Paradise Valley (Highway Quartet #4)

“I’m just here for my things,” Cassie said. “I’ll grab them and get out.”

“Sheriff Kirkbride is on his way back,” Judy said. “I’m sure he’d like to talk with you.”

“Not tonight.”

Judy nodded. She wore her usual dark suit and there were a few strands of silver in her severe black haircut Cassie hadn’t noticed before. Judy was hard to get close to, Cassie thought. The two of them had tiptoed around each other when Cassie first joined the department but they’d later formed a kind of professional relationship based on mutual respect.

Judy looked left and right down the empty hallway and lowered her voice. “I’m very sorry about what happened today. I think you didn’t deserve it and … I’m just sorry it happened that way.”

Cassie paused for a moment. “Thank you, Judy.”

“I know the sheriff feels the same way. So do a lot of other people.”

“That means a lot,” Cassie said. “It really does.”

Judy implored Cassie to come to her desk and Cassie got closer.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” Judy whispered. “Really. I’ll give you my number at home.”

Judy scribbled the number on a pad and tore off the top sheet and handed it to Cassie.

“Thank you,” Cassie whispered back while folding the sheet and slipping it into her jacket pocket. She wasn’t sure why Judy had done that.

“Why are we whispering?” Cassie asked.

“Because there’s someone in your office,” Judy said, gesturing with the tilt of her head down the hallway.

“I thought she was supposed to be here only until the sheriff came back from his injury.”

“We all thought that,” Judy whispered.

*

ASSISTANT COUNTY ATTORNEY DEANNA Palmer said “Come in” when Cassie knocked on the slightly open door. Cassie knocked with enough force to fully open it so she could step inside.

When Palmer saw it was Cassie the forced welcoming smile on her face faded.

“It’s me. I’m just here long enough to gather up my personal stuff,” Cassie said.

Palmer wore a camel-colored business suit over a white blouse. She had short red hair and a smattering of freckles over the top of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Cassie had never worked with her, but her reputation was that she was as fiercely loyal to Tibbs as Cassie was to Kirkbride.

“Everything is boxed up along the wall,” Palmer said.

Cassie noticed that the credenza behind the desk no longer had her photos of Ben and Jim and that her diplomas from the University of Montana and the Montana State Law Enforcement Academy were no longer there. Instead, there were framed shots of Palmer on a ski trip, on a rafting trip, with Tibbs shaking hands with the president in Washington, and her two small children. No husband, though. Palmer was divorced.

Palmer had added a banker’s lamp to the desk that illuminated her in a soft yellow glow. Cassie’s computer—maybe it was Palmer’s computer now—was on but turned at an angle so she couldn’t see the screen. The rest of the room was dark.

“Can I ask how you got in here?” Palmer asked while Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. She could see two small open-top boxes on the carpeting near the wall. She recognized her photos and diplomas stacked neatly inside as well as spare makeup and medication she’d stored in her desk.

“I used the keypad outside and in the elevator.”

“We’ll need to get that changed.”

Cassie said, “Not for me you won’t. I won’t be coming back.”

“So I heard,” Palmer said. “Do you want me to get you some help with your belongings?”

Not, Cassie noted, Can I help you?

“I’m fine,” she said, putting the smaller box inside the larger one and lifting it up. Together, they weighed practically nothing.

“If I find anything else I’ll leave it at the front desk and give you a call,” Palmer said. “But I think that’s everything.”

“Seems like it,” Cassie said.

Palmer nodded and turned back to her computer screen. When Cassie didn’t immediately step out of the doorway, she looked over with her eyebrows arched.

“Is there something else?”

“Lottie Westergaard is down in the lobby. She’s hoping someone up here will take a personal interest in a missing person’s case. Her grandson Kyle has been missing a month and she isn’t feeling any love from the sheriff’s department about the progress of the investigation.”

Palmer took a deep breath and waited a moment before answering as if she were putting aside what she really wanted to say.

“As you can imagine, we’ve had a lot on our plate this past month.”

“Oh, I can imagine it. But maybe if you took a few minutes and reviewed the file and just talked to her—”

“That’s not what I do here.” Crisp. Abrupt.

“I guess I’m not sure what it is you do,” Cassie said. “If nothing else, you could ask one of the deputies to speak with her. I think if she was assured that someone up here was taking Kyle seriously that might really provide some comfort to her.”

“Shouldn’t you be talking to the sheriff?” Palmer asked.

“He’s not here, but I will.”

“Then I think we’re done.”

“There’s another boy missing with Kyle named Raheem Johnson.”

Palmer practically threw herself back in her chair in exasperation. She said, “It’s not that I’m uncaring or unsympathetic so don’t you dare put that on me. You have no idea how many things are going on around here right now. We’re grossly understaffed and the sheriff hasn’t been back long enough to get a handle on all of the problems that occurred during his long sick leave.”

“He had a concussion,” Cassie said.

“And we know why, don’t we?” Palmer snapped. Then: “We get calls every day about missing people because folks around here are transient. Some guy wants to collect the money he’s owed from another guy but he can’t find him. A landlord is looking for the tenant that skipped rent. So many of these ‘missing’ people didn’t really put down roots here. They just go without telling anyone else at the time and leaving mortgages, leases, and car payments. They came to work for big money in the oil field and when they find the jobs have dried up they just pack up in the middle of the night. Every day, folks drop off the keys to their houses at the bank on their way out of town and a lot of them don’t even bother to do that.”

“They’re both fourteen,” Cassie said.

Palmer threw up her hands. “There was a man in here a few weeks ago saying his wife had gone missing. According to him, he came home for dinner and she just wasn’t there. So add her to the list of unsolved cases, I guess.

“Talk to the sheriff you love so much,” Palmer said with finality. “Tell him to get his act together before the whole county spins out of control. But don’t bring your problems to me.”

“Go tell that to Lottie Westergaard down in the lobby,” Cassie said.

Deanna Palmer huffed and turned back to her computer.

Cassie resisted the urge to hurl the boxes at the woman’s head. At that moment she was grateful they’d taken her gun away.

*

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