“Where am I going?” she asked.
“Away,” he said, his voice rising. “The both of you. I want you out of here. Out of my county, out of the state if you can manage it. I’ve had enough death and destruction for one month. The Creigh clan won’t rest until this is taken care of, and that just means more of the same.”
“Why don’t you stop it, then?” Carrie demanded, surprising the sheriff and me in about equal measure. “Why does Mingo and his gang have free run of Carrigan County? If you knew that trouble was brewing, why weren’t your people alerted to look for just exactly what showed up in the parking lot here? Why was Rue Creigh able to drive in here and abduct me and then drive right back through the center of Marionburg with me in plain sight, adorned in duct tape?”
Hayes started to splutter, but suddenly Carrie Santangelo of the SBI professional standards investigations division was in his face and not backing down.
“We’re not causing this shit. We might be provoking them, but that’s because we’ve had the temerity to lift up the rock and see what’s under it. You and your people, on the other hand, are doing nothing. Nothing! You think the Creighs aren’t moving product here in Carrigan County? You think there’s no meth problem in your piece of the hills?”
“You listen to me,” Hayes began, but she shut him right down. The shepherds had long since crawled out of the room. I was trying to figure out how to join them.
“No, Sheriff, you listen to me. I’m beginning to think that I need to call my ex-boss in my ex-organization and tell him they need to take a look at the Carrigan County Sheriff’s Office, that the sheriff here is either hopelessly ineffective or he’s part of the Creigh organization. Or maybe I should go find the local newspaper and write a little op-ed piece. I’m a citizen now, not a state employee. I can say whatever the hell I please. And if that’s not okay with you, then get off your fat ass and get to work. Find these bastards. Arrest them. Harass them. Fucking do something! And in the meantime, get the hell out of here before I get pissed off.”
The sheriff was red in the face by the time she’d finished, and I was suddenly concerned about his heart condition. But then, to my utter amazement, Hayes grabbed his hat and briefcase and stomped out of the cabin. I went to the window and saw one of his deputies hotfooting it up the path to the parking lot with the sheriff behind him, his hat jammed low over his forehead. I suspected the deputy had heard an earful and was anxious to get to the safety of his cruiser. I pulled the curtain closed.
“Well, now,” I said, and then stopped when I saw there was still fire in her eye. “Want a drink?”
She shook her head and went out onto the porch overlooking the creek. I fixed two scotches and went out after her.
“I chase bent cops,” she said, “but I have a positive hate-on for do-nothing cops.”
“I’d’ve never guessed,” I said, handing her a drink. She took it without looking at it, but she didn’t refuse it. A waft of leftover smoke from the front parking lot blew down in our direction. “That the car or the burning bridge?” I said.
“Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” she said. “You’re either with the good guys or you’re not. Hayes has been doing the ostrich act for too damn long. Time somebody braced him up.”
“If he does have a heart condition,” I said, “it tends to sap the do-something right out of a guy.”
“Then he should retire and let someone else do the job. Right now the Creighs are walking all over him.”
“So you don’t think he’s dirty?”
She shook her head. I agreed with that assessment. “So how the hell do we prove this business with Grinny Creigh and children in Robbins County? And do that all by our lonesome?”
She grunted defiantly and sipped some of her scotch.
“We still have Baby Greenberg as at least a passive ally,” I said. “I don’t know about Sam King-he tried to make it look like he was washing his hands of this mess, but I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Whatever they’re doing, they won’t tell me,” she said.
“Right, so we have to figure out some way to blow this thing open. We need to find the children.”
She looked over at me in the darkness. “No shit, Sherlock,” she said, somewhat more amiably. “And how do we do that? You got a plan?”
“I got the glimmer of one,” I said. “What’s the very last thing the Creighs would expect us to do right now?”
She thought for a moment. “Come back at them?”
“Bingo,” I said. I explained what I had in mind. “So that’s what we’ll do,” I concluded. “But first we’ll need to execute a little cover and deception. And for that I need to go see Sheriff Hayes and eat some serious crow.”
I went out to my Suburban and drove out of the lower lot and up into the main parking area. One fire engine was still there, along with a state police crew, wading through three feet of white foam as they began the fatality investigation. The remains of the Dodge were covered in yellow rubber drapes, surrounded by several yards of police tape. There were a few gawkers out in the lot, but not very many, courtesy of the nauseating vapors exuding from the charred wreckage. I got a whiff as I drove by, and I drove over to the sheriff’s office in Marionburg with all the windows open.
Hayes’s office was still going strong after the incident at the hotel. I walked into the main reception area and told the sergeant on duty that I needed to see Sheriff Hayes.
“This is not a great time for visitors,” the cop said.
“Why don’t you tell him that Mr. Richter is here to apologize.”
“Richter. Right. Heard that name earlier. You sure you want to do this?”
“It can’t get much worse,” I said. He gave me a look that said, Oh, yes, it can, but went into the sheriff’s office. Five minutes later a deputy I didn’t recognize came out to reception and called my name.
“Sheriff says you can have three minutes,” he announced. He looked both ways and then said, “You sure you want to go in there?”
There’s an echo in here tonight, I thought. “Can’t wait,” I said, and he rolled his eyes. I was most definitely in deep shit with the Man.
Hayes was sitting behind his desk when I was ushered into his office. Gone was all the previously sympathetic friendliness. In its place was a steely glare, backed up by all the authority a southern county sheriff can muster, which is considerable. For a moment I thought maybe I had made a mistake coming over here. I noticed a small yellow prescription bottle next to his in-box. I skipped the pleasantries.
“I came to apologize and to tell you that we’re leaving,” I said. “Sam King advised the same thing, so we’re going to get out of Carrigan County and leave you in peace. I think Ms. Santangelo was out of line with what she said, and neither she nor I nor anyone at SBI thinks you’re involved with the Creighs or anything going on in Robbins County.”
“That’s nice,” he growled.
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “And how you handle the situation here is, of course, your business. We’ll need the morning to get our shit together.”
“That harpy going, too?”
“It’s Harper, but yes, sir. And I’m sorry for that mess at the hotel tonight. I don’t know that that was the Creighs, but I suspect it was.”
He relaxed fractionally. His face was no longer dark red as it had been in the cabin. In fact, he looked a little gray around the edges. “I had our people call Mingo’s office once we ID’d the car,” he said. “The license plate came up Robbins County and listed the registered owner. Mingo sent a deputy over, and he gave us a tentative ID on the owner. The occupants are all stumps, of course; they’ll require dental identification.”
“Let me take a guess on the owner,” I said. “A guy named Lucas Can?”
His eyebrows went up. “How the hell did you know that?”
I explained the background. “He said he’d made the Creighs’ shit list for screwing up the hit on Carrie and me in the river. My guess is they gave him one chance to redeem himself. They sent along two helpers to keep him honest. He’s the one Sam King was setting up on to get Carrie back.”