“I’m sorry about this,” he said.
I flexed my shoulders and swung my arms about the way people sometimes do when they’re cold and want to warm themselves. My wrist was chafed and sore, and I wanted to rub it, but I refused, not unlike a professional baseball player who jogs nonchalantly to first base after being plunked with a fastball—I didn’t want the chief to know I was hurt. I didn’t want any of them to know how vulnerable I felt. I had no real idea where I was, but I knew it was too far from home.
I tried to make my voice sound tough. “Where are the bounty hunters?” I said.
“The two men who brought you in?” the chief said.
“Where are they?”
“They’re gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. They left before I arrived.”
“Who are they? Where can I find them?”
The chief shrugged a reply.
“Who hired them?”
The old man stepped deeper into the interrogation room. The desk officer sidled up next to him, ready to step between us if necessary.
“I hired them,” the old man said. There wasn’t a trace of regret in his voice.
“Well, I hope you at least stopped payment on the check.”
He snickered at that and stepped closer. “I’m Dewey Miller. I own most of what’s worth owning around here.”
I recognized the look in his eye. He believed in the privileges of power. He had the most, so he demanded the most. Something else, there’s an old movie that you can catch on TCM—She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Whenever one of his subordinates would say he was sorry for screwing up, Captain John Wayne would tell him, “Don’t apologize, mister. It’s a sign of weakness.” Miller was from that school.
“Excuse me if I appear less than conciliatory,” I said.
“I did what I had to do,” Miller said.
“I bet.”
“I thought you were the man who raped my daughter.”
I glanced at the teenager standing behind him. There was at least a fifty-year difference in their ages. Other differences, too. The old man wore a hooded expression of brooding anger, as if he became pissed off at the world one day and never changed. The girl’s face, however, was open and filled with virtues—strength, humility, humor, and goodness. It was not something you could fake. This was a girl that you could hurt without even trying, I told myself.
“Now you know different,” I said.
Miller nodded his head. He had nothing more to say. The teenager filled the void.
“How many times do I have to say it?” she said. “I wasn’t raped.”
Miller spun and slapped her across the mouth with a full-arm swing, driving her back so that she stumbled and nearly fell against the wall. In a sharp baritone, he shouted, “Have you no shame?”
I reached for the girl, the only one who did so, but she waved away my assistance. She regained her balance and gave her father an oddly neutral, unangered look while she touched the corner of her mouth where the blow had fallen. Satisfied that nothing was broken or bleeding, she let her hand fall to her side.
“No, I don’t have any shame,” she said. “At least none for myself.”
She turned slowly and left the room.
Miller called to her, “Saranne.” She didn’t stop.
Miller gradually became aware that we were all staring at him. He saw the contempt in my eyes. I called him a bastard. His head jolted upward. There was a kind of hysterical expression on his face, and he clenched his fists, but I knew nothing would come of it. I wasn’t chained to the table anymore.
“She’s my daughter,” he said.
“Why don’t you treat her like it?”
Eventually his hands went limp, and he rubbed his face with them. He took Tracie’s chair and sat looking at nothing in particular. He wasn’t going to apologize for this, either.
The desk officer patted his shoulder in a forgiving manner. “It’s tough,” the officer said. “A man could lose his head.”
So much for law enforcement in Libbie, South Dakota, I told myself.
“Mr. Miller brought Saranne here to confirm your identity,” the chief said.
“Really? I thought he did it to show us how tough he was.”
Miller gave me a look that he probably thought was threatening and clenched his fists again. All he did was remind me how much I wanted to hit someone, anyone.
“The bounty hunters,” I said. “I want their names. I want to know where I can find them.”
“You don’t talk to me that way,” Miller said.
“One way or the other I’ll have the names before I leave. Get used to the idea.” I silenced any potential argument by turning my back on him and facing the chief. “The Imposter—did he actually pretend to be me, or was it just a coincidence that he was using a name that happened to be the same as mine?”
“He had your actual address. He said he retired early from the St. Paul Police Department. He said he helped find some gold that a gangster hid in the city seventy-five years ago. He said he had numerous friends in high places. Does that sound like you?”