Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(63)

“Okay, I’ll see you later, Marybeth. It was good to see you. I hope Joe’s okay.”

“I do, too. Come in about those books.”

“I will.” Then to Tibbs: “See you soon.”

Tibbs sighed and looked at the floor. His face was beet red and his bare feet suddenly splotchy.

Marybeth said, “Caught. No wonder you weren’t picking up.”

Tibbs rubbed his face again. “Please don’t tell my wife when she gets back.”

“I’m not a gossip.”

“I don’t do this kind of thing. I’m not that kind of guy.”

“I’m not here to judge you,” Marybeth said, although what little regard she had for the new sheriff had just been hit by a torpedo.

“Thank you.”

Marybeth took a deep breath and shook her head. She wanted to grab a blunt object, maybe that ceramic zebra on the mantel, and clobber him.

Instead, she said, “Nate Romanowski and my daughter Sheridan are ready and willing to go try and find Joe and the hunters on their own, but it would be much better if you put together an official search-and-rescue effort. We might need aircraft, horses, and men on ATVs.”

Tibbs said, “I’m not comfortable with sending Romanowski up there. I’ve heard some pretty sketchy things about him.”

“It doesn’t look like I have a choice,” Marybeth said with heat.

Tibbs rubbed his jaw. “We can’t get anything going until morning, and then it’ll take a lot of time and money to get it underway.”

“I know that. But we’ve already lost too much time because you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

“I’ve got to figure out the protocol here,” Tibbs said. “I haven’t been in charge of one of these S-and-R operations here before. I know how we did it back in my old department, but there’s a lot more country around here.”

“Then move your ass,” Marybeth said. “Get up, get dressed, and get to your office and start making calls.”

“You don’t need to talk to me like that,” Tibbs said.

“It’s been thirty-six hours and it’s probably below zero up there,” she said. “It’s time to do your job.”

Tibbs grasped the arms of his chair and hauled himself to his feet. His face was dark with either anger or humiliation or both, she thought.

“I don’t know what I was thinking when I let them talk me into this job at the end of my career,” he said. “I was told this place was sleepy.”

“It isn’t,” Marybeth said.



* * *



—

Marybeth slid into the driver’s seat of her van and closed the door.

“I’m glad he was home and answered the door,” Sheridan said. “Did you get him to do something?”

“Yes, but he’s not very enthusiastic about it and it won’t be as quick as we want. Some of the delay is legitimate. He probably has no idea who to call to get the search-and-rescue team activated.”

“Crap.”

“I know. I wish we still had Mike in charge.”

Sheriff Mike Reed, who’d been gunned down two years before, had been professional, competent, and a friend of Joe’s. The entire county missed him.

“So,” Marybeth asked her daughter, “what did you find?”

“Not a lot,” Sheridan said. “There have been no more posts from Steve-2. Even though it’s the middle of the night, his followers on ConFab are starting to ask questions and chatter about him. The hashtag #WheresSteve2 is trending and there are a few memes where people pasted pictures of Steve-2’s face on that ‘Where’s Waldo?’ character. Most of the comments are about how he’s done this kind of thing before, kind of jerking his followers around by not posting. There are a few people who think something happened to him, but most of them think he’s just a self-absorbed asshole.”

“Is he?” Marybeth asked.

“Of course. But I checked his timeline and it’s rare for him to be off-line for so long. He usually can’t wait to share his observations and philosophy.”

“Could it be he just can’t get on the Internet?” Marybeth asked.

“I suppose that’s possible, but I doubt it. He was online before. So what happened?”

“I’m afraid whatever it was happened to your dad as well.”

Sheridan sat back and lowered her phone to her lap as Marybeth drove back toward her house. Then she said, “Nate and Liv are at your place, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call Nate. We can get going right now to go up there and see if we can find him on our own.”

“Honey, is that a good idea?”

“Mom, don’t talk to me as if I were a child. Do you have a better idea?”

“No.”

“We can’t afford to wait until Sheriff Dipshit gets his act together.”

“Sheriff Dipshit?”

“Sorry, that’s what I think of him right now.”

“I can’t disagree,” Marybeth said.

“Just make sure in the morning that he knows we’re up there and ahead of him,” Sheridan said. “I don’t want him tracking us instead of finding Dad.”