Snow Blind - Lori G. Armstrong [65]
Normally this type of situation piqued my curiosity and I’d snoop around for information. Not this time. We weren’t working for Amery. If I hadn’t been 227
adamant about that fact before, I would be now. Bud Linderman played dirty. And if he played dirty with me, Martinez would kill him. The easiest way to prevent the deadly outcome was avoidance, pure and simple. I twirled the office chair around. I bumped the mouse and the previous “past history” screen filled the left corner of the monitor. My gaze landed on the Bad Doggie site.
As investigators, we had access to information sites private citizens didn’t. Nothing like searching classified CIA files. Government sites were helpful, but usually as boring as government pamphlets. The local police department had to provide a voucher to the Web site owner/server, stating the primary function of our investigative business before they’d grant us access to the sites. And we paid a ton for the privilege of using the vast pool of information. Didn’t matter we were the smallest fish in the pond.
Tip sites listed rewards, sightings, recent scams, and were primarily used by bigger investigative companies who also employed extraction and security specialists.
I clicked on the link. Bad Doggie was a snitch site modeled after anonymous tip lines in big cities. Each state had a page. Rewards were offered in some cases, but the site was not affiliated with any law enforcement agencies. The site debunked two myths: A—that criminals were computer/Internet illiterate, B—that lawbreakers 228
would turn on each other, but not turn to law enforcement. South Dakota posts dealt with poachers, illegal fossil hunting, and child support issues. The posts were infrequent and out of the realm of our normal investigative business. It surprised me Kevin bookmarked the site last week. Huh. What’d he been looking for? I imagined him checking my history files. Couples resorts in the Caribbean and the Pro Bull Riders Tour stats page. I shut down the computer and realized I’d lost two hours. Dammit. That was why I hated the Internet; it was a time suck.
My cell phone rang and I groaned. Nothing but bad news on that damn thing lately. Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes folks didn’t have the number; this wasn’t the million-dollar phone call. Honestly, I couldn’t look at the caller ID; I just answered it.
“Hello?”
“Julie? It’s Missy.”
Missy? Not another Pampered Chef party invite.
“Hey, Miss, how’s it going?”
“All right. Look. I’m not supposed to do this, and if you tell Deputy John I called you, I’ll deny it, but you’d better get to the sheriff ’s office right away.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Your dad is in jail.”
“What? When—”
“Here he comes, gotta go.”
Click.
229
Why the hell hadn’t my pushy-ass family called me? Since they’d bugged me about every other minor fucking thing in the last week? Now Dad’s in jail and my former co-worker had to break the news?
I bundled up and locked the office. The drive to the Bear Butte County Sheriff ’s Office was a complete blur, and, for once, not because of the weather. I didn’t go in the building through the administrative offices; I used the door around back in the half basement that led to booking. In the tiny entryway, I shoved everything— my purse, my shoes, my coat, my belt, even the necklace Martinez gave me— in the plastic bin for personal belongings and pushed it through the Plexiglas partition. After my stuff was checked and catalogued, the security guard buzzed me in and I passed through the metal detector. My blood pressure was near brain aneurysm range when I finally reached the booking desk. Twee manned the area. She looked like someone’s grandma. A stout, sweet-faced German descendant with salt-and-pepper hair, styled in a bouffant from the 1960s. An unassuming woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Wrong. I’d seen her fly over the counter and body 230
slam a two-hundred-pound