“Okay, butthole, I get your point. Here’s mine. I needed to know how Russ acted when he found that poor girl lying there with a bullet hole in her throat, and you told me.” A beat passed, and Eli started to walk away, paused, looked back and said, “Keep Carly close to home for a while. Something’s up with Eric—he got a threat from Freddie Lansing last night, during the shindig at Bailey’s, and I’m taking steps to make sure the little bastard doesn’t follow through on it. I don’t want Carly caught in the crossfire.”
Cord’s expression turned dead solemn. “You can’t just say something like that and then walk away, Eli. If my daughter is in danger, I need to know the details.”
“And you will. Soon—very soon—but not now. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m up to my ass in alligators at the moment—nothing like a dead body to throw a wrench in the works.”
All true. It would be a long, long day.
Melba was waiting when Eli returned to the spot where the young woman had been killed. Everyone else was gone.
“What’s the plan?” she asked, though she knew, of course.
Eli might have replied, The usual—an autopsy, meetings with other jurisdictions to hammer out who would handle what, interviews with Russ Schafer and anybody else with even a remote connection to the dead girl.
“First thing—we order DNA tests. If there’s a match, we’ll at least have something to go on as far as identifying the girl. You and the rest of the team can ask around, show pictures, see if anybody recognizes her. I can’t peg her as a local, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t. People come and go all the time, like they do any other place.”
“That will take time. The DNA thing, I mean.”
Sometimes Melba, in her thoroughness, could be pedantic.
DNA tests always took time because every lab in the country was perpetually backed up. Sad commentary on the state of the nation, in Eli’s opinion.
“Yes,” Eli replied evenly. “So the sooner we get the swabs, the better.”
“You remember Bethanne Schafer?” Melba asked, ignoring his statement, as they approached their vehicles, hers a cruiser, his the SUV. “She was older, so I didn’t know her very well, but it was pretty clear that she and Russ and Shallie had it rough at home. Shallie was a foster child, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Eli replied. Then he smiled at the memory of Shallie as a kid, a dichotomy of a girl: rough and tough, soft and pretty. Once, when Russ had been bullying her, she’d broken his nose with a well-aimed right hook. “Might be a good thing if you go and talk to Shallie. See if she’s been in contact with Bethanne over the years. If she has, she’ll know if that girl could be Bethanne’s daughter. She’s a little old for a runaway but, then again, she might have been on her own for a long time.” He thought of Carly, a seventeen-year-old kid on the run, risking her life at every turn as she hitched her way across the country, carrying everything she possessed in a shabby backpack, looking for her dad, hoping to find a home and a family.
A chilly ache formed in his guts.
That dead girl could have been Carly.
Or Hayley.
Or one of Melba and Dan’s spirited, beautiful daughters.
His fingers curled into fists and inevitably an image of Freddie Lansing formed in his mind.
Was Lansing capable of a crime of that magnitude?
Almost certainly.
Was there a connection? A motive?
Maybe. Guys like Freddie probably didn’t need much of a motive. They tended to be narcissistic, easily offended, whether the slight was real or imagined. Figuratively, and sometimes literally, they shot first and asked questions later.
Or never asked questions at all.
Slow down, Eli told himself silently. He was on treacherous ground here, making a case against Lansing simply because he wanted a case against him, any case.
A completely human reaction? Yes.
In line with his personal values? No.
Eli was composed of flesh and blood, and when his family or friends were threatened, a pure and ferocious rage rose within him, pounding at his rib cage and the back of his throat, fighting, clawing to be released.
As a responsible citizen of earth, let alone a man sworn to uphold the law—to the letter—Eli resisted that part of himself with all his might. Why? Because his honor, his integrity and his dogged pursuit of justice were entwined with his deepest, truest self, and he knew that if he wasn’t careful, he might become a person he didn’t want to be.
In short, if he wanted to live in his own skin, with any degree of comfort, he couldn’t knowingly break the law.
All the way back to town, and his office, where the lot was crowded with rigs from varying jurisdictions, Eli thought about the dead girl. Whoever she’d been in life, whatever she’d done or failed to do, she hadn’t deserved to die the way she had.
As he parked, his watch, rather than his phone, indicated an incoming text.
He braced himself for a shot of Freddie Lansing’s hate speech as he walked across the parking lot, heading for the office.
Instead, the message was from Sara. Dan Summers agreed to provide security, and he’s moving in today. Eric is holed up in his room with Festus; says he’s going to be a laughingstock, going to school with a bodyguard.
Eli smiled at that, pulled out his phone to text back. No way was he going to attempt a reasonable response on the Lilliputian keyboard the watch offered.
I’ll stop by when I can, he wrote. Tell Eric I said to chill. Very busy at the moment.
Sara’s reply was nearly instantaneous. We heard the sirens. Town’s buzzing with speculation. What’s up?
Eli opened the office door, stepped into the lobby. As if I’d tell you in a text. I’m busy, Sara. LATER.
Did Freddie Lansing do something? Is he in jail? I ran into his mother when I went to the store for groceries half an hour ago and she looked at me as though I’d just run over her puppy.
SARA. STOP. LATER.
Okay, Dudley, have it your way, but you’re going to have to explain eventually.
GOODBYE.
Eli?
He put his phone away without replying.
Inside, Connie Sue Hildebrand, the day receptionist/dispatcher, was fielding calls with grim efficiency.
No, the sheriff was not available for comment.
No, she could not personally make any official statement.
Fortunately, the news crews from larger cities in Montana had yet to arrive, but they were on their way, for sure, and when they arrived, they would stir the present shitshow to a whole new level.