He scrambled to his feet, hearing his deputies snickering behind him, then put his fingers against Tami’s neck, finding a strong pulse. “Tommy, call the ambulance. I think she just passed out, but I want be sure she didn’t bang her head or something.”
“Should we move her, or at least get a blanket to cover her up?” Robyn asked.
“I'm not sure we want to move her,” Weber said, “but I definitely want her covered up.”
***
“You blew up Tami Gaylord’s house with a hand grenade?” Chet Wingate screeched, and Weber held the telephone receiver away from his ear, which was still ringing from the flash bang.
“It wasn’t a grenade like you blow people up with,” Weber said.
“No, you just blew up a house with it! We’ll be lucky if Mrs. Gaylord doesn’t sue the town for every penny we have!”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Weber replied, “and we didn’t blow up the whole house. All we did was break the glass in the sliding door and a couple of windows.”
“Sheriff, do you have any common sense at all?” Chet asked.
Weber had to admit to himself that, in hindsight, using the flash bang probably wasn’t the best decision he had made that week, but it really did seem like a good idea at the time. Who knew the damned things were that loud?
“Look, Chet, Tami is fine, just a little bump on the back of her head. And most of the damage in the house was done by the bear, not the grenade. When I left, her she was in the middle of her usual histrionics, but Tami acts that way if someone gets in the express lane at the grocery store with more than fifteen items.”
“Don't make light of this,” the mayor said. “I’ve already had a phone call from Grover Recker and he's hot!”
“If you look up the term “ambulance chaser” in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Grover,” Weber said. “Has there ever been anything he wasn't hot to sue somebody about?”
“Sheriff, you are skating on thin ice,” the mayor warned. “Now, I expect you to get together with Mrs. Gaylord and Recker and get this whole thing straightened out. And in the meantime, what are you doing about those two hooligan deputies of yours that started a riot in the café this morning?”
“I told you, I'm handling it,” Weber said, his irritation beginning to show.
“Well see that you do!” the mayor shouted and slammed down the telephone, breaking the connection.
Weber sat for a moment holding the telephone receiver in his hand and looking at it. Usually it was him hanging up on the mayor, and he wasn't exactly sure what to do with this turn of events. Finally, he shrugged and hung up the telephone, then pushed the intercom button on his desk and summoned Mary Caitlin.
“One thing I can say for you, Jimmy, things never get boring around here,” Mary said as she took a chair beside his desk.
“Give me a break, Mary,” Weber pleaded. “I had to see Tami Gaylord naked!”
“Yeah, and I had to clean a dead guy’s dried blood off the floor. Everybody's got their troubles.”
“How are Carl and Abby doing?”
“I think they'll be better once they're back in their own home,” Mary said. “Abby still says she doesn't think she can be there again, but she’s a tough lady. She’ll handle it.”
Weber was silent for a moment, and Mary studied his face carefully. “What is it Jimmy? Something’s eating at you.”
“I don't know,” the sheriff told her. “Something just keeps bugging me. Why would a guy like Chandler show up here in Big Lake? If you're an escapee on the run, why would you pass up places as big as Albuquerque, or even Gallup, and find your way so far back here in the mountains?”
Mary shook her head and said, “I don't know. Why does any criminal do the things they do? Nobody said this guy was a Rhodes scholar, Jimmy. If he was smart, he wouldn't have been busted as many times as he had been. He was mean and evil, but that doesn't mean he had any common sense at all.”
“You're probably right,” Weber told her, “it’s just one of those things that happen, and it’s too bad it had to happen here, to nice folks like Carl and Abby.”
“What do you mean probably right?” Mary sniffed at him. “Have you ever known me to be wrong yet?”
“Well, you did marry Pete about a hundred years ago.”
Mary laughed and said, “It wasn’t a hundred years, though sometimes it does seem that way. Besides, I was a horny young thing, and in my day and age, young ladies did not do the deed without benefit of a ring on their finger.”
“That's a lot more information that I really needed to have on a day like this,” Weber told her.
“What?” Mary said with a laugh. “You didn’t think I liked getting my rocks off when I was a youngster? Let me let you in on a little secret, Junior,” she said leaning close to him, “Old ladies like it, too!”
Weber blushed several shades of red, and Mary enjoyed a hearty laugh at his discomfort. Finally she managed to calm herself down, wiped tears from her eyes, and then sat back in her chair. “So what are we going to do about Buz and Dolan?”
“I don't know,” Weber admitted. “Dolan's furious. In the state he was in today I'd be afraid of what he might do if he caught Billy coming around to see Gina.”
“Well, these things happen to people all the time,” said Mary, “and somehow or another they manage to get through it.”
“Yeah, but most of those people don't carry guns for a living,” Weber told her.
“So what are you going to do?” Mary asked him.
“I guess I’m going to go and try to talk some sense into Dolan. With any luck, he’ll shoot me instead of Billy. Then they can call Pete back to work and he can handle all of this.”
“You leave that old man out of this,” Mary warned him. “He needs all the stamina he can get just to keep up with me these days. I am in my sexual prime, you know?”
“Too much information, Mary,” Weber told her. “Way too much.”
He left her laughing at him in his office and walked outside to his Explorer.
***
Wendy Reed opened the door to Weber’s knock and said, “He's around back, cleaning out his truck so he can turn it in.”
“Can’t you talk any sense into him?” Weber asked her.
“I've been trying to get through to him since last night,” Wendy said. “I've never seen him this way before, Jimmy.”
“Let me see if I can get him to listen to reason,” Weber told her. He walked out to the driveway and into the backyard, where Dolan was using a large canister style shop vacuum to clean his department issued pickup truck. He didn't hear Weber's approach over the noise of the vacuum, and when the sheriff tapped him on the shoulder he looked up, then went back to his task without saying a word.
“Dolan?”
There was no response, so Weber leaned down and unplugged the vacuum from the extension cord leading out from the garage.
“There's nothing to talk about, Jimmy,” Dolan said. “I’ll have this thing cleaned up in an hour or so and I'll drop it off, or you can have somebody come by to pick it up, whichever you want. As long as it's not that asshole, Buz.”
“Come on, Dolan. I know this is bad, but we’ll all get through it together. We’re family.”
“No,” Dolan said, pointing at the house, “My family is in there. That woman and those kids are my family. They're all that matters!”
“And how do you expect to feed your family and pay the bills without a job?” Weber asked him.
“This isn't the only place in the world where a cop can work,” Dolan said. “I’ve got twenty years on the job. You think I can't find another department that will have me?”
“That's right, you've got twenty years on the job. And you just turned 41 last month. How many departments are looking for 41-year-old men, Dolan? They're all looking for young bucks, and that’s not you or me anymore, my friend. And even if you did find another job, do you really want to move your wife and kids out of the
town where they have lived all their lives and start over someplace new?”
“Don't you call me friend,” Dolan said. “Friends don't turn their back on friends when they're in trouble, Jimmy. And as for this town, it can go to hell, and everybody in it. Including you!”
“What would you have me do, Dolan?” Weber asked him. “Should I have let you and Buz keep on fighting right in the middle of the café? Should I turn you loose and let you go hunt down Billy Carelton? And then what, Dolan? Should I let you beat the hell out of him? How's that going to help anything? Is it going to make this baby go away? You can't turn back the clock. Your family has a bad situation here and you have to man up and deal with it!”
“That's easy to say when it's not your kid,” Dolan told him. “How do you think I feel right now, Jimmy? What do you think is going through my mind right now?”
“I'll tell you what's going through your mind right now,” said Wendy. Neither man had seen her come into the backyard, but she marched up to her husband, who stood a foot taller than her, and looked up into his face with fire in her eyes. “The same thing that went through my daddy's eyes when I got pregnant! Do you remember that, Dolan? Do you think Gina is the first girl who ever found herself in this situation? But do you know the difference between Gina and me? When it was me, my daddy was there to hold me and comfort me, he wasn’t out in the back yard cleaning some damned pickup truck! Now, I know you’re pissed off at the world right now, Dolan Reed, but there’s a little girl in that house crying her eyes out because she’s scared and confused, and what she needs is her daddy to tell her it’s all going to be all right. Stop being her father for a minute and go be her daddy!
Dolan stared at his wife in silence for a long moment, and then he seemed to slump as the anger drained out of him. Without another word, he dropped the shop towel he had been holding and walked toward the house.
Weber stared after him and then turned back to Wendy, who remained fixed in place, looking at the back door of her home. Finally she spoke. “Did you bring his badge, Jimmy?”
The sheriff nodded and fished the gold star out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Give us a day, okay Jimmy? He’ll be back to work tomorrow.”
Weber nodded and started to leave, but stopped when Wendy said, “I knew.”
“You knew?”
Wendy nodded. “Gina never said anything, but I knew. I think I knew before she did.”
“So what happens now?” Weber asked her.
“They’re young, but Billy’s a good kid. They’ll have a hard time of it, but they’ll get through it together. Just like Dolan and I did.”
Chapter 10
It was Friday night and Parks and Marsha Perry had driven over to Show Low to watch a movie. Weber was restless. He picked at a TV dinner listlessly, then gave up and carried it to the plastic trashcan in the corner of the kitchen and dropped it in. He wandered around his cabin, picking up a magazine from the coffee table in the living room and dropping down onto the couch to thumb through it, but couldn’t concentrate and gave up. Then he picked up the remote control and flipped through the channels on the television, trying to get interested in an old 1970s sitcom and then a documentary on the shrinking Amazon rain forest.
The old Seth Thomas clock on the fireplace mantle chimed 11 o’clock and Weber thought about going to bed, but he wasn’t tired and he feared what might be waiting for him in his dreams. He piddled around for another hour, putting a load of laundry in the washer and giving the television one more try.
Finally he gave up, turned off the television, retrieved his .45 from his nightstand and stuck it into his waistband behind his right hip and left the cabin. He drove aimlessly for a while, cruising down Main Street, where the only businesses open were the Cattlemen’s Saloon and the Arby’s restaurant, where three cars were lined up at the drive-through. Weber made a U-turn at the ski lodge and drove on, eventually finding himself in front of the large old two story house he had grown up in. The house where his sister Debbie had lived with her husband Mike before she committed the crimes that ended with Mike and two other people dead, and her in prison serving three life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Weber felt a chill run down his spine and his stomach turned over. He had to clamp his lips tight to hold down the little bit of dinner he had managed to eat. He realized that his hands were gripping the Explorer’s steering wheel so tightly that they ached.
“This is ridiculous,” Weber said out loud, and turned into the driveway. He shut off the engine and listened to it make small metallic ticking sounds as it cooled down, his hands still locked on the steering wheel.
“I can do this. I can do this. It’s just an empty old house. I lived in it for over twenty years. I can do this.” His words didn’t give him any more confidence than they had when he stopped on the road in front of the house.
As he sat in the dark, a thousand scenes went through his mind. Swinging in the tire swing that used to hang from a limb of the old oak tree in the front yard. Sitting on the broad old porch on summer evenings, eating popcorn and drinking lemonade. His father playing his guitar and singing old time songs about Casey Jones, tumbling tumbleweeds, and ghost riders pushing a phantom herd of cattle across the sky. His mother working in her garden and bringing in fresh tomatoes and ears of corn for dinner. Debbie riding the spotted pony their father bought her for her seventh birthday.
“I can do this,” Weber said again, and reached down to put his hand on the door handle. But he couldn’t open it and step outside. No matter how hard the rational part of his mind told him that it was just an empty old house, his hand stayed frozen as he fought down wave after wave of nausea. Finally, he started the Explorer’s engine, reached up with a shaking hand to put the transmission in reverse, and backed out onto the road.
Weber was almost out to the T intersection when he spotted a car backed into the driveway of a summer cabin that was closed down for the season. He pulled in beside it and rolled down his window.
“You’re up late,” Robyn said.
“Couldn’t sleep. Anything going on?”
“It’s a quiet night,” Robyn said. “Kate forwarded the phone to my cell and closed down the dispatch console at midnight. Buz just went off duty and the Antler Inn closed at 1:30, so the drunks are all home or wherever they’re shacking up for the night. I pulled over a trucker who was doing 20 over the limit out there on the highway and gave him a coupon good for $125 off his next paycheck, but that’s it.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Robyn said, “There’s plenty of room over here.”
Weber didn’t take a minute to consider, slipping out of his vehicle and into the passenger door of Robyn’s patrol car. There was more silence, but it was the comfortable silence of two people with a lot of history behind them. Somewhere along the way they found themselves holding hands and eventually they shared a kiss, and then another. Before they knew it, their hands were working hard to get past uniform buttons, Robyn’s ballistic vest and gun belt. Like a couple of lust-crazed teenagers, they made their way to the back seat.
“This is crazy. What if someone sees us?” Robyn asked as she frantically pushed her boots off while Weber was loosening his belt.
“Let them call a cop,” he told her. “Just don’t answer the phone if it rings.”
Soon they were naked and locked together, months of pent up passion exploding out of them.
Afterward, Robyn chuckled as she lay under him. Weber pushed himself up and asked, “What’s so funny?”
“This. Us. Humping in the back seat like a couple of high school kids.”
“Except we don’t have to get home by curfew,” Weber said.
“Well… that and I don’t think high school kids have your staying power, Jimmy. The only time I was ever in this particular position before, it only lasted about ninety seconds.”
“And that was just the first round,” he told her. “Can a high school kid do this again? Especia
lly so soon?”
He leaned down to kiss her but Robyn turned her head. “Jimmy, we really can’t do this. Not here.”
He kissed her ear and nibbled on the lobe, and soon her protests turned into soft moans. The last thing Robyn managed to say was, “You’d better be willing to carry my books home after this.”
***
Finally dressed and back in the front seat of Robyn’s car, she said, “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I know that.”
“I need you to know that,” Robyn said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between us down the road, Jimmy, but I love you.”
He kissed the back of her hand and said, “I love you too, Robyn.”
It was the first time he had ever said that to her, and a tear trickled down her cheek. Robyn reached up to brush it away.
“I know what the mayor said to you, about our relationship.”
“How did you….”
“Come on, Jimmy, nothing happens in that office that everybody doesn’t know about in five minutes.”
“Screw Chet Wingate.”
“No thanks,” Robyn said. “He’s not my type. But we can’t just ignore this, Jimmy. If he takes this to the Town Council…”
“Listen, Robyn, Chet has brought complaints about me before the Council so many times that I can’t remember. It never comes to anything.”
“But this is different. This is us they’re going to be talking about. I know you don’t give a damn what people think of you, Jimmy, but I do.”
“Are you ashamed of what we have together?” he asked her.
“Oh no, Jimmy, no!” She leaned over and held his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. “But put yourself in my place, professionally. What will people say when they find out that Big Lake’s first female deputy is sleeping with the sheriff? How much respect will I get in the department? On the street?”
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