All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(75)

“Okay. I’m glad to hear that, but the situation with the Quinn girl is the least of your worries. I’ve also got a gun that my deputy found in your shop. Now, we don’t know for sure yet, but my suspicion is that’s the gun used to kill Liam and Valerie Quinn. So you tell me, how’d the gun end up there?”

“I don’t know.” I knew that gun was gonna end up in front of me to explain. “After Roger and Cutcheon left, the phone in the office rang. I went in to answer it, ’cause we’d left a message for Roger’s wife, thought it was her. While I was on the phone, Wavy came in. She closed the office door and the window blinds, but the garage doors stayed open. Anybody coulda walked in there.”

“That puts us at nearly three hours between when her aunt says she dropped the girl off and when she made the call to dispatch from your office. You didn’t leave the garage any time in those three hours?”

“No, Sheriff. I didn’t even leave the office.”

“Three hours is an awful lot of fooling around, even for a young man like you.”

My face got hotter and hotter, and even though it was air-conditioned in there, I started sweating. The sheriff waited, looking at me.

“Well, we talked quite a bit, too,” I said.

“So, that’s your story? You and the girl talked. And you fooled around some, but you didn’t have sex with her. And you didn’t leave the office any time in there. And that’s what the Quinn girl will say?”

I nodded, but it made my guts tight, thinking about the police questioning Wavy.

“Anything else you want to tell me?” the sheriff said.

“That swab they took?”

“For the gunshot residue?”

“That might come back positive.”

“Damn it, Junior. What’s the story?” The sheriff put out his cigarette and leaned a little closer, frowning.

“There was a possum messing in my trash this morning and I took a shot at him.”

“Don’t suppose you killed him?”

“I missed.”

“That figures,” the sheriff said. “Is that it? I’m not gonna find your prints on that gun? That Quinn girl’s exam ain’t gonna show there was more than a little fooling around?”

“No, sir, but what kind of exam?”

“I believe they’ll do a swab for semen and look at, you know, whether she’s got any injury. Like that.”

“Are they going to touch her?”

“Yes, I suppose they will.”

“I wish they wouldn’t. She can’t stand for people to touch her.”

It made me sick. That I hadn’t had the self-control to say, “No, Wavy.” Or the goddamn good sense to close up the shop and take her to my house. I’d had this great plan and I screwed it up with plain old carelessness.

“She’ll be okay,” the sheriff said. “And so will you, if you’re telling me the truth.”





7

SHERIFF GRANT

The federal agents crawling all over the Quinn place were part of some drug task force, and apparently that meant they couldn’t help look for two missing kids. We lost daylight before we found Wavy and Donal. I’ve had some sleepless nights as sheriff, but that was one of the worst.

By four o’clock I gave up on sleep and went back to the station. The feds had made about a dozen arrests, left me to figure out where to keep them overnight. I sent the women over to Belton County, and put Junior Barfoot in the old drunk tank in the basement. It hadn’t been used in twenty years and still smelled like piss. Down there in the dark, he was this big mountain on the narrow bunk.

“You asleep, Junior?”

“Not likely.” He sat up and gave a long sigh.

“I thought you might have some idea where those Quinn kids are.”

“Isn’t Wavy with her aunt?”

“No, your girl ran off from the hospital yesterday afternoon.”

“You just now decided to tell me that?”

He was a soft-spoken man, but when he took hold of the bars in front of me, I stepped back. I’d never been afraid of him, but right then, I was glad for those bars between us. I’d seen a few men who needed a doctor when he was done with them.

“Did you look up in the meadow? Those cottonwoods? By the windmill? What about my house?” he said.

“We can check again. And your house is locked up.”

“She’s got a key.”

“Alright, we’ll start there.”

“Let me know, will you, Sheriff? When you find them.”

I promised I would, and went up to the desk, where Haskins was on duty.

“Have Delbert check Junior’s house for the girl. I’m going up to the Quinn place,” I said.

“The Rotary’s coming out to volunteer come dawn,” Haskins said.

“Did Barfoot tell you something?” Agent Cardoza said. I hadn’t noticed him sitting at one of the desks in the squad room, and I wished he hadn’t noticed me. A fireplug of a man with a bristly black mustache, he looked as rough as I felt. But he was a federal agent, so even at four in the morning, he wore a suit and tie.

“He’s got an idea about where the Quinn kids might be,” I said.

“You mind if I tag along?”