“No, sir. Kirby washed out after a year of not exactly living up to his potential. Came on back to Deception Cove, got himself deputized, and now we all figure he’s just marking time until Kirk Wheeler up in Neah Bay retires.”

“Wheeler’s the sheriff?”

“In name, anyway,” Moss told him. “Though he mostly concerns himself with fishing these days. He’s pushing seventy, been threatening to call it quits for years. One of these days he’s actually going to do it, and then Makah County is all Kirby’s.”

“Kind of seems like he’s already assumed ownership,” Mason said. “Based on my limited interaction. You figure he’s an honest cop?”

Moss studied him for a beat. Looked out over his shoulder at the parking lot behind. The lot was still empty, the highway, too.

“There’s whispers,” the older man said. “Maybe you saw that truck he drives—”

“The boat, too.”

“The boat, too,” Moss agreed. “Hard to say how he’d scrape up that kind of cash on his county salary, but everyone has a theory.”

“What’s yours?”

Moss hummed something tuneless. “I mean, here’s the thing,” he said. “We have a bit of an amphetamine problem in Makah County. Now, I’m not saying Kirby’s directly involved, but he hasn’t exactly focused his efforts on curtailing the local operation.”

Mason said, “Was Jess’s husband involved in that stuff?”

“Ty?” Moss frowned. “I thought this was about a dog, Mr. Burke. What exactly are you thinking is going on here?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mason said. “Just a couple things struck me as funny, that’s all.”

The coffee machine burbled. “Just one second,” Moss said, disappearing into the back room. He returned a moment later with a bottle of Irish cream. He winked at Mason, poured them both mugs, spiked each with a splash from the bottle, and slid Mason’s mug over.

“To your health,” he said, and lifted the mug to his lips. When he put the mug down again, his expression was focused.

“I don’t know much about Ty Winslow,” he told Mason. “We didn’t exactly run in the same circles, you know how I mean?”

Mason tried his coffee. Surprisingly good, and hot enough to chase the damp cold that had followed him since he’d stepped off the bus last night.

“Let me put it this way for you,” Moss continued. “There’s two bars in this town. We got Spinnaker’s, across from the government wharf. Tim Turpin owns that one, and Tim sees himself as a real gourmet-type individual, has the locally sourced veggies and the gluten-free bread, sustainable salmon, that kind of thing.”

“And the other place?”