Page 145 of South of Nowhere

Hell.

A slug from the phony soldiers had smacked into the windshield, spidering it, and ended up in the passenger seat headrest.

Expensive to fix. And he’d have to have it done soon. If police were inclined to write you up for a mere crack in a windshield, which they were, they woulddefinitelydo so if the damage was caused by a .45 projectile.

Dorion and Shaw left Balboa to his engineering work and walked down the hill to her SUV.

The case was not, of course, over. Bear and the phony engineers were merely hired guns. The latter had been arrested, but their boss was still at large, ID unknown.

And it was time to find out who that was.

The two skirted the command post, which had been hermetically sealed off by Officer Debi Starr, who had strung more yellow tape in the past six hours than had been used in the hamlet of Hinowah in the past six years, he guessed. Starr had also used the metal detector that had found the slug traversing Eduardo Gutiérrez’s calf to discover the burial sites for scores of bullets fired by the mercenaries. These were marked with plasticized playing cards. Clever idea if your small-town police station didn’t have enough yellow numbered evidence sandwich boards in its inventory to go around.

It had taken two bombs and a lethal shootout, but the Olechu County Sheriff’s Office had finally decided Hinowah was not crying wolf. They had a crime scene team running the workshop at the Redding mine and they would soon tackle the levee, the command post and the black Expeditions. The FBI’s experts also were en route.

Colter and Dorion walked past the prisoner transport van that had very nearly been Annie Coyne’s crematorium. It too was festooned in yellow.

They joined Han Tolifson at the bottom of the road where it curved left and descended into the town proper. He looked their way with raised eyebrows.

“So it’s solid?” he asked.

Deadpan, Dorion replied, “You could call it a ‘boulder’ dam.”

Though stern in her disaster response work, Dorion probably had the best humor of all the siblings.

It took a beat, then Tolifson smiled.

“We’ll convene at the office.” He gave directions.

Colter got into Dorion’s SUV and they drove into the village center.

As they approached the modest one-story Public Safety building, which had government architecture written all over it, Colterspotted on the sidewalk beside the front door his mother, Annie Coyne, Mrs. Petaluma and a gray-haired woman in a purple dress—a friend of the Indigenous woman, Colter guessed.

Their mother noticed the siblings and waved. The foursome on the sidewalk hugged one another, then split up, Mrs. Petaluma and her friend walking away toward the town square, and his mother and Coyne heading toward the front steps of the PSO, where they waited.

Dorion parked and she and Colter, along with the two women, walked inside.

The office was part of a government complex, not a stand-alone building, so you couldn’t judge the size from the outside, but Colter was surprised to see how small the law enforcement operation was.

It was clear somebody loved houseplants.

Immediately inside the front door was a reception desk, presided over by Marissa Fell, a large brunette in her mid-thirties. Her heart-shaped face, light olive in complexion, and mass of curly hair gave her an alluring air. Had she been on duty throughout the day, even during the worst of the flood scare? Colter guessed she had been. Her eyes and expression told him she was that sort of person.

Tolifson poked his head through a door in the back, gesturing them to follow. As they walked down a short corridor, he said to Colter, in a low voice, “I tell her it’s unprofessional, the place looking like the Garden Center at Home Depot, but her position is that we’re in charge and we shouldn’t pay any mind to the opinions of others. She’s not wrong there.”

Colter noted a particular tone in the mayor’s voice. He had seen too the absence of wedding rings on his and Fell’s hands. The percentage they had more than a working relationship?

Sixty plus percent. Part of the proof: she’d won the houseplant dispute.

They now entered an office pen of six desks, only three of which showed signs of habitation. One belonged to the town’s third patrolperson, currently on vacation,L. Brown.The second was TC McGuire’s, who was at the moment sitting in front of a large computer screen, keyboarding in a clattery blur, his big head looking straight forward instead of where his fingertips were striking. On the screen was the reality-show tape of John Millwood pointing the Glock 42 in Colter’s direction at the Good Luck and Fortune Mine.

The other occupied desk was Debi Starr’s, the name plate reported. He noted a number of framed pictures, the subjects primarily a handsome blond man about her age and twin boys, presumably around ten, with blond crewcuts.

Windows into another world.

On the wall was a bulletin board featuring mug shots and security cam images of fugitives and suspects. As most wanted notices were digital, these printouts seemed from a different era, almost decorations, though the dates were recent. He couldn’t help but note a reward for one suspect in particular, a mean-looking man with a broad, flat face and narrow eyes, resembling a predatory whale. The reward was for $25K, and as the crime was domestic kidnapping, Colter was tempted to pursue it. Maybe he would come back here after all was said and done.

He wouldn’t mind an excuse to stay in the area a bit longer; Colter Shaw was very aware that Annie Coyne was three feet behind him.

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