Dark Signal Read online

  Ethel didn’t look up from her desk piled two feet thick with files and papers. Her fingers flew on an old-school adding machine.

  I stopped in front of her desk and tried for a gentle tone so she wouldn’t immediately curl up and rattle her tail. “I wonder if I can ask a couple of questions.”

  She slammed her hand on her adding machine and it whirred a few times. Maybe she didn’t have rattles or fangs, but she wasn’t shy on the venom. “What are you doing in here? Isn’t Brittany at her desk?”

  I held my hand up to ward off some of her fight. Might as well jump straight into it, in case I needed to run for my life. “I wanted to talk to you privately. Who do you think had cause to hurt Chad?”

  She threw herself back in her chair, and I wondered that it didn’t break. Her thin mouth formed a smirk. “I knew Betty wouldn’t tell you. Always protecting her own.”

  I’d have to wade through Ethel’s stream to get to the good stuff. “She didn’t seem to know anything about Chad.”

  Ethel’s chuckle had the sound of rustling dead leaves. “I don’t suppose.”

  For the love of cheese, this woman made me work for this. “Can you tell me what you know?”

  Ethel inhaled until I thought she might explode and looked away as if I tromped on her nerves. “You know Olin Riek is Betty’s cousin?”

  I traced the family tree in my mind and nodded, wondering where this was heading.

  Ethel glared at me as if I were a dunce. She prompted me. “Olin Riek? Sells State Farm and a few other companies?”

  “Sure.” And what? Man, this sheriffing gig called for buckets of patience.

  She waited for me to make a connection, and when I didn’t she shook her head in disappointment at my stupidity. “When Chad Mills got to be president of the union at the railroad, he started steering his guys to get their insurance from his buddy in Broken Butte. When he got the union account switched over, well that was Olin’s bread and butter. Didn’t make him too happy.”

  The used lunch smell in the closed space clogged my throat. “How do you know?”

  She had a self-satisfied smirk. “Garth plays cribbage with Olin on Sundays. Garth says Olin was spittin’ nails about Chad. Said he could go hang himself.”

  That hardly makes him a murderer, but I didn’t say that. Olin wasn’t someone I’d been around much. Just an older guy in the background of my life. He wasn’t a big man, probably around sixty-five years old, not prone to calling attention to himself. “Okay, Ethel. Thanks for the heads up.”

  She reached for her scorched coffee and sipped noisily. “Ted relied on me to help him out quite a bit. I’ve been in this office a long time. I know about the people around here.”

  And if she didn’t, she’d be sure to make it up.

  I gave her more gushing thanks, waved at Brittany, and slipped out of the office and across the hall to the commissioner’s room to see whether Bill Hardy had made it back.

  Clete hadn’t moved so I ventured in. I didn’t take my coat off and perched on a chair. “Have you talked to Trey Ridnoir?” Clete had about as much starch to him as a wet rope.

  “Nope. Had my phone off.”

  Sometimes you’ve got to let another person unload their sad on your shoulders. “It’s been a rough day, I’ll bet.”

  Clete lifted a Styrofoam cup half full of coffee. He set it back down. “Hell of a way to go.”

  I had to agree with that. “I didn’t know Chad well. What was he like?”

  Clete raised his eyes to mine. “I thought a lot of Chad. So young.”

  Something tickled my brain. “Don’t you have a son about the same age?”

  Clete stared at the table. “My wife’s boy.”

  “Were they friends in high school?”

  Clete slid his cup a few inches one way, then back. “They probably played against each other in sports. Ron was only here his junior and senior years.”

  “Where’s Ron now?” I asked out of politeness, not because I cared that much.

  Clete was like a grizzle-faced Eeyore. “He allowed as how he didn’t want any more snow and took off for California after a couple of years at the university in Lincoln.”

  “Oh.” What should I add to that?

  Clete shook his head. “College isn’t for everyone, I guess.” I’d like to escape to my office, but sitting with Clete seemed like the thing to do.

  He sat back and veered off the topic. “Have you heard anything from Carly?”

  Speaking of college. She should be halfway through her freshman year. Everyone in town knew she’d run away last spring just weeks before graduation. I shook my head. “Not much.”

  “Kids can be a real disappointment some times. I always believed in Scripture, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.’ But I wonder how old a kid has to be to not depart.”

  I doubted he referred to Carly, but I didn’t need to go prying into his private life.

  Guess he didn’t mind a guest. “You try to help them out. Give ’em advice and do everything you can, and then,” he sighed, “it all goes to hell.”

  Never the life of the party, Clete’s normal gloom darkened a few shades. “You know, when Chad started at the railroad, I took him under my wing. I helped get him the union rep position. We’d talked about him going for my job when I retired.”

  “I’m sorry.” Union rep. A person couldn’t take on that responsibility and not make someone unhappy from time to time. Like Olin Riek.

  He stared at his coffee cup. “How could it all go so wrong?”

  The shrill of my phone sliced through the silence. I jerked to my feet. “Sorry.” I nodded to Clete as I rushed from the room, leaving him to his sadness. I answered in the hallway. “Hi, Michael. What’s up?” Michael, my younger brother by five years and twin of Douglas and married to Lauren.

  “Meet me at the Long Branch.”

  Michael, the brother who charged through life at breakneck speed, never had time for a casual get-together. I didn’t need Spidey senses to know something was up. I steeled myself in case he plopped a cute and cuddly puppy into my arms. “What are you doing in town?”

  “I had to pick up parts in Broken Butte, and I’m heading home.”

  “And you want to meet me at the Long Branch?” To say it was out of character would be like calling January in the Sandhills cold.

  “I just pulled up, but can’t stay long. Kaylen has a basketball game at six.”

  Now it made sense. Michael had an hour before he needed to be at the school to watch his eight-year-old daughter run up and down the court. I can’t go as far as to call what they did an actual game of basketball. But even LeBron had to start somewhere.

  Going to the Long Branch opened me up to all kinds of questions about the Chad situation from happy-hour drinkers, and I didn’t crave that kind of attention. “Meet me at the house instead.”

  The ding of his pickup said he was climbing out. “I’m already here. Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Bill Hardy’s voice rang out from the commissioner’s meeting room. He’d apparently returned from the bank and was jawing with Clete.

  If Michael had been in town getting parts, he probably didn’t have a puppy in tow. “I’ve got to inspect a pickup and then I’ll be there.” If for no other reason than curiosity about what he was up to.

  I walked into the commissioner’s room and greeted Bill.

  He rose and took a few tentative steps as if warming up his legs. He’d been a pro rodeo bull rider, and the spills, breaks, and damage had settled in his bones. Even when his muscles agreed to work, he limped toward the door. “Sorry to drag you into the courthouse. I heard about the train wreck last night. They say Chad Mills was killed. I ’spect you’ve been dealing with all that mess. That BNSF will be trying to find their way out to making it Chad’s fault so as not to have to pay the widow.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Bill glanced back at Clete. “No of
fense there, ranger. But you gotta admit, the damned railroad ain’t no Santa Claus.”

  Clete waved Bill away. “None taken. I just work for them.”

  “I’ll get my inspection form.” I hoofed it out of the meeting room and down the short corridor to the door marked “Sheriff.”

  That’s me. Not weird at all. I jangled the stupid key ring with the cheesy sheriff badge. It stabbed me with a memory of my honeymoon with Ted at the lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We’d seen matching silver rings designed by a famous Navajo artist in the gift shop. We couldn’t afford anything that fine, so we’d given ourselves five dollars each to pick out something for the other in the gift shop. I’d found the key ring with a sheriff’s star for him. He’d picked out a tiny wooden pop-gun for me. I’m sure it wasn’t oversight that he hadn’t changed it. I inserted the key and pushed the door open.

  As the sheriff’s wife, I’d been in this office countless times. There were the occasional lunches or dinners we’d shared early on when I had to make an unexpected trip to town for penicillin for a sick critter or for a load of salt to throw in the pasture or a couple of times just because. I tried to forget those thrilling moments because that always led to me remembering that he and Roxy conducted some of their business here, too.

  The office was cramped and dark, with no window to the outside. I wondered if it had been a supply closet and later converted to the sheriff’s office. It didn’t matter. The sheriff didn’t spend a lot of time there. Well, Ted hadn’t anyway. I could see that I might hang out here more than he did, just to escape my parents’ house.

  Toward the back of the office, behind a thick steel door, Grand County possessed one holding cell. I pulled open the door to see it. I’d expected a cot and sink behind the barred jail door. What I found was a storage area and the door not locked. It looked like a hundred years of spare parts and county records. I took that as a good sign there wasn’t much cause to lock up prisoners in this quiet, law-abiding enclave.

  If Ted had straightened or cleaned there was no evidence. Papers heaped the metal desk with files tossed haphazardly across the surface. Two ceramic mugs half full of coffee, doctored with Ted’s concoction of sugar and powdered Coffee-Mate, grew fluffy white mold. A couple of drawers in the four-drawer metal filing cabinet were open with files lying on top. It’s possible Ted skedaddled from the office in a rush, like the survivors of Kilauea, but the more likely explanation was sheer passive aggressiveness. He’d purposely left everything in disarray. I wouldn’t be surprised if he and Roxy had spent last Saturday night here, downing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and rearranging the files.

  I’m not bitter, though. Maybe he’s not either.

  I peeked under the papers strewn on the desk. No inspection forms. The slim drawer in the center of the desk held only pencils, pens, free-range paperclips, a few loose coins, and lots of dirt. The top right-hand drawer had a Grand County phone book from 2004, a directory of Nebraska county officials from the same era, and other useless and outdated reference booklets and folders.

  The left-hand top drawer was more of the same worthless junk.

  I plopped in the desk chair, the low burn of frustration heating my cheeks. The chair, one of those cheap secretary things with three legs on rollers, wobbled, then tilted. I grabbed for the edge of the desk, but the leg of the chair snapped, and I tumbled backward, my legs sailing up. I landed on my back, the chair on top of me. I pushed myself to my knees and grabbed the chair to study the break. I’d never be able to prove it, but I’d have wagered Ted sabotaged me.

  “Are you okay?” Bill Hardy’s scuffed cowboy boots appeared in the office doorway.

  I scrambled to my feet. “Sure. I haven’t found the form yet.” I flipped through a desktop file folder.

  Bill stepped into the small office and snicked the door closed. His voice lowered conspiratorially. “I only brought the rig in today because I wanted a word with you.”

  His tone caught my attention, and I quit rifling papers on the messy desk.

  He lowered himself into the only intact chair in the office, something pilfered from the commissioner’s room. “You know Marv and Trish Duncan? They’ve been out at our Double T place since before Pop’s heart attack.”

  I knew the place. So far back in the hills a person could settle in at Christmas and not be seen until Easter. There were many places like that in the Sandhills. In fact, Indians and outlaws used to retreat out here to hide.

  I nodded. “Marv and Dad used to fish on Duck Lake out there.” It took about an hour to get to the Double T from Hodgekiss, but the scenery was worth the bother of a four-wheel-drive road meandering between rugged sandhills and shallow lakes. Dad and Marv Duncan had gone all the way through school together. When Dad went into the Army, Marv had married and moved to the Double T.

  “I’d forgot about that.” He eased his weight to his hip, as if sitting in one position for more than a few seconds pained him. “So you know what a nice place it is. I keep about four hundred head out there year round and some more heifers in the summer.”

  There’s only one reason he’d be telling me this. I folded my arms and leaned back against the file cabinet and waited for it.

  He shifted again. “Marv is fixing to retire. Trish wants to move to Omaha to be close to the grandkids, you know how that is.”

  Here it comes.

  “I know you just got sworn in, but I’d sure like to have you take over for Marv.” He spoke faster than I’d ever heard him. I supposed he wanted to sell me on the idea. “It’s a long ways out for a single person, I know. But Marv and Trish raised two daughters out there and got along fine.”

  A ranch job. Exactly what I wanted. The life I was used to and loved.

  Bill stood. “You don’t have to answer me right now.”

  This was that safety net I’d been hankering for. A house of my own, a solid ranching job, solitude, peace. “When do you want an answer?”

  Bill rubbed his left giddy-up. “A week or so. Marv’s ready to go and I ’spect you got to give a couple weeks’ notice so’s they can appoint Ted.”

  Funny there seemed to be no doubt about Ted stepping back. He’d be thrilled.

  Bill reached over my shoulder to the top of the filing cabinet and pulled off a stack of papers. The inspection forms.

  10

  It didn’t take long to inspect Bill’s truck and send him back to Betty to jump through the hoops of presenting the spike-haired sharp-shooter with every number, signature, proof of cradle-to-grave protection, and woe-to-who-might-have-forgotten-the-exact-slip-of-paper. January was about to throw the switch on the afternoon and bring on early dusk.

  I stood in my office doorway. If I took Bill’s offer, why bother to put order to this chaos? I tossed the broken leg on the seat of the wrecked chair and wheeled it down the hall. It clattered down the stairway to the basement and back door.

  The cold shocked me, though I should have expected it. I dragged the busted chair down three concrete steps and past the Charger. Up with the Dumpster lid and goodbye to Ted’s chair. There had to be enough money in the budget for a new one.

  Clete was gone by the time I gathered my coat and keys. Betty’s radio clicked off, and she and Ethel both stepped out of their offices, like dueling piano players, inserting their keys into their office doors, one after the other. They turned in sync and, keeping a few feet of distance between them, not making eye contact, walked toward the front hall.

  “Calling it a day?” It was a stupid thing to say, but these tough old birds, flip sides to a bitter coin, scared me. As they did almost everyone else in the county.

  Spiked-haired Betty perked up. “Looks like another cold one out there.”

  My voice was too cheerful by half. “They say there’s a warm front heading in.” We were in a deep conversation now.

  Ethel had changed from her one-inch vinyl Sunday school teacher pumps to vinyl black ankle snow boots with rubber soles. I wondered how she zipped them a
round her thick ankles. She didn’t offer me any more than a sullen nod. At five o’clock, the red lipstick she favored had crawled up the fine wrinkles around her lips and smeared, giving her a clown mouth.

  The courthouse perched halfway up the hill that Hodgekiss called home. It was around the corner from Main Street, just down half a block from the ornamental windmill that stood sentinel over the business district. The highway ran perpendicular to Main. The Long Branch and First State Bank stared at each other on opposite sides at the bottom of Main. Marching uphill from those anchors were Burnett’s Tack Shop, the post office, and Hodgekiss Farm and Ranch Supply on the Long Branch side. Dutch’s Grocery Store, the Methodists’ Jumble Shop, and a rickety fourplex known as the Apartments on the bank side.

  Three blocks on either side of Main made up the north side of town. Crossing the tracks where two highways intersected, one long street bordered the tracks the length of town. This street is where I grew up and where I’d retreated to nine months ago. When Hodgekiss got 911 service a few years ago, the officials gave all the streets name. No one in town used them. When referring to my street, people said south-along-the-tracks.

  Bill Hardy’s offer ground in my mind as I glanced at the cruiser and decided to leave her parked and walk. It. Leave it parked. Sure, it’d be a real chickenshit thing to abandon the office after being duly elected. But a ranch job. Those didn’t come along every day, at least not one this sweet.

  I hoofed it to the Long Branch, still sporting my lovely brown uniform and Smith and Wesson. With little sleep last night, I was more than ready for a warm shower and an early night.

  The smell of work-soiled bodies, beer, onions, and grease so old it could have a high school diploma filled me as I found Michael perched on his usual barstool amid a noisy early crowd. Where his twin, Douglas, loaded extra pounds and had round cheeks like the Pillsbury Doughboy, Michael’s muscles had hardened with daily workouts. Even his hair had darkened from the blond of his youth as if growing more serious as Michael pushed himself harder.