Decker put out his hand for her to shake. “Amos Decker.”
“Not a name you hear much anymore,” Southern said as she shook his hand.
“Did your husband tell you details about the case?”
“He did not breach confidences, if that’s what you were asking. But I manage the funeral home, so I am there quite a bit. Rest assured, whatever I might have learned will go no further.”
Decker took a sip of his beer and eyed the unused mechanical bull. “What’s the story with that thing? Thought it’d be popular with this crowd.”
“It was. Too popular.”
“Come again?”
“It came down to legal liability issues. You get a fracker on that thing and he breaks his leg, arm, or neck, you got a lawsuit from him or his family and another from the company that desperately needed him out in the field. I guess it costs too much to remove, so now people just throw beer cans and bottles at it from time to time.”
As she said this, one drunk young man in a Stetson wound up and hurled his empty glass beer bottle at the bull. It hit the bull’s hard hide and broke apart, its shards collecting on the floor underneath along with a small mountain of other debris while he high-fived his buds.
“They clean it up every night and the next night it just fills up. But if they’re taking their hostility out on that instead of someone’s face? That’s anger management, North Dakota style.”
Decker nodded. “So did you know the victim?”
“No. But I understand that Joe Kelly did.”
“Do you know him well?”
“Well enough. London’s booming right now, but that wasn’t always the case. Everybody knew everybody else. That all changed with the fracking. Now we have folks from all over, even different countries. Think I heard Russian spoken at the grocery store last week.” She paused and added, “But that hasn’t always been the case. We almost had to shut down our business during the last bust.”
“Surely people were still dying, even if the good times had gone.”
“Oh, they absolutely were. Some by their own hands out of despair at having lost everything. Only their families didn’t have the money to pay for our services. They’d offer to barter and such, and we did what we could, but we had our own bills to pay. Luckily, we held on and now things are fine. For now. Who knows about tomorrow?” She looked around. “Your partner isn’t with you? Walt told me you were with another agent.”
“We parted company back at the hotel.”
“Will there be more agents coming?”
Decker sipped his beer and didn’t answer. Caroline Dawson had now hung herself around Baker and was using him as what looked to be a dance pole.
“Do you know those people?” asked Southern as she glanced where he was looking.
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Any leads yet?”
“I can’t get into that.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Decker focused on her. “You have any ideas on who might have done it?”
“Me?” she said, although she didn’t really look surprised at his query. “Well, I can tell you that we do have violent crime here. Not as bad as the last boom cycle. Before we just got all guys, transients with problem backgrounds looking for a quick payoff and then they’d move on. Now we’re still getting some guys with shady backgrounds, but we’re also getting more families. People are putting down roots. They want a nice, safe community.”
“I sense a but coming.”
She smiled demurely. “But we have places like this where young, single guys in particular come to spend their money and blow off steam. And sometimes that turns out badly.”
“Kelly mentioned an incident earlier here today.”
“I heard it was a fistfight between a bunch of guys that turned into something more. Joe apparently de-escalated it. But some people went to jail and some went to the hospital.”
“The guy I’m looking for is probably not in the ‘dumbass bar fight’ category.”
“I saw the body when it came in,” said Southern softly. “So I understand what you mean.”
“Not a pretty sight.”
“We’ve had some bad ones here. Not murders. Accidents. Explosions and fires from fracking gone wrong. Those were . . . challenges from a cosmetic perspective. We had to do a closed casket with a picture of the deceased in . . . happier times on top.”
“I can see that.”
She finished her drink and put the empty on the bar. “Something like this could be a real drag on the town, just when things are going so well.”
“And Irene Cramer probably deserves some justice, too,” said Decker bluntly.
She bowed her head slightly. “I never thought otherwise. Good night, Agent Decker.”
She left and walked up the stairs leading to the second story of the bar. Decker turned back to see that Stan Baker and Caroline Dawson were no longer on the dance floor. He looked around the bar space but didn’t see them anywhere. He finished his beer, braced himself, and headed back out into the heat, though he found it was cooler outside than in.
A bolt of lightning far to the west speared downward, and something seemed to explode at the spot where the slash of electricity had stabbed the earth. The sound reached them even here, and a plume of flames shot upward and lit the sky for miles around. The other people on the streets kept on walking, or staggering, as though detonations like that were routine.
London, North Dakota, was getting more interesting by the minute, thought Decker as he trudged on.
SIX A.M.
Decker flicked open his eyes and rose without the need of the set alarm on his phone. He trudged to the bathroom, showered, and changed into a fresh set of clothes. He looked out his hotel window. The sky was dark and still clogged with clouds, but he could see a seam of dawn starting to build, like a sleepy eye about to open. He looked at the weather app on his phone. It was only sixty-eight degrees but with a dew point that would make Louisiana proud. Decker thought he could actually see the air outside, it was so thick with moisture.
He sat on the edge of his bed for a couple extra seconds as he awoke more fully. Another town, another case to solve. His life. And welcome to it.
He went down to breakfast to find Jamison already sitting at a table with Joe Kelly in the hotel’s restaurant. The local detective was dressed in a dark two-piece suit, white-collared shirt, and no tie. His shoes were black scuffed boots with worn heels.
Decker sat at the table. “I thought I’d be the first one down,” he said.
“I’m a borderline insomniac, so I’m usually up by four having my first of too many cups of coffee,” said Kelly.
“And we gained an hour coming out,” said Jamison, who was looking over her menu. “So it’s actually a little late for me.”
Decker eyed Kelly. “I was out walking last night and a bolt of lightning hit something in the far distance. And there was an explosion.”
“I heard that, too,” chimed in Jamison. “Wondered what the hell it was. But nobody in the hotel seemed bothered by it.”
Kelly nodded. “It was probably just lightning hitting a saltwater disposal pond. The lightning is sort of drawn to those things, and also to the metal freshwater tanks and piping stations. The bolt hits it, it blows up, and they come and repair it. Cost of doing business up here.”