Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [37]
Last night he’d been a no-show. On one level it bothered me; on another level I admitted Dawson had a right to his anger as much as I did. We’d always butted heads when it came to his job, or maybe my issues with the way he did his job. Since we were both stubborn, we’d need a few days apart to cool off. Not that I missed him or anything.
I’d spent the morning helping Jake and the afternoon finishing ranch paperwork. Following a supper of peanut butter crackers and an apple, I’d crawled into bed. I counted the chinks in the log walls, the ceiling, and the floor, instead of counting sheep. Damned insomnia. But I was determined not to drink myself into a coma. I’d drifted off, dreaming of a fifty-two-inch big-screen TV, when my cell phone buzzed on the pillow. “Hello?”
“Mercy? Thank God you’re still up. I don’t know what to do. He won’t even let me see her—”
“Whoa. Slow down, Geneva. What’s going on?”
“Dawson arrested Molly!”
“Where are you?”
“At the jail.”
“Hold tight. I’ll be right there.” After three decades of rock-solid friendship, Geneva and I had hit the skids upon my permanent return to South Dakota last summer. It’d taken effort on both our parts to repair the rift, and we were almost back to normal.
Twenty minutes later, a loud argument involving a half-dozen people greeted me as I entered the sheriff’s department.
“—absolutely ridiculous! This has been going on for years!” a plump redhead insisted.
I recognized her as Brenda Simmons. She’d graduated two years before me.
“Which is why it’s past time it was stopped, Brenda,” Dawson calmly replied.
“So rather than giving them a warning, you’re throwing them in jail?”
“They’re all eighteen.”
Some wormy-looking guy with sandy-brown hair stepped forward. “It was sneaky as hell, how you and your deputy just waited out there in the field for them to show up.”
“And when they did show up, they broke the law.”
“Where’s the harm?” Brenda demanded. “It’s just a prank. Otis always gets his damn ugly statue back.”
“That’s hardly the point,” Dawson said.
Geneva waved me over.
I muttered, “Who are all these people?”
“The other parents. In addition to Molly, Sheriff Dawson arrested Jaci Carr, Robby Brinkhouse, and Lyle Evans for attempted robbery and trespassing.”
I whistled. “Heavy charges. What’d they do?”
“Snuck into Otis Brandhier’s pasture to borrow his prairie chicken statue for graduation.”
That was still an Eagle River High School tradition? I’d heeded Dad’s wishes not to participate in the annual event, but he’d never taken it as a serious crime.
“Don’t you think jail is excessive punishment?” BeeBee Carr asked me. “God knows your dad never would’ve done anything so harsh.”
I avoided meeting Dawson’s eyes.
“Wyatt Gunderson isn’t sheriff, and I don’t give a good goddamn how you all think he’d react. If he’d nipped this ‘prank’ in the bud years ago, we wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
That shut them up.
“Look, it ain’t gonna hurt any of them to spend the night in jail. Maybe next time they’re tempted to instigate a dumb prank, they’ll remember their stint behind bars and make a better decision.”
Everyone talked at once. The verbal sparring was pointless: Dawson wouldn’t budge.
Then Geneva leveled the final blow. “This is grandstanding, Sheriff. Maybe you think these pissant arrests will convince voters you’re finally doing your job, but there are plenty of us in this county who know better. And guess what? We vote, too.”
“And guess what else, Missus Illingsworth? You’ve wasted enough of the taxpayers’ time by harassing me into changing my mind.” His hard gaze encompassed the group. “We’re done. You can bail your sons and daughters out tomorrow morning at nine a.m. Deputy Jazinski will escort you out of the building.”
The beanpole deputy started herding angry parents. But Dawson said, “Miz Gunderson? A word, please?”
The parents waited, even Geneva had a hopeful look, like I could magically change Dawson’s mind.
Wrong. I shook my head at her.
As soon as they were gone, Dawson said,