I nodded and put mayonnaise on my burger, a practice she hated. “Yep, I’ve seen the signs.” The prosecuting attorney had jumped the gun this morning and placed his red-white-and-blue signs in all the strategic spots around town before finding out for sure if I was really going to run again. So far, it had been the strongest motivation that I had had to continue my tenure.
“Prosecuting attorney/sheriff.” She paused for effect. “Kind of gives you an indication as to what his administration would be like.”
I thought about my original plan, to run for sheriff, put in half a term, and then hand the reins over to Vic, allowing her to prove herself for two years before having to face a general election. I chewed a chunk of burger. “You think Vic would make a good sheriff?”
Dorothy slipped a wayward lock behind her ear and looked past me. Her hair was getting longer, and I wondered if she was growing it out. The answer to my question about Vic, like everything else about Dorothy, was definitive. “Why don’t we ask her?”
I fought the urge to turn and look out onto Main Street, where I’m sure a handsome, dark-haired woman was parking a ten-year-old unit in front of the Busy Bee Cafe. Wyoming had never elected a female sheriff and the chances of their electing an Italian from Philadelphia with a mouth like a saltwater crocodile were relatively slim.
“She’s got the Basquo with her.” There was a pause as I continued eating my lunch. “Those two are quite the pair.”
Santiago Saizarbitoria had joined our little contingency three months ago and, with the exception of trying to put out a chimney fire single-handedly on an ice-slicked roof, had proven himself indispensable. I listened as the door opened and closed, the laden April air drifting through the brief opening. They sat on the stools beside me and threw their elbows onto the counter. In identical uniforms and service jackets, they could have been twins, except that the Basquo was bigger, with wrists like bundled cables, and had a goatee, and he didn’t have the tarnished gold eyes that Vic had.
I kept eating as Dorothy pulled two mugs from under the counter, poured them full, and pushed the cream dispenser and the sugar toward the old world pair. They both drank coffee all day. Vic slipped her finger through the handle of her cup. “How was this afternoon’s premiere at Durant Elementary?”
I took another sip of my iced tea. “I don’t think we’ll make the long run.”
She tore open five sugars and dumped them in her mug. “I been here two years. How come they never fucking asked me?”
I set my glass back down. “It’s hard to read nursery rhymes with a tape delay.”
She stirred the coffee into the sugar and spoke into the mug. “That monkey pud Kyle Straub’s got signs up all over town.”
“Yep, I heard.”
Saizarbitoria leaned in and joined the conversation. “Vern Selby was talking very highly about Mr. Straub in the paper yesterday.”
“Yep, I read it.”
All our radios blared for a second. Static. “Unit two, 10-54 at 16, mile marker four.”
We looked at one another. Ruby had made a crusade of using the ten code in the last few weeks, and it was turning out to be a royal pain in the ass for all of us. I was the first one to guess. “Intoxicated driver?”
Vic was next. “Road blocked…”
Saizarbitoria took one last sip of his coffee and slipped off his stool; he knew the chain of command. He clicked the mic on his radio. “Ten fifty-four, roger.” He looked at the two of us and shook his head. “Livestock on the road.”
Vic and I shrugged at each other as she tossed him the keys. She sipped her sugar as he hurried out. “Do let us know.”
Vic hitched a ride with me. As we walked up the steps of the old Carnegie Library that housed the Absaroka County jail and offices, I could smell her shampoo and the crab apple blossoms. We were about halfway up the steps when she stopped me with a hand on my arm. I turned to look at her as she leaned against the iron railing and slid that same hand up the black-painted steel bar. I waited, but she just looked off toward Clear Creek, where the cottonwoods were already starting to leaf. She glanced back at me, irritated. “You still planning on leaving tomorrow morning?”
I adjusted the book of fairy tales under my arm. “That’s the plan, at least mine.”
She nodded. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Okay.”
She sniffed, and I watched as the wrinkles receded from the sides of her nose like cat whiskers. “My mother wants to have lunch with you and Cady.”
I waited a moment, thinking there must be more. “Okay.”
She continued to look off toward the creek. “Super Cop might be too busy, but my mother is feeling negligent in her attentions toward your daughter.” I watched as the muscles of her jaw flexed like they always did when she mentioned her father.
“Okay.”
“I mean…It’s not a big deal. She just wants to have lunch.”
I nodded again. “Okay.”
“You can go to my Uncle Alphonse’s pizzeria-it’s nothing special.”
I smiled and dipped my head to block her view. “I said okay.”
She looked at me. “It’s a family thing, and like most of the family things concerning my family, it’s fucked up.” She sighed. “I mean…they should have gotten in touch with her a long time before this, but in their usual, fucked-up way…”
“We’ll have lunch.” I watched as she studied her Browning tactical boots. Her dark hair stood up in tufts of dissatisfaction. “I would love to meet any of your family.”
“Uh huh.” Nothing was ever easy with Vic; it was one of her charms. She started up the steps without me. “Just don’t expect too much.”
I shook my head, followed her, and caught the beveled-glass door as it swung back into my face. I gently closed it and walked by the photographs of the five previous Absaroka County sheriffs. I saluted the painting of Andrew Carnegie as I mounted the final steps to the dispatcher’s desk where Ruby sat reading the last series of updates from the Division of Criminal Investigation down in Cheyenne. “What the hell is a 10-54?”
She raised her blue eyes and gazed at me through her salt-with-no-pepper bangs. “Ferg says that he’s 10-6 today if he’s got to work the next week and a half solid, and I’m 10-42 as of five forty-five for my church’s ice-cream social.”
I decided to ignore the flurry of tens. “Did he go up to Tongue River Canyon?” She nodded. The Ferg was my part-time deputy who made a full-time habit of harassing the local aquatic life with his hand-tied flies. He was going to have to take up some of the slack while I was gone, so I didn’t begrudge him a day casting bits of fur and feather upon the waters. “Any Post-its?”
“Two, and that young man who is supposed to come in this afternoon.”
“What young man?”
She shook her head. “The young man from Sheridan who applied for the other deputy position in Powder Junction. He said he’d be here before five.”
I sat on the corner of her desk, looked at the time on her computer, and reached down to pet Dog. “Then he’s got twenty minutes.”
The beast’s head rose, and Ruby examined the scar that a bullet had left near his ear; a tongue the size of a dishwashing rag lapped my hand. “Lucian called to see if you’d forgotten it’s chess night.”
“Damn.” I was going to have to go over to the Durant Home for Assisted Living to see the old sheriff.
“Cady called.”
“She’s changed her mind and doesn’t want us to come after all?”
Ruby wadded up the second Post-it and dispatched it with the first. “Not likely. She says for you to bring along your gun because she wants to take you to her shooting club on Thursday.” We looked at each other for a moment, and then she raised an eyebrow. “Shooting club?”
