“Could be,” Boyd said. “Ain’t many Mabens.”
Harvey blew out a stream of smoke and turned in the chair and bent over and let out a gruff cough.
“You ain’t supposed to smoke that in here.”
The sheriff raised up. “Put on a khaki skirt and cop the attitude of a rattlesnake and I got a secretary’s job ready for you.”
Boyd waved at the smoke cloud. “What now?”
“Why don’t you ride back over to the shelter and talk to them? See what she looked like. Any tattoos or anything. If she had a car and what kind was it and whatever else.”
“All right,” Boyd said and he stood up and walked around behind his chair. He paused and looked around the sheriff’s office. Framed newspaper clippings and certificates of duty and pictures of grandchildren were hung without pattern. A hat rack stood in the corner and held Harvey’s gun belt and a green John Deere hat and a full-length raincoat with PIKE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT in block letters across the back.
“I swear to God I should just pack up and go home,” Harvey said. “Hard to believe I gave up being a park ranger for this headache of a life.”
“How many times you gonna tell me that?”
“Gets harder to believe, though. Don’t it? I don’t even understand it myself. All I had to do all day was ride around and wave to men in boats across the dam. Watch kids play on the sandbanks and watch their mommas in their bathing suits with their pretty legs stretched out. Talk to campers, take a beer if offered. Traded all that for car wrecks and wife beaters and fools with guns. And now this crazy meth shit on top of all else. Teeth rotting and brain eating itself. Why the hell would I trade sunrises and sunsets for this?”
Boyd didn’t answer. He then asked Harvey if he could have a cigar.
“Didn’t I just tell you to go and do something?”
“Yeah, but I’m gonna need a couple of minutes to recover.”
The sheriff pulled open a drawer and took out a cigar and handed it to him across the desk. “From what?”
Boyd reached down and took a lighter that was sitting on a pile of papers. “You tell such gutwrenching sad stories I got to cope somehow. I swear to God I’m gonna bust out crying like a little girl next time you start talking about sunsets.”
The sheriff leaned back in his chair and crossed his heels on the edge of the desk and said I wish to God you’d go do something. Boyd flicked the lighter and huffed and puffed until the end of the cigar glowed orange and the fog in the room spread into all corners.
“Maben,” Harvey said.
“Yep.”
“Maybe I knew her momma.”
“She still around?”
“Nah. She wasn’t no good. If it’s the woman I’m thinking about.”
“This Maben had a kid with her,” Boyd said.
“And that is the beginning and the end of what we know.”
“That’s it.”
“Then take your free cigar and go find out something else.”
41
BOYD HADN’T TOLD THE SHERIFF THE PART ABOUT RUSSELL AND THE woman at the Armadillo. Caroline. Wasn’t much to go on but he figured it was worth riding by the bar and asking, deciding to wait until later to go visit the shelter. The Armadillo didn’t open until around one so he lost a couple of hours riding the highways. He dragged a dead deer out of the middle of the road. Ate lunch at the truck stop so that he could look around. See if maybe they were missing something.
He finally drove downtown to the bar and he walked in. It was dark even in midday, lit only by a row of lights that shined on the liquor shelves behind the bar. He heard a clamor and he called out and then a man in a sleeveless shirt came through the swinging door behind the bar. He held a case of beer and he set it on top of one of the coolers and looked at the deputy and hoped he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“How you doing?” Boyd asked and he sat down on a bar stool.
“Fine. You?”
“Not complaining. Not right now.”
The bartender’s tattoos covered most of his arms and he wore a silver earring in each ear.
“Mind if I ask you a thing or two?” Boyd asked.
“Nope.”
“You don’t happen to know a woman named Caroline. Comes in here from time to time.”
The bartender opened the case of beer. Pressed his lips together. Seemed to be thinking. Boyd knew the look. The look of someone trying to figure out how to answer.
“She’s in no trouble,” he said. “None at all. Nobody is.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody mentioned so far. You know her or not?”
He slid open a cooler and took beers from the box and placed them in and the bottles tapped against one another in small clangs. “I think I know who you’re talking about,” he said.
“What’s she look like?”
“Not too damn bad,” he said.
“Come on. Gimme something.”
The bartender shrugged. “Brown hair. Some freckles.”
“How old?”
“Depends on the light.”
“Ballpark.”
“Thirtysomething. Fortysomething?”
“Don’t know a last name, do you?”