Cold Wind - C. J. Box [20]
Missy kept her eyes on Joe, silently pleading but not groveling, as the deputies marched her across the lawn toward the car. Behind her, Sheriff Kyle McLanahan filled the doorframe, scowling briefly at Joe and then peering over Joe’s head at the ranch yard. He carried a leveraction .30-30 Winchester carbine with plastic-gloved hands. Behind him was Dulcie Schalk, the new county attorney who’d replaced Joe’s friend Robey Hersig.
Joe looked over his shoulder to see what the sheriff had fixed on, and saw the television satellite truck rumbling up the long driveway. McLanahan had no doubt frittered away time inside until he could make a dramatic appearance before the cameras.
Dulcie Schalk was in her early thirties, with dishwater-blonde hair, dark brown eyes, and a trim, athletic figure. She’d been hired by Robey as his assistant a few months before he was killed three years before, and she’d stepped into the vacuum and filled it so well that when she’d run for the office she was unopposed. Schalk was unmarried except to her job, and Joe had found her to be honest and professional, if very tightly wound. Marybeth and Dulcie Schalk ran in the same circles, and shared a profound interest in horses. They’d gone on trail rides together and Marybeth spoke highly of her, which counted with Joe.
Schalk was driven and passionate and worked long hours. Her record for obtaining convictions was a hundred percent. In Joe’s opinion, if she had a weakness as a prosecutor it was her penchant for not going into court unless the case was airtight. Joe had been frustrated by her a few times when he brought her cases—one involving the suspected poaching of an elk and the other an out-of-state hunter who may have falsified his criminal background of game violations on his application for a license—because she thought there might be too much “air” in the case to pursue it further. So when he saw the determined set to her face as she came out of the door behind McLanahan, he knew there was substance behind the arrest. And for the first time that day, he questioned his initial assumption that Missy was innocent.
Even so, Joe said to both McLanahan and Schalk, “Are the handcuffs really necessary? I mean . . . look at her. Does she look like she might resist?”
Missy thanked Joe with a barely perceptible nod. She seemed to need a champion, and Joe felt odd playing the role. He even admired her a little for her dignity and poise, given the situation. The deputies towered over her.
Dulcie Schalk nodded at Joe as if she agreed, and turned to the sheriff for his reaction.
McLanahan lowered his lids and smiled slyly at Joe. “Keep ’em on,” he told Sollis, who had moved toward Missy with his cuff key. Sollis retreated.
Missy said nothing, and lowered her eyes to continue her slow walk toward the GMC. But McLanahan chinned a silent command at his deputies to hold her there. Joe realized the sheriff wanted to make sure Missy was caught on camera being escorted to the car.
“Come on, McLanahan,” Joe said, feeling his anger rise, and surprised it did. “There’s no point in humiliating her even more.” He looked to Dulcie Schalk for support, but Schalk had turned away.
Joe saw something remarkable when McLanahan finally gave the go-ahead to his deputies to resume the perp walk with Missy toward the GMC. As the video camera rolled and both Jim Parmenter and Sissy Skanlon snapped photos with their digital cameras, Missy’s entire face and demeanor changed. Not just changed, but transformed. Her walk became a shuffle. Her shoulders slumped. The poise she’d shown earlier morphed instantly into pathos. Her eyes moistened, and her mouth trembled as if holding back a wail. She looked suddenly pathetic. A victim. She seemed barely capable of entering the GMC without help. He assumed the cameras