Chat - Archer Mayor [38]
“No, no,” he then said. “It’s not like it’s a secret. Sure as hell the people we’re asking know about it. I just wondered why a relatively new car would fall apart like that. That’s really all it is for now. The sheriff’s department is helping me out. I’m not even officially involved.”
She nodded. “I thought maybe he’d just hit some ice.”
It was a leading question, but this time Joe played along. “A tie rod nut worked loose. Without it, the wheel pretty much does what it wants. It happens. I just want to make sure that it happened by accident.”
“How do you do that?” she asked.
That felt like pressing, and he resisted her, his reasons at once professional and very personal. “Well, like I said, I’m trying to keep my nose clean. The deputy handling it owes me a call on that very subject. He’s pretty good around cars, it turns out.”
He still hadn’t made eye contact with her, instead studying his mother being wheeled up to his brother’s bed. But he was also consciously aware of Gail staring at him from the side, in search of some reaction.
“How’re you doing?” she finally asked softly.
He glanced at her quickly and then nodded toward the scene before them, using it to dodge the true meaning of her question. “I’ve been thinking about the old lady lately, wondering what’ll happen after she dies—Leo, the farm, all the rest. I never saw this coming.”
This time Gail was the one who remained silent, prompting Joe to seek out her reflection in the glass. She was no longer looking at him, but her sadness radiated like heat.
Damn, he thought. This is too hard.
He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of the sheriff,” he said, his voice loud and bluff in his ears, “I ought to hook up with him. Find out what he’s got new, if anything. Could you handle Mom? Drive her back home, maybe?”
“Sure,” Gail said softly, still not turning. “Happy to.”
Joe patted her shoulder once and left the room, relieved and frustrated, both.
He found them out on Route 5, standing like a line of bird hunters at a shoot, except that they were all standing in a snowbank, looking down instead of skyward, and dressed alike in dark blue pseudo uniforms decorated with glaring white sheriff’s patches. Barring a couple, they were all boys, mostly thin and gawky, sporting hair that looked painfully short in the cold weather. Slightly back of them was Rob Barrows, watching for traffic as much as giving guidance to the two of his teenage Explorers who were actually manning the metal detectors.
Joe pulled over by the side of the road and got out of his car.
“Any luck yet?” he asked.
There was a shout from the most distant detector handler.
Barrows smiled at the timing. “Guess we’ll find out.” They began walking together down the line. “We’d be due,” he added. “We’ve been out here almost three hours, finding enough scrap metal to open a business. Slow going.”
They reached the young woman who’d shouted out.
“What’ve you got, Explorer Ferris?” Rob asked in a clipped tone.
The girl stiffened slightly as she barked out, “A signal, sir. Pretty strong.”
“Show me.”
With her companions looking on from both sides, Ferris swept her instrument across the top of the snow by the edge of the road. They were about a half mile away from where Leo had gone off.
The detector began signaling loudly as she hovered over a marked defect in the white crust at their feet.
“Does look like something went in there,” Barrows commented quietly. He turned to another of the Explorers. “Drury, get in there and carefully open up a channel going to the bottom of that hole. Take your time.”
They watched as this second teenager got to his knees and slowly began digging into the snow, removing great handfuls in his gloves and dropping them behind him onto the roadway.
“Matthews,” Barrows ordered, “you and Johnson go through what Drury’s dumping there. Run the detector over it. Make sure there’s nothing hidden inside.”
Joe watched the deputy gradually engage more and more