No Getting Over A Cowboy. Delores Fossen

signed it and passed it back to Clay. “You don’t happen to have any old files on Nicky’s folks, do you?”

      Clay pulled back his shoulders. “Not that I know of. Why? You think they could be connected to our John Doe?”

      “No. It’s not that.” But he couldn’t say what it was exactly. “It’s just I remember some rumors about her father getting drunk, maybe even arrested. And her brother, Kyle, ran off when he was just a teenager. I figure that couldn’t be a sign of a happy household for him to have done that.”

      Clay stayed quiet a moment, but Garrett could almost hear the guy thinking. And he was thinking like a cop. “Are you looking for something to help you evict Nicky?”

      “No.” Garrett huffed. The truth wasn’t going to make this sound any better, but he went with it anyway. “I just saw Nicky out at the old house her folks once owned, and it seemed as if she didn’t have good memories of the place.”

      Nope, the truth didn’t sound better, and that’s probably why Clay gave him a cop’s stare. One where he was no doubt trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

      “She was crying,” Garrett added.

      That got rid of the cop stare and, cursing under his breath, Clay sank down into the chair behind his desk. “Am I going to need to be concerned that Nicky’s come back to dole out some kind of payback to her parents?”

      Garrett had to answer no for a third time. “Her father’s dead, and her mother doesn’t live here so no payback. Could you please just check and see if her dad, Walt Henderson, had a police record? Since the guy’s dead, you wouldn’t be violating his privacy.”

      Of course, Clay would probably be violating other things like rules about sharing official information with someone whose argument was that Walt’s daughter had been crying. Still, Clay started typing on his computer keyboard.

      “Not all the files have been digitized,” Clay explained. “So, even if he had a record, it might not be...” He stopped, started reading something he’d pulled up on the screen. “It’s here. Drunk and disorderly.” He made some more key strokes. “DUI. Two of them,” he added. “He also had his driver’s license revoked.”

      This certainly wasn’t painting a pretty picture, but Nicky hadn’t mentioned anything to him about it. They’d only dated for a month, though, and while that had been enough time for sex, it apparently hadn’t been enough for her to share with him the junk going on in her life.

      “There’s more,” Clay continued a moment later. “He was brought in and questioned about a domestic violence situation after the cops were called to his house. That happened about seventeen years ago.”

      Even though Garrett had just taken a sip of hot coffee, he felt the chill go over him.

      “Nothing came of it,” Clay added, “because the person refused to file charges against him.”

      “Nicky’s mother,” Garrett mumbled.

      “No.” Clay looked up from the screen and met his gaze. “The person he assaulted was Nicky.”