And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(10)

“Good god. ‘Second Amendment,’” Gary said. He touched the side of his face and rolled his eyes.

“If you want to press charges, I’ll take her in for reckless discharge of a dangerous weapon.”

Gary hooked his thumbs inside the front of his overalls and stared up at the sky. His beard lifted off his chest. “I don’t know. I don’t want that woman to go to jail on my account. I just want her to leave me alone.”

“It’s up to you.”

Gary kicked at the gravel with his boot and shook his head. “No, I don’t want to press charges.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Stay here. I’ll go down and talk to her.”

Packard grabbed the arrow by the fletching and pulled it out of the wall, then went down the hill toward Cora’s. He’d been mediating things between these two since arriving in town, with no end in sight. His last visit was to negotiate a mutual de-escalation involving warring yard signs. Cora’s went up after Thanksgiving—a large hand-painted message on canvas strung between two trees in her yard with a Bible verse about the sexually immoral and idolaters and men who have sex with men not inheriting the kingdom of God. Gary retaliated by making his own giant sign on canvas that said HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY! He wrapped his in blinking lights and put an eight-foot-tall inflatable Santa next to it. The sheriff’s department would have stayed out of it had Cora not kept calling and complaining about the honking keeping her up all night.

Cora was barely five feet tall, with short red hair curled tight. On a previous visit she’d come to the door with little green rollers pinned in rows all around her head and a clear plastic shower cap over it. She shouted her defense as Packard closed the distance between them. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean it! Greta is my witness.”

“Cut the crap, Cora. Put down the crossbow and step away from it.”

She did as she was told, then stood there with her jaw set.

Packard pushed up his sunglasses and pointed the arrow at her. “I should be arresting you right now for violating Minnesota Statute 609.66, which calls for a $1,000 fine and/or ninety days in jail for handling a dangerous weapon in a manner that endangers the safety of another.”

“It was an accident. Me and Greta was gonna go out and shoot at the hay bales. I was carrying the bow over my shoulder and it went off.”

“Why did you have a loaded crossbow over your shoulder, Cora? What sense does that make?” He took a step closer so there was almost no space between them at all.

She had no response. Packard looked past her at the picture window in her living room. He saw Greta standing a few feet back. She was a giant woman, over six feet tall, built like a lumberjack with long brown hair she kept pulled tight in a thin braid long enough to sit on. There was a hulkiness to her that spoke to some kind of thyroid or pituitary condition. She stepped back and disappeared in the shadows when she saw him looking.

“Cora, I’m telling you this for the last time. I’m tired of this nonsense.”

“I’m tired of living in the shadow of sin. There’s improper traffic in and out of that house at night. Other sodomites. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter five, verse eleven, ‘Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.’”

“The Bible also says, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than this.’”

Cora gave him the stink eye while she struggled to find a retort. He cut her off. His own quiver of Bible quotes didn’t hold many arrows. “It’s only Gary’s kindness that’s keeping you out of jail right now, Cora. He doesn’t want to press charges. Now listen to me. If I get called out here again—for any reason—I’ll arrest both of you for wasting police resources. You think being his neighbor is bad? Wait ’til I put you both in the same jail cell.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I’m the acting sheriff for this whole county. I can do whatever I want.”

He put the arrow under his heel and bent the shaft ninety degrees, then gave it back to her. “I’m not kidding, Cora. If you or your family or any of your possessions end up on Gary’s property, you’re going to jail. Count on it.”

Cora snatched the bent arrow. He saw her eyes shift from him to something behind him, probably Gary. “Of course you take his side. You’re just like him,” she spat out.

Packard pulled himself up taller. Speculation about his life out of uniform had started almost as soon as he arrived in town. What brings you to Sandy Lake? Where you from? No wife? No kids? Packard had answered some of their questions and ignored others. Silence, he thought, would stonewall them. A long enough silence would bore them.

He unsnapped the cuffs on his belt and pulled them out. “Say one more word to me, Cora. I dare you.”

She turned and hurried toward the house, shaking the bent arrow over her head. “‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the LORD!’”

Packard went back up the hill to find Gary standing outside the dog kennel. “I was hoping you’d put her over your knee and whip her ass with that arrow.”

“Mr. Bushwright, I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told Cora—”

“‘Mr. Bushwright’?” Gary looked taken aback. He put a hand on his chest. “How very formal of you. Sorry, please continue, Mr. Deputy Packard, Acting Sheriff, sir.”