by Jeff Carson
“Ah, no. All of our deputies have a lot of work to do now, helping dig the town out from the snow, and making sure everyone is healthy and safe from the cold temperatures that have settled in for the day.”
“Thank you, Sheriff Wolf.” She turned to the camera. “And there you have it. We were just talking with Sheriff David Wolf of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department, after an absolutely huge avalanche, triggered by CDOT and the ski patrol of Rocky Points Resort, all caught on camera by our excellent camera crew here. I’m Renee Moore, reporting …”
Wolf decided to walk toward his car rather than stand next to her like a dumbass. For the first time of the day, he walked out of the dull light of the shadowed valley and into the sun’s morning rays reflecting painfully off the white snow. He pulled his sunglasses down off his head. They were glazed over with a thin layer of frost, so he put them back up, and then broke into two quick sneezes. The air was a balmy zero degrees, biting into the inside of his nostrils when he sniffed.
“Excuse me, Sheriff?”
Wolf wiped his nose and turned around, hoping he was presentable.
“You just gonna leave without saying goodbye?” Renee Moore jogged toward him, swishing her powder-blue pant legs together with every step. She held out a knitted-mitten hand and Wolf took it.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Goodbye. Be careful on the trip back to Denver. You do a great job on television. My son is going to flip when he knows I talked with you.”
She laughed. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, I think he’s a big fan.”
She mock frowned and gave a little laugh. “You think he’s a big fan? So you aren’t sure.”
“Well, it hasn’t come up. But he’s thirteen, and he tends to quickly develop crushes on attractive women, so I’m quite confident that he’s either a fan or will be when he sees the interview.”
She stared at Wolf for a second and then narrowed one eye and smiled. “And your wife, what will she think?”
“Ex-wife,” Wolf said, “and she’ll probably hate you.”
She laughed, this time more naturally—and attractively—and then she looked down. “Well, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Wolf turned to his SUV and hopped in, and then gave her a quick wave as he drove away.
He smiled at the interaction and looked in the rearview mirror, seeing the Colorado-famous Renee Moore looking after his receding vehicle. He wondered why he didn’t ask her out, or at least get her number, and then pondered why he would have. She lived in Denver, over two hours away—and that was if there was no traffic—a distance that had already been proved impossible for a relationship to endure.
Had she been hitting on him? Not really, he concluded. It was just easy politeness between two individuals that had morphed into a nice interaction—one with no future in it.
That seemed to be the recurring theme of his love life nowadays. As he drove past the dwindling line of cars on the pass, he thought about seeing Sarah the night before. She had looked extremely good, to put it mildly, with her snug blue dress that hugged her athletic curves and her braided blonde hair pulled back with shiny silver clips. And her eyes, as always, had been mesmerizing—brighter blue than the sky was today.
They had gotten along well last night, too. They’d attended a gala held atop the mountain at the Antler Creek Lodge, an ultra-exclusive restaurant open for dinner, only accessible by snow cat from the top of the gondola. In the little interaction they’d had, Wolf had laughed at her gossip about various people in the dining room, and they’d exchanged funny glances from across the room a couple of times. It was how their relationship had been lately. With their past as complicated as it could get—a marriage, a kid, her drugs, her alcohol, her sobriety, and her now defunct relationship with Mark Wilson—their present was going well. Just like his interaction with Renee Moore, though, he wasn’t ready to expect anything for the future. What was holding him back from pursuing the only love he’d ever known in his life again, he couldn’t say. But he was definitely hesitating because of some feeling he couldn’t put a finger on.
“Sheriff, do you copy?” It was Tammy Granger on the radio.
Wolf plucked the radio from the console. “Go ahead.”
“I have a visitor here at the station who wants to speak to you.” Tammy was using a quieter-than-normal voice.
“Not exactly a good time. Who is it?”
“It’s a Mr. Irwin, from the Irwin Construction Corporation. He’s one of the—”
“Yeah, I know who he is. What does he want?” Wolf knew Tammy was using a tone of voice that suggested the man could hear what Wolf was saying, but Wolf didn’t really care. It was a bad day to drop in and request a little chat with the sheriff.
Tammy paused. “He wants to speak to you today and is wondering when you’ll be back in. He seems adamant. What would you like me to tell him?”
Wolf was coasting down the final straightaway of the pass into town. “Listen, I’m on my way past the station now. I’ll just drop in. Tell him to sit tight.”
“Thanks, honey,” Tammy said in a sing-song voice.
Wolf was unsure how to respond to that, so he didn’t.
Highway 734 from the Williams Pass gate to the southern edge of town was relatively easy driving, despite the snow from the night before. The men plowing the town for the past eight hours had made sure of that.
There were only a couple of cars parked in front of the small shops lining Main, and ahead a green John Deere front-end loader was toiling away, grabbing an oversized bucket of snow, turning and dumping it on top of a ten-foot mountain in the center of the street that ran the length of a football field. The great wall of Rocky Points, Wolf thought.
As Wolf passed by the tractor, he waved at Greg Nanteekut, who sat in the cab. Greg pointed at Wolf and nodded, not moving his mouth, which bulged with tobacco. Wolf watched in his rearview mirror as the bucket of the loader swung past the rear of his SUV with barely a few feet to spare and dumped another load onto the center mound of snow.
Wolf pulled off Main into the station lot and parked next to the only other SUV in the fleet still there. Despite the conditions, they still needed at least one deputy at the station, and Wilson had been the lucky one to get it because he had drawn duty at the gate earlier. After sucking in exhaust, fielding hundreds of questions from the line of drivers trying to get out of town to the south over Williams Pass, and then dealing with the complaints following the news of the indefinite closure, Wolf had felt that Wilson deserved a little coffee-and-warmth time.
There was another vehicle parked in the lot, a black Range Rover with tinted windows, billowing exhaust into the arctic air.
Wolf turned off his vehicle, donned his winter cap and gloves, and stepped out into the biting cold. His boots squeaked on five inches of powder in the parking lot. Greg Nanteekut had cleared out the lot at some time in the dark hours of the morning, before the snow had stopped completely. Good enough.
Wolf walked straight past the purring Range Rover without slowing. The tint of the windows afforded Wolf no view inside, and he wasn’t one to approach tinted windows and knock, just like he wasn’t into speaking to people who wore sunglasses indoors.
Wolf entered the station and stomped his feet inside the door, sloughing off geometric chunks of snow onto the mat. Inside was quiet, save the humming of the fluorescent bulbs overhead, and warm. Way too warm, Wolf thought. But this was Tammy’s territory, and if she wanted to operate the reception area with a short-sleeved shirt on when it was zero degrees outside, then that was her business, and anyone in the department knew second-guessing anything Tammy knowingly did was a bad idea.
The man Wolf remembered from the night before as Ted Irwin sat at the far end of the window-enclosed anteroom of the station. Last night his bone-gray hair had been shinier and neatly plastered to his head, but now it stuck up in the back, as hair tended to do after taking off a winter hat, which sat on top of a wadded winter jacket on the chai
r next to him.
He looked at Wolf with bark-colored eyes and smiled, creasing his wrinkled, yet taut, skin. He stood up and held out a hand to Wolf.
Irwin’s small, soft hands were adorned with silver-colored jewelry that was almost certainly made of an exotic metal. He was thin and just under Wolf’s six-foot-three height, in his early sixties, and had a complexion and physique that suggested he ate a lot of plants and exercised regularly.
He seemed to mirror Wolf’s sentiments about the room’s temperature, as he was stripped down to a long-sleeved polo shirt—rolled to his elbows—and his face was so red that it looked like he wanted to press it against the glass.
“Mr. Irwin,” Wolf said.
“Sheriff Wolf,” Irwin said with a smile. “Thank you for seeing me.”
Wolf turned to the door to the squad room and the locking mechanism clacked just before he reached for the handle and twisted it open.
“Thank you,” Wolf said to Tammy, acknowledging her unerring ability to push the access button mounted on the edge of the counter in front of her with perfect timing. Every time.
“Mmmm,” she said, keeping her eyes on her Guns and Ammo magazine.
A cool whoosh of air flowed out of the squad room into the reception area as Wolf held the door open for Irwin to enter.
Irwin’s eyes lit up for an instant. “Oh, it’s …”
Wolf walked behind him and let the door shut. “Cooler in here?”
Irwin smiled wide, revealing big, solid, white teeth. Veneers, Wolf guessed. No one’s natural teeth were that perfect.
“Yes. Much cooler in here.”
The relief in Irwin’s voice made him smile. “Well, you might have to put that jacket back on when we get to my office.”
“Gladly,” Irwin said.
Wilson was standing in the middle of the desks of the squad room with a steaming cup of coffee. “Sir,” he said with a nod.
“Wilson, how’s it going in here?” Wolf asked.
Wilson gave a smile and looked around. “Quiet, sir.”
“That’s good. Follow me, Mr. Irwin.” Wolf padded across the low-pile carpet through the line of desks, and then took a left down the hall at the back of the room.
Irwin walked silently behind him and cleared his throat as they passed the coffee machine standing on the oak-television-stand-turned-coffee-station against the wall.
“Would you like a cup?” Wolf asked.
“Uh, if you don’t mind, I would love one.”
Wolf shook a styrofoam cup off the stack and held it out to Irwin.
Irwin grabbed a cup and pulled the coffee beaker from the machine, then filled Wolf’s cup before pouring his own.
“Thanks,” Wolf said. “Sugar there, cream’s in this little fridge here.” Wolf took a sip and watched Irwin expectantly, but Irwin just raised an eyebrow and took a sip.
“Ah,”—Irwin smacked his lips—“I like it black, too.”
Wolf stepped through the open door of his office and flicked the light on, unnecessarily, as it was bathed in bright sunlight slicing through the blinds. The fluorescent lights overhead stuttered on and buzzed. A green-and-gold plastic CSU Rams clock ticked on the wall.
“Please, take a seat.” Wolf unzipped his jacket and threw his hat and gloves on one of the empty built-in shelves; then he hung up his jacket and sat in his chair facing Irwin.
Irwin sat down and placed his hat and jacket on the chair next to him.
“Did you have fun at the gala last night?” Wolf asked.
“Yes,”—Irwin smiled and gazed into nothing—“it was a lot of fun. Great food.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes and took another sip, remembering how Irwin had been sitting next to Sarah at one of the many real-estate tables. Wolf had been a few tables over with Hal Burton, the ex-sheriff of Sluice County who liked to think of himself as Wolf’s mentor, the Sluice County Commissioner, the County Attorney General, and a few other political higher-ups from neighboring Byron County.
He and Irwin had met only briefly. It was probably a flicker of memory for Irwin, but Wolf had kept a close eye on him all night. Irwin’s infatuation with Sarah had been clear early on.
“What can I do for you?” Wolf asked.
Irwin hovered the cup over the edge of Wolf’s desk and glanced up for approval. Wolf nodded, and Irwin set it down.
“Well, I have a little bit of a problem, and I was hoping you could help me out.”
Wolf took another sip.
“As you may know, I have a helicopter at the resort.”
Wolf did know. The service of cat skiing off the backside of Rocky Points Resort had grown in popularity over the past two decades and, last year, the corporate bigwigs in Denver had decided to exploit even more of the terrain. They’d followed in the steps of Silver Mountain—a tiny resort in the San Juan mountains in southwest Colorado—and begun offering heli-runs for a reasonable hundred bucks and change. That is, a reasonable price when compared to a normal day of heli-skiing, which could run to over a thousand dollars per person.
The helicopter and pilot that ferried skiers from mountaintop to mountaintop were leased from a company in Aspen called Irwin Construction Corporation, which was owned by the man who now sat across from Wolf.
Wolf nodded. “Yes, I haven’t been up in it, yet, but I’ve seen it flying all winter.”
“Well, I came into town two days ago for last night’s gala, and a few other engagements, and to entertain some clients”—he waved his hand—“etcetera, etcetera.” Irwin took another slurp of coffee and set it down. “Last night, my helicopter pilot, a man named Matt Cooper, picked up a client of mine from the gondola, to take him back to where he was staying.”
Wolf remembered Deputy Baine’s side remark on the pass and began to suspect he knew where this was going.
“When Matt got into town,” Irwin continued, “a Deputy Baine pulled him over and all but yanked him out of the car, and then proceeded to give my pilot a roadside test for drunkenness.”
Wolf looked into his coffee cup and tilted it, letting the grounds settle to the corner; then he sucked down the last drops. “What can I do for you, Mr. Irwin?”
Irwin sat up straight and smoothed his shirt. “My pilot wasn’t found drunk by your deputy last night, but he was given a ticket for rolling through a stop sign, something my pilot says he certainly did not do. He slid to a stop. May have been a foot over the line, but the line was also buried under a foot of snow, so I’m not sure how your deputy even gave the ticket.”
Wolf lifted his hands. “I don’t know—”
“And two nights before that, he was found to be driving sober after a roadside test. By the same deputy. And four days before that, he was given a ticket for rolling through a stop sign by, you guessed it, Deputy Baine. A couple of days before that he was given a speeding ticket by Deputy Baine.”
Wolf leaned back in his chair and looked at the stripes of sunlight gleaming off the oak shelving.
“Your man has a personal vendetta against my pilot,” Irwin said. “Deputy Baine’s actions, and last night’s episode in particular, are regrettable and concerning.”
The truth was, Wolf didn’t put it past Baine to do such a thing. Six or seven years ago, Wolf had witnessed Baine rough up a customer coming out of the Beer Goggles Bar, and it had forever shaped how Wolf viewed Baine professionally.
Wolf and Baine had been on their way in for a bite to eat, and a young man, a college kid, had come barreling out of the bar straight into Baine’s chest. The kid had looked up, held up his hands, and apologized profusely, slurring the whole way through. In the process, a fleck of spittle had come out of the kid’s mouth—a fleck of spittle Wolf never saw. Before Wolf knew it, Baine had thrown the kid on the ground, his knee pressing on one side of his face, attempting to bury his head into rocks and dirt. Baine had gone nuts, and Wolf had had to pull him off.
It turned out that Baine had messed with the wrong kid that day. The kid’s father was ex-DA and r
an a prestigious law firm in Denver. In the end, Baine had to endure a month’s suspension without pay, apologize, and complete a one-year probation. That was all fine and good, but never once had Wolf seen an ounce of regret in Baine about the matter—not then, and not any time since.
“Sheriff Wolf?” Irwin said.
Wolf took a big breath and swiveled back to face Irwin. “I’ll look into this,” Wolf said, and stood up.
“What assurance do I have that—”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any assurances,” Wolf said. “But you have my word that I’ll look into this.”
Irwin frowned for a second and stared at the carpet, then stood up and nodded in resignation. “Thank you, Sheriff. I appreciate it. Of course you’ll have to check the facts yourself before you go making me any promises.”
Wolf nodded and stepped around the desk.
Irwin gripped his hat with two hands and looked down. “I was sorry to hear about the mayor’s wife. I take it you’ll be at the service today?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Then I’ll see you there,” Irwin said, turning around and letting himself out of the office door.
Wolf followed Irwin through the squad room, taking in a whiff of his strong cologne as they walked. Wolf twisted the knob to the reception area and let him go first.
“Sluice County Sheriff’s Department,” Tammy was saying into the phone as they entered the blasting furnace of a room. “Just a minute, honey.”
Wolf looked over. She pointed the phone receiver at Wolf, pushed a button, set it down, and flipped a page in her magazine.
Irwin finished putting on his coat and nodded to Wolf. “Thank you for your time.” He turned and ran straight into the glass door, backed up and stared it down, then gave a final wave and left.
Wolf couldn’t keep himself from smiling at Irwin’s exit. Irwin seemed to be a good man, and he could see why Margaret Hitchens spoke so highly of the well-to-do bachelor, even if Irwin did ogle Wolf’s ex-wife.
Irwin jogged across the parking lot and got into the passenger seat. The Range Rover backed up and drove away, leaving behind a cloud of exhaust.