In Plain View

“Broken neck. Time of death was approximately nine o’clock-”

“No shit, nine a.m.?”

“Guy died about a half hour before we got there.” He sounded matter of fact, but I could see him questioning my reaction. I waved it off.

“How’d you hear about it?” I asked.

“Phone tip. Somebody saw him setting up, I guess. We ran the plate and knew it was Jost by the time we sent guys to the scene.”

“Phone tip called in the license plate?”

“Yeah.”

That seemed weird to me, given the off-road nature of Jost’s parking job. His little car had been parked parallel to the road in the ditch. The person who called it in would have to have driven right by the car.

“Coroner thinks Jost must have been out there a while, setting himself up. There was a lot of foot traffic between his car and the site.” Curzon shifted back to a recline, against the patio wall. Sipped his beer. Nothing like a little shop-talk to make you forget your troubles. “He used rope from the ambulance rig. Stacked the boxes he had in his trunk to get the lift he needed, kicked the top box out from under him…or it slipped.”

“Does the coroner have an opinion?”

Curzon hesitated. “Off the record?”

“Why not? Everyone else is.” I took a sip of lemonade beer to wash the bitter out of my voice. On the fourth sip, I decided Mrs. Curzon was right. It was nummy.

“Evidence is contradictory. I assume you saw what was inside those boxes?” he asked.

“Porno magazines.”

“Yeah. Same ones found in the trunk of his car the night he was brought in.” He said it as if it might not mean a thing, but the silence that followed said otherwise.

Figuring people was a skill that improved with experience. Tracking people, tracking behavior, the more you knew of the possibilities the more likely you could imagine a solution to a scenario. Things fit or they didn’t. I figured Curzon was one of the lucky few who could keep up with me when it came to tracking someone into the dark of uncharted, unhappy possibilities.

I threw out a suggestion. “Everybody already knew about the mags, so why bother to take them out of the car?”

Curzon crooked one of those black eyebrows in disbelief. Didn’t sound right to me either. A guy like Jost wouldn’t leave them in his car once they’d been discovered. He’d have the guys at work asking to see what he had in his trunk every damn day.

“He used the same magazines that got him busted to hang himself. Could be remorse. Self-punishment.” I sipped my lemonade. “What’s ‘contradictory’ about the evidence?”

“The magazines suggest a sexual-” Curzon finally settled on, “-intent. But there’s no other evidence to support that assumption. No pertinent body fluids. Guy had his clothes on. In fact, those clothes he was wearing? The pants don’t even have a fly.”

“How…awkward for him.”

Curzon acknowledged this with a tip of his beer. “Exactly. On the other hand, judging by the time of death, and the mud on the sides of the box, he had to have been standing out there a while. Probably standing up on the boxes for a while. Looking at pictures, maybe? We don’t know.” He shook his head.

Weirdness.

“Trying to get up his courage?” Was courage what it took to face that moment?

“Possibly,” Curzon answered vaguely. “Guy was no Boy Scout. Maybe he couldn’t figure out how to tie the knot.” That thought generated a frown and shrug. “On the other hand-how many hands is that now?-there was no note.”

Another indication of autoerotic asphyxiation, according to Dr. Graham.

I shook my head. “Contradictory evidence.”

“You got it.” Curzon sounded stoical, in a pissed-off sort of way.

“Any other witnesses,” I asked as casually as I could manage, “besides the phone tip?”

“No.” He turned to face me and consider the possibilities my question suggested. “None.”

I nodded, ah.

“You’d report any pertinent information to the proper authorities, wouldn’t you, Maddy O’Hara?”

The use of my whole name-a sure sign of trouble.

“Of course I would, Sheriff Curzon.”

He smiled and the glow in those eyes understood exactly how little we really knew of each other. “I see you brought your boy along today.” He wasn’t looking at Ainsley; he was looking at me.

Ainsley was thick into the game of touch football with the underage Curzons. The females seemed to be tackling him whether he had the ball or not.

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Not at all,” he assured me. Eyes still trained on the game, he added, “I’m glad.”

“Gives the kids someone to play with?”

Curzon smiled as a gang of mostly girls brought Ainsley down again. The boy stood up and shook himself off when Marcus Wilt called out a hello. Ainsley ran a couple of loping steps that direction and shook hello, all charm. PK-politician’s kid-probably knew three quarters of the people in town. Beside me, Curzon tensed.

The kids called Ainsley back to the game.

“I’d say the fact you brought your escort looks good for me.”

“Don’t hold your breath, Sheriff.”

“Jack,” he said.

“What?”

“Jack Curzon. It’s my name. You’re a guest in my father’s house, eating my mother’s food. Drinking her-” he curled his lip and pointed at my glass, “-drink. You ought to be calling me Jack…”

“How about I call you jack-”

“…not to mention the fact, I’m about to get familiar with you.”

Without so much as a glance in my direction, I felt his hand shift from my elbow, to my waist, to the small of my back. The cold of the wall behind me was suddenly replaced with the heat of his palm.

Jenny squealed with laughter as she went down under a pig-pile of ballplayers.

All those painkillers on board, I should have had no trouble staying cool. Numb, even. “Uh,” was the best I could do.

Lame. Maybe lemonade beer was stronger than I thought.

That spot of warmth quickly slipped lower, tucking under the hem of my blouse. Skin to skin at the small of my back, warm became hot. All the blood left my head.

I hissed, side-stepped away from him with my bad leg, and sang a stinging little song of the profane.

Curzon grabbed my arm when I bobbled. “Whoa. What’s the problem?”

“Your town’s full of crazy-fucking drivers is what.” I backed out of his grip and boosted my butt up onto the concrete wall. Gingerly, I swung my leg up in front of me and hiked up the split cuff of my capris. The white patch of bandage sported a brown stain that I hoped was peroxide. I decided not to peel it back and check.

“How’d that happen?”

I grumbled out the short version of my brush with the SUV.

“You report it?” he asked in the work voice.

“No. Are you kidding? Not that big a deal. Besides, the emergency room ate up my free time. I had to get to this swell party.”

“Come in tomorrow and fill out a complaint.” It wasn’t an order; orders presuppose a future compliant will. This was more like old news. A done deal.

“Why bother?” I snapped. “You people couldn’t catch the guy when the victim was all the way dead.”

Oops. Where did that come from?

“And how is that conflict of interest going?” he replied smoothly.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “That came out rougher than I meant. Blame the Vicodin.”

Both his eyebrows lifted. He was working to manage no smile. God help me, if he laughed.