came to appearances, he was one of the most by-the-book officers she’d ever met. His white-blond hair had a short military cut. His shirts were always crisp. The dark stripe down his beige trousers was never rumpled. According to rumor, he washed his vehicle at least once a day. His vocabulary, however, was gross. It always surprised her that someone with such a high regard for cleanliness could talk so much filth.
Natchez swore constantly. Whenever she was around him, Sam used a mental (bleep) so she wouldn’t be distracted and wouldn’t show him that his bad language bothered her. He enjoyed irritating her and never failed to come up with borderline sexist comments when they met. Given those ugly characteristics, she halfway expected Trevor Natchez to be up to his elbows in dirty dealings.
After he parked his vehicle behind hers, he climbed out from behind the steering wheel, straightened the flat brim on his uniform hat and strode toward her.
“If it ain’t Little Miss Sheriff,” he said with a sneer. “What happened to my man Morrissey?”
She glanced around him to look at his car. The inescapable dusting of ash from the fire must be driving him nuts. “You left your flashers on,” she said. “Were you hoping to keep the crowd at bay?”
“When I want advice from you, honey, I’ll ask for it.”
She directed him to the tarp, squatted beside it and held back the corner to reveal Morrissey’s face. The folds of his chin were slack. His skin had taken on a grayish hue. Sam couldn’t stand the dead man’s stare and had pulled his eyelids down.
For a brief moment, Natchez seemed shaken. He clenched his jaw, and his thick blond eyebrows lowered so much that she couldn’t see the blue of his eyes. He flipped the tarp to cover the dead man’s face and tilted his head upward. While he scanned the skies as if looking for heaven behind the clouds and smoke, a litany of profanity spewed from his mouth.
“Where did you find him?”
“In this car.” She pointed. “Shot in the chest, he was behind the wheel, but there wasn’t any spatter. He must have been killed somewhere else.”
“Did you come up with those conclusions all by your cute little self?” He glanced at Ty. “Or did this FBI stud help you?”
Ty ended his phone call and greeted Natchez with a pat on the back and a handshake. The two of them were as friendly as could be. They stood over the body of their fallen comrade and said a few things about what a truly great guy Morrissey had been, quick with a joke, sharp as a tack, a credit to the uniform, blah, blah, blah...
Earlier, Ty hadn’t been so complimentary. He’d as much as told her that Morrissey was under suspicion for working with the cartel. She supposed Ty’s conversation with Natchez fell into the “never speak ill of the dead” category.
Natchez scanned the area. His gaze paused on each of the dead or injured men. “What happened here? Did our sexy lady sheriff pitch a fit?”
Her hand rested on the butt of her gun. It would have given her great pleasure to shoot this man between the legs and ruin his perfectly neat uniform. “We were ambushed.”
“No way.”
“My dispatcher has already put in a call to the ambulances,” she said. “They should be here any minute.”
“Who told you to move the body?”
“Nobody had to tell me anything,” she snapped. “These murders were committed in my county, and I have jurisdiction over the investigation.”
“The heck you do. Morrissey was my man. I should be the one who looks into his murder.”
She got in his face. This was one of those times when Sam was glad for her giraffe-like height. Natchez was an inch or two shorter than she was, and she made it seem like even more by stretching her neck and straightening her shoulders. “Here’s the deal, Lieutenant Natchez. The investigation is mine. But I’m aware that I don’t have the facilities to do thorough forensics.”
“Damn right you don’t.”
“Neither do you. The state patrol doesn’t have a coroner. You can’t do an autopsy.”
He opened his mouth, no doubt to swear, but nothing came out. Maybe Swain County was too small and too limited in resources to handle this case, but Natchez wasn’t equipped for doing a murder investigation, either.
“I suggest,” she said, “that we request assistance from the FBI on these cases.”
“Good plan,” Ty said as he held up his cell phone. “I just talked to my supervisor, and he mentioned the same thing.”
Natchez gave a nod. “I’m okay with that. If you need my help, I’ll do whatever I can.”
Ty asked him, “Is losing a man going to cause you any problem in scheduling?”
“To tell the truth, Morrissey was cutting back on his hours. He used more sick time than a teenage girl getting out of gym class with the cramps.”
She turned away. Where, oh where, were the ambulances? There was no hope of providing sensitivity or enlightenment to Natchez. She tried to ignore him, but he was like a rash that wouldn’t stop itching.
Natchez swaggered around the scene with Ty. They paused beside the dead man on the road, whom Natchez recognized immediately from a BOLO. Well, of course he would. The guy probably had every notice on file going back ten years, probably practiced with them every night like flash cards.
“I heard a rumor, Ty. Maybe you can verify. I heard that Wade Calloway is still alive.”
Too much! Hearing her husband’s name on the tongue of this bigmouthed jerk sent Sam right over the edge. In a couple of quick strides, she was beside Natchez. With her right hand, she yanked his wrist behind his back, putting a nasty crease in his shirtsleeve. Her left hand held her stun gun at his throat.
“Never speak of my husband again, unless you intend to humbly and without profanity praise him for being an American hero. And show some respect for me, the grieving widow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Finally, she’d got through to him. All it took was an outrageous act of violence on her part.
When Sam drove past the supermarket on the east edge of Woodridge, she noticed more activity than usual in the parking lot, and she wondered why. Typically, if a blizzard was predicted, everybody rushed to stock up on food and necessities. The fire might be having the same effect, even though gathering more supplies wasn’t a good idea if your house might be burned to rubble.
On the wide main street that went through the center of town, every slanted parking space was taken outside the diner, the coffee shop and the two taverns. This was something she understood. People liked to huddle together and reassure each other when trouble was near.
She wished that she could do the same.
But she couldn’t talk about Wade’s return from the dead or the possible danger from a criminal cartel. Not even Ty knew the whole story; she hadn’t shown him Wade’s gun that had been planted in Morrissey’s car. Besides, Ty wasn’t here. He’d gone with the ambulances. One would deliver the wounded to the hospital in Glenwood Springs. The other would transport Morrissey and Reyes to wherever their bodies would be autopsied.
Sam was alone with her problems.
Somehow, she had to cope.
After a stop at the one traffic light in town, her SUV cruised past the Swain County Courthouse, where the 911 dispatchers were babysitting her daughter. Sam’s bloodshot eyes bored a hole in the two-story building, wishing she could see through the chiseled red stones to where her daughter was drawing or skipping rope in the wide corridors or sitting at a desk and rearranging the clutter.
Before