by Alex Grecian
4
The Burden County sheriff’s station was in a modified double-wide trailer, all mint-green siding and white trim. Except for the sign out front, it looked exactly like one of the starter homes that lined the other side of the street. Deputy Ekwensi Griffith pulled into the parking lot beside the building and they got out. They had stopped at a KFC on the way back, and Quincy balanced two buckets of chicken and a big bag of sides. He kicked his car door shut and the bag swung around, banging into his leg.
Skottie stood for a long moment looking around, her boots scuffling in the dirt. There was a pen behind the lot where three German shepherds paced around in circles, growling and throwing themselves against the wire walls of their enclosure. Skottie waved at them and held the station’s front door for Quincy, then followed him inside, where she could still hear the dogs barking. A woman who might have been Phyllis the dispatcher sat behind a long counter in the middle of the front room.
Quincy motioned for Skottie to wait there and he crossed to a door behind the counter. He went through, and Skottie caught a glimpse of a dim hallway before the door closed again. The woman smiled at Skottie and nodded at a row of plastic chairs, then returned to flipping through a fashion magazine.
Skottie sat and waited. The decor reminded her of a chiropractor’s waiting room more than a police station. There was a plastic tree in the corner behind the front door and a cheaply framed Norman Rockwell print on the wall next to the tree. She perused the collection of magazines on the end table and picked up a copy of Family Handyman, passing on Deer & Deer Hunting. She read an article explaining how to build a tree house in twelve easy steps and had just settled into a review of this model year’s riding mowers when the inner door opened again and Sheriff Goodman sidled into the room. Skottie stood and took a step forward, but the sheriff didn’t make a move to shake her hand. The skin around his left eye was purple and splotchy, and his jaw was noticeably swollen. He frowned.
“I know you,” he said. “Seen you before.”
“We met once a few weeks ago,” Skottie said. She tossed the Family Handyman on the table. “That wasn’t my favorite day.”
Goodman squinted at her, then laughed, three sharp barks, as if he had read what laughter was supposed to sound like.
“What’d I do?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Did I hit on you? ’Cause I get a little flirty sometimes.”
“You made damn sure I knew what my place was and who was boss around here.”
He studied her for a minute. “Well, if I didn’t get flirty, maybe I still got a chance.”
“Not likely,” she said. “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing to worry about,” he said.
“Hunting accident?”
“Something like that.” He nodded at her. “Okay, let’s you and me have a talk.”
“Yes,” Skottie said. “Let’s.” She smiled at the woman, who might as well have been holding her magazine upside down for all the attention she was paying it. She didn’t smile back.
Skottie followed Goodman around the counter and through the door, past a kitchenette that smelled like fried chicken and a unisex bathroom with the door standing open. She glanced in and saw a plunger sitting on the toilet seat. Down a brief hallway, they came to three doors, two of them open. One of the rooms was empty and contained a low cot, a chair, and a metal airplane toilet installed in the corner. She guessed that the closed door next to it hid a similar room. Deputy Griffith emerged from it, closed the door again behind him before Skottie could see inside, and brushed past them.
A young guy with a brown shirt and a sandy brown buzz cut was waiting for them behind a desk in the third room. He had his feet up and was picking chicken out of his teeth with the corner of a folded five-dollar bill. A paper plate piled with bones sat on the desk in front of him, and he used his free hand to pat his stomach.
“Shoulda saved you some,” he said. “I know how you people like chicken.”
“Dammit, Christian,” Goodman said. “Getcher feet off my desk.”
Christian moved the chair back and stood. Skottie noticed his left arm was bandaged and there was an ugly welt on the side of his neck. The brass name badge pinned to his chest read C. PUCKETT. He saluted Goodman, then walked past Skottie with his eyes averted and closed the door behind him. Skottie could hear him in the hallway, talking in low tones with Quincy.
“Sorry about him,” Goodman said. He used the side of his hand to brush the plate into a trash basket next to his chair. “Take a seat.”
Skottie ignored the offer and stood across from Goodman, looking down at him across the desk. “Guess it’s hard to find decent help.”
“Christian’s my nephew. My sister thought he’d get some discipline if he come to work for me. He’s a decent kid, just young, is all. He’ll grow into the job.”
Skottie couldn’t bring herself to care one way or another about Sheriff Goodman’s opinions or his relatives. They could think what they liked about one another and about her. None of it mattered. She had a job to do, and the worst that these men could do was get in her way, irritate her, and make her lose her cool. So she kept her mouth shut and smiled, but the smile didn’t mean a thing.
“So,” Goodman said, “what can I do for you, since you already made the long haul up from Hays on your day off?”
Skottie raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah,” Goodman said. “I know you’re not here in any kind of official way. I put in a call down there when Quincy picked you up.” He pointed in the general direction of the waiting room and, beyond it, to the highway. “You got no reason to be here, far as anybody knows. So let’s go forward on the understanding that I’m being nice to you.”
“Great,” Skottie said. She hoped she sounded sincere. “I appreciate that.”
“Since we’re friends now, I’m curious. You gave me a heads-up about this guy Roan, and now he’s a suspect in a murder we got out at Kirwin. If you know something about him, I’d appreciate hearing it. Might go a ways with me.”
Skottie considered how much she should tell him. Goodman didn’t seem to know that she’d been in contact with Travis since the traffic stop, but once he found out he would drop the friendly act. She might have a brief window of time in which he’d share information with her, if he thought she was cooperating, but he’d be suspicious if she volunteered anything too easily. “What does that mean, it might go a ways? What do you think you can do for me?”
Goodman looked at her and his eyes narrowed. When he stood up, Skottie rocked back on her heels and then silently cursed herself for doing it. She hadn’t meant to show him any kind of weakness or indecision. Goodman crossed to the filing cabinet in the back corner of the room. As he passed the window, Skottie’s gaze was drawn outside to Deputy Griffith, who was leaning on the hood of his squad car in the parking lot. He was watching the office, though Skottie was reasonably certain he couldn’t see in past the blinds.
“You want something?” Goodman had pulled a pint of Dewar’s from the top drawer, and he held it out to her, waggling it back and forth.
“No, thanks,” Skottie said.
“Suit yourself. Five o’clock somewhere, right?” Goodman grinned and poured three fingers into a paper Dixie cup from a stack on top of the cabinet. He crossed in front of the window again, and this time Skottie avoided looking out at the lot. Goodman sat down, and now Skottie sat across from him.
“What we got,” Goodman said, “is a woman murdered sometime in the last few days and dumped out at the lake in the Kirwin preserve. You know it? The lake?”
“I used to go out there when I was a kid. In high school.”
“I didn’t know you grew up around here.”
“No reason you should.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Why?”
“I grew up here, too. Feels lik
e I oughta know you.”
“You don’t wanna know me,” Skottie said. “Anyway, what makes you think Dr. Roan is connected to the woman you found?”
“Don’t know yet. Still looking into it.” Goodman regarded her over the lip of the paper cup. He took a sip of scotch. “What’s the deal with the Bloom chick? Her husband calls in and complains somebody harassed her, gives a description of Roan. Next thing I know, you’re popping up over there, too.”
“I visited her yesterday. I was going back to ask her a couple of follow-up questions.”
“About Roan?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Skottie decided to change the subject. “What’s your victim’s name?”
“Margaret Weber. She was a teacher out at the middle school in Hays. Somebody did a real number on her. Took his sweet time.”
Skottie recalled her conversation with Travis at the bar. He had talked about killing as a last resort. “Roan’s only been in the area a couple of days, right? So why’s he a suspect?”
“I don’t think he did the killing,” Goodman said. “I think he dumped the body. Found him practically standing over it. Which means he’s got an accomplice that did the actual work. Like, maybe he came out here in the first place to help somebody finish poor Margaret off and hide the crime.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” He sipped from his cup again without taking his eyes off her.
“You think it’s me?”
“Is it?”
“So you’re thinking I killed a schoolteacher in Paradise Flats, and then Dr. Travis Roan, a person I’ve never met before, caught a flight out here to help me cover it up. Why?”
“You got a daughter. She go to the school Margaret Weber teaches at? Taught at, I mean. Maybe you had a run-in with her, maybe she gave your girl a bad grade and it was the wrong time of the month.”
“My daughter’s not in middle school yet.” Skottie spoke through clenched teeth, but held her temper. She knew Goodman was trying to rattle her. “I’ve never met your victim.”
Goodman waved his hand at her, swiping it through the dust that floated in the sunlight over his desk. “Ah, I don’t think it was you. Just wanted to see what you’d say.” The dust floated back.
“You don’t think Roan had anything to do with your case.”
Goodman shrugged.
“So why keep him?”
“He’s weird,” Goodman said. “I don’t like him.”
“Not good enough, and you know it. You’re going to have to turn him loose pretty soon, unless you’ve got some real evidence.”
Goodman nodded. “Yeah. But I can make him nervous for a while. Meanwhile, you wanna tell me how you know him? Aside from you two colluding in a murder, that is.” He smiled to let her know he was just kidding around.
The light changed in the office as the sun went back behind the clouds, and Skottie glanced out the window again. A white Explorer had pulled into the slot next to Quincy’s car, and a uniformed state trooper was standing behind it, engaged in conversation with the deputy. Skottie recognized the trooper as Lieutenant Keith Johnson. Goodman followed her gaze and swiveled in his seat. He pulled the blinds aside.
“There we go,” he said. “Wondered how long he was gonna take to get out here. Those SUVs y’all use don’t move very damn fast, do they?”
“You called my lieutenant?”
“Told you that. Called soon as Quincy ran into you.”
“Why?”
Goodman let the blinds drop back into place. He set his scotch down and folded his hands under his chin.
“You got your neck of the woods and I got mine. You stay in your neck or you tell me why. Today I tell your boss you’re up here interfering in my investigation, tomorrow maybe I arrest you because now the groundwork’s been laid, you see?”
“You can’t arrest me.”
“Maybe I can’t hold you, but I can sure as shit put you in a room for a few hours and make your life hell while I got you.”
Skottie leaned forward over the desk. “What’s your problem, Goodman? Why are you making this adversarial? Are you so insecure about what’s happening in your ‘neck of the woods’?”
Goodman made his strange laughing noise again. He held up his hands, palms out, placating her. “Okay, okay. Let’s go back to being friends again.” He picked up the paper cup, saw that it was empty, and his eyes darted to the filing cabinet, but he set the cup back down and centered it on the desk, staring at it while he talked to her, moving it slowly back and forth. “You know how often we catch a murder in Burden County? I’ll tell you, it’s one, maybe two, in a year. It’s always some guy gets liquored up and hits his wife too hard. Too hard this one time. Or somebody pushes somebody else, maybe hits a guy in a bar, and they don’t get back up. But what we don’t get is a woman’s body with a dog collar on her neck, sunk down in the lake. That don’t happen here, and I’m guessing you can sympathize with me how I don’t like seeing it.” He looked up at her for a second. “I just don’t like seeing that. And your friend Travis Roan either happened to stumble on it or he’s involved with it in some damn way.” He glanced at the filing cabinet again, then smacked his lips and turned his gaze back to Skottie. “Like you say, he’s been in the area for two days and, also like you say, I can’t hold him very long. But I don’t like him and I don’t like coincidences. So . . . would you be so kind as to tell me, Trooper Foster, did he divulge anything to you in your encounters with him that I might find of interest? Anything I can use to help solve this murder I got?”
He sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in a silent invitation to open up.
“Right,” Skottie said. “Cards on the table?”
Goodman nodded.
She almost opened up, but at the last moment stuck with her instincts and lied. “He never told me why he was here.”
Goodman sighed. “Then why were you at Ruth Elder’s house this morning?”
“I wasn’t. I saw your deputy parked there and I stopped to see what was going on. Curiosity, that’s all.”
“You happened to be driving past the house where your buddy Roan was yesterday? And where you say you were? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“I guess so.”
“More coincidences, huh? Your day off, you drive all the way up from Hays and then decide to drive down a residential street where I got Quincy watching a house and where you been before by your own admission. Amazing. Somebody should call Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, if that’s still a thing.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Skottie said. “I got a text from Roan this morning. It said something happened up here and to come right away.”
“Can I see that text?”
“I’m not giving you my phone.”
“But he had your number.”
“He got it from the dispatcher yesterday. Lied and told her he was a friend of mine. You can ask my lieutenant about that if you don’t believe me.”
“And you have no idea what Roan’s doing here in Kansas, why he’s snooping around a dead woman’s house or why he got himself found near another dead woman’s body?”
“None.”
“But you come running because he texted you.”
“It was that or clean my oven and make a pumpkin pie. It’s my day off, and I really didn’t have anything better to do. I’m just as curious about this guy as you are, Sheriff.”
Goodman watched her for a long time, maybe waiting for her to say something else. When she didn’t, he finally stood up again and she followed suit.
“I’m gonna pretend I believe you, Trooper,” Goodman said. “But from now on, Travis Roan is my problem, not yours. Unless you got something concrete to give me, something helpful, you stay the hell away from Paradise Flats, you stay away from Rachel Bloom, y
ou stay away from Travis Roan, and you let me do my job.”
“You got it.” Skottie saluted him and turned to leave the room. Behind her, she heard the filing cabinet scrape open.
5
She stepped out of the pale green building and saw Ekwensi Griffith headed toward her, his boots crunching on the gravel lot. The dogs were barking, still throwing themselves at the sides of their chain-link enclosure. As he drew near, Quincy waved his hand and shouted as if he wanted the sheriff to hear him inside. “I guess you’ll be needing a ride back to your car, Trooper.”
Behind him, Lieutenant Johnson was waiting, leaning against the back of the Explorer with his arms folded across his chest. He pushed himself away from his vehicle and cleared his throat. “No worries, Deputy.” His voice boomed across the lot. “I’ll give her a ride out there.”
Quincy turned, walking backward, and nodded at the lieutenant. “Okay. Yeah, that’s great.” Then he turned again and bumped into Skottie before she could step out of the way. He grabbed her arm and pressed a piece of paper into her hand. “Whoa! Sorry. You okay?”
“Yeah,” Skottie said.
Quincy leaned in and whispered, “He asked me to give this to you. It’s my ass if Goodman finds out. Trusting you, amigo.” He patted her on the shoulder and moved away, trotted toward his car without looking back.
Lieutenant Johnson was watching Quincy, frowning. Skottie took advantage of the distraction and stuffed the paper into her pocket.
Johnson turned his gaze back to her. “You ready to go, Foster?”
“Yeah.”
Skottie went around to the other side of the Explorer and got in. Johnson started the engine and reversed out of the lot onto the residential street. Behind them, Deputy Griffith’s squad car pulled out and drove away from them in the other direction. The shaft of sunlight Skottie had seen from the window of Goodman’s office was well hidden now. The sky was a slate sheet stretching to the horizon.
“Which way we going to your car?”
She pointed. They drove in silence for a moment before Johnson spoke. “We don’t know each other too good yet, I guess.”