She laughed. “Works for me,” she said. “It’s too early to hit a bar anyway.”
“Your dad make any bar recommendations?” he asked as they drove slowly through town. Streets were full of tourists, this being the last weekend of Tulip Festival. People seemed to be wandering from bar to bar, drinks in hand. Was that legal? He wondered. Angie asked to be let out, and she wandered down the street, camera in hand. Well at least that part of the assignment wouldn’t be a bust. He waited for her at the other end of the center square and watched the people. He knew if he were out in it, he’d have threat assessment running in the back of his head the whole time. And everyone would give him space. Angie mingled. Even with a big-ass camera and a flash going off, people just smiled at her. Sometimes she stopped to chat, or to get a name, he thought, smiling as he watched. Once, she knelt down to talk to shy child, a girl, he thought, hard to tell at that age and at this distance. Then Angie took the child’s picture with the tulips the kid was carrying. He laughed.
“Thanks,” she said, hopping back into his car. “That was fun.”
“No problem,” he said. “You’re fun to watch.”
“Yeah?” she said, dimpling up.
“Yeah,” he said. He drove past Anne Norton’s house. There was a car parked in front that hadn’t been there. It wasn’t a sheriff’s SUV, and it wasn’t the car he thought belonged to Norton. Angie jotted down the license plate for him. “Any unusual numbers on it?”
“No, looks like a regular plate,” she answered.
“OK, then let’s find a bar.”
Turned out that had been one of Angie’s questions to people as she walked around town. They were looking for a local’s bar she’d heard about, so it took some questioning. But she’d thought she knew of a place. “Probably the place your aunt made you go,” she teased.
“Probably,” he said. “She has a way of knowing those things. Kind of like your dad.”
And sure enough, they pulled into the same parking lot full of trucks, SUVs, and a fair number of bikes. He groaned, mostly for show. “Country western,” he said. “And yes, it’s the same one. Couldn’t have found it, but this is it.”
Angie laughed.
He locked his bag and her camera bag in his lockbox in back, and they walked in with his arm around her shoulders.
Chapter 11
Breakfast with the sheriff was interesting, Mac thought. Angie might have been a touch hung over and was clutching her coffee mug as if her life depended upon it. Norton was in a good mood. Got laid last night, Mac speculated. He hadn’t, and he’d been tempted. Really tempted. But he had some loose ends to tie up at home first. Nor did he want to harm what was developing into a good work partnership. But they’d danced, and she got snuggly after a few drinks. It made him grin.
Breakfast was at an old-fashioned restaurant that served a lot of food, good coffee, and the waitress called people ‘Hun.’ Well, not Norton. She called him sheriff. Mac wasn’t sure if it was out of respect or dislike.
The three of them had a corner booth, apparently the one the sheriff always sat in. Mac sat in the middle, which made him antsy, but he wasn’t going to make Angie sit between him and the sheriff, not when Norton was so obviously disdainful. Mac felt trapped.
The sheriff was chatty. Mac grilled him about the constitutional sheriff’s association, and what that all meant. He was taping the interview, recorder in plain sight, and he taped his request to tape as well. But eating, interviewing, and taking notes? Nobody was that good.
Constitutional sheriffs had hot buttons, Mac knew. Besides guns, public lands were a big one. And 50 percent of the land in Skagit County was federal land. “Do you have a problem with how federal land is run in Skagit County?”
“Federal land shouldn’t even exist,” he said with a snort. “That’s not in the Constitution. That’s part of the socialist influence from the 1920s. It should all be in private control.”
“Wouldn’t that eliminate people’s usage of it?” Mac asked. “I want to be able to go hiking in the mountains.” Well, he didn’t, but for discussion sake?
“So, let private owners charge for it, and people can pay to go,” he said. “But truth is, you can’t go there now. It may be the people’s lands, but there are permits and regulations. Well, not under my watch. If the National Parks Service wants to enforce that stuff, they can staff it. We don’t enforce any of it.”
Mac took a sip of coffee and a bite of heavily buttered toast. “How do the rangers feel about that?” he asked.
“They shout at me every now and then,” he said laughing. “But that’s not going to get us out there. And the last time they got too nasty, someone took a shot at one of them. And we didn’t answer that call either. So, they backed off.”
“So, your message was you’re on your own? And if you don’t like it, we won’t come when you really need us?”
“Something like that,” Norton agreed. “We don’t have time to worry about ATVs churning up the trails. More power to them. We can either answer serious calls — like someone taking a shot at someone — or we can worry about their stupid regulations. Can’t do both.”
Mac wanted to find some of the park rangers to talk to after this. “What about your wilderness trips? Those on federal lands?”
“Mac, half the county is federal land,” he said. “Of course, they are.”
“What about the tribes?”
Norton grunted. “They wanted autonomy, they got it.”
“What does that mean?” Mac asked.
“It means that they can call their tribal police department if they have problems, not me.”
“OK,” Mac said, leaning back in his chair,
