“That’s good,” she muttered, tapping away. “Spin this also as a PSA, remindin’ folks they should look after themselves.”
He didn’t like the idea of spinning a murder any way, but if there was a way it had to be spun, Hix would pick that one.
The front door opened and Hix looked to it to see Henry Blatt, McCook’s last sheriff, strolling through.
“Hope you ain’t talkin’ to the press, boy,” he declared loudly, his gaze swinging from Terra to Hix.
Terrific.
“Sheriff Blatt, what’s your take on what’s happened to Nat Calloway?” Terra called out as Blatt sauntered right to the swinging half door and also right through it.
“My take is no comment,” he stated and kept talking and walking. “Drake, wanna talk to you. Office.”
Hix watched him go, sighed and looked to Terra.
“Just to say, off the record, which is not something a reporter usually throws out there, but thank God you’re in that office instead of him, this happened in this town, Hix,” Terra murmured, lifted her tablet his way and said, “Thanks. You shoot me the details of that truck, I’ll have some text to you to look over before I post it on the website. Work for you?”
“Yeah, Terra, thanks.”
She nodded, moved, waved to Reva and walked out.
Hix turned to the half door and saw Reva in the door to dispatch.
“That pompous ass messes things up for you and the Calloway family, Hixon, you’ll have another shooting on your hands,” Reva announced.
Reva was a petite, very round, older version of Ida but with short, dyed-brown hair teased into a helmet style that oddly suited her.
However, whereas Ida was a sage who was relatively mellow, regardless that her family might or might not be significantly dysfunctional, Reva had the wisdom of her years and was a ball-buster, which might be the reason why her son was a heart surgeon in Omaha and her daughter flew jets for the Air Force.
“It’ll be all right,” he told her.
“It better be,” she shot back, turned and flounced to her desk.
Hix went through the swinging door and right to his office, relieved to see Blatt at least had it in him not to be sitting in Hix’s chair.
He was standing, staring at the whiteboard, and the second Hix hit the room, Blatt turned to him, clapped his hands, rubbed them together and asked, “Right, run it down for me.”
“Henry—”
Blatt lifted a hand his way. “Don’t give me that. This is serious. You need all the help you can get.”
“We got it covered.”
Blatt’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll repeat, don’t give me that shit, boy.”
Hix let his deputies call him by his first name and he’d never, maybe even with a gun to his head, though he hoped that was never tested, refer to one of them as “boy,” “son,” “girl,” or “gal.”
Until he’d retired, Hix had never called Blatt “Henry,” but Hix had been called “boy” almost exclusively, unless Blatt was feeling soft-hearted, then he’d call Hix “son.”
Hix hated it.
But right then, the priority was stopping a retired sheriff who’d never investigated a murder in his entire career interfering with a murder investigation. It was not telling the man how he felt about being forty-two, the elected sheriff and being called “boy.”
“Due respect, Henry, I understand you wanna help but the best way you can help is let us get on with this case.”
“I know every inch of this county and practically every soul in it.”
The first was true. The second, even with a county that unpopulated, it was still large in land mass, so it couldn’t even come close to being true.
“You happen onto a five-year-old, white, Ford F150 with McCook County plates that shouldn’t be anywhere but the Grady ranch or a house on Emerson, not much you can do,” Hix told him.
“You run it down for me, maybe I’d have other ideas,” Blatt returned.
“Henry, I got some calls to make and then I gotta get out there and see if I can make some leeway in finding out who killed the father of two little kids. Again, respect, but I don’t have time for this.”
“I’m here to help.”
“And I’m tellin’ you, best way you can do that is let me get on with doing my job.”
Blatt gave him a scowl. “That isn’t respect.”
“And just to point out,” he tossed out his hand to indicate the both of them in that room having that conversation, “this isn’t respect.”
Blatt blew out a breath, broke eye contact, lifted a hand to squeeze the back of his neck, dropped it, then looked again to Hix.
“Faith is my wife’s sister’s great-niece. My sister-in-law is married to Faith’s great-uncle.”
Damn.
It was true that Blatt was a blowhard, but outside of liking a bit too much his position of authority, he’d always given indication he was also about serving his citizens.
He just did it in a pompous-assed way.
“Then how you can help is keep an eye out for Nat’s truck and look after Faith. She’s gonna have a lotta people in her space thinkin’ they’re helping when they’re probably not. If you can shield her so she can get on with her grief without playing hostess to half the town, you’ll be doin’ a lot.”
Blatt didn’t look like he liked it, but he did look like he was considering it, then he came to a decision.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll spend the day on Faith’s porch. Make sure she’s got quiet to take a nap or somethin’.”
Hix bit back a sigh of relief.
“I’m sure she’d be grateful.”
Blatt nodded.
Hix got out of his way when Blatt started toward the door.
The man stopped when he was in line with him.
“Find this fucker, son,” he ordered, fire in his eyes, wearing his sixty-eight years on his face.
He knew Faith and he cared for her.
He also knew Nat and he wanted the man who ended his life to pay for it.
“We’re throwin’ everything we got at that, Henry.”
Blatt nodded, drew in a big breath and walked out Hix’s door.
Hix was back at his desk, making his last calls, approving the notice Terra sent to him after he’d emailed her the details on Calloway’s truck, fielding other calls from papers in the county, when his cell on the desk beeped again.
He looked to it and it was another text from Reva. This time it said, Hope.
His eyes went to the window but Reva texting him because she couldn’t phone him seeing as he was on the phone had taken too much time.
A knock came at the door and his gaze turned there to see Hope standing in it, her face soft.
Shit.
He did what he could to make the call he was on short and then ended it.
The minute he put the handset in the receiver, still in the door, she called quietly, “Hey.”
“Hope, whatever this is, I really can’t do it now,” he returned.
Unsurprisingly, he said that and his ex-wife walked right in.
Hix rose from his seat.
“You doin’ okay?” she asked.
“I’m working.”
“I know,” she said, again quiet. “I heard, Hix. God.” She shook her head coming to a stop right across the desk from him. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. It’s had to have been rough.”
“I wasn’t married to him, Hope.”
“I know, but you . . .” She looked to the windows before she came back to him. “You never liked the murders in Indy.”