“Out of what? You don’t even know where to go up there.”
“I’m a big boy. I have an idea. Charles Alan Watkins. The town of Templeton. It’s about four hours, give or take. It’s already in the GPS.”
“You have to take me! You don’t know them. What are you going to go up and say, ‘Uh, I know this’ll sound a little weird, but you know that accident everyone’s talking about … well did your husband know someone named Adrian, who might’ve had some reason to, um … kill him?’ They’re a simple farming family. They won’t even talk to you. Trey’s funeral is tomorrow. You just can’t intrude.”
“I’ve done this once or twice before, Dani. I think I can finesse the details. I’m not negotiating this. You just go to work.”
“Screw work. I can get have someone to handle my shift in ten minutes. I’ll be dressed in five. C’mon, Ty, you need me to go up there with you. Allie won’t open up to you. You know she won’t. At the very least, I can go to his funeral. Which I ought to anyway.” Her towel slipped down, half exposing a breast.
Hauck turned away. “Besides, it could be dangerous. Would you put something over yourself, please?”
“Why, dangerous? I can handle myself.” She tightened the towel back up. “Jesus, you’re thinking I’m right, don’t you! You learned something since I saw you last night and now you think I’m right! C’mon, Uncle Ty, what is it you know?”
His silence gave him away.
“Holy shit, I knew it! I knew it from the second I saw him there, in that eddy. Poor Trey … He got caught up in something, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know …”
“Uncle Ty, I’m going! That’s just the way it is. You wait for me, you hear!” She jumped up. “Blu, you watch him. Don’t let him move.” She ran into the bedroom, her towel flying off and exposing her backside as she bolted through the door. A tattoo on her shoulder. Before he averted his eyes.
He thought about just leaving while she was getting dressed, but now he knew she would only hop in her car and follow. Then he thought about maybe disabling her car. Disconnecting the battery or something. Or even dragging her ass back to Wade and throwing her back in a cell.
No, none of that would work, he realized. Other than the last thing.
She’d follow him.
Blu sat there staring at him, his large brown eyes sagging. “You take your job pretty seriously,” Hauck said to him.
He yelled into her bedroom, “You do exactly what I tell you, you hear? This isn’t a game, going up there. People are dead. You don’t open your mouth unless I say so. And then it’s only what I tell you to say. Understood?”
He could hear her opening and closing drawers, and running into the bathroom.
“You hear …?”
“Okay, I hear! I hear!” she yelled back, amid sounds of hastily throwing her things together.
“And when I say we come back, we come back. Whether you’re satisfied, or whether you think I’m just another Wade. You just get in the car with your mouth shut and we come back. No argument. Okay …?”
“I said okay already, Uncle Ty! Okay!”
“Okay, then. I’m going to take a lot of shit for this if it comes out. Your dad’s going to call and he’s gonna want to know what the hell we’re doing up there.”
“He called last night. I told him you were great. We’re safe for a couple of days.”
“And then there’s Wade. He’s gonna wonder if I’m still around and what you’re doing.”
“He’s the one who told me to get out of town! Anyway, I won’t answer his calls. What is he going to do, subpoena me?”
“I would.” Hauck stared at Blu with some deflation. I must really be out of practice, he thought.
She came back out of the bedroom. She’d thrown some things together in a yellow backpack, but she was wearing a waistless flax dress, V-neck, nice sandals, her golden hair long and brushed out, setting off her tan. “I know it’s not a game up there, Uncle Ty. I just want to find out what happened. He was my friend.”
Hauck nodded resignedly. He couldn’t help but shake his head and say, “You look nice.”
“I mean, we are going to someone’s house. It’s only respectful.”
“You’re right.” Hauck looked at himself in a black polo shirt hanging out of his jeans.
“You were just going to show up looking like that and assume they would open up to you …?”
He shrugged, agreeing reluctantly. She had a point. “I’ll stop and buy something on the way.”
“Blu, let’s motor, dude! We’re going in Uncle Ty’s car.” The Lab jumped to his feet.
Hauck shook his head. “Uh-uh. No fucking way we take the dog.”
“Of course he’s coming. He goes everywhere with me.”
“N-O. What didn’t you hear …?”
But by then Dani had put together a plastic bag with his food and grabbed his leash, and was already past Hauck, with Blu, out the door.
“I’m only kidding. We’ll drop him off at my friend’s. She watches him if I have to leave town.” Blu bounded into the back of Hauck’s rented SUV. “Shut the door on the way out. It automatically locks. We better get moving, don’t you think. Blu, in the back.”
Way out of practice, Hauck muttered to himself, shutting the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Templeton was a tiny farming town in the eastern Colorado plains, an immense expanse of dry, seemingly endless brush and scrub about twenty miles east of Greeley, along the Cache la Poudre River.