“We’re just friends.”
“Like I said, good for you, man. And I don’t mean that snarky, Hix. She’s pretty. Looks sweet. Great fucking smile. Friend or whatever, after what you been through, you deserve a smile like that aimed your way. So good for you.”
Hix didn’t reply.
But Larry was right.
More than just Greta’s smile was good for him.
Now he’d connected with her, she had his card, his number, she knew where he was at.
So he could clear his mind and focus on finding Nat Calloway.
“Not thinkin’ Nat Calloway is gonna walk in those doors, Hix.”
Hix took his attention from where it was aimed through the windows of dispatch to the outside windows facing the street and looked at Ida who took over for Reva doing the nighttime dispatch shift, three to eleven.
Dispatch wasn’t McCook County Sheriff’s dispatch. They didn’t have enough going on to have their own dispatch.
It was McCook County everything dispatch. Sheriff, fire, emergency, and a couple of hotlines (suicide and sexual assault). The county’s 911 number ran through that room so even Dansboro Police, the only town in the county that was big enough to have their own force (albeit there were only three people on that force) used that dispatch.
But the county was sleepy enough, five days a week, it was only operated from seven in the morning to eleven at night, the weekend shift going all the way to one in the morning mostly just because. The 911 calls were redirected to a service for the midnight hours due to the fact that no one called in during those hours because most the county was asleep, but it was still willing to pay for cover.
Hix had spent the day getting more of what Faith Calloway said about her husband, Nat.
Good guy. Hard worker. Family man. Loved his wife. Loved his kids. Might miss church on Sunday but only because that was one of the few chances he got to sleep in, though Faith didn’t miss it and took the kids.
He was liked.
Hell, Flynn Grady was beside himself, and not just because his foreman was missing, but because that foreman was Nat.
Hix had call to know Grady after Hix’s deputies had been called in by the sheriff of Grant County to assist with some cattle rustling mess that had happened a few years earlier.
Grady was a decent man, but he was crotchety. The kind of man you would know he liked you when he kicked the bucket and put you in his will.
But he liked Nat. So much, he’d suspended operations that day to set his hands on the roads to see if they could find him.
Not one of those men had protested or dragged their feet. They set out for their trucks practically before Grady finished giving the order.
That said a lot without using a single word.
Hix didn’t argue with this interference.
Mostly because he wanted that man found.
They’d also learned that no one thought Nat and Faith would work out, but he’d loved her at seventeen, and according to everyone they asked, he loved her now. He wouldn’t cheat. Worked too hard to get caught up in anything—another woman, booze, drugs, gambling. But it wasn’t the fact he didn’t have time, it was the fact he loved his wife too much. When he wasn’t working or on the road, he was with his family or his football league buddies.
Simple man. Simple pleasures. Simple life.
And now he was missing. No clues. His truck was nowhere to be found. They couldn’t locate his phone so it was either turned off or destroyed. Last person who saw him was one of Grady’s ranch hands and that man had seen him get in his truck and drive away.
Still, it was nearly eleven and Hix was at the station. He’d gone over his notes and copies of all his deputies’ notes and he’d done that repeatedly. He’d then gone out to the Harlequin and brought in dinner for him and Ida.
After that, he’d hung out with her in the dispatch room, his eyes often straying to the windows, his mind filled with Nat Calloway.
“You got a bad feeling,” Ida noted.
“Yup,” he agreed.
She nodded.
“You know the Calloways?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Think they go to the Methodist church.”
For some in that town, what church you attended was the social divide. Ida was a Baptist. She was one of Keller’s flock. She was a fine woman but her social stratum wasn’t all that layered.
“We don’t have much in the way of this kinda thing in this county, ’less a man or gal gets itchy feet,” she remarked. “Reckon in the big city you saw more of this. So I reckon your bad feelin’ isn’t a good thing.”
She was very right.
“Nope,” he agreed.
She leaned to him. “It’s late, Hix. Go home. Get some rest. It’s as bad as you’re thinkin’, you’re gonna need it. It isn’t, then you got a decent night’s sleep.”
It was good advice.
So Hix nodded, took the sole of his boot off the chair he’d pulled in front of him and his ass off the one he was sitting on.
He looked down at Ida.
Round, red cheeks, hair going gray and she wasn’t about to do a thing about it, something he knew because the “going” part of gray had almost went. If she dissed Lou’s House of Beauty and trimmed the long ends herself, Hix wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Your shift’s over in twenty minutes, Ida. Could wait. Walk you to your car.”
“You need company to keep your mind off things, Hix, you’re welcome to stay. But I’m used to the solitude and I like it. Got four kids at home who fight more than my husband and I did before he pulled on his boots and took off, and that’s saying something. Quiet does me a lot of good.”
Her four kids were actually four adults still living with their mother. Hix couldn’t figure out if they were sucking her dry or loyal to the bone after their daddy left her with them when they were a whole lot younger. This was mostly because she fought with them as much as she said they fight with each other.
There was love there, though, and Ida seemed content.
Not to mention, it wasn’t any of his business.
“Right, Ida. Catch you tomorrow.”
“You will, Hixon. Try to sleep good.”
He lifted his chin. Gave her a low wave. Went to his office, shut it down, shut the bullpen down, leaving the lights over reception on for Ida.
He gave her another low wave before he left, got in his Bronco and drove to his apartment.
He threw back a beer watching late night TV and trying to unwind, clear his head, find tired.
But he was still wired.
Even so, Ida was right.
Until they figured out what had become of Nat Calloway, he’d need to have his shit together so he needed his sleep.
He picked up his phone first, going to texts and finding Greta’s.
Now you got me. Hope things went ok with what you were looking into. That means hope I see you tomorrow.
That was Greta. She didn’t play games either.