“There’s no monster,” Darrell replied, “and I don’t do media interviews.”
“Yes, I know, I remember. That’s a shame. Still, you were a big help last time. Two hundred volunteers out in the woods day and night for an entire week! What an event that was! The winter makes it harder, but perhaps we can stage a reprise. Hmm? What do you say?”
“That will be up to the sheriff.”
“Of course. I’ll call Jerry. It’s still Jerry, right? Ajax hasn’t weaseled his way into the chair yet?”
“It’s still Jerry,” Darrell said.
“Excellent.” Ben’s lips clamped around the end of his pipe, and his cheerful brown eyes focused on me. “Now, who’s this smoky black-haired beauty, Darrell? Is she your partner? You’ve traded up! That last man who was with you looked like a dead walleye washed up on the beach.”
“I’m Deputy—” I began, but then I hesitated.
Who was I?
Was I still Deputy Todd? Or was I someone else? Where did I go from here?
“I’m Deputy Colder,” I went on, making my decision. And once I made a decision, I didn’t go back. “Rebecca Colder.”
“Colder, Colder, Colder. Your father is Harold Colder, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Truck driver?”
“Yes.”
“Solid man, Harold. Seems to me he and I spent some nights together at the 126 in days gone by, when I was just a sprout of twenty-one or so. I don’t recall you being much more than a toddler back then. Now look at you and those dark eyes. Doesn’t she have amazing eyes, Darrell?”
Darrell looked as if he were chewing on a steak that was mostly gristle. “I’ve got to call in to the station and let them know everything is clear out here. And tell Norm that you broke into his trailer.”
“Oh, yes, yes, do what you have to do. Rebecca and I will hold down the fort.”
Darrell headed for the cruiser. Ben Malloy put his hands on his hips and sucked in a loud breath of cold air through his clenched teeth. He was a tough man to dislike, but also an easy man to be annoyed by. He was very tall and heavyset, but he had the cherubic face of a little boy. His short hair was brown and wavy, and he had a nervous habit of constantly pushing it back from his forehead. For a big man, he had quick, graceful movements.
“So, Rebecca Colder,” Ben proclaimed. “Are you going to help me find the Ursulina?”
“My job is to help Darrell figure out who killed Gordon Brink,” I replied.
“One and the same! One and the same!”
“This is a criminal investigation, Mr. Malloy. Not a television show.”
“Ah, I can see Darrell trained you in his image. No nonsense. Always serious. I like that. Well, it may surprise you to know that I’m a serious man, too.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Extremely serious,” Ben assured me.
“Serious about what? Money?”
Ben took his pipe out of his mouth and reappraised me with a whimsical smirk. “Well, well, well, you’re a smart one, aren’t you?”
“Darrell’s smart. I just work hard.”
“Oh, you can pretend all you want, but I can see you’ve got a lot ticking behind those dark eyes. People shouldn’t mess with you, should they? Well, here’s the thing, Rebecca Colder. Yes, I’ve made a lot of money selling tall tales. I won’t deny it. Did ancient astronauts visit Earth and leave their technology behind with the Mayans and Egyptians? Between you and me, probably not. Is there really a curse on King Tut’s tomb? Doubtful. But the Ursulina story isn’t just about ratings or money to me.”
“No?”
“No indeed. You see, I grew up in Black Wolf County just like you, and I know a secret.”
“What’s that?”
Ben winked and lowered his voice. He leaned in close enough that I could smell pipe smoke on his breath. “The Ursulina isn’t a myth. It’s real. I’ve seen it.”
Chapter Twelve
The return of Ben Malloy reheated the cold investigation into Gordon Brink’s murder. That was mostly because Sheriff Jackson began to get dozens of media calls from around the country asking if the Ursulina was back and whether we were any closer to trapping the killer beast.
“We look like idiots!” Jerry shouted at us in his office behind the closed door. “Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Andy Rooney did his whole piece on the Ursulina. He rattled off all the unsolved crimes we could put to bed now. He had a photo of the Ursulina on the grassy knoll in Dallas. The Ursulina burying Jimmy Hoffa. The Ursulina parachuting out of a 727 with D. B. Cooper’s ransom money.”
“Ben knows how to get publicity,” Darrell replied.
“Well, it was bad enough when he made laughingstocks of us six years ago. I was in that documentary, do you remember? The sheriff with the monster in his backyard. I’m not going through that again! Got it? I want to know who killed Gordon Brink, and I want an arrest.”
“I want that, too.”
“Next time People magazine calls me, we better have a human being behind bars, and if you can’t do that, then you can start sleeping in the woods until you find me a seven-foot-tall ape.”
Darrell didn’t smile. None of this was funny to him.
“The thing is, Jerry, I wish I could tell you we’re close to figuring this out, but right now, the investigation is dead in its tracks.”
The sheriff got up from behind his desk and paced. Physically, he was an older, grayer version of Ajax, tall, lean, and handsome, but his personality was like a lit fuse, always one spark away from a blowup. Jerry was in his midfifties, which made him several years younger than Darrell. Back when the previous sheriff had retired, a lot of people around the county assumed that Darrell would run for the job. But Darrell had no patience for politics. He let Jerry do the county fair and the Chamber of Commerce dinner and the 4-H picnic. Jerry had charisma, just like his nephew, and he ran unopposed. He’d been sheriff for more than a decade, and he would probably stay in the job until he was buried in the ground.
“There’s no such thing as a dead investigation,” Jerry snapped. “Just cops who need to get off their butts and get the job done.”
“I can’t make up evidence out of thin air, Jerry.”
“No, but you can shake things up.” The sheriff sat down at his desk again. I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t looked at me once since Darrell and I had come into his office. I might as well have been invisible.
“What do you suggest?” Darrell asked.
“You’ve got one legitimate suspect in this murder, and you’ve been treating him with kid gloves. Go in there and rattle his cage.”
Darrell sighed. “Jay.”
“Exactly. Come on, Darrell, a crime like this is personal. You don’t carve up somebody like that unless you’ve got a hell of a motive. More often than not, that means we’re looking at a family member. If you ask me, a wife is always the likeliest person to carve up her husband, but you confirmed that Gordon’s wife didn’t come back from Minnesota until after Gordon was killed. Right? So who does that leave us with? The son. Jay.”
“Except there’s no evidence the boy was involved.”
“No evidence? I’ve seen your notes, Darrell. Jay and Gordon hated each other. The kid showed no emotion about his father being killed. He called Gordon a monster — I mean, shit, does he have to spell it out for you? Plus, Jay admits he was home Sunday night. His room overlooks the front of the house, but he claims he didn’t hear or see anything. What are the odds of that?”