I opened the door and climbed into the sheriff’s cruiser. The sheriff drove swiftly and surely along the rain-blackened, arrow-straight highway that ran straight as a knife blade through the darkly dripping pine forest. The fog and misty rain had settled even lower upon the terrain, hiding the top half of the trees and covering the land in a blanket of cold and foreboding dreariness that seemed to carry within its ghostlike folds the guilty permanence of sin.

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

WHILE ZIMMER HANDLED A PHONE call, I took a sip of the surprisingly good coffee and looked around the office. Most official sanctums I’ve been in have at least one I Love Me wall, decorated with photos of the office holder being honored by other people of even higher rank and position. Sheriff Zimmer’s photos were all of other people. Friends and family, I could only assume, or perhaps, simply people he admired.

On the corner of a nearby bookshelf sat a small framed black-and-white photo of a group of combat soldiers in the desert, posed self-consciously in front of a still smoldering tank. The men in the picture were filthy with the grime, dirt, and stress of combat. They looked exhausted, but the grin each man wore on his face told the real story—they had lived through a deadly fight they probably hadn’t expected to survive—and were ecstatic with the joy of finding themselves still among the living. A closer look told me it was a squad of marines, and that the man in the middle of the group was Sheriff Zimmer in younger days.

Zimmer finished his call and gave me his attention at last.

“My deputy tells me that Leon will indeed be spending the night in the hospital, at county taxpayer expense, as usual.”

It didn’t seem that I needed to reply, so all I said was, “Uh-huh.”

Sheriff Zimmer looked at me quietly for a few seconds. I believe he was letting the silence build, hoping I’d say something. I didn’t and merely held his look.

“What the hell did you hit Leon with?” he asked, breaking the silence at last. “That boy went down like he’d been poleaxed.”

“It’s called a drop punch,” I replied. “I learned it from an old cop in Yonkers, New York.”

“Well, it seems to be right effective. Maybe you can show me how it works sometime,” he said, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, and placing both hands over a knee. “But first, why don’t you tell me what brought about that little altercation. Most people don’t walk away from a fracas with Leon Wren. In fact, I’ve got two outstanding assault warrants on him right now—this one makes three. And if I could dig up some witnesses or other proof, I’d have him up on a murder charge or two.”