Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [32]
“Dawson doesn’t give a damn what the public knows, just as long as we keep spending private time together between the sheets,” I retorted.
“Don’t be so sure. He’s not just the sheriff. Why do you insist on seeing him only in that role?”
“Because when it comes right down to it, especially stuff like this?”—I flapped the envelope at him—“I can’t separate the man he is from the job he does.”
John-John floated a deliberate pause. “Think about what you just said, Mercy.”
I think I should’ve kept my big mouth shut.
“Dawson looks beyond what you did for a living in the army and what you do for a living now. Maybe you should do the same for him.”
He turned abruptly, his braids swinging haughtily.
Petty, but I flipped him off.
While waiting for my audience with the sheriff, I asked Deputy Moore if the coroner had finished her exam, half expecting that snoopy question would get eagle-eared Dawson out of his office. But it didn’t. However, she informed me that when the medical examiner from Rapid City was done, the body was being transported.
After five minutes of watching me pace in front of her desk, Kiki let me into Dawson’s office. His argument on the phone escalated, but he gestured for me to stay until he finished the call. I shook my head and handed him the envelope, my mind elsewhere.
I parked down the street from Clausen’s Funeral Home, where I had an unobstructed view of the back. One of Clausen’s hearses was parked by the fence, which meant the other one was inside the closed doors. I sat in my truck for an hour, waiting, brooding, feeling ridiculous, when the garage door finally scrolled up.
Do it. He’d do it for you.
Scrambling out of my truck, I silently bemoaned my lack of proper attire. Major Jason Hawley deserved full military dress. As the hearse passed by me, I stood at full attention, offering my salute. I held that final salute until the hearse was a black dot on the horizon, and he was really gone.
I owed him. Finding out who’d killed him was a piss-poor way to pay him back for saving my life. But it was all I had.
Three shots later I was as ready to make the call as I’d ever be.
The stone path around the foreman’s cabin was ringed with logs of varying heights and widths. Perching on two logs that formed a natural chair, I flipped open my cell phone and dialed, watching the watery beams of light contort shade and shadow.
One ring. Two rings. Three. Four. Five. I was prepared to wait until twelve, but she answered on ring nine.
“Why is it you always interrupt when I’m watching porn online?”
“You’re always watching porn online, A-Rod.”
She laughed. “You know me too damn well.”
“Does your porn watching mean you’ve got home-field advantage?” Anna never liked talking about where she was. Home-field advantage meant she was in the States. Playing for the other team—our private joke since we’d fielded the are-you-a-lesbian question numerous times—meant she was somewhere else in the world.
“Yep. So why’re you calling me, Gunny?”
“I need a reason to call you?”
“No. But you always do. You aren’t asking about updates on the soccer team. As far as I know, the roster hasn’t changed since the last time we talked.”
We’d christened our elite army squad the soccer team. “Good to know. Have you talked to the coach lately?”
“No, but I checked in with the team captain last month. She said the rainy season was brutal this year.”
That meant the team had been grounded, stuck at some base without new orders. “That’s a shame. Hopefully they’ll get to travel to an away game soon and utilize their new talent.”
“As nice as it is to know that you can make idle chitchat, Gunny, cut to the chase.”
My stomach twisted. And I thought I was ready for this conversation? I blew out a slow breath. “Okay. Remember the last time we talked, and I bitched about the Canadian oil company that’d been looking to put a freakin’ pipeline right across my land?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, they passed the first hurdle. They sent a rep