The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

Chapter 4

The man standing with his back to the door pretending to study the large topographical map of Hart County and its environs hanging on the wall behind the desk jerked around when Roan walked in, then pushed past the corner of the desk and came toward him.

He was a tall man, similar to Roan in both height and build, but now he seemed to have folded in on himself, so that his buff-colored Western-style suede jacket hung from his broad shoulders like a coat on a rack. His normally strong-sculpted features appeared shrunken, too, and his skin, yellowed and darkened to the color of old parchment, draped across them in ill-fitting folds and hollows. Only his eyes seemed as sharp and intense as Roan remembered, their ice-blue glare glittering out of shadowed sockets like the eyes of a starving wolf homed in on his prey.

He’s aged twenty years, Roan thought. But he wasn’t all that surprised. He’d seen the look before, on his father-in-law, Boyd Stuart’s face, right after Erin had died-the look of a man fixing to bury his child.

“Good to see you, Senator,” he said as he clasped the big, rawboned hand. “Just wish it didn’t have to be for this. Can’t tell you how sorry I am.” He meant it sincerely. He hadn’t had much use for Jason Holbrook, but he wouldn’t wish the pain of losing a child on any man.

Holbrook gripped Roan’s hand tightly in both of his-a politician’s handshake-then released it. “Hell of a thing,” he muttered as he swiped a hand over hair that was still luxuriant but more silver now than gold. “Just a hell of a thing.” He coughed loudly and abruptly, then narrowed his wolf’s stare at Roan. “Tell me you’re gonna find whoever did this. Tell me you’re gonna get the son of a bitch that shot my boy.”

Roan met the older man’s gaze with an almost identical one and quietly replied, “I mean to. I believe I will.” He laid his Stetson on the top of his desk as he rounded its corner and pulled out his chair.

Senator Holbrook was pacing again. He paused to frown distractedly at nothing. “You’ve called in the state boys-that’s good. That’s good. That detective that picked me up at the airport-seems like a good man. Seems to know his stuff.”

Roan nodded and sat. “I think he does. Name’s Kurt Ruger. Partner’s name is Roger Fry-he’s not here right now. I sent him with the forensics evidence to the lab in Helena. They’re both good men.”

Holbrook aimed the scowl at him again. “Sure that’s going to be enough manpower? I can have the FBI in here by tomorrow morning. In fact, if this was in some way directed at me…”

The chair creaked as Roan leaned back in it, deliberately adopting a casual attitude, masking the tension he felt with calm eyes and even tone. “At this point there’s nothing about the shooting that would indicate a national security connection. In fact, we’re pretty certain this was local.”

“Local…as in…”

“Personal.”

“Ah.” The senator’s mouth tightened. Then he rubbed a hand hard across his eyes, as though the fire in them burned even him. “I see,” he said heavily, and hauled in a breath. “Well…okay then, I don’t want to step on your toes, Roan. Just trying to help. You let me know if you need anything, now, you hear me? Anything at all. Just find this guy.”

“Oh,” Roan said softly, “I’ll do that.”

Instead of leaving then, the senator jerked out one of the chairs that faced Roan’s desk and perched himself on the edge of the seat, then leaned forward with shoulders hunched and hands clasped. “Okay, so tell me what you’ve got so far. Any leads? Any suspects?”

Getting down to brass tacks, thought Roan. The fact that he’d anticipated this didn’t make it any more welcome. He shifted warily. “Now, Cliff, you know I can’t-”

Holbrook silenced him with an impatient gesture and grimace. “Don’t give me that, Roan. You think I can’t get access to anything you or those state boys have got? Take me one phone call. I hope you’re not gonna make me do that. Lord, son, this is family.”

Family. Roan let out a breath, hating the jolt that had kicked inside him at the word. He doubted the senator, given his current frame of mind, even realized the implications of what he’d said. No sense making anything of it.

He shrugged. “We’ve got some ideas. Pretty good idea what happened, anyway. For starters, it looks like Jason most likely knew the person that shot him.”

The senator’s eyes narrowed. “That’s why you’re saying it was personal.”

Roan nodded. “He was shot at fairly close range, no sign of any struggle-in fact, it looks like Jase may not have known he was in serious danger, not until it was too late.”

Holbrook let out a groaning breath and leaned back in his chair, shaking his head.

“And,” Roan added reluctantly, “some of the forensic evidence suggests there may have been a woman involved.”

The senator’s grunt didn’t sound surprised by that information; the man knew his son as well as anybody did. He put a hand over his eyes and said tiredly as he rubbed, “So…you’re looking at, what, a jealous boyfriend? Husband?”

It was the moment and the question Roan had been dreading, but he didn’t see how he could avoid answering it. He couldn’t explain his reluctance, or the pulse tapping in his belly, as if he were about to betray a personal confidence. From a woman he’d just met, and a suspect to boot. Weird.

“Could be. Seems he had an altercation with a woman outside Buster’s last night.” He cleared his throat, but the words still came hard. “This woman seems to be the last person to have seen Jason alive.”

Holbrook’s head jerked up and his eyes sparked like coals coming to life. “So? Why isn’t she in here? Why aren’t you questioning her?” He paused, then did a double take and said incredulously, “Are you telling me a woman might have done this?”

Roan made a gesture of impatience that rocked his chair, making it squeak again. “I’m not saying that, no. At this point, anything’s possible.” He reined himself in, leaned forward and placed his clasped hands on his desktop. “Cliff, I’ve just come from questioning the woman. She’s voluntarily turned over her gun and a DNA sample, both of which will be on their way to the lab first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, we’re running a check on her-appears she’s new in town, hasn’t lived here more than a few months.” He paused, hating, for the senator’s sake, what he had to say now. Whatever else Jason Holbrook may have been, it didn’t change the fact that he was this man’s child. He coughed, then spat it out. “There’s something you need to know. There’s a good possibility Jason may have assaulted this woman. May even have raped her.”

“Lord.” Holbrook ran a hand over his eyes. Then he looked up at Roan and his eyes hardened, became splinters of cold steel. His voice, hushed to begin with, rose with anger to a muted roar. “Are you saying this was…what, some kind of self-defense?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all. I don’t think it was, not in the legal sense. I’m just-”

The senator’s clenched fist thumped the desktop. “She-or somebody-shot my son, dammit.” He pushed himself upright, leaning on that closed fist, until he loomed above Roan like a thunderhead. His voice grated harshly between clenched teeth. “Jason wasn’t any saint. Hell, I know that. But he was my son. I want whoever did this to pay for it. If this woman shot my boy-no matter what he did, she had no right to take his life. I want her arrested, prosecuted and locked up, you understand me?” He straightened, and his rugged face spasmed with grief as he turned to go. Then he paused, and his voice quivered slightly as he added, “You do this for me, son. I’m countin’ on you.”

Roan sat still while a storm raged inside him, gripping the arms of his chair to hold himself steady against the battering of the anger and too many other emotions he couldn’t name. Through a shimmering haze he watched the other man walk toward the door, the man he’d looked up to as a boy and young man and secretly believed-or perhaps wished-was his own biological father, seeing him suddenly stooped and old. He heard himself ask, in a hard, cracking voice, “Where are you staying? You realize your house is still being processed as a crime scene?”

Cliff Holbrook hesitated, then turned to look back at him. He seemed dazed. Almost…lost.

Vulnerable. Roan didn’t want to think it. Couldn’t help it.

“Tell you the truth, I…hadn’t really thought,” the senator said, smiling slightly.

Roan sure as hell didn’t want to feel sympathy for the man, not right now anyway. But he couldn’t help that, either. “Why don’t you go on out to the ranch?” he heard himself say in a voice like a washed-out gravel road. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. I’ll call Boyd, tell him you’re coming.”

There was a moment…a flicker of something in the other man’s eyes, there too briefly to read…a softening, perhaps, or even…regret? Then Senator Clifford Holbrook seemed to gather himself and grow taller…stronger…harder. “Thank you,” he said crisply, more like himself again, “but I’ll make do with the local motel until my house is released. I want to make this understood right now, Roan-” he jabbed the air with a forefinger and his voice took on the timbre and conviction of a man making a campaign speech “-I am not leaving this town until the person who murdered my son is behind bars. Count on that.”

Roan watched the door thump shut behind the senator, then blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair, fingers laced behind his head. Half of him felt small and disappointed and rejected and wanted to kick something because of it. The other half wanted to laugh at himself for being so stupid. When was he going to stop thinking anything between him and Clifford Holbrook was ever going to change?

Time to go home, he thought, but a glance at his watch gave him a jolt of surprise and sent a squirt of guilt through him, too. Way past time. Susie Grace would be sound asleep by now, and Boyd most likely, too, snoring on the sofa in front of the television, which would be playing away on Mute, tuned to the History Channel. There’d be dinner left for Roan in the kitchen, but he didn’t relish the idea of eating microwaved leftovers alone, or going home to a cold silent house, for that matter, tiptoeing like a thief into his daughter’s room to kiss her good night, his belly sore with knowing he’d disappointed her again.

Then he thought about the man who’d just left his office to go alone into an empty motel room, knowing the son whose room he’d once tiptoed into for a goodnight kiss was lying cold and dead on a table at the morgue.

I’ve got a job to do, Roan thought.

He swiveled his chair around and punched the button that would bring his sleeping computer to life. Say what you would about the Internet, at least it never closed. If nothing else, he could still do some checking up on the lady named Mary Owen.

Mary lay shivering in a tumble of clammy sheets and watched daylight slowly wash color into the featureless gray of her bedroom. She’d been awake for hours, tossing and turning, afraid to go back to sleep, knowing she’d dream of Diego again. Not the Diego of last night’s unexpectedly awakened memory, smiling and sexy-eyed, handsome as sin. The Diego DelRey who waited for her in the shadowy darkness of her nightmares was the other Diego, the one who’d looked at her that last time with eyes that were filled with hate. The one who had stabbed the air with a finger like a dagger and vowed in words only she could hear that he would find her one day. Find her and make her pay.

Why is this happening to me now? Diego isn’t coming to kill me. He’ll never find me. I thought I was over the fear.

Was it because, for the first time in many years, she was without the comfort of a weapon? Or…was it something else entirely? He violated my space… got under my skin… inside my head. Made me vulnerable.

She wasn’t thinking of the man who’d tried to rape her.

She lay still, concentrating on breathing evenly and deeply, and once more closed her eyes. I won’t be afraid, she thought. I have nothing to be afraid of now.

Little by little she felt the tension ease from her muscles, and her body take on the heaviness of impending sleep. Cautiously, she released her mind, letting it drift through memories of happier times, like a boat floating down a river past pleasant scenes on its banks: the apartment in New York, the dear, dear face of her roommate, Joy. Diego again, leaning toward her across a table, his eyes flickering in the light of a guttering candle, the air soft with humidity and fragrant with the scent of tropical flowers…his hands so warm, holding hers, the sudden lovely coolness of the ring he placed on her finger.

“Marry me,” I remember he said to me in his husky, sexy voice, “and I will make all your dreams come true.” And I looked into his eyes, filled with so much love for me…and how could I not believe him?

But now…those eyes faded into shadows and another pair came to take their place, not the dark and smoky Latino eyes of Diego DelRey, not even the ones from later on, hard, now, with hate. These eyes were an intense and glittering blue, and squinted a little, as if from a lifetime of gazing at sunshot horizons. They seemed to look straight into Mary’s soul, down into the deepest darkest places where all her secrets slept.

She opened her eyes, shaking, as fear swept through her like a cold Montana wind.

Deputy Tom Daggett knocked on Roan’s office door at seven forty-five Saturday morning.

“Yeah?” Roan grunted, trying to look as if he hadn’t just been asleep with his head on a pile of expense reports.

Tom looked wary, but came on in anyway. “Sorry to bother you, Sheriff-thought you’d want to know. Just got a call from the crime lab in Helena. That evidence we sent over-too soon for DNA on that second blood sample, but the slug we dug outa the dashboard of Jase’s truck?” He paused, flushed with the import of the news he bore. “It’s from a Colt 45 revolver.”

“A Colt 45. No kidding.” Roan scrubbed a hand over his stubbly jaw and glowered at his deputy, who he considered had no business being this fresh and enthusiastic so early in the morning. His own mouth tasted like the bottom of a chicken coop, and even the station’s off-duty-room coffee was sounding good to him right now. “A damn six-shooter,” he muttered on an exhalation. The dispenser of so many doses of frontier justice. It seemed fitting, somehow.

And not a Ladysmith. Which should have made him feel better, but for some reason didn’t.

He leaned back in his chair, making it squawk, and dug the keys to his patrol vehicle out of his pocket. “There’s a couple of evidence bags in the back of my car,” he said as he lobbed the keys at Tom. “They need to get over to Helena right away. Like…yesterday. Lori can do it-I hate to keep using those state detectives for errand boys. Then I want you to get over to the courthouse-they ought to be opening up about now. Get on over there and look up the deed to that beauty shop Queenie Schultz sold when she left town last winter. Find out everything you can about the person who bought it. Her name’s Mary Owen. I want to know what address she gave Queenie and how she paid for that shop. Then I want her bank records, her social security number, her birth certificate, passport and driver’s license numbers. I want you to find out where she parks her car and get me the license plate and VIN off it. I want to know where that woman lived before she came here, where she went to school, what she did for a living, who she was married to, what childhood vaccinations she got. Anything and everything. You got that?”

“Uh…yeah, but…it’s Saturday, Sheriff. Courthouse is closed.” Tom looked as if he was beginning to regret being the one to bring the sheriff up to speed on the latest developments. “Anyway, don’t you need a warrant for some of that stuff?”

“Yeah, you do, for pretty near all of it,” Roan admitted grumpily. Frustration gnawed at him. He didn’t like being thwarted when he had a mystery to solve. “Okay, since it’s Saturday…here’s what you do: call up Miss Ada and ask her to get hold of the circuit court judge. Hurry up if you want to catch him before he goes off fishing.”

“Me, sir?”

Roan heaved a cranky sigh. “Just tell Miss Ada we need the judge today. I’ll take it from there. Okay?”

Tom muttered something Roan couldn’t hear, which was probably a good thing. He went out, closing the office door behind him.

Alone again, Roan leaned back in his chair and had himself a good stretch, which didn’t do a lot to relieve the crick in his neck or the stiffness in his legs, either one. He put his hands flat on his desktop and was about to unfold himself and go find a bathroom and a cup of that lousy coffee, in that order, when the door to his office opened once again, without a warning knock this time.

He heard a gravelly voice he knew well say, “Little bit, what’d I tell you-”

And the eyes he’d rather have looking back at him than any others in this world were peeking around the edge of the door, those blue eyes, sparkling with mischief, lighting up the morning like the sun coming up over the top of a hill. A little girl’s eyes…and so much like her mother’s he felt a stab of pain every time he looked into them.

“Hey, peanut,” he said, his voice going soft and husky, “where’d you come from?”

There was a throaty giggle, and the rest of his daughter’s face slid into view around the edge of the door, wearing an off-kilter smile of delight. And the spasm of pain and guilt and rage that hit Roan then wasn’t just a stab; it was a knife thrust deep in his guts and then twisted. But it was a pain he was used to, so he was good at hiding it behind a warm and welcoming smile.

“We wanted to surprise you,” Susie Grace said as she danced across the room and into Roan’s arms and gave him a loud smacking kiss.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted, swiveling away from his desk to make room for her in his lap. “Well, you sure did that.” His eyes lifted over her head to the man who’d followed her into his office. “Boyd… What’re you guys up to so early?”

“We brought you some breakfast,” Susie Grace announced. “Grampa made bacon-and-egg samwiches.”

“Figured you could use some coffee, too.” Boyd hefted the old-fashioned, black-painted metal lunch-box he was carrying, the kind that holds a thermos bottle in the lid. Being the sort of man who never liked throwing things away, he had a lot of that sort of antique junk around his place. “If you don’t mind the good stuff, instead of that swill you got here.”

A Montana cattleman by birth, ancestry and tradition, Boyd still perked his coffee in a big enameled pot, which sat and simmered on the back of the cookstove throughout most of the day and by evening, Roan happened to know, the contents came to resemble something a man could waterproof his boots with.

This early in the morning, though, Boyd’s coffee sounded like pure heaven, especially after a night like he’d just had. With a growl of gratitude, he shifted Susie Grace to one knee while he opened up the lunch-box, took out the thermos bottle and poured himself some in the red plastic lid. He closed his eyes and savored the smell of his first cup of coffee and the sweet warm weight of the child in his lap and decided this day might not turn out to be so bad after all.

While Roan slurped down some coffee, Susie Grace got busy unwrapping one of the two fat foil packages from the lunch-box. “You have to eat, Dad,” she told him sternly. “If you’re going to work so long you have to keep your strength up.”

“Grampa tell you that?” Roan winked at Boyd.

Keeping her eyes lowered, watching her scar-stiffened hands painstakingly unfold the sandwich wrappings, Susie Grace lifted her chin a notch, giving Roan a glimpse of the shiny puckered skin that covered most of her neck and the right side of her face. “No, I told myself. I have a mind of my own, you know.”

Boyd snorted and Roan came near losing the swallow of coffee he’d just taken. “Yeah, you do,” he said, chuckling, while Boyd rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

Tom Daggett tapped on the open door and leaned into the room. “How you doin’, Mr. Stuart? Hey there, Susie Grace. When you’ve got a minute, Sheriff?”

Roan gave him a nod, then swiveled around and nudged the little girl in his lap. She hopped off obligingly, but with a pitiful sigh for effect. “I know…you have to go to work.”

“I do, peanut. Sorry. What’ve you guys got planned for today?”

Susie Grace’s eyes danced and her mouth formed its quirky lopsided smile. “We’re goin’ fishin’. Grampa says I’m old enough now, he’s gonna teach me how to fly cast. Only I can’t wade in the creek, ’cause the current’s too strong.”

“Not to mention you’d freeze your fanny off,” Boyd said in his crotchety way, making an impatient come-here gesture with his gnarled and burn-scarred hand. “Come on, now, little bit, let’s us get out of your daddy’s way and let him do his job.” The hand was gentle as it ruffled his granddaughter’s hair, then settled protectively onto her shoulder. “Guess we’ll see you later, Roan.”

Roan said, “I’m gonna expect some fried trout for supper tonight.”

Boyd snorted and Susie Grace threw Roan a cheeky grin over her shoulder. “Then you hafta come home or you won’t get any.”

Roan laughed. “Well, I guess I will, then.” He kept the smile on his face and gave a good-bye wave as he said, “Have fun,” and Susie Grace waved back and blew him a kiss. Then he sat with a heavy ache at the bottom of his throat and watched the old cattleman and the seven-year-old child go out the door together, the one bent over and rump-sprung from too many years spent on the back of a horse, the other skip-hopping and holding on to his hand, her flame-red pigtails bouncing. All the family Roan had left in the world, and both of them wearing the scars that were a constant reminder to him of the dear one he’d lost, and of how near he’d come to losing the two of them as well.

“That Susie Grace sure is growin’ up fast,” Tom said as he came on into the room.

“Yeah, kids have a way of doing that.” Roan picked up a bacon-and-egg sandwich and bit into it, adding as he chewed, “What you got for me, Tom?”

“That evidence you mentioned? Lori’s on her way to Helena with it right now-just drove out of the parking lot. And, uh…I thought you’d want to know, Jason’s dad-Senator Holbrook-he just pulled up out front.” The deputy shifted uncomfortably. “How much do you want me to tell him, Sheriff? About the investigation, I mean. I know the usual procedure, but him being a United States Senator, and all…”

Roan looked at what was left of the sandwich, then put it down, having lost his appetite. “Might as well give him everything we’ve got,” he said, frowning into the plastic thermos lid, now empty. “He’ll just get it anyway-” he looked up at his deputy and grinned without humor “-him being a United States Senator, and all. You get hold of the judge yet?”

“Miss Ada’s workin’ on it. Said to meet her over at the courthouse and she’ll put me in touch with the judge. I’m about to head over there now.”

“You say the senator’s coming in the front?”

“Yes, sir.”

Roan picked up his sandwich again and made a face at it. “In that case, you might want to go out the back.”

Of course, he knew the inevitable couldn’t be avoided forever. By mid-afternoon, with both state detectives, Ruger and Fry, and Roan’s deputy, Lori Thrasher, back from Helena, and Tom having reported in from the courthouse, Roan knew the inevitable had arrived. He was going to have to bring Senator Cliff Holbrook up to date on the investigation into his son’s murder. More specifically, the investigation into the background of the only viable suspect in the case so far, namely, the woman who called herself Mary Owen.

The senator’s response was about what Roan expected.

“What do you mean, she doesn’t exist?”

Tom and Lori both winced, and Roger Fry shifted restlessly and looked over at his partner. All four lawmen looked as though they’d rather be anywhere but where they were.

Roan folded his arms and carefully leaned back in his chair, just far enough so it wouldn’t squeak. “Well,” he drawled, “that’s maybe overstating things a bit. Mary Owen did exist, but unfortunately she died in 1971.” He paused, then added, “At the ripe old age of eighty-three.”

“The hell you say!”

“The woman we know as Mary Owen,” Roan went on calmly, ignoring the senator’s exclamation, “moved here from Coeur d’Alene last winter. Before that she lived in Cheney, that’s in Washington state. She’s moved around a lot, our Mary, but we’ve been able to trace her back about…what, Tom? Ten years? That’s when she showed up in St. George, Utah. Before that, nothing. Nada. According to all the records we’ve got, prior to ten years ago this woman did not exist. Anywhere.”

He spoke calmly, but there was a slow burn in his belly. He had a bad feeling about where this was headed. What he felt like was a passenger on a fast train heading straight off a cliff, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” The senator’s voice was a low, tense growl. “You said this woman was the last person to see my son alive, that she might have had reason to want to hurt him. Now you’re telling me she’s got a shady past? Why haven’t you got her in here? Why aren’t you questioning her?”

“No, now, I never said she had a shady past. What I said was, she had no past. That means she’s got secrets, maybe even something to hide. It doesn’t make her a killer. Her fingerprints aren’t in the system.”

“You said she had a gun.” The senator had that wolf-look in his eyes again-burning cold and hungry. He had his prey in his sights and wasn’t about to let her go.

“Which isn’t the murder weapon,” Roger Fry pointed out, after a deferential cough.

Holbrook threw him a look and made a dismissive gesture. “Of course it isn’t-I’m sure that’s why she gave it up so easily. Look, if the lady’s got one gun, she can have others. You haven’t found the gun-you said it was a Colt 45, right?-the one that shot Jason. Have you?”

Tom Daggett jerked to attention. “No, sir, that’s right. Not yet, we haven’t.”

“She could easily have gotten rid of it-hell, it could be anywhere out there.” The senator made a wide, furious sweep with his arm, then gripped the arms of his chair and leaned toward Roan. “Look-her blood was on Jason’s shirt, wasn’t it?”

“Appears to be,” Roan said, with a glance at Detective Fry. “We won’t know that for certain until the DNA results come back. But look, she’s admitted Jason assaulted her that night. That’s not in question.”

“And she went and got her gun and came back and shot him.” Holbrook thumped the chair arm. “She had motive, means and opportunity, for God’s sake. What more do you need?”

“Evidence?” suggested Roan, and earned himself a steely, narrow-eyed glare.

“I want that woman brought in for questioning,” the senator went on in a soft and dangerous voice. “If you’re not willing to do it, Roan, I’m sure these fellas here’ll be glad to.”

Detective Fry coughed and looked down at his feet. Roan wasn’t sure he knew what hackles were, but if it was another word for temper, he could definitely feel his rising.

However, he showed no outward signs of annoyance as he rocked gently in his chair and said with meticulous courtesy, “Sir, I have every intention of questioning Miss Owen further, particularly in light of what we’ve found out-or rather, what we haven’t found out-today. However, I’d prefer not to drag the lady out of her shop in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and leave a bunch of this town’s female citizens with their hair all gunked up with chemicals.” He peered pointedly at his watch. “I figure she ought to be closing up in…oh, about fifteen minutes, which is when I expect to be there. If that’s okay with you?”

Roan brought his eyes back to Cliff Holbrook, and he wasn’t surprised to see the older man’s complexion had darkened considerably. It had grown unnaturally silent in the room, as though the other four people in it had faded into the woodwork, leaving him and the senator to face each other alone.

“I want to go with you when you pick her up,” Holbrook growled, head lowered and eyes burning-more angry bull, now, than wolf.

Roan shook his head and said firmly, “Sorry, Senator, I can’t let you do that.” He rose and reached for his hat. “This is my job. I’ll deal with Miss Mary Owen.”

“Alone?” Holbrook’s voice sounded hoarse and strained. “Shouldn’t you at least take some backup?”

Roan gave him a crooked smile. “Cliff, this isn’t Ma Barker we’re dealing with. Besides,” he added with pointed looks at his deputies, “these folks here have plenty else to do. Tom, Lori, don’t you have a murder weapon to find?” As the two deputies snapped to attention, he nodded at Ruger and Fry. “And if you gentlemen wouldn’t mind, I think maybe a trip to Coeur d’Alene might be in order.”

He got their nods of agreement, settled his hat on his head and nodded at the senator, then briskly took his leave. Nobody was more surprised than Roan when Clifford Holbrook sat in his chair and let him go without another word of argument.