“Can’t really say. I’m just following up on any leads I can get.”
“I didn’t know there was a sheriff’s office in Paradox Valley.”
Yeah, right you didn’t.
“It’s myself and one deputy, sir. Joint arrangement between Montrose and Montezuma. A requirement of the Japanese consortium.”
“I heard about that.” He muttered a racist epithet.
Jude forced her face to remain impassive. “Yep, seems like before long there’s not going to be much of this country left for Americans.” She manufactured a sigh and stepped back from the door. “Well, thanks for your time. You have a nice day, sir.”
She had only made it three paces when Hawke took the bait, “You new to Colorado, Detective?”
Jude stopped walking and offered a polite smile. “You guessed that right. Originally from D.C.”
“What brought you out West?”
He’d hear the official version sooner or later, if he hadn’t already. May as well use it to her advantage. “I needed a change. I was working for the FBI but I, er…I wasn’t comfortable with certain aspects of my work for personal reasons, so I quit. Figured local law enforcement might be a better place for me.”
Her disenchanted fed act seemed to play pretty well with Hawke. Caution vied with curiosity in his expression. “Those aspects you’re talking about wouldn’t have anything to do with depriving Americans of their right to privacy, would they?”
“I really can’t discuss that. All I can say is recent changes didn’t sit well with my personal views and there comes a time when you have to stand up and be counted.”
“Which is something I pride
myself
on,” her subject promptly asserted. He ran a hand over his naked head, smoothing back imaginary hair.
Jude blurted, “My dad didn’t fight for this country to have it taken over by—” She broke off in a display of professional prudence. “I need to be getting along now, sir.”
Amazingly, Hawke went for it and actually took a step outside his fortress. Jude couldn’t imagine he would be suckered so easily by a man. But it seemed like a combination of loneliness and sexism was working against him. The guy was obviously starved of female company, not to mention being so damned ugly even the most deluded sycophant in his movement probably wouldn’t get naked with him. It had to get old, sitting out here all day examining your navel lint and trying to come up with astute new ways to sell theories about international Jewish financiers running America. Especially since nowadays anyone who bothered to read the newspapers knew the Chinese funded the deficit and big oil called the shots.
“Detective, listen,” he was emboldened to declare, “you’re not alone.”
Jude greeted this gesture of solidarity with an innocent smile, like his meaning had gone right past her. Guys like Hawke knew their organizations were targeted by undercover agents and were paranoid by nature. She didn’t want to appear too eager to bare her soul.
“I appreciate that, sir. If everyone in the community took such a supportive attitude it would make my job a whole lot easier. Bye now.”
Their subject was full of surprises. He walked her to the Dakota and gallantly opened the door for her.
Acting like she was fighting off a girlish flutter, she touched her hair, checked the buttons at her collar, and said, “Well, thank you. Mr.”—she consulted her notebook—“Mr. Hawke?”
“Correct. Harrison Hawke.” He watched her face closely for a reaction.
Jude gave him a smile she hoped fell somewhere between coy and unaware and got into the truck. “It was a pleasure, Mr. Hawke.” She started the motor.
He bared his teeth in an uneasy version of a smile. “Come by again if you’re in the area, Officer.”
She waved cheerfully and drove off, wondering if it could possibly be this easy. Bureau wisdom held that even the most cynical and unappealing males were easily convinced that a woman might find them irresistible. Hawke, it seemed, was no exception, her badge notwithstanding. But it was equally possible that he had made her as a fed the moment he set eyes on her, and was merely playing along to see what she was up to, keeping the enemy close. Jude smiled. She enjoyed chess, especially with an arrogant opponent. The win was so much more satisfying.
*
When she got back to the station, Smoke’m was howling and Tulley was in tears. Her colleague had hauled out their small television and was watching a film in an apparent bid to distract himself from the source of his upset. Jude pretended not to notice the soggy Kleenex piled on his desk. Clearly, congratulations on a successful date were not in order.
She eyed the TV screen and groaned at the sight of subtitles. Still, it made a change from
Fargo
, his regular fix. “Foreign movie?” she asked, unbuttoning her shirt and stripping down to her white tee.
As a detective, she spent a fair amount of her time in civilian attire, but she wore a uniform when she wanted to make her presence felt. The canyon residents seemed to appreciate having visible law enforcement for a change.
“It’s called
Osama
. It’s about this girl in Afghanistan. She had to pretend to be a boy so she could work, otherwise she and her mom were going to starve.” Tulley got all choked up. “Then the mullahs made her go to their weird religious school and chant the Quran and all. But they found out she was a girl because she got her period.”
“Ugly, huh?”
“Now they’ve buried this foreign doctor up to her neck and they’re going to stone her to death.”
“Fucking barbarians.”
“I can’t watch it anymore.” Tulley gathered the used tissues and consigned them to the trash.
Jude turned off the DVD and flipped through the latest stack of movies her sidekick had ordered off Netflix. “For Chrissakes, can’t we get some normal films for a change?” she grumbled. “This stuff is so depressing.”
“I want to learn about other places. Not everyone is like us.”
“What about
Kill Bill Volume Two
?
I bet that’s a blast.”
But Tulley was still hating the mullahs. “We did the right thing going in there. Those guys are evil.”
“Yeah, well, we put them in power. Bin Laden and his asshole buddies got their start on our dime. This is called pigeons coming home to roost. Or, in this case, Stinger missiles.”
Tulley absorbed this fact with the skepticism of a true patriot. “I think you’re mistaken about that.”
“I’m sure you do.” Jude didn’t want to get into it. Why disillusion the guy? She had to work with him. “So, how was the picnic?” It seemed safe to ask now that he’d regained control of his emotions.
“She liked the scarf.”
That was a start. “You’re back sooner than I expected.”
Tulley looked uncomfortable. “She…Something happened.”
Jude pictured an awkward grope and Tulley getting his face slapped. Personally, she wouldn’t be sobbing over the likes of Alyssa Critch, but then she wasn’t a born-again Christian male who thought he’d have to wait until his wedding night to get any. “Want to talk about it?”
“She was very…aggressive.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know what to do, her being smaller and a woman.” He said this with a catch in his voice that emphasized something odd Jude had noticed in his speech pattern, a halting rhythm that seemed almost singsong at times. “If I’d pushed her, I might have hurt her.”
“Are you saying she tried it on?” Jude felt stoned.
This
had him sobbing in his beer?
Mutely, he opened his collar and pointed to a dark purple mark. It was more than a hickey. The virgin had gnawed on him.
Jude managed not to laugh. “Guess you weren’t expecting that.”
“She handled me. You know—there.” Unlike 99.9 percent of the straight male population, Tulley, it seemed, did not count crotch grabs by young females among his daily fantasies.
Jude reminded herself that unwanted sexual fondling was not a joke, even if the victim
was
a six foot male. “So how did you deal with these advances?”
“I told her it was too soon for hanky-panky.”
Hanky-panky
. The last time she’d heard that expression was from her grandmother, who made pronouncements about teen promiscuity and venereal disease throughout Jude’s childhood.
“Maybe she was just trying to let you know she’s not as uptight as her old man,” she said, finding that hard to believe.
A more likely explanation was some form of entrapment, her suspicious mind suggested. Were there still people who believed a man had to marry a girl he’d “compromised”? In this backwater, anything was possible. Was it her place to warn Tulley? She felt like a big sister to him at times, but this was the kind of situation that called for a man-to-man conversation, a talk with a guy he could look up to. She was puzzled that he seemed to have no buddies. He had plenty of brothers, but none he was close to. From what Jude had observed, his family had issues with him leaving town and getting an education. She had the impression that instead of being proud of him, they felt betrayed on some level.
“So, how did you leave things with her in the end?” she asked, resigning herself to the role of mentor.
“She still wants me to come to church with them on Sunday.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“Okay, I guess.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“Tell me something. Are you interested in this girl? As in, attracted.”
“Well, she’s decent and from a good family. She’s—”
“I’m not asking about her qualifications as a prospective wife. I’m asking if you want to kiss her.”
The ears changed color. “Not really.”
“Well, I have to tell you, that probably means she’s not the right girl for you.”
“The book says look beyond the flesh.”
“Okay. But it doesn’t say ignore the flesh entirely, does it? Listen, think about other girls you’ve dated. How did you feel about kissing them?”
“It was okay. I’ve never had a steady girlfriend. Guess that would be different.”
“You haven’t? Not even in high school?”
“I was friends with some girls. But we weren’t serious. Then I was at the police academy and then I moved out here.” Tulley shook his head in sober resignation. “There’s a woman shortage. Seems like all the nice girls already have boyfriends.”
Listening to these feeble excuses, Jude tried not to leap to the obvious conclusion. Some people were late starters. Tulley’s lack of interest in women and the odd lilting way he spoke did not have to mean he was gay. And since she wasn’t about to pop that particular question, she said, “You could maybe let Alyssa know you’d like to be her friend but you’re not looking for more than that right now.”
“I don’t think she’ll take that real well.”
“They never do.”
Tulley’s expression said he could buy that. “Why aren’t you married? Never met the right guy?”
“Can’t see that happening, I’m afraid.”
“Ever get lonely?”
Jude contemplated the grinding hollowness she felt fairly often these days. “Sometimes. How about you?”
“It’s been better since I got Smoke’m.”
“Maybe you should think about spending social time with some of the guys. Isn’t there a poker game Tuesday nights?”
He shifted restlessly. “Yeah, but they’re not looking for anyone else.”
Jude wondered what the deal was with Tulley and the other deputies. She’d heard a few remarks about him being a loner and sensed puzzled tolerance rather than hostility in their manner toward him. Come to think of it, they treated her much the same way. Maybe it was do with their unique status as a remote office. The Cortez crowd plainly envied them the perks of a cozy situation away from the sheriff’s eye, not to mention their glamorous new profile, operating the only K-9 unit with a specialist cadaver hound. Some people got all the breaks.