Sherry’s voice said on the other end, “Parks County Sheriff.”
“Hey, Sherry. It’s Anna,” I said, suddenly not sure what I was about to ask, or how. “Uh, Winger. Is the sheriff available?” I’d never called the sheriff before. He had always demanded my time. “I mean, I need to talk to the sheriff.”
“OK, yeah, he’s back there. Let me forward you. Hey!”
“What?”
“I thought maybe you might want to come over to our house on Sunday. We’re having a cookout.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. “What’s Sunday?”
“Just a Sunday. Friends, neighbors, some family. Bring Joshua, too.”
I couldn’t imagine it. “I’ll try.”
“You’ll try? Come on, say you’ll come. You have another offer?”
“Such flattery,” I said. “I’ll check Joshua’s football schedule and let you know.”
When Sherry forwarded the call, I heard a faint click and then a ring. Then another. I wondered if he would answer at all, if Sherry had announced me, and now his punishment for the other night was to let the phone go on and on.
Finally the sheriff answered with a sigh. “You’re talking to me, then?”
“Is that how you always answer your phone?” Immediately, I knew this was the wrong way to go. I tried again. “I owe you an apology. You were trying to help and I was—I was just scared, I guess. And I took it out on you. For that, I am truly sorry.”
Silence. I waited it out.
“‘For that,’ you’re sorry,” he said.
“I’m also sorry that I insinuated—no, let me say it right.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I said rather directly that you weren’t doing your job. That is not the case. You’re doing your job as well as anyone could. Aidan’s case, for instance—”
“I’m not patting myself on the back for that one.”
Aidan’s body. My nerves leapt. “What do you mean? Why not?”
“Ms. Winger, the little boy is still missing, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You called for more than just plying me with half-assed apologies? Shoot.” I heard him let out a small puff of air and pictured him relaxing back in his chair, throwing his boots up on the corner of his desk.
“Did you actually hire a psychic to help find Aidan?”
“Aw, hell. Where did you—is that in the Spectator?”
“This morning,” I said. “Really? You did?”
“How did they ever . . .” Paper rustled in the background.
“It’s on page two, with the time line.”
“The time line? Oh, this is perfect. That’s what we need. By-the-minute recapping, in case you missed it on television, on the radio, in earlier issues of the paper.” He went silent. I let him read. “You’re in here.”
“Yes.”
“Is that OK?”
“I don’t know what I’d do about it if it weren’t.”
“Good attitude. Good,” he murmured. Still reading.
“So how is it that you don’t believe in what I do, but you believe in psychics?”
“Is that what’s bothering you? That your science has been mocked, but I’m willing to listen to what Madame Zonda has to say?”
“That’s not really her name, I hope.”
“It is not,” he said.
“But you hired her. You said you didn’t believe in my sort of—woo, wasn’t it? You didn’t believe in me, but you went ahead and hired someone who depends on vibrations—” I heard the strident screech creeping into my voice. “You said my work wasn’t real, but then you ask me to do more of it. I’m confused, I guess.”
I wished both that I could see his face right now—that I had gone over to do both the apology and the accusation in person—and that I had never called at all. What was the point? Why did I care so much? If he didn’t put any stock in what I did for a living, fine. He would stop calling. Except that he hadn’t stopped calling. There was something there, a little bit of his own methods, his manipulations, that I wanted to understand.
“Two things,” he said. I thought he was talking lower, or holding the phone closer to his mouth. I felt as though a hand had been placed on my arm; again, the calming, measured tones spared for me. I wondered what I must seem like to him. Recluse. Bitch. Wack job. He probably called me Madame Zonda behind my back. “I didn’t hire that psychic,” he said. “I never would. Never. I know some say they’ve had luck using them and all, but no.”
“Oh,” I said. “Who—”
“The Ranseys hired her. Mrs. Ransey.”
The older woman, the penitent believer in Sheriff Keller, believed in the other side, did she? My sense of rightness came flooding back. Of course—and I’d insulted his methods again. “I’m sorry I thought that you—never mind.”
“That’s what the time line says, right?”
I laughed, a weight lifting. “The media,” I said.
“Such as it is. Now the second thing?”
“Huh?” I’d forgotten his opening pronouncement. “Oh, yeah. What’s the second thing?”
“I said I didn’t put much stock into handwriting analysis,” he said. “But I happen to think we’re more than just the magic we believe in. I’m not saying I’m lining up to have my signature read or anything. That’s what you do. There’s more to me than what I do, though, so I expect the same of other people. And I never said that I didn’t believe in you.”
I sat, transfixed, trying not to breathe into the phone. I could pretend that I had already hung up, or that the line had broken while he spoke. More manipulation? Maybe this was just a prelude to asking his next favor?
He started laughing. “So you don’t take compliments well. It’s one more thing we both know about you. And you’re mad I sent you more handwriting, even if I don’t completely buy in?”
“Can we talk about that? What am I looking at here?”
“Those are copies of some chain of custody forms for our missing evidence,” he said. “Standard procedure, especially in a drug case, is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the drugs collected from the suspect upon arrest are the drugs in evidence. If the chain is broken, that’s reasonable doubt and my arrest walking out the door.”
I paged through the sheets. “I don’t see broken chains, but maybe I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“I don’t know, either,” Keller said. “But the chains are definitely broken because the drugs are gone, replaced with useless powders. The good stuff goes up someone’s nose or veins. So the chain of custody can’t be right. You see?”