He nodded, almost triumphant that someone new understood the injustice of it. “Because they don’t give a damn about possession,” he said. “First thing they did…well, the first thing they did was scare him to death, with lots of talk about maximum sentences and whatnot. But after that, they offered him a deal. If he would tell them where he got the joint, they’d drop the charges.”
Even if Megan’s knowledge of criminal law was garnered mostly from television, she knew enough to realize what the feds were up to. “They’re trying to work their way up the distribution chain.” She decided to push just a little bit further. “All the way to the Codys.”
Megan had never considered herself especially sensitive, but even she couldn’t miss the chill that swept over the room.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Stan said quickly, and he turned his attention back to his food.
Megan frowned at Tina. That hadn’t been the reaction she’d been expecting. She thought the locals might be hostile, but that wasn’t what this felt like. It felt like they were afraid. “Joe Cody was in here for lunch yesterday…” she started. But she wasn’t sure where she wanted to go with it. “It seemed like everyone was comfortable with him.”
“Joe’s fairly even-tempered. For a Cody, at least. But they’re a big family, and they’re clannish.” Tina was speaking much more quietly now. “Nobody wants to get on their bad side.”
“Is that what happened with Joe’s brother-in-law?” Megan had no idea why she was pushing this. It wasn’t her job, but she really wanted to know, just for herself.
But Tina was distracted, and as a dark-haired teenage boy came out of the kitchen with a plastic bin, she reached out and gently grabbed his arm. “Alex. This is Megan, in from out of town. She’s the one your uncle pulled out of the water the other day.” Tina looked meaningfully at Megan. “Megan, this is Alex Watson—Joe Cody’s nephew.”
Oh. “Hi, Alex.”
“Hi.” The kid looked shy, and a bit bewildered at being dragged into the conversation. But somebody had taught him some manners. “Welcome to Shadow Valley.”
“Thanks. You’ve lived here your whole life?” Megan smiled encouragingly, and the boy seemed to respond.
“Yeah.” It was a short answer, but his face was open and pleasant.
“So, let me ask you, Alex… What do you think the biggest law enforcement problem is, in this town? What should the police be focusing on?”
It was almost frightening to see the child turn into a defensive young man. “Minding their own business,” he said firmly, and then stepped away and nodded at the tables. “I’ve got work to do.”
He left, and Megan looked at Tina. “Now it’s my turn to ask—am I being too pushy?”
Tina raised both eyebrows. “That depends. What are you trying to do, exactly?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“You want to understand the cops, or the Codys?” She glanced over to the table by the window where Alex was piling dishes into his bin. “If it’s the cops—they’re just following orders. And if it’s the Codys…” Another quick look toward Alex. “Be careful, sugar.”
“They’re that bad?” Somehow, Megan just couldn’t accept the idea of Joe Cody as a source of danger. It wasn’t just because he was so attractive. She thought of him talking to her about taking her wet clothes off, practically asking for permission before each button was undone. Could someone be so respectful in one way and so dangerous in another?
Tina shrugged. She waited until Alex passed by her and returned to the kitchen, then said, “You know how we say people have hot tempers?” She waited for Megan’s nod. “Well, that’s not the Codys. That family, and especially Joe—they have the coldest tempers you’re ever going to see. You ever touch steel after it’s been outside on a winter’s day? So cold it burns.” Another pause, as if waiting for encouragement, and Megan leaned in a little to show her interest. Tina shifted forward as well. “A bear attacks you, you can feel the animal there, you can feel the heat, the anger, you can understand what it’s doing. A snake attacks you—there’s nothing there. Just cold.” She leaned back a little and nodded, pleased with her poetic speech.
Megan wasn’t so sure. “Have you ever been attacked by a bear, Tina?”
Tina shook her head. “No. But I’ve been bitten by a snake, and I ain’t looking to repeat the experience.” Another quick look to the kitchen, then Tina leaned in and spoke barely above a whisper. “Dave Watson—Alex’s daddy—they never found his body. Cops figure Joe hid it in the woods somewhere, and if Joe Cody hid something in the woods, it’s gonna stay hid. But Joe’s been walking around so cool, so calm about the whole thing, he’s got people thinking he didn’t do it at all. They’re saying maybe Dave just decided to leave town. He always was a shifty bastard.”
“But you don’t believe that?” Megan certainly liked the sound of it, herself.
“Sure, I could. But that’s the thing about the Codys. They’re always cool and calm. You can’t ever pin anything on any of them, not for sure. But after a while, all the stuff that happens—you realize, yeah, they’re doing it. There’s no way all that stuff could happen all around them, without them being involved. They’re just doing it smooth enough to not get caught.” Tina sounded almost proud of her hometown boys.
“So what evidence do the police have? If there was a murder, why do they think Joe did it, instead of some other Cody, or somebody else entirely?”
Tina gave Megan a strange look. “Sugar, why ask me?” She half turned, far enough to pick up the plate that the cook had put in the pass-through, then turned back around and put the dish in front of Megan. “Why don’t you finish up your breakfast, leave a generous tip and head over to the police station and ask someone who might actually know something?” She sounded friendly enough, but Megan got the message that their little conversation was over.
“You’re right. I should.” She picked up her fork and smiled. “Thanks for breakfast, Tina. And for the conversation.”
“Any time, sugar,” Tina said, and it felt like she meant it.
Chapter Nine
Megan spent the next two days with her nose buried in the files Don had so helpfully stacked up for her. She was hoping that if she understood the cases better, she’d be able to figure out the personalities as well. And the paper files had an advantage that she wouldn’t have found if she’d stuck with the digital versions. There were informal notes in the margins, comments from a variety of people who’d handled the file. There were no names on the casual notes, but Megan got pretty good at recognizing the handwriting and the attitudes of the major players. She also sat in on meetings and sent a short daily report back to the governor’s office, but the files took up most of her time. What she read intrigued her.
On the morning of her fourth day in town, Megan came back from a trip to the bathroom and found Anna sitting in the conference room, looking over the stacks of paper. She seemed almost startled when Megan came in, but recovered so quickly that Megan couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it. “You really going to read all this?” Anna flicked one of the piles disdainfully, almost causing it to topple. “It’s a fucking waste of time. If you want to know something, you should just ask.”
Megan sat down quickly. “Okay. Excellent. First question—Why are you guys so convinced Joe Cody murdered his brother-in-law?”
Anna looked surprised. “What have you read so far?”
“I’ve just seen the basic evidence—Joe came back to town, he had a public disagreement with the alleged victim and the victim disappeared that night. Blood matching the victim’s DNA was found in Joe Cody’s truck, but not in sufficient quantities to suggest a fatality. Joe has refused to speak about the incident in any manner or venue.”
“Yeah. Of course, Joe refuses to speak to us on the record about anything ever. It’s a
family tradition. A rule, practically. He said he had no reason to believe Dave Watson was dead, and then he just stared at us, waiting for us to let him go.”
“Well, okay. So he’s denied it, essentially. And the evidence is all circumstantial. I mean, Joe’s right, we’re just assuming the guy’s even dead. And if he is, there’s really nothing all that tight tying Joe to the crime.”
“You know, we don’t normally refer to perps by their first names.” Anna sounded a bit smug, and Megan wanted to wipe the superior smile off her face.
“Well, you probably don’t normally swear at them for daring to call you at work either. Apparently the rules are a little different on this one.” But she didn’t want to be too aggressive, not when Anna was still her only quasi ally other than the sheriff. “Look, I know the story about me has made it up here. I’m obviously in no position to judge somebody else for…for man-related misjudgments. But my Dad is FBI, and I know that cops aren’t robots. It’s impossible to totally remove personal feelings from a case. Is it possible that something else is affecting your judgment here? Either you’re angry at Joe for leaving all those years ago, or maybe you’re not angry and you’re overcompensating to cover up some feelings you still have for him?”
One look across the table told Megan she’d made a big mistake. The other woman was looking at her like she was either stupid or insane.
Then Anna leaned forward quickly and, for an instant, Megan thought things were going to get physical. And it wouldn’t be some girly little slap either, not from a woman like Anna. If Anna hit someone, it would be with a closed fist and some serious power. But the deputy just reached for the stack of files Megan had been going through, pulled one out and shot it across the table.
Megan eyed it cautiously. The file was labeled Shannon (Cody) Watson. Megan gave Anna a questioning look.
“Open it,” Anna said.
Megan did. The folder was full of pictures, all of Shannon Watson, but Megan could barely recognize the woman she’d met at the garage. Her photographed face was bruised and swollen, and subsequent pictures showed the same level of damage all over her body. Her legs, her arms, her torso… Megan closed the folder when she saw the first photo of the woman’s pubic area. She looked up at Anna, too shocked to speak.
“Joe’s sister,” Anna said. “Beaten and raped. Repeatedly. I mean, repeatedly on this one night, but also at countless different times over the past ten or so years. This last one was the worst. It came after she got a restraining order, trying to keep him away from the house. And when we arrested him for this, the son of a bitch had his story already lined up—three fishing buddies who swore up and down that he was with them, a full day’s hike out of town. We charged him anyway, but with an alibi like that, the judge refused to hold him.” Anna looked at the innocuous manila file folder, then back up to Megan. “You’re right. The amount of blood we found in the truck wasn’t conclusive. Maybe Joe could have explained that away, if he’d opened his mouth. And Dave Watson was a deadbeat—him drifting out of town isn’t exactly unbelievable. But you’re also right that I know Joe Cody pretty well. And that’s how I know that he killed the fucker. He did it, just like I would have, if this had been my sister.”
Megan drew in a deep breath, and it was only a little shaky when she exhaled. “So how can you want to catch him? If you think he did the right thing, why do you want him punished?”
“The right thing? It’s not my job to decide what’s right and wrong. That’s the jury’s job. I just try to figure out what happened. If I arrest Joe and he gets acquitted, I’ll be just fine with that. But if I ignore this, and word gets around that it’s okay to commit murder in this town as long as you think you have a good enough reason—I won’t be responsible for that sort of mayhem.”
“It’s not your job? Okay, but what about how you feel as a person? If she’d already gone to the cops, and that didn’t do any good, didn’t Joe do the right thing? I mean, self-defense covers defense of others, right?”
“That’s right, you went to law school. So you know there’s an immediacy issue with self-defense in this case, but maybe a good lawyer could get past it. As a person—sure, that’s what I’d hope for. I’d hope Joe got off. But as a cop, I’m going to do my damned job.” Anna was watching Megan closely, and she must have seen something that made her relax, because she sat back in her chair and sighed. “It didn’t use to be this way. Back in the day…” She smiled quickly. “My daddy was the sheriff here, when I was growing up. Carson took over from him. And my daddy was not real interested in doing things by the book. He was more like you said—he’d do what made sense to him. I think about that sometimes. I wonder what he’d think about how I’m doing the job.”
“You don’t think he’d be impressed?” Megan thought of her own father, saying he was proud of her even after he knew about the mistake she’d made, and she realized again what a gift that was.
“Impressed? Confused, more like it. He’d look at the Watson case, and he’d say, ‘Why didn’t you just beat the shit out of the asshole? A slap or two here and there, that’s between a man and his wife, but a beating like this? A beating calls for a beating, and if you don’t want the family to do it, then you’d best do it yourself.’” Anna’s voice was heavy and gruff while she was speaking her father’s words, but it lightened to her usual tone when she said, “I don’t know. Maybe he was right. Maybe that was a better way. But it’s not the way things are done, not anymore.”
Megan nodded. “But it’s still the way the Codys do things.”
Anna snorted. “The Codys pull the kids out of school for two weeks for the fall hunt. They heat their houses with wood. They dry their own venison jerky and use it to make pemmican. They plant huge gardens and put up enough vegetables to stock a grocery store, and they take herbal cures for months before bothering to see a doctor. They…” She stopped and shook her head. “The Codys do a lot of things the old way.”
“But the meth’s new,” Megan said. “And it seems like it’s been a serious problem around here for about a decade. Joe Cody was away for most of that time, as far as I can tell. Where was he?”
Another snort from Anna. “Bastard won’t say. Not even to me. So the feds figure he was off apprenticing in the drug trade, learning the ropes from some bigwig. We tried to tell them that Codys don’t need anyone to teach them how to grow or carry weed. And like you said, meth’s been a problem around here for a while now. I don’t think the Codys are involved in that, but if they are, it’s all of them, not just Joe. He’s been out of town too long for him to be the cause of it all.”
“So if Joe isn’t the source—if it’s not the Codys at all—who is supplying the meth? Where’s it coming from?”
“Exactly. That’s the question we keep asking, but whenever we try to get anywhere with it, the feds shut us down. They say we’re getting too close to their investigation, or that they need us to release a suspect because they want to use him as a CI, or…” She threw her hands up. “It’s ridiculous. It’s like they’re so determined to bust the Codys for something, they’re chasing after them even for stuff it doesn’t look like they’ve done. And keeping us from following leads that might turn up evidence of someone else being involved.”
Anna looked disgustedly at the folders piled all over the table and, for a moment, it seemed as if she was going to say something more. Then she shook her head and stood up. “I’m going to go work on something I can actually do something about. Parking tickets maybe.” With that, she was gone.
Megan stayed behind in the conference room, thinking. She needed to spend some time reviewing the rules on jurisdiction. That was probably where she should have started. And she was going to need to talk to the sheriff, rather than just hearing from his deputies. If he was agreeing to all these federal decisions, then the deputies didn’t really have much to say about it. Megan was excited to actually have the be
ginnings of a plan. She’d been sent away from the capitol in disgrace, but maybe she’d find a way to return in triumph.
Chapter Ten
Megan worked until lunch, then walked across to the diner. She found her usual spot at the counter, gave her order and turned to find Joe Cody settling onto the stool next to hers. God damn, it was really not fair for the man to be that good-looking. How had she never noticed his eyelashes before, long and curving gently to almost touch the tanned skin above his sharp cheekbones…
“Hi,” he said, but there was no smile, no friendliness in his voice.
She was taken aback by his tone, and then disconcerted by her surprise. When had she come to think that pleasant interactions with a drug-dealing killer were to be expected?
“Hi,” she responded.
“We should talk.”
“Really?” She tried to stay cool. She tried to imagine what a tough policewoman from the movies would say. “So—talk.”
He looked at her as if he could see right through her ridiculous charade, and wasn’t impressed. But he didn’t pursue that, just leaned back a little and said, “Fine. Stay away from my nephew.”
“What are you talking about?” There was nothing feigned about her response this time.
“He said you’ve been asking questions. He said you’re in here every day, poking around and talking to him.”
“Talking to him, like saying hi, maybe. Tina introduced us a couple days ago. What am I supposed to do, pretend I don’t know him?”
“Yeah. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” Joe’s face was serious, and his eyes were like ice. Megan remembered Tina’s talk about his cold temper and for the first time she could feel it. It was chilling.
“I don’t understand.”
He shook his head as if frustrated by her stupidity. “You want to poke around and ask questions in general, fine, whatever. That’s your call. But he’s a kid, and he’s not part of any of this, and it will damn well stay that way.”
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