by Jeff Carson
Wolf pushed Sarah’s name on the screen. He listened to the phone ring in his ear and watched the wipers leave long swaths of water as they squeaked back and forth.
“Hello?” Sarah answered.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Can we talk?” Wolf asked.
There was a long pause. “Sure. I’m at the office, can you come over?”
“Be right there.”
Wolf pulled back onto the highway and drove into town. A minute later he pulled into the parking lot of the Hitching Post Realty storefront office. With his front tire dropping into a hole filled with muddy water, he shut off the engine and got out.
By the time he’d opened the jangling glass door, his hair was coated with snow. Stepping into the warm office space, he brushed his head and wiped his feet on the welcome mat.
Sarah, Margaret, and a man Wolf failed to recognize looked up from their desks, which were all angled to face the large plate-glass window front of the office like they were plants soaking up as much light as possible.
“Howdy, Sheriff,” Margaret said in a terrible Texas accent.
“Hello,” Wolf said. He nodded at Sarah, who scooted back her chair and stood up. The man sitting at the other desk nodded and got back to pecking on his keyboard.
“How are things going?” Margaret asked, this time in a normal tone. She narrowed her eyes. “You talk to Burton yet?”
Wolf shook his head.
She raised her eyebrows and nodded, and then looked down at her computer screen.
Wolf blinked. “How about you? Business good?”
“Excellent as usual, but not as good as it could be. Hey, Barry,”—she looked over at the man at the desk next to Sarah’s—“this is Sheriff Wolf. Sheriff Wolf, this is Barry Hashberger. Barry’s a new one I recruited out of Vail.”
Barry stood up and walked over with his hand extended. It was warm and dry and he shook with a firm grip. “Nice to meet you, sir. I’ve heard”—he stopped himself short—“about you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
Margaret cleared her throat. “I’ve told him the story about the Village Base Condos Deal and the corruption that came along with it, and the sheriff who uncovered the whole mess.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes and nodded. “So you’re glad the condo deal fell through and Klammer and Irwin had to skip town with their tails between their legs after all?”
“Hell, no I’m not glad. Like I said, business is not as good as it could be.” She stared with a straight face and then tried to look happy. “I’m just kidding. We’re starting another open-bid process as soon as we can get our godforsaken government back intact. And when we do, and someone else builds those condos, Hitching Post Realty will have those listings. Just a hell of a lot later, thanks to you.” She bent down and squinted at the screen. “Ah! The Cherokee Trail counter just came in … they agree to waive inspection.”
Barry made a fist and held it in the air.
Wolf looked at Sarah.
She shrugged, zipped up her jacket and walked to Wolf with a smile. “Exciting in here, isn’t it?”
Wolf nodded. “My hair is standing on end. See you guys later. Nice to meet you, Barry.” Wolf waved and followed Sarah out the door.
Barry smiled and waved. Margaret kept her eyes on her screen and pointed in Wolf’s general direction.
They walked through the snow to Wolf’s SUV and got in.
“Where to?” she asked.
Wolf fired up the SUV and cranked the heat to halfway. He shut off the radio and looked out the windshield. The snow was falling so thick it was like looking straight at a waterfall, and the office window behind it was completely invisible.
“That night I busted Charlie Ash,” he said, “he said something to me.”
She stopped putting on her seatbelt and looked over at him.
“He said that you broke up with Mark because you were still in love with me, and he was sick of competing with me for your heart, and that’s why he returned to Vail.”
Sarah frowned. “You were talking about me and Mark with Charlie Ash?”
Wolf nodded. “He said he befriended Mark while he was in town.”
Sarah swallowed and glanced out the windshield. “Okay.”
“Ash was trying to egg me on, trying to get to me. And he did a pretty good job of it, because he also said that Mark had told him that you’d cheated on me sometime in the past. When I was still in.”
Sarah looked at him with an open mouth and wide eyes. The heater blew with a low howl and the wipers swished across the windshield.
Wolf reached up and turned off the wipers without breaking eye contact.
A tear fell down Sarah’s cheek.
“That’s the truth, isn’t it?” he asked.
She kept her watery gaze on his and nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.
Wolf took a deep breath and looked past her into the falling snow.
“I’m sorry.” Her words were barely audible over the air vents.
Wolf sighed and closed his eyes, stretched his neck muscles, and then looked at her. “About what?” he asked. “About cheating on me? Or not telling me about it? Or not telling me about how we had a miscarriage? Or about something else? Something you don’t have the guts to tell me about yet?”
She held his gaze. “I was going to tell you. I’ve been trying to tell you for months. Ever since Mark and I broke up.”
Running his fingers over the two-day growth of stubble on his chin, Wolf sighed and gazed out the windshield.
The heater blew.
“I know you won’t care to hear this, but for what it’s worth, it was with some random guy. I don’t even remember most of it.” She talked to her hands. “I was so drunk, on pills … it meant nothing to me, and I’ve been beating myself up for it ever since.”
Wolf kept his eyes on the snow piling up on the windshield.
“I’ve been so ashamed. I … was going to tell you so long ago, after I told you about the miscarriage. But then I just let things slip further and further away. And I felt so … I knew I didn’t deserve you for what I’d done to you when you were off fighting, so I chickened out.”
He tapped the steering wheel with his thumb. “I don’t know what …” Wolf shook his head. “Who was it?”
“Nobody you know,” she answered quickly.
Wolf looked over at her.
“Don’t you want to know why?” she asked. “Why I did it?”
“What?” He shook his head and looked in the rearview mirror. He suddenly needed her out of the car. “Look—”
“You went back,” she said. Her voice shook. “You just went back. You knew I was doing bad, and you left again.”
Wolf stared at her. “I was serving my coun—”
“But you had a choice! You didn’t have to do that last tour.”
Wolf shook his head and leaned his head back. “I couldn’t leave.” Wolf closed his eyes. “I couldn’t leave.”
“Rangers lead the way,” she said.
Wolf looked at her again.
She glared back at him defiantly, her wet eyelids narrowed, a stream of mascara running down one cheek.
Wolf looked at the steering wheel. “I’ve gotta go.”
She climbed out and closed the door with a soft thunk, and then walked past the hood and disappeared into the falling cotton.
Wolf flipped on the wipers, backed into the lot and drove down Main.
He took a deep breath and shook his head, inhaling the flowery scent of Sarah, still strong in the cab.
Who? That’s all he could think.
Why? Because he’d gone back. So she gave up.
He slapped the steering wheel, and then he slowed and took a left at a hand-painted sign that said Beer Goggles Bar and Grill with an arrow pointing left down a dirt road.
The narrow bridge over the Chautauqua River creaked and clacked as Wolf drove across it.
The road on the other side was muddy,
cratered with potholes, and Wolf’s SUV rocked side to side as he pulled into the lot and parked. He stepped outside and shut the door, squinting as the huge, wet flakes slapped his face.
The snow was still melting on contact with the ground, and the saturated rocky dirt shifted under his boots as he walked over and around puddles to the entrance.
Inside, bluegrass music pumped out of a speaker right next to his head. It smelled like beer and bar food and his mouth watered.
There were ten or so patrons in the restaurant, and a few quiet types sitting at the bar sipping beers. Former sheriff of Rocky Points, Hal Burton, was wedged into a corner booth against the windows on the left side. He looked up and saw Wolf, nodded, and got back to studying the menu.
Wolf looked at the melting snowflakes beading on the glass next to Burton and thought of Sarah’s wet eyes.
“Sheriff,” Jerry Blackman, the owner of the bar, leaned over the counter and held out his hand.
Wolf snapped out of his thoughts and shook it. “Hey, Jerry.”
“Get you a drink?” he asked.
“I’ll take a Coke,” he said, noticing the tall, half-drunk beer sitting in front of Burton.
“You got it.” Blackman grabbed a glass and twisted away. “I’ll bring it over.”
Wolf walked over and slid into the booth across from Burton. “What are you looking at the menu for?”
“I’m hoping some inspiration will jump out at me,” he said, not raising his gaze. A few seconds later he slapped the menu closed. “Nope. Bacon cheeseburger again.”
Wolf smiled.
Burton looked out the window and grabbed his beer. He tilted it up and poured it through his thick gray mustache, and when he came up for air he had a line of foam on it.
“I see you’re sticking to your diet,” Wolf said.
“Shut up.” Burton belched and set down the glass, holding up a finger in the direction of the bar.
The truth was, Burton did look like he was sticking to his diet. His once over-ample frame was now just ample, and his face looked to be thinner, the skin drooping more underneath his chin rather than ballooning out.
“You look pretty good, actually,” Wolf said, studying him.
“Lost twenty-two pounds so far. I’ve been starving myself for the last day for this meal, so shut up and quit lookin’ at me like that.”
Wolf smiled and looked out the window. The Chautauqua was running fast and high with the arrival of mid-spring warmer temperatures. The banks on either side were still piled with snow, and sheets of dripping ice reached out over the water, the icy liquid passing underneath in rippling waves.
“Snow’s comin’ in again, eh?” Burton asked.
Wolf adjusted his focus and looked at the flakes flying by the window. “Yep. Gonna be big, they say.”
Jerry came over with another beer and a Coke. Burton and Wolf ordered the bacon cheeseburger and fries.
Then they sat in tense silence for a few minutes. The speakers played “Touch of Gray” by the Grateful Dead, and the clank of silverware hitting plates filled the other gaps in sound.
“Jesus, you aren’t even going to ask me about it?” Burton leaned his elbows on the table.
Wolf shrugged and took a sip of his Coke.
Burton narrowed his eyes and leaned forward.
Wolf met his glare. “Okay, how did it go?”
Burton leaned back and shook his head, mumbling something R-rated under his breath. He reached down and pulled a manila folder off the seat next to him and pushed it across the table.
Wolf took it and opened it up.
Inside was a black-and-white copy of the formal reprimand issued by the Sluice County Commissioner’s Office upon the recommendation of the Incident Review Board tasked with his “misconduct in the line of duty”—a form filled out and given to Wolf by the Commissioner of Sluice County himself. It was something that Wolf had seen more than a few times in the past month, and had been thinking about almost continuously since it had been delivered to him.
It was a constant reminder that Wolf’s future as sheriff of Sluice County looked tenuous at best.
Wolf flipped to the back page and realized that it had been stapled in the corner to the page in front of it. This page was a typed letter, signed in ink by Commissioner Heller and a couple of other names he recognized.
Wolf read the letter, word by word, then set it back inside the manila folder and closed it. Then he looked up at Burton.
“Complete dismissal,” Burton said, bouncing his thick eyebrows. “Huh? Who’s got your back?”
Wolf exhaled and looked back out the window. “I don’t like people fighting my fights for me.”
Burton scoffed. “Jesus … I didn’t fight your fight, you dumbass. I had your back,” he said, poking his finger onto the table. “You’ve been fighting for a month, and I jumped in and took a shot where I saw an opening.”
Wolf pulled his eyebrows together and looked at Burton.
Burton nodded. “Big difference.”
“What about Rachette, Patterson, and Wilson?”
“Nothin’s … whoa, here we go,” Burton leaned back and Jerry Blackman clanked steaming plates of food on the table and shoved them into place.
“Anything else?” Jerry asked.
“No thanks,” Wolf said.
“Yeah, I’ll take another,” Burton said, pointing at his three-quarter-full beer. “I’ll be ready by the time you get back.”
Jerry disappeared and Wolf stared at Burton.
“Don’t worry—Cheryl’s pickin’ me up in an hour. Gave me the day pass to have some drinks.”
“Rachette, Patterson, Wils—”
“Oh, yeah. I talked to Heller.” Burton shook his head. “He’s got no beef with what you did. And he’s sure as hell not going to throw those deputies under the bus. Everyone knows it was just Ash’s last-ditch effort to get even with you, and they ain’t gonna give that guy the satisfaction. Not that conniving, murdering son of a bitch. Rachette, Wilson, and Patterson have received the same letters confirming full dismissal of any wrongdoing.”
They ate their food in silence, listening to bluegrass on the stereo and watching the sky thicken even more with dropping flakes until the river was barely visible through the curtain of snow.
Relief enveloped him, and he actually felt his pulse slow with each minute.
He had been agonizing up until now, living in a personal hell ever since that night they’d tricked Charlie Ash into confessing. Agonizing because, for following Wolf’s plan, three deputies had been put at risk of being fired. And because it had immediately become clear that the fates of Wolf’s and his deputies’ careers were going to be connected by the powers that be.
What bothered Wolf the most was that he had foreseen the problems that would certainly arise that night. He’d had a clear glimpse of the future, but he’d ignored it. He’d been too caught up with justice and not enough with what the law dictated he could or couldn’t do. When Kevin had confessed to killing Mary Richardson, all while holding his gun left-handed and not right-handed like the Lake Tahoe killer Chief Gunnison had described, Wolf had simultaneously seen the truth and the window of opportunity to bring justice to Charlie Ash open wide.
Charlie Ash, though in county custody and confined to a hospital, had delivered a crushing blow when everything had been over and done with. The official complaint alleged that Wolf and his subordinates had deprived Ash of his constitutional rights when they’d used unlawful means and deadly force to elicit a statement from him. And Ash, under extreme duress and fearing for his life, had “intentionally offered a false statement in an attempt to save himself from bodily harm and imminent death at the hands of an individual known to Wolf and his deputies to be violent and mentally impaired.”
Ash, calling on any and every political connection he had, had demanded his own release, and that Wolf and his deputies be dismissed at once.
And now this letter in the manila folder, and the same lette
rs for Rachette, Patterson, and Wilson was the paddle to get them off Shit Creek once and for all.
When Wolf and Burton had finished their food, there wasn’t a granule of salt left on either plate, and only then did Burton open his mouth to speak again.
“I was talkin’ to Heller. You know, you oughta be proud of what you did.” He picked his teeth with a toothpick. “That … Ash-hole woulda still been chairman of our county council. Runnin’ around, takin’ bribes.” He shook his head and took another long pull of beer. “And all the while a cold-blooded murderer? Nobody would have ever been the wiser if it weren’t for you.”
Wolf wadded up his napkin and set it on his plate. “Lot of dead people in Rocky Points. A lot of risk I put on my deputies.”
Burton stared at Wolf. “You can’t take responsibility for what Kevin did, killing all those people. You can blame Ash for that. What you did was … noble. You figured out Kevin Ash was the one killing and was going to kill his father next, and you saved Charlie’s life rather than standing by and letting him die.
“Sometimes, things just work out where you’re always puttin’ someone at risk. Especially when you’re in the leader’s chair. If you wouldn’t have clipped a wire on Kevin, set up those video feeds and done that?” He shook his head. “A murderer would be free. Right here. Right in our government. Right in our town.”
Burton drained his beer and got started on the next one. Then he stared at Wolf and put a palm on the table. “You can’t always keep your partners from risk.”
Wolf looked up at him. Burton was staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and Wolf understood. Burton was referring to Wolf’s father. Burton and Wolf’s father had been partners back in the day, and if Burton had been with Wolf’s father that day so many years ago, his dad might still be alive.
Wolf had beaten himself up for years for not being able to solve the case of his father’s death, but Burton had beaten himself up about it even more—all for taking a sick day on that fateful day Daniel Wolf had been killed.
“What matters is you.” Burton poked his index finger at him. His lip started quivering, along with his voice. “You’re the type of guy that makes sure you’re there for your partner—your partners—in the end. That’s what I’ve always seen in you, and by God that’s why you’re sheriff of this county, and not some other …”