after the day’s events. Beneath their bandages, the scrapes on her cheeks were starting to itch fiercely, but she willed herself not to touch them.
She pulled out her phone and quickly looked at the screen. Still no messages or missed calls. She was assuming no news was good news, and she hoped she was right. Pretty soon she was going to have to wrap up this field day with Sheriff Wolf and get back to her father.
But not yet. The more time she could spend with these people—the sheriff being the most important of them all—the better.
The wind died down when they got to the automatic
