Best Served Cold

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘And guess what was on the splinter!’ Charlie said.

  I sighed. ‘Think you can drag this out much longer, Charlie? I really got nothing to do here today.’

  ‘Blood,’ he said.

  I sat up straight. ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘I shit you not, Sherlock.’

  ‘What?’ Emmett asked, sitting up straight himself, leaning on my desk.

  Covering the mouthpiece of the phone, I told Emmett, ‘They found blood on that broom of Miz Pettigrew’s.’

  ‘Halleluiah!’ Emmett said.

  ‘Y’all, now, don’t you two start getting too excited,’ Charlie said over the phone. ‘We gotta send the blood off to Oklahoma City, to their DNA lab before we find out anything. But you might wanna start swabbing your suspects.’

  ‘You’ll make that DNA request a priority?’ I asked.

  ‘Priority plus,’ Charlie said. ‘If need be, me and you can take a trip to Oklahoma City and light a fire under their asses.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said and hung up.

  Then sat there for a minute, playing a scenario in my head of trying to get cheek swabs from our plethora of suspects. It wasn’t gonna be pretty.

  ‘You know, I’d really rather just stay with y’all,’ Mrs Pettigrew said from the back seat of the car. Holly had tried to get her to ride in the front but her mother-in-law pulled the pregnancy card and told Holly she shouldn’t be all squashed in the back seat. Instead, she complained of the lack of leg room so much that Holly’s front passenger seat was now pulled up so close that, had she been any more pregnant, her belly would have touched the glove compartment.

  The highway had been cleared of ice, even the bridges and overpasses, so it was smooth sailing all the way up I-35 to Kansas. They were headed for the Kansas state line, about an hour out of Prophesy County.

  ‘Mama, we’ve been over this,’ Dalton said from the driver’s seat.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Mrs Pettigrew said, sighing. ‘Y’all need your space. I understand.’

  ‘Mama, you know it’s not that—’ Dalton started.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘It’s for my own protection.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Dalton said and sighed. Holly was the only one who heard the sarcasm in her mother-in-law’s voice.

  It was beginning to look like Kansas – a lot more flat land and fewer hills. They were on a stretch of highway without any trees, just prairie, with a filling station or two to break the monotony and more snow on the sides of the road as they headed north. The loud bang of a blown tire was heard and the car began to careen all over the highway, barely missing an eighteen-wheeler that was honking like mad. Dalton wasn’t ready for it, and everything he’d learned at the advanced driving class he’d taken flew out the window, just like the shards of window glass that were freed by the impact of Mrs Pettigrew’s head.

  ‘So let’s review,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s don’t,’ Emmett said.

  ‘Shut up,’ I said.

  ‘Bite me,’ he said.

  ‘Sheriff?’ Anna Alvarez said from the doorway.

  ‘Hey, Anna. You got anything?’ Me and Emmett had given her some names to run through the computer, hopefully to find someone – anyone – who might stand out as our bad guy.

  ‘Well, that Vaught guy, Troy?’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said while Emmett turned around in his seat in expectation.

  ‘He got a ticket back in 2012 for running a red light but that’s it. He’s listed on the DMV records as unmarried, living at the address Emmett gave me with two vehicles registered in his name: a 2010 Chevy half-ton and a 1954 Jeep.’ She looked up with a frown. ‘They made Jeeps that far back?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said and sighed at her youth. ‘Even way back then.’

  ‘Jeez, who knew?’ she said.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I checked out that guy, Wharton Jacobs, like you asked me to. Jacobs isn’t even his real name, Sheriff!’ she said, all excited like. ‘His real name is Jacob Wharton – can you believe it?’

  ‘So why’d he change it?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably because he was wanted in Alabama for fraud,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I do declare!’ Emmett said, playing with a Southern accent even worse than his own.

  ‘Hum, so did Jacob Wharton have any kin?’ I asked.

  ‘No, sir. He was a product of the Alabama foster care system, with a detour to a juvie center when he was fourteen, and it appears he was a guest at a correctional facility as an adult. Did eighteen months,’ she said.

  ‘What about the ex-wives?’ I asked.

  ‘Two of them are living here in the county but I doubt either one would want to take revenge for his death. Seems more than likely they’d want to help Miz Sanders kill the SOB,’ Anna said, a slight indication that maybe she felt the same way about Mr Wharton Jacobs née Jacob Wharton as everybody else in our small world did.

  ‘The other two?’ I asked, just because it was expected of me in my vaulted position as sheriff of Prophesy County, Oklahoma.

  ‘One died of cancer shortly after her short marriage to Wharton broke up and the other remarried, has three children with her new husband and is living back east in, I think …’ she checked the notes in her hand, ‘Baltimore, Maryland.’

  ‘OK, let’s forget about old Wharton, whatever his name is. Anything else?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. I dug deeper into all the others like you asked and the only thing I got was that John Connors was married before his current wife, Reba, and had a son from that marriage.’

  ‘No kidding?’ I said. Now this was a new wrinkle. A son. Was he close to his daddy? Did he want revenge on the deputy who was too late to the house to keep his daddy from becoming brain damaged? And did that revenge just lap over to the rest of us? ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘John, like he was a junior maybe, but he was adopted by his mother’s new husband when he was still a baby, so his last name’s not Connors. It’s Brewer. John Brewer.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Twenty-seven. Lives in Oklahoma City. Unmarried. No children. Drives a truck for Walmart.’

  I held out my hand for her notes on John (Connors) Brewer. ‘Thanks, Anna. Anything else?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, sir. Want me to keep trying?’

  ‘No, you done good. Go get some lunch.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said and left.

  I was beginning to like her. She was the only one in the department who said ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’ There was something to be said for a little respect for authority. When the rest of her paperwork showed up from Laredo, I might just put her in for a raise.

  ‘So, you wanna go check this guy out? This son?’ Emmett asked.

  ‘It’s a longer shot than any of the others we’ve been looking at,’ I said. ‘Don’t see how I can justify a trip to the city to the county commissioners.’

  ‘Yeah? So how long you gonna wait to go light a fire under those DNA guys? Two birds, one stone,’ Emmett said, wiggling his eyebrows.

  ‘You got something you want to do in Oklahoma City?’ I asked.

  ‘You still got that coupon for that steakhouse?’ he asked.

  A plan was coming together.

  The car rolled over three times, going off the highway and stopping upside down in a ditch. Dalton was screaming Holly’s name, even though their hands had found each other, even as he undid his seat belt and got himself upright. ‘Baby? You OK?’ he asked, holding on to her shoulders.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. Mama?’ Holly yelled into the back seat.

  Dalton unclipped Holly’s seat belt and turned her to an upright position, then flung himself between the two front seats to look in the back.

  His mama hadn’t answered. His first look told him she was dead. ‘Mama!’ he shouted. ‘Oh, my God, Mama!’

  ‘Move!’ Holly said, clawing at her husband’s back. ‘Let me see her!’

  Holly was small enough to climb into t
he back seat. There was blood everywhere but she was able to find its source – a gash on Mrs Pettigrew’s head. Feeling her neck, Holly found a strong pulse. ‘She’s alive, Dalton! She’s alive! Call an ambulance!’

  Dalton grabbed his cell phone and dialed. Nothing happened. ‘It’s broken!’ Dalton said with a sob.

  Holly grabbed the phone and looked at it. No service. They were definitely out in the boondocks.

  ‘Get me that box of Kleenex up there!’ she said. When Dalton handed it to her, Holly grabbed a handful of tissues and made them into a bandage of sorts. ‘String? Tape? Anything to keep this in place?’ she demanded.

  ‘Ah, I dunno! I dunno!’ Dalton cried.

  ‘Damnit, honey! Get a hold of yourself. I need you! Check the glovebox! See if there’s anything in there.’

  Two seconds later Dalton handed her a box of dental floss. ‘This work?’ he asked.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said, smiling at her husband, then turned to Mrs Pettigrew to try to staunch the bleeding.

  It stopped after a few minutes, then she felt again for a pulse, which was still strong. Holly rubbed the inside of her mother-in-law’s wrists and slapped her face.

  ‘Oh, jeez, Holly, whatja doing?’ Dalton demanded.

  ‘Honey, I’m trying to wake her up,’ she replied.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t oughta slap her,’ Dalton said. ‘She’d be real mad.’

  ‘You wanna do this?’ Holly said, almost – but not quite – snapping at her husband.

  ‘Oh, hell no,’ Dalton answered.

  ‘Then do something useful and walk back to that gas station we saw a few miles back. And keep looking at your cell phone to see if you got service.’

  When he gave her the look she usually found charming, she sighed and grabbed the phone. Holding it out to him, she pointed at the bars in the corner. ‘See this? When you get two or more bars that means you’re in the service area and can use the phone. Call nine-one-one. Get an ambulance for Mama.’

  ‘Right, right.’ Dalton stared at the phone. ‘Two bars. Call nine-one-one. Gotcha.’ He kissed her deeply and said, ‘I’ll be back quick as can be.’

  She touched his face with her fingers and smiled. ‘I know that, honey. Just be careful. Watch for ice.’

  ‘Is an ambulance on the way?’ I asked Dalton, my hand tight on the phone receiver.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Mama’s already in the hospital. Me and Holly got a ride with a state trooper. But Milt, I gotta tell you something bad.’

  ‘Your mama’s OK, right?’ I asked, beginning to sweat.

  ‘Oh, yeah, mostly. She’s still asleep and all and she’s got concussion. They wanna keep her here, at least overnight. No, the thing is, Milt, that blown tire?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It was brand new, so I had ’em check it out. Somebody shot out the tire, Milt. Somebody did this on purpose.’

  ‘This is insane,’ Emmett said.

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ I said.

  ‘That’s two hits on Dalton. It’s gotta be the Permeter brothers.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. What they got in the way of alibis?’ I asked.

  Emmett leaned back in his chair, the front two legs off the floor and yelled out the door, ‘Anna! Get me that file on the Permeter brothers, please.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she called back, and Emmett grinned at me.

  ‘She called me sir,’ he said.

  ‘Did Jasmine finally stop calling you that?’ I teased.

  Anna was in quick with the files – two of ’em, not as thick as one might wish for.

  ‘OK, so we don’t have a definite time for the note or the zombie baby, or when somebody messed with Maryanne’s brakes, or the judge’s brakes, or when somebody broke into Miz Pettigrew—’ I started.

  ‘Yeah, we do, with Dalton’s mama. Remember? The house was empty when they took those ladies to the hospital,’ Emmett said.

  ‘Well, yeah, Emmett,’ I said, somewhere between snippy and sarcastic, ‘but the poison had already been put in the food by then!’

  ‘Yeah your own self!’ Emmett said. ‘But somebody went in her house and cleaned up, remember? The broom? The blood?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I don’t do sheepish, but if I did …

  ‘So maybe we should bring in them Permeter boys and see where they were during that hour.’

  ‘Call Charlie and find out our window,’ I said. ‘And call Jasmine and Anthony. I want those boys picked up now.’

  Jasmine was scared. She and Emmett were the only ones who hadn’t been harassed by this guy yet. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop. They had talked the night before about having Petal, their daughter, go stay with Jasmine’s sister Daisy in Little Rock, but Emmett was worried about Petal missing school.

  ‘Better to miss school than end up in a car accident or whatever!’ Jasmine had countered.

  ‘You’re being paranoid,’ Emmett had said. ‘If this asshole was after you or me he’d have done something by now, don’t you think? He seems to be concentrating on Anthony and Dalton.’

  And now Milt, she thought. Who was to say she and Emmett weren’t next? With them it would be two birds with one stone. But, after the phone call from Dalton, Jasmine was relaxing a little bit. Two attempts on Dalton’s family meant, maybe, that her family was in the clear. Obviously someone was after Dalton. She was really sorry about what happened to Dalton’s mother but secretly she was just damned glad it wasn’t her family. She still wanted to send Petal to her sister’s, though.

  She was supposed to be going after Nick Permeter. She’d never met any of the Permeters and wasn’t looking forward to meeting one of them now. Jasmine was beginning to wonder if it was time for her to retire. She was getting less and less interested in getting shot at or beaten up by a perp and more and more interested in being a stay-at-home mom with all the perks of the PTA, being a room mother and occasionally sleeping in. Maybe she’d take a cooking class, get better at it. She was pretty sure Emmett was tired of chicken nuggets. She needed to expand her horizons. Maybe read a book. It had been a while since she’d had time for that. She was so wrapped up in her reverie that she barely felt the bullet that blew out the glass of her side window. She slumped over the steering wheel and her foot slid off the gas pedal as the squad car she was driving ran over the side of the road and into a ditch.

  EIGHT

  Anthony got back to the shop with Joe Permeter shortly after noon.

  ‘I didn’t get to eat my lunch!’ Joe said. ‘You can’t take me in when I’m hungry!’

  ‘Never heard of that one,’ Anthony said, pulling him along by the arm. ‘And quit your belly-aching. I’ve heard enough from you and your brother to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you ain’t heard from our lawyer yet! That’s the next voice you’re gonna hear!’ Joe said, trying to pull away from Anthony. But, with his hands cuffed behind his back, resistance, as they say, was futile.

  Anthony had come in the front door and could see Anna Alvarez in the bullpen. ‘Hey, Anna, tell Milt I got me a Permeter,’ he said. ‘I’m taking him to interrogation.’

  ‘Got it,’ she said and headed down the hall to the sheriff’s office.

  Anthony took Joe Permeter into the interrogation room and sat him down on the side of the table that faced the two-way mirror into the break room, the side of the table that also held the iron ring to which he cuffed his prisoner. He knew he should have just cuffed one of Permeter’s arms to the ring, but not being in a real friendly frame of mind, Anthony cuffed both of his hands under the table, which made Joe have to bend over. Anthony went to the door, his back to it, his arms crossed over his chest and a grin on his face.

  ‘You enjoying this, Deputy?’ Joe asked, sneering at him.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Anthony said, his grin getting wider.

  ‘Well, enjoy it while you can because my lawyer’s gonna sue the department and you personally!’

  ‘Which lawyer is this? Your mama’s first cousin’s ex
-husband who’s a judge in another county?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Joe said and looked away, his mouth grim.

  Anthony didn’t laugh out loud, only because, deep down, there was nothing funny about anything right now. Not with his wife still acting like what happened was all his fault, his baby girl still crying a lot – from pain or her mama’s tension, he wasn’t sure – and with Dalton’s mama in the hospital and two women dead. No, not much funny about this. And if he wasn’t the good cop he was, Anthony thought, he’d uncuff this bastard and beat the living hell out of him. But, and in his head it was kind of a mantra, he was a good cop.

  There was a knock on the door he was leaning against and he turned to see the sheriff standing there. Anthony opened the door and Milt came in. The two took seats across from Joe Permeter.

  ‘So, Joe, what you been up to?’ Milt asked.

  ‘I’m not talking,’ Joe said.

  ‘I’d sorta like to know your whereabouts this morning. From say eight o’clock to ten o’clock.’

  ‘I was asleep! I work nights, ya know!’

  ‘Anybody vouch for that?’ Milt asked.

  ‘No, I sleep alone,’ Joe said, still not looking at anybody.

  ‘Really?’ Milt said, a surprised look on his face. ‘I keep hearing you’re such a player. Women coming out of your ass. Yet you sleep alone?’

  Joe turned and looked Milt in the eye. ‘I don’t like to wake up to a skank. I send ’em home early.’ He smiled.

  Milt shook his head. ‘Joe, you must be the poster boy for the feminist movement, huh?’

  Joe shrugged and returned to staring at the wall.

  ‘So, no alibi,’ Milt said, turning to Anthony.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Anthony said. ‘Want me to swab him?’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea. Then lock his ass up.’ Milt stood up and left the room.

  Anthony brought a swab out of his pocket and told Joe, ‘Open your mouth.’

  ‘Make me!’ Joe said, clenching his mouth shut.

  ‘OK,’ Anthony said, and pinched Joe’s nose shut.

  I went back to my office, a little worried that I still had no evidence worthy of locking up the Permeter brothers, but here I was, doing it again. I wondered if I could get a law passed saying it was OK to lock up assholes. Of course, we didn’t have enough room to do a thorough job of that.