Ten minutes later he entered Gage Dalton’s office in the rear of the sheriff’s department. Gage wore his full tan uniform, except for the cowboy hat that hung on a coat tree in one corner. He leaned back, the springs of his chair creaking, and waved Austin to sit across from him in one of the two battered chairs.
“You see what’s on my desk?” Gage remarked.
Austin nodded. A stack of papers on one side, a computer on the other. In between were writing instruments, a family photo and a nameplate that looked as if it made a habit of falling to the floor.
Gage pointed. “Paper.” Then he pointed again. “Computer.” Then he waved to the corner where a printer stood on a stand. “Printer.”
“So?”
“Back twenty-five years ago, maybe thirty, someone told me that switching to computers would eliminate paper.”
Austin started to laugh before the sheriff finished.
“Exactly. If you ask me,” Gage said, “all they’ve done is multiply the amount of paper. Why? Because you can’t really trust this dang machine not to flip its lid. Lose things. Crash. Whatever. So we fill out our reports, print them out, file them in a good old-fashioned filing cabinet, and all I can say for this machine is that it’s made carbon paper and correction fluid obsolete.”
Still laughing, Austin said, “Ah, but email.”
“Nuisance.” But then Gage paused, his dark eyes twinkling. “Enough of being a curmudgeon. What do you think of our town?”
“It’s growing on me. The longer I’m around, the friendlier people get. Pretty soon I’ll be part of the background.”
“I bet you’re good at that. Getting along okay at Corey’s?”
“Fine. But I want to talk to you about that.”
“Depends on which that.”
Austin nodded his understanding. “I want to know about her mother’s murder. I need to understand. She doesn’t remember, but it certainly left her terrified.”
“Makes her a bit difficult to deal with sometimes,” Gage agreed. “She keeps her circle tight and mostly confined to women.”
“You knew that when you took me over there. So why did you inflict me on her?”
Gage frowned. “Is she making you feel that way?”
“No, but I’ve got a picture of what’s going on here and I need to understand. You put me in play for a reason, Gage. There’s a room over Mahoney’s, and I’m sure you knew it.”
“Of course I did. I used to live there.”
“So maybe you can tell me why you took me to Corey knowing she’s afraid of men.”
Gage sighed. “Hope.”
“Hope?”
“Yeah, hope.” He leaned forward, wincing a bit, and put his crossed arms on the desk. “That woman needs to break out of her shell. I watched her grow up, and it’s really bothering me that she can’t seem to get past what happened.”
“So why me?”
“Lots of reasons. Handy excuse because you needed a place to stay. After I checked up on you, you seemed to be trustworthy. You’re someone she doesn’t know and already have a pattern with. Plus, you must be pretty good at getting into closed circles.”
Austin wasn’t at all sure he liked this. “So you manipulated the two of us?”
“You could say that. Or you could just say I was hoping she might find a wedge so she could peek out of her shell. I’m not asking you to do anything. I was just hoping it might turn into a good mixture. There’s always that room over Mahoney’s if you’re furious.”
“You wanted me to con her.”
Gage slammed a hand down on his desk, clearly angry now. “Absolutely not. If I had for one minute thought that was possible, I’d never have let you stay in this town, let alone Corey’s house.”
“Then what the hell do you mean by me being good at getting into closed circles?”
“That’s what you did in Mexico, wasn’t it? It’s a gift. How you use it can make it a con. But you’re not a con artist. You were a freaking agent doing a god-awful job, which I well know since I did it myself. I pretended a lot on the job, but never off the job. Did I mismeasure you?”
Austin glared right back. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. And what you do or don’t do with Corey is between the two of you. I’m not working any angle at all here, just hoping like I said. Nobody in this damn town was getting past her walls, and she sure as hell isn’t traveling. I figured you might get her interested enough to come out of her shell a bit. I also figured you must be sensitive enough not to break the eggs, so to speak. If that’s a crime, leave.”
Austin wanted to stay angry. He was feeling used. He figured Corey would feel the same if she guessed, not that he was going to tell her. But he also saw Gage’s point. The man was concerned about a young woman. Evidently he’d been concerned for some time. So he’d taken a flier. He even understood Gage’s reasoning, because he was the last person on earth who wanted to inflict harm on some innocent person. He’d just spent six years avoiding that with every means at his disposal, six years trying to protect people he didn’t know and would never meet.
“I just wish you’d have told me.”
Gage gave a crooked, humorless smile. “That would have worked real well.”
Probably not, Austin admitted to himself. In fact, he’d have found another place to try to get himself together again. Instead, he’d found Corey, and her whole mess was focusing him again in a way he thought he’d lost indefinitely. He might not be doing her much good, but she was doing some for him.
“Let’s move on,” he said finally. “Tell me about the murder. About Corey.”
“You have a reason for that?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you when I have the picture.”
Gage told him, and it wasn’t pretty. A gunshot would have been bad enough, but as a child, Corey had witnessed her mother being stabbed over thirty times. The assailant had left no clue at all. Corey, covered with blood, had been taken out of the room in a nearly catatonic state. She hadn’t spoken for days, hadn’t cried, had spent all her time trying to hide.
Austin swore fluently in two languages. “And no leads?”
“Zip.”
“So the murderer might have even been a woman?”
“The Denver P.D. is pretty sure the culprit was a man, from the angle of the wounds and the strength of them. Then, there’s Corey’s fear of men.”
“True. Well, from the sound of it, it’s probably better that she can’t remember anything.”
“A blessing,” said Gage. “Besides, what if she did remember? Any description of the assailant she might give us would probably be useless. She was a child, she was in shock, and I doubt she’d remember much except what happened to her mother. The guy might even have had his face concealed.”
Austin sat pensively for a few moments. “Does everyone here know that she can’t remember?”
“I can’t answer that factually, but if you want my suspicion, then yes, most folks probably know that. Her grandmother Cora talked about it some with her friends. I imagine it made it to the furthest reaches of the grapevine.”
Austin was intimately acquainted with rumor mills like that. They’d served him well and often. “Well, there went that, then.”
“What?”
“The day I arrived, Corey got an anonymous note in the mail. She dismissed it as a prank, but at the same time she was uneasy enough to keep it. It was mailed in town here.”
“What did it say?”
“‘I remember you but you don’t remember me.’”
Gage’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I think that’s not the last of it?”
“Because it’s not. She got another one yesterday. Same M.O. This one said, ‘I know about your mother.ʼ”
“Well, damn,” Gage said sharply.
“She’s trying to treat the notes as a sick joke, but I don’t think she truly believes it. I can’t dismiss it.”
“Hell, no,” Gage agreed, drumming his fingers rapidly.
“The thing is, there’s nothing in these notes that couldn’t probably be said by anyone who knows about what happened. It’s the two of them together that make me worry. No threat, just a kind of torment for Corey. Frankly, Gage, I have little patience for tormentors.”
“Even less when they might keep it up, or make it worse. She doesn’t need this, joke or not.”
Austin didn’t answer. This was Gage’s town. He knew it inside and out. Austin was on the outside here and needed a whole lot more information than he had right now.
“Did you bring the notes?”
“No. Got a warrant? They’re not mine, I’m not operating in an official capacity, and anyway, I don’t want to betray her trust. I did look them over pretty closely when she and I talked about them last night. No identifiable markings, cheap paper, cheap envelopes, self-sticking stamps. Hell, even the envelope flaps are self-sticking. They appear to have been printed on an inkjet printer.”
“Address, too?”
“Yes.”
“So what you’re saying is this guy may have taken great steps to ensure he can’t be traced. No DNA, no fingerprints...”
“That’s a hunch based on the fact that he wouldn’t have had to lick the envelope. But what does it mean, anyway, Gage? How likely is it that if you got a print or DNA off those letters that it would be useful? You know most of that stuff is only of use once you have the perp.”
“But it does make me wonder about the intent behind the notes. Anything else?”
“We thought we smelled beer on one of the notes, but it was so faint we couldn’t be sure. That means about half the population.”
“Great.” Gage again drummed his fingers briefly. “We have similar backgrounds, you and I. If your nose and mine agree, we’re going with our noses.”
Austin nodded. “I’ll keep sharp. I definitely don’t like the way this smells.”
“Me, neither, but I’ve been wrong before.”
“Let’s hope we both are.” Austin rose, but Gage stopped him just before he opened the office door.
“Austin? When she was in high school, Corey took gym classes in the martial arts or something. I won’t go into all the psychological claptrap about why she probably did that. I’m sure you can figure it out yourself.”
“Pretty much. And?”
“There’s a gym over at the high school and another at the junior college. Try to persuade her to refresh a bit. Maybe with you. Just let me know, I’ll make sure she can use one or the other during off-hours if she doesn’t want to be in a crowd.”
That was a good idea, Austin thought. He was sure he could talk her into it. He was starting to get the measure of Corey.
Then he thought of the child Gage had described, nearly catatonic, not speaking for days, hiding from everyone. A crack opened wide in his heart. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen children who had suffered similar experiences. The world was full of them. But to do his job, he’d had to keep his focus on other things. Trust other people to take care of the world’s waifs.
Now he had a waif of his very own. He was absolutely certain that Corey would hate knowing he thought of her that way for even an instant, though.
She’d be right, of course. Hunkered down though she might be, she was no longer that traumatized seven-year-old. She’d built herself a decent, if limited, life and seemed to handle things very well.
But there was still a monster in her closet, and all of a sudden, for no evident reason, it seemed to be trying to creep out.
Damn, what was going on here?
* * *
Austin had evidently decided that whether she liked it or not, he was through keeping out of her way. He was in the kitchen when Corey got home, and delicious aromas filled the house. Dropping her sewing bag near the door, she wandered in and found him at the stove, wearing a bibbed barbecue apron. He turned when he heard her and flapped it at her. “You like? I thought about getting one covered with tulips because I liked the pink frill around the edge...”
Her laughter interrupted him.
“Okay, I guess this was the better choice. How was your day?”
“Great,” she said, actually touched that he’d asked. “We started a new quilt. It’ll be embroidered butterflies, each set in a white block edged with blue. The butterflies are going to be a challenge, but it’ll get more of my ladies involved.”
“Why is that?”
“Because we’ll have the sewing group make the butterflies, the embroidery group decorate them and the quilting group piece it all together.”
“That sounds like some kind of project.”
“It’s going to be auctioned for charity, so it’s worth it. Plus, everyone is having fun. I like it when we come up with projects that everyone can participate in.”
“You forgot your knitters and crocheters.”
“They’re working on a different project. What are you making?”
“A feast. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m craving my native cuisine again. Tamales tonight, along with chili con queso,
guacamole and some corn chips.”
“Um, wow.”
“I hope that’s a good
um.
”
“It is. What’s in a tamale?”
“Basically cornmeal. Think of them like dumplings, except I found some chorizo to add to them.”
She sat with a thump. “You found chorizo
here?
”
“Like I said, you have a very friendly grocer. Now he’s asking me for recipes.”
She gaped at him. “You should have gotten the apron with the tulips.”
He laughed so hard she thought she saw the sparkle of a tear in his eyes, and she joined him, holding her sides.
“Actually,” he said when he caught his breath, “I may be in danger of being asked to give cooking lessons at the market. I made extra tamales so I can bring some by in the morning.”
Amazement filled Corey. Conard County was a friendly place, but it generally took strangers a little while to knit themselves in, and a lot of them never came to be regarded as “locals.” This guy had been here just a short time and the grocer was asking him for recipes? Food as an international ambassador, she thought. She realized she was catching a glimpse of the man who had gone south of the border undercover. He’d had to knit himself in there, too.
She supposed that ought to make her suspicious of him, the ease with which he fit himself in, but she actually admired it. This was her hometown, yet she had never felt as if she really fit. More like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite press into the hole that it had once been part of.
“He also got me some poblanos, too. They’re a mild pepper, and I may make chiles rellenos tomorrow. That recipe goes back maybe five thousand years, but it hasn’t lost any flavor in the meantime.”