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Lupe disappeared. Joa
The photos of the men were all formal portraits. Most of them had posed in Western garb that included visible weaponry. Their faces were set in serious, unapproachable expressions. Joa
As Joa
“Mr. Beaumont?” she asked, holding out her hand and straining to sound more cordial than she felt. She wasn’t especially interested in making him feel welcome, since he was anything but. As he turned toward her, she realized he stood well over six feet. Naturally, at five feet four, she felt dwarfed beside him. She held herself erect, hoping to appear taller.
“I’m Sheriff Brady,” she said.
As he returned her handshake, Joa
“Glad to meet you,” he said, pumping her small hand with his much larger one. “I’m Beaumont – Special Investigator J.P. Beaumont. Most people call me Beau.”
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I believe we need to talk,” he replied.
“In that case,” she said, “we’d better go to my office.”
I HAD BEEN WAITING for Sheriff Brady for several minutes, but she surprised me when she walked up behind me without making a sound. Her bright red hair was cut short. The emerald-green eyes that studied me could have sparked fire. She wore a dark olive-green uniform, which looked exceptionally good on her since she filled it out in all the right places. If it hadn’t been for the forbidding frown on her face, she might have been pretty. Instead, she looked as if she had just bitten into an apple and discovered half a worm. In other words, she wasn’t glad to see me.
I followed Sheriff Brady from the public lobby into her private office, realizing as I did so that I hadn’t expected her to be so short, in every sense of the word. She waited until she had closed the door behind us before she really turned on me. “What exactly do you want?” she demanded.
I know how, as a detective, I used to hate having outside interference in one of my cases, so I didn’t expect her to welcome me with open arms. But I hadn’t foreseen outright hostility, either.
“We have a case to solve,” I began.
“We?” she returned sarcastically. “I have a case to solve. My department has a case to solve. There’s no we about it.”
“The Washington State Attorney General’s Office has a vested interest in your solving this case,” I said.
“So I’ve heard,” she responded, crossing her arms and drilling into me with those amazingly green eyes.
In that moment Sheriff Joa
Like Joa
“Look,” I said impatiently, “today happens to be my birthday. There are any number of ways I’d rather be spending it than being hassled by you. So how about if we cut the crap and get our jobs done so I can go back home.”
She never even blinked. “Your going home sounds good,” she said. “Now, if the Washington State Attorney General is so vitally interested in this case-”
“The AG’s name is Co
“If Mr. Co
I set my briefcase down on a nearby conference table and flicked open the lid. “You can,” I said, extracting Latisha Wall’s file from my briefcase. “That’s why I’m here.” I handed it over to her. She took it. Then, without opening the file or even glancing at it, she walked over to her desk and put it down.
“I’m delighted to know that Mr. Co
The lady was getting under my skin. I pulled out a business card and handed it to her.
“I’m not an emissary,” I said. “As you can see, I’m an investigator – a special investigator – working for the attorney general. Latisha Wall was in our witness protection program. Mr. Co
“In other words, your witness protection program has a leak, and you’re the plumber sent here to plug it,” Sheriff Brady returned.
“Exactly,” I said.
She recrossed her arms. “Tell me about Latisha Wall,” she said.
I had read through the file several times by then. I didn’t need to consult it as I related the story. “After graduating from high school, Latisha Wall did two stints in the Marines where she worked primarily as an MP. Once she got out of the service, she went to work for an outfit from Chicago called UPPI. Ever heard of them?”
“I know all of that,” Sheriff Brady said.
“You do?”
She smiled. “We only look like we live in the sticks, Mr. Beaumont. Have you ever heard of the Internet? My chief deputy, Frank Montoya, was able to glean that much information from newspaper articles. What else?”
Score one for Joa
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Please do,” she said. She motioned me into a chair and then sat behind a huge desk that was so impossibly clean it was frightening. I worry about people with oppressively clean desks.