“Now?” Rachette asked, leaning toward Patterson and rubbing his backside.
“No. We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning.”
The meeting broke up and people streamed out of the office. Patterson took her time getting up.
“Patty,” Wolf said, “can I talk to you?”
She stopped. “What’s up?”
He closed the manila folder on his desk that Lorber had left and crossed his legs. “Do you remember coming across Deputy Cain’s resume this year? She…apparently applied, and I somehow didn’t see it.”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I saw it today,” she said. “I was speaking to Charlotte earlier, and she was telling me about how you and Wilson have been dragging your feet on a few things. I hope you don’t mind, but after that I finished your stack of paperwork,” she gestured to the empty wire basket on his desk.
“Oh, yeah. Wow. Thanks.”
“I went into your file cabinet to make sure there were no more forms that hadn’t been filed since there seemed to be a few missing from May and June.”
“There did?”
“Yes. But I figured it out. Don’t worry.” She walked to the filling cabinet, opened the top drawer, pulled a file, and slapped it on his desk. “Deputy Cain.”
Wolf opened it and was greeted by a photo of Deputy Piper Cain’s smiling face paperclipped to an application. Although it was a generic work photo from Gallatin County Sheriff’s Department, she looked good in the picture.
A handwritten letter, signed by the sheriff of Gallatin County in Bozeman, Montana, was paperclipped to the back. Wolf skimmed it, coming across words like exemplary and remarkable. According to the letter she was a hard worker, a team player, a self-starter, and tough.
“It’s a good letter of recommendation,” Patterson said.
Wolf looked up and nodded. He closed the file. “ Thanks. I hired Deputy Chavez as a favor to Wilson. We…I, never hired another one.”
Wolf turned in his chair, facing the window. He’d had more time to mull over the time period around the winter storm. That storm had also been when MacLean had called him, touting his recovery from advanced pancreatic cancer and his intention to return to Rocky Points and the sheriff’s position. Wolf had rarely felt such elation in his life as he had during that conversation, and though he was ashamed to admit it now, it wasn’t because of MacLean’s improved health. That had been the moment Wolf had decided to leave these millions of things that didn’t involve the detective squad and Wolf’s previous world to MacLean on his return.
He looked underneath Deputy Cain’s resume and saw two other candidates, both with less than half the experience and qualifications she had.
A wave of guilt washed over him as he thought about Cain’s predicament in Dredge, living with her father up there in the middle of the woods.
“I’m a pretty out of touch sheriff this time around, huh?”
Wolf swiveled back to see an empty office.
“Yes,” he answered himself. “You are.”
He pulled out his cell phone and scrolled to recent numbers, pausing at Piper Cain’s in his outgoing calls from earlier today. Maybe a good sheriff would call his deputy to check in on her after a day of action like that. Then again, maybe a creepy sheriff would have done that.
He scrolled deep into the unused recesses of his contacts for another number. He found it and stared. Dennis Muller.
The last time he’d seen his deceased ex-wife’s father was at the hospital when Cassidy had given birth to Ryan. Wolf knew Sarah’s parents saw Jack, Cassidy, and Ryan regularly, visiting Carbondale to see their great-grandson, but Wolf had not seen or spoken to the Mullers more than a few times since Sarah’s funeral.
Wolf got the sense that they blamed him for her death, although they’d never said as much outright.
Wolf decided that was a topic for another therapy session with Hawkwood and dialed the number.
“Hello?”
“Hey Dennis, it’s David.”
“Yes, hi Dave! How are you?”
They stuttered through some small talk, covering all the bases: Jack and Cassidy, his wife, Angela and her new hobbies, Dennis and his retirement from the construction business and his lack of hobbies.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about that…the construction, that is.” Wolf explained the situation with Rick Hammes, and how they were trying to track him down.
“There’s a big project happening in Edwards right now,” Dennis said. “The biggest, by far. They’re creating a pedestrian zone, next to the new Riverwalk section of town. Putting in a hundred thousand square feet of mixed use, a park, and diverting the river for a water park. They have a huge budget on this thing.
“Of course, those workers can’t afford to live in a place like Edwards, Vail, Avon, or Beaver Creek, so, yeah, they put them up in the motels down in Wolcott and Eagle. Sometimes three or four to a room, depending on the worker’s tolerance for such a thing.”
“Are there any other projects around you can think of that might fit the bill?” Wolf asked. “Maybe in Vail or Avon?”
“No. Nothing nearly as labor-intensive as what they’re doing up in Edwards. If your guy dropped his job to come up here and work because they needed help, you want to start in Edwards. Anyway, I’ll make some calls tomorrow morning, but for now I’d start there.”
“You know the construction company?”
“Sterling Star Commercial,” he said without hesitation. “I know the owner well. Here’s his phone number. Tell him I sent you.”
They finished their conversation a few minutes later with a promise from Wolf to have dinner at their house in Vail one evening soon, a promise that had been made at least three times before in as many years.
He hung up and turned back to his desk. With a flick of his thumb he opened the file in front of him and stared at Piper Cain’s picture. Her eyes were different in this photo than in real life. Brighter. Happier.
He read her vital statistics. She was five foot six. One hundred and fifteen pounds. Brown eyes, although he would have described them as
