“Are you nuts?”
He laughed. “Yeah … the only thing she ever did well was mess around with Councilman Venegra. Because, you know, sequined knee pads.” Bergen came around the desk, handed her her walking stick and lifted her to her feet. “You’ve been working for sixteen hours straight. You’re in pain. You’re irritable. We’re in crisis mode. We need our sheriff to be alert.”
She hated that he was right.
She hated that Lacey leaped down and frisked around.
Kateri needed about ten hours of sleep before she could frisk. Yanking her arm free, she leaned heavily on her stick and marched into the patrol room. “What about you? You’ve been on duty longer than I have.”
“I did a face-plant in the break room for three hours this afternoon.”
She started to laugh. “You fit on that puny love seat?”
“I didn’t say I fit on it. I said I slept on it.” He pushed her toward the outside door. “Go get some food and some sleep. For Lacey’s sake.”
All the irritation oozed out of her. “Yes. I think I’d better.” With Lacey at her heels, she headed for the door and met Moen walking in.
He looked better, less haunted, recovered as only a young man with a clean conscience could be. He asked, “Need a ride, Sheriff?”
“No, thanks, Moen. I think we’ll walk home, work out the kinks.”
“Okay. G’night, Sheriff.” He headed inside.
She opened the door. She stepped outside.
From somewhere, she heard a deep, muffled boom!
Lacey barked once, sharply.
On the northern outskirts of town, a dark plume of smoke rose.
She stepped back inside. “Moen,” she called. “Now I need a ride.”
*
The scene was carnage; one small house exploded, houses on either side burning, three fire engines parked at the curb while their men battled the flames, and two of Virtue Falls’ policemen stood over the prostrate form of a tall, skinny, sobbing man.
She recognized him. Kevin Wilson, official loser.
“Moen, you come with me. Lacey, you stay here.” When Lacey whined pitifully, Kateri said, “We don’t want the firefighters running over you and we definitely don’t want you on the ground if there is, God forbid, another explosion.”
As always, Lacey seemed to understand. She stayed in the car, paws perched at the edge of the rolled-down window, watching eagerly.
Police officer and friend Ed Legbrandt gestured to Kateri. “You’ll want to hear this, Kateri … um, Sheriff.”
She limped over, Moen at her side. She knelt beside Kevin, grabbed his greasy hair and lifted his head. In a deliberately charming tone, she asked, “Little man, what’s the matter?”
He had a bruise across his chin, a busted lip and big wet tears. “I rented that place. Paid good cash for it. And he blew it up.”
Suspicion made her voice deepen. “He?”
Kevin sniffled. “John Terrance.”
She looked up at Legbrandt.
He nodded and mouthed: Told you so.
She did not smash Kevin’s face into the sidewalk. She thought she should get points for that. “John Terrance blew up your rented house. Why?”
“I figured … figured … figured if he wasn’t making meth anymore, someone could cash in big time. Why not me?”
“Why not indeed?”
“So I rented this place, was cooking the stuff, sold my first on the street yesterday and today I’m in the kitchen and I smell something funny. Not what I’m cooking, you know? So I turn around and there’s John, looking pissed as a yellow stream. He’s holding a can of gas, pouring it in a circle around me, and he says, ‘Better get out while you can, you miserable little…’ I didn’t hang around to hear what he called me. He was smoking a cigarette and I thought … damn it!” Kevin twisted his head so hard Kateri lost her grip on his greasy hair. He looked at the blackened explosion site. “Yesterday I bought the first ripe organic tomatoes from Joe’s Garden and he blew them up!”
Moen perked up. “Joe’s Garden has a new crop of tomatoes? They’re the best!”
“I know. Right?” Kevin said.
Kateri wiped her hand on her pants, got laboriously to her feet and grabbed Moen by the lapels. “Never mind the tomatoes. John Terrance is in town. Somewhere. Make the call, make sure every officer is looking for him. I’ll take the patrol car. And Lacey. You stick here, coordinate with Legbrandt, supervise the cleanup.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Gem Lounge.” Her phone rang. Her pager vibrated. She answered and looked at her message “Yep. The Gem Lounge. That bastard is looking for revenge. Against everyone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kateri flipped on her lights and her siren and drove hell-for-leather toward downtown.
Officer Weston reported shots fired at the Gem Lounge.
Bergen reported John Terrance was headed for the harbor; Bergen had alerted the Coast Guard, and he and Officer Chippen were in hot pursuit.
“You’ve got that covered?” she asked. “Because I’m backup at the Gem Lounge.”
“Go for it,” he said.
Three minutes later she parked along the curb where two of her cops were trying to interview the thirty excited citizens who milled around gesturing, talking and slapping each other on the back.
She took a long breath. Back-slapping constituted a situation well in hand.
She keyed into Bergen and heard him shouting, “We’ve got him cornered. He’s cornered!”
“Good man.” This would all be over soon. For now, she needed to know that Bertha was alive. With Lacey at her heels, she hurried toward the saloon. People turned to her, shouting various versions of, “He was here! John Terrance was here! And Bertha—”
“Is okay or you all wouldn’t be smiling so broadly.” She hurried through the door.
Broken bottles and glasses littered the floor, and the odor of beer, whisky and gin almost drove her backward over the threshold.
The place was empty except for Sean Weston, who stood at the bar holding a sawed-off shotgun and murmuring soothingly up at the red-faced and obviously livid Bertha … who stood on the bar kicking at the shattered liquor bottles and cursing John Terrance’s name in English, Norwegian and a few languages Kateri didn’t recognize.
Calm descended on Kateri.
The bad-tempered woman was apparently unhurt.
Kateri scooped up Lacey to protect her paws from the broken glass, strolled over to a bar stool, used a napkin to dry it and seated herself, Lacey in her lap. She waved Sean Weston away and waited until Bertha wound down. “So, Bertha, how’s it going?” she asked.
That started Bertha off again. “I just had Tom in here to build me a new bar, solid walnut, and that limp prick John Terrance slashed the wood and ruined the finish. Ruined it!”
“I can see that.” Big cuts in the bar. Deep. “What’d he use?”
“A machete.”
“And…?”
“I pulled my sawed-off shotgun out from under the bar and aimed it at him. Told him he was an idiot to bring a knife to a gunfight. I thought he was going to take another swing at me—”