“They haven’t reported on the autopsy yet,” Kraft said.
“You wrote ‘presumptive assumption’ on your notepad,” she said. “Is that about the U.S. attorney’s opinion?”
Kraft came to a negative decision about Carr. “I’d better let the FBI discuss that with you. Say, you never did tell me what your connection with this is.”
“No, I didn’t, did I,” she said. “You’re a very careful man, Mr. Kraft, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes.” What did that mean?
A malicious smile twitched the corners of her mouth. “And you don’t like to be kept on the bench here.”
“I don’t like it,” he agreed. He wondered at her almost open hostility to him. Was it calculated provocation, or did it reflect something even more disastrous—a high-up decision to distrust the local deputy? He guessed it was distrust of him and wondered how to deal with it. Hellstrom and the Security Council had discussed with him contingency plans for such problems, but no plan had assumed a situation as complex as this one.
Clovis glanced over her shoulder out the window behind her chair. The office was hot and the hard wooden seat of the chair irritated her. She longed for an iced drink and a cool, shadowy lounge bar with soft chairs, Janvert beside her, warm and admiring. For a week now, she’d been playing the part of Janvert’s sister on this stupid western vacation. That mask had come off with the discovery of Peruge’s death. The cover relationship had been touchy at times. Janvert had not gone out of his way to keep things smooth with Nick Myerlie, who’d fronted as their father. And there’d been DT poking his nose in every time they’d turned around. Spying for the brass, no doubt of it. DT was so damned obvious it was ridiculous. Tight quarters in the damned van and an investigation whose pattern none of them liked had worn on them. There were times when they had chosen not to speak rather than risk a fight. All of that stored-up temper was coming out in her now, with Kraft as its focus. She realized this, but didn’t care to suppress it.
The cars of housewives doing their afternoon shopping were beginning to fill the parking lot below the window. Clovis scanned the cars, hoping to see the FBI team emerge from one of them. Nothing. She returned her attention to Kraft.
I could tell this stupid deputy that we’re prepared to put him six feet under in the most direct and sanitary way, she thought. It was a fantasy game she liked to play about people she disliked. Kraft would be shocked and alarmed, of course. He already showed signs of the twitches. Nobody was going to blast this son of a bitch, of course. Hardly likely. But Kraft was in trouble. The Chief had pulled strings in Washington which had reached out through the state capital to the sheriff in Lakeview. It was like a marionette system. Potent federal power was breathing down Kraft’s collar and he could feel it. He still wanted to see her identification, but he hadn’t asked straight out to see it in more than an hour. Lucky, too; she had only her cover identification. That said she was Clovis Myerlie and she’d already been introduced as Clovis Carr.
“This has been a very unusual way to handle a missing-persons case,” she said, swinging around to stare at the poster on the side wall. Cattle rustling, yet, and how to prevent same!
“An even more unusual way to handle an unexplained death in a motel,” Kraft said.
“Murder case,” she corrected him.
“I haven’t seen that tied down yet,” he said.
“You will.”
He kept his gaze on Carr’s sunburned face. They both knew that nothing about this case was usual. The sheriff’s words still rankled in Kraft’s memory. “Linc, we are just the country cousins in this case as of now. The governor himself is in the act. This is not routine, got that? Not routine. We will straighten this out between us later, but right now, I want you to lie doggo and let the FBI run the whole show. They can fight it out with the Alcohol Tax boys on who has jurisdiction, but our jurisdiction stops at the edge of the governor’s desk, got me? Don’t tell me we have rights and responsibilities. I know ’em as well as you do. Neither of us is going to mention them. Is that all clear?”
It had been very clear.
“Where’d you get that sunburn?” Kraft asked, staring at Carr’s face.
Sitting out in your goddamned western sunshine with a pair of binoculars, you son of a bitch! she thought. You know where I got it. But she shrugged and kept her voice nonchalant. “Oh, just hiking around your lovely countryside.”
Hiking around the Hive, Kraft thought with a pang of deep disquiet. He said, “None of this might’ve happened if your Mr. Peruge had gone through normal channels. He should’ve gone to the sheriff over in Lakeview first instead of coming to me or even to the state people. Sheriff Lapham’s a good—”
“A good politician,” she interrupted. “We thought we’d rather deal directly with someone who enjoyed a closer relationship with Dr. Hellstrom.”
Kraft licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. He held himself watchfully alert for any more revelations that touched on their suspicions. He didn’t like the way Carr cocked her head to one side to return his gaze.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What’ve I to—”
“You understand,” she said.
“Damned if I do!”
“And damned if you don’t,” she said.
Kraft felt himself caught by the unleashed power behind her hostility. She was deliberately trying to provoke him. She really didn’t care how she treated him. He blurted, “Oh, I know what you are, all right. You’re from one of those secret government agencies. CIA, I’ll bet. You think you own the—”
“Thanks for the promotion,” she said, but she bent a more watchful gaze upon him. The conversation had taken an awkward turn that she did not like at all. Eddie had said the Chief wanted them to press the deputy, but not to frighten him off.
Kraft fidgeted in his chair. A painful silence settled over the room, deep and charged. He started casting around for excuses to get away to a telephone. He could excuse himself to go to the toilet, but this female would make sure he went to the toilet and there was no telephone there. The desire to call Hellstrom was losing its appeal, too. It could be very dangerous to call. Every line to the farm might carry a tap by now. What had caused them to link him with Hellstrom? There’d been those times he’d been taken sick on Outsider foods and been nursed back to health at the Hive. The cover was that he’d been a great good friend of old Trova (true), but she was long dead and in the vats. Why should that make these government people suspicious?
His mind went on this way for a time, following the trail of its own fears, worrying out bits of the past to wonder about. Was that suspicious, or what about this event, or the time he’d . . . It was a useless occupation and it made his palms sweaty.
The ringing of the telephone startled him out of his nervous reverie. He grabbed for the phone, knocked it from its cradle, had to recover it from a dangling position beside the desk. The voice on the line was anxious and loud when he got the receiver to his ear. “Hello? Hello?”
“This is Deputy Kraft,” he said.
“Is Clovis Carr there? They said she’d be there.”
“She’s here. Who is this?”
“Just put her on the line.”
“This is an official phone and I’d—”
“Goddamn it, this is an official call! You put her on this line!”
“Yes, well—”
“Do it now!” There was no mistaking the long history of expected obedience behind that barked command. Kraft felt the power in the voice.
He handed the phone across the desk to Carr. “It’s for you.”
She took the phone with a puzzled frown, spoke into it. “Yes?”