Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [53]
Then it hit me. I flew out of my wrap, my heart pounding. I grabbed my jeans and rifled the pockets, but then I remembered Odd had driven last.
“Quinn? What the hell…”
I rifled his pockets and came up with the car keys. He asked me what I was doing but the adrenalin was pumping so hard I couldn’t answer. I ran outside in my skivvies, doing a painful dance on the gravel. I got to the trunk of the car.
Frank was standing outside the main house, leaning on the porch rail, sucking up oxygen. He gave me a wave and a cheery “Good morning!”
Odd was standing on our porch now. I’m sure he was wondering from what new conniption he would now have to rescue me. Frank gave him a good-morning too, all smiles, probably believing we must finally be having a swell time in his little resort.
I opened the trunk and took my service baton from its holding ring. I rushed back to the porch. By this time, Stacey and her mother were standing in the open doorway, both in their skivvies, both probably worried that I was rushing in to beat the shit out of Houser.
Not a bad idea, but.
I stopped behind Odd and placed the baton along his port wine birthmark. It was a perfect fit.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Creeping myself out,” said I, and I was.
I deputized Gwen.
Houser had not fallen sick, thank God, but he was not in the pink either and I was damn sick of dragging him along. I made Gwen raise her hand and swear to a lot of stuff I made up on the spot, with no authority whatsoever to administer same.
“Do you swear to enforce a distance between the prisoner and the victim sufficient enough to preclude any and all physical contact of any nature whatsoever?”
“I do,” she swore solemnly.
“I do too,” said Stacey, though I was not fool enough to swear that one to anything. I cuffed Houser’s hands behind his back and gave the key to Gwen, pretty much shitcanning my career should she turn out to be irresponsible, and, da frick, she was already irresponsible or her daughter wouldn’t be giving head to a guy more than twice her age.
Odd and I got back into yesterday’s clothes. I didn’t have a toothbrush, he didn’t have that or a razor, but we pulled ourselves together as best we could, while my new deputy brewed the coffee.
“Would you tell me where we’re going?” he asked. We were using the bathroom together, having reached a new level of intimacy, I guess.
I envied him his short hair. All he had to do was wet it and run his fingers through it. My own was a mess and there wasn’t a lot I could do with it. The Shenandoah solution, a babuska, was not available, so I pulled it back and tied it up. I looked like general hell, but could care less.
“I’ll tell you when we get there, I don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“A little late for that,” he said, and I laughed.
Gwen handed us each a cup of coffee and we blew on it.
“Remember, sitting in James’ four-by…how you knew something was wrong?
“Yeah…”
“Something was wrong.”
“What?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out, if we’re lucky.”
It was not easy going back to the tribal police headquarters and Chief Shining Pony. I was prepared to do a little groveling.
The second Robert was on duty and I gave him a dour good-morning, which he took warily and returned a grunt that I took as a greeting between enemies. He probably heard from the first Robert all about the ruckus last night, including the screaming match I had with his boss, the kind of match I never lose, by the way.
“Know where the chief is?” I asked.
“Hmm-hmm.”
“Like, where?”
“In his office.”
I belayed my usual cop’s rap, and tapped like a timid doormouse.
We went inside. To say the chief was a bigger man than I gave him credit for would not be accurate, because I had always given him that credit. He understood that my shrewish behavior the previous night was borne on a cop’s need for justice and her outrage that it had been denied for so long. I didn’t tell him it was all multiplied by a factor of…whatever, by the hormonal