On the way back to work, Dalton watched a guy in a silver Sebring roll through his stop. Normally, he wouldn’t have worried about it, but he was procrastinating and this was a perfect distraction.
The man’s name was Nicholas Szczesny, from Las Vegas. He wore a yellow shirt and white pants, like he’d just come off the golf course. He was polite and soft-spoken, said he liked this little town, but he was used to driving in Vegas, which is a bit more aggressive.
Dalton said that’s how it was for him after driving in Iraq.
“When were you there?” Szczesny asked.
“2010,” Dalton said. “Did a second tour in Afghanistan. You?”
“2004, a little before that, a little after.”
Dalton looked down and saw a small tattoo of a skull with a bayonet sticking out of the top on the man’s forearm and decided not to ask any more questions. He took his license and registration, looked him up, and saw that his record was clear. He came back and said, “I’m going to let you go with a warning. People around here aren’t always paying attention, so a full stop can make a difference.”
The man smiled. “Attention must be paid.”
“Have a good trip.”
The man drove off, and Dalton returned to the public safety building. When he got back to his desk, he found a stack of requisitions and a Post-it reminding him not to forget to sign the overtime. Ten emails later, he tried getting back to work when a call came through from LaRae. It was five o’clock. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry for what?” Dalton asked.
“I know you asked not to be bothered, but it’s Janey Gladstone. She insists.”
“On what?”
“Talking to you.”
“About?”
“She says something weird is going on at Raylene Cluff’s house.” Dalton made two fists—one he set on the desk and the other tightened around the phone. He wasn’t much of a decorator, but he’d set up a few things directly in his line of sight: a picture of Karen and the kids, a shelf with some trophies from high school, a shadow box with his military medals, a photo collage of him holding up a variety of fish he’d caught over the years, and one large photo of a coho salmon he caught in Nunatak Fiord in Alaska. He’d set all these things up to be a place for his eyes to go when he didn’t want to yell, punch, or kick anything. Today he focused on the coho. He caught that thing eight years ago, right after he got back from Afghanistan. It took him forty-five minutes to land it. Weighed thirty-three pounds. The guides shipped it home for him on ice. Cost him a hundred bucks to do it, but he didn’t care. He never ate it. It was still in the freezer.
“Sheriff,” LaRae asked, “are you there?”
“Yeah, put Janey through,” he said.
There was a click, a span of silence, then the sound of rapid breathing. “Janey, this is Sheriff Dalton.”
“I am at their house, not really at, but in—inside it,” she whispered.
“Whose house?”
“The Cluff home.”
“After I said not to?”
“I came over to get some personal things for Raylene.”
“We could have sent somebody over.”
“Well, there’s a reason they call them personal things, Patrick.”
“Fair enough.”
“I believe I have found myself in an extraordinary situation. Somebody is here who should not be.”
“Somebody besides you?”
“I came down here to the basement because that’s where the laundry is, and I heard a clatter outside, so I went to the top of the stairs and looked around and saw that somebody was climbing up the outside of the house. There was no ladder, just his legs. I went back down, but I can hear him clomping around up there. It comes through the ductwork.
“Where are you now?”
“By the chest freezer.”
“Hang up and hide,” Dalton said.
“Hide? Where?”
“Someplace you can get comfortable. You might have to be there awhile.”
“Now you’re scaring me,” Mrs. Gladstone said.
“I am hanging up now so we can get someone over there.”
“Can’t someone keep talking to me?” Mrs. Gladstone’s voice was thin.
“How about LaRae Knowles? Would you talk to her?”
“Yes, I can do that,” Janey said.
“Okay, hang on.” Dalton put her on hold and rang LaRae. When she answered, she said, “I am so sorry. I know you said to hold your calls.”
“That’s fine. I need you to keep talking to Mrs. Gladstone. Tanner and I need to get to the Cluff house. Sounds like somebody is breaking in.”
“That’s really weird,” LaRae said.
“It is.”
“I’ve got it,” she said and pulled the call back to her phone.
Dalton hung up and left through a side entrance. He radioed Tanner from the Bronco and told him where to meet. He tore through town with his lights on but no siren. Time stretched out as he worried. In cop shows they always cut this part down to a couple of shots, never showing how the drive gives a person enough time to suffer through a hundred possible outcomes, catastrophe piled on top of catastrophe. There were more ways for this situation to go wrong than he was willing to imagine.
Tanner was waiting for him when he arrived. He had his sidearm unholstered and was wearing his body armor, which amped up Dalton even more. “The street is clear. Nothing weird going on. I ran the plates on these cars.” He pointed to the three vehicles on the street. “They all belong to the people who live here. That one is Janey Gladstone’s,” he said, pointing to a white Buick.
“Tell me this is nothing,” Dalton said.
Tanner shrugged. “I’d rather be ready.”
Dalton called in the situation, and the dispatcher asked if they needed backup. Dalton said, “I got everybody here with me at the moment.” Tanner chuckled.
They walked up to the house and split. Dalton continued down the driveway toward the carport, and Tanner went through the bushes and around. After a few minutes, Tanner came across the radio. “There’s a ladder here, hanging in the garage. You think the burglar returned it to where it goes?”
“Not likely,” Dalton answered.
“Then it looks like we’re dealing with somebody who can climb better than I can, which means we’re also looking at a different story than the one we thought.”
“Don’t say it.”
“You think the guy is still in there?”
“I don’t want to find out by having him shoot first,” Dalton said.
“If we crouch here all day, we’ll regret it,” Tanner said. “Meet me at the back door.”
Dalton came around the house, and Tanner was standing at the back stairs with his weapon pointed in the air. “Who goes first?” he said.
“You got here first,” Dalton said.
“A leader’s gotta lead.”
“If I get shot, who does the paperwork?”
“You’re seriously the worst boss ever.”
“There’s an old lady in there.”
“All-time worst,” Tanner said.
“Fine,” Dalton said. He cracked open the back door and went inside. They went room to room on the ground floor, passing through the crime scene, which still hadn’t been cleaned. The stench of it was uncomfortable. One of the evidence numbers on the desk had been tipped over. He walked up to it and noticed an empty rectangular spot in the dust and blood spray, not quite the size of a sheet of paper. He took a picture of it with his phone, then looked around more carefully until Tanner joined him. He showed Tanner the spot and said, “Let’s find Janey, then come through here a second time.”