Page 38 of Cowboy Dreams

I asked the sheriff, “Can you sobriety test him?”

“You think he’s drunk?”

“Maybe?” Not really, but it had occurred to me that was his easy out.

“I’m not drunk, sir!” Morse insisted, one step behind my idea.

“You sobriety tested me when you stopped me doing ninety-one, and threatened to write me up as going over a hundred.”

“You were speeding dangerously.”

The sheriff looked back and forth between us, then said, “Might as well cover the bases. Morse, stand on one foot.”

“Seriously?”

“As a heart attack. Do it.” The sobriety test took a few minutes, with Morse passing although he had to try the one-foot part twice, blaming Joe’s crotch-punch for his wobbly start.

At the end, Morse sneered at me. “See? Not drunk.”

I told the sheriff, “You can attest to that. His lawyer’s going to try to find ways to get him off, but he’s not drunk. He knows exactly what he did.”

“I see.” The sheriff nodded to me.

The firefighters came by to say they were done. “Not much damage to the interior although some of those boards are charred through and will need to be replaced. You need us for anything else, Sheriff? If not, I’ll send our arson gal by in the morning.”

They rolled off down the drive, turned onto the road, and were gone. And we waited. A couple of times, Morse began to say something, but the sheriff shushed him. Just when I was going to beg to take this inside before my feet turned to ice, the sheriff’s phone rang.

“Yeah, Garcia, what’s the word? Uh-huh… Right, and what did he say…? Okay… No, not yet. Thanks. Get back to work.” The sheriff tucked his phone away and drew his gun. “Frank Morse, you’re under arrest on suspicion of arson. You have the right—”

“Don’t do this,” Morse pleaded. “Come on, you’re not picking them over me.”

“Shut your face. You have the right to remain silent…” The sheriff went through the whole warning.

“What about him?” Morse pointed at Joe. “He hit me. Aren’t you going to arrest him?”

“Near as I can tell, he was protecting this property. So no, I’m not.” Breyer had Lancaster handcuff Morse, put him in the back of her cruiser, and drive him off, heading for the county jail.

The sheriff blew a slow breath as her car vanished into the darkness. “Well, fuck.” He turned to me. “I’ll send someone by to collect those surveillance videos soon. You dohavevideos, right? That wasn’t just some made-for-TV ploy to get him to confess?”

“I have them,” I told him. “WiFi to my computer app, and stored internally in the cameras as a backup. The company I hired does good work.”

He turned to Joe. “Did you get any look at the pickup driver?”

“Hal Morse,” Joe told him.

“Right.” Breyer squared his shoulders and met my eyes. “On behalf of Vickston County and the Sheriff’s Department, I want to apologize…”

I was tired and my back was killing me, and I wasn’t ready to hear apologies. “Sheriff, I’m heading to bed. With Joe,” I added, in case that wasn’t clear enough. “The arson gal and whoever you send can come by in the morning. I don’t need apologies from you. I need you to promise that this won’t get swept under the cops-will-be-cops rug.”

“Not a chance.”

“I was telling the truth about that traffic stop too, by the way. He threatened me with falsifying my crime and charging it as a felony. He did it to me because as far as I can tell he hates gay men.”

“He hates me,” Joe put in.

“Yeah. And Joe specifically. I could pay the fine, but if you start looking into him, you might talk to all the pretty women and queer men he’s stopped in the last year or two. Ask them if what went on the ticket was really what happened.”

Breyer inclined his head. “I’ll do that. And I’ll spread the word that my department will come down like a ton of bricks on anyone giving you or the ranch a hard time. The money you’re bringing into the community will make harassing you an unpopular move, anyway.”

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