election.
“You wanted me to remind you to eat lunch?”
Hanson’s uncertain, questioning tone made him a terrible lawman, but a decent mother hen. G. William scrubbed his hands down his face; his mustache felt bushy and prickly. Joyce used to nudge him when it was time to trim it. His considerable gut cared not for memory, and it rumbled at the notion of food. “Yeah, sure. What did I do yesterday?”
“Coff-E-Shop.”
“Right, right. Let’s do Grasser’s today. Cheeser with fries, and get yourself whatever. Put it on the county.”
“Gotcha.”
As Hanson retreated, G. William heard Joyce’s tongue clucking. Something green won’t kill you, you know.
“Hanson!” he shouted, and when the deputy poked his head back in, said, “Kill the fries. Do me one of those side salad things.”
“Right.”
There, are you happy now?
Happier if you’d lose a few pounds. I managed.
Her teasing voice. She’d been plump her whole life—God, he loved that!—but in the last year of her life, all that weight had dropped away. Ovarian cancer, she joked, turned out to be the diet she’d spent her whole life looking for.
Not an option for me, sweetheart.
His eyes misted, and he pressed his lips together and shook his head violently. There was no time for this. Not now. She was gone. Gone and in the ground a good month now, and there was a missing girl—please, God, don’t let her turn out to be A Dead Girl—to deal with. A murder would be the first in Lobo’s Nod since…since he wasn’t sure when. Maybe back to old Étienne himself. Maybe…just maybe…poor old Cara Swinton had come upon the ghost of LeBeau, and he’d done her in.
That scenario was as likely as any other, for all the evidence G. William had. He stood and lumbered over to the corkboard. He wasn’t pudgy or big-boned or overweight or “carrying a few extra pounds” or whatever other euphemism of the moment one could elect to use. No, he was fat. Obese, in fact. Five-ten-and-a-half, with a broad frame hauling north of three hundred pounds. Some of it was muscle. Some of it, he liked to growl to deputies, was just pure mean.
You’re going to keel over from a heart attack , she’d said. In the hospice. Last days. Last breaths, and she used them to reproach him for his weight.
You spent your life taking care of yourself, and look where that got you , he’d retorted. Lightly.
Making plans is the surest way to tickle God’s funny bone , she’d said.
He’d only had one plan, and it had had two simple components: Be the sheriff and live a long life with Joyce.
God had guffawed and taken away one. Now He was fixing to take away the other.
No good time for A Dead Girl, of course. Let’s not pretend otherwise. A Dead Girl is always a tragedy, no matter the time of day or year or precisely where we sit in the election cycle for county sheriff.
But can we agree—can we admit —that there may be a worse time for A Dead Girl? And right now would be quite possibly the worst time imaginable.
The election was a month away. Halloween crap festooned the local stores, had done since around Labor Day. In one month, the people of the county would go to the polls and vote for big-ticket items like senator and representative and a handful of judges. They would also vote to determine who would sit at the sheriff’s desk at the county office in Lobo’s Nod. G. William had run unopposed in every election since his second, when his popularity had proven an effective deterrent to also-rans who saw fit to try to wrest his job from him. But this year—this goddamned year—a town cop over in Calverton had decided to challenge G. William.
The local papers had a field day with the announcement. They still read mostly newsprint in this part of the country, and both the daily and weekly rags wrung some extra sales and chortles out of the mere idea of an upstart challenge to the venerable G. William Tanner, the man who’d policed the Nod and its
“You wanted me to remind you to eat lunch?”
Hanson’s uncertain, questioning tone made him a terrible lawman, but a decent mother hen. G. William scrubbed his hands down his face; his mustache felt bushy and prickly. Joyce used to nudge him when it was time to trim it. His considerable gut cared not for memory, and it rumbled at the notion of food. “Yeah, sure. What did I do yesterday?”
“Coff-E-Shop.”
“Right, right. Let’s do Grasser’s today. Cheeser with fries, and get yourself whatever. Put it on the county.”
“Gotcha.”
As Hanson retreated, G. William heard Joyce’s tongue clucking. Something green won’t kill you, you know.
“Hanson!” he shouted, and when the deputy poked his head back in, said, “Kill the fries. Do me one of those side salad things.”
“Right.”
There, are you happy now?
Happier if you’d lose a few pounds. I managed.
Her teasing voice. She’d been plump her whole life—God, he loved that!—but in the last year of her life, all that weight had dropped away. Ovarian cancer, she joked, turned out to be the diet she’d spent her whole life looking for.
Not an option for me, sweetheart.
His eyes misted, and he pressed his lips together and shook his head violently. There was no time for this. Not now. She was gone. Gone and in the ground a good month now, and there was a missing girl—please, God, don’t let her turn out to be A Dead Girl—to deal with. A murder would be the first in Lobo’s Nod since…since he wasn’t sure when. Maybe back to old Étienne himself. Maybe…just maybe…poor old Cara Swinton had come upon the ghost of LeBeau, and he’d done her in.
That scenario was as likely as any other, for all the evidence G. William had. He stood and lumbered over to the corkboard. He wasn’t pudgy or big-boned or overweight or “carrying a few extra pounds” or whatever other euphemism of the moment one could elect to use. No, he was fat. Obese, in fact. Five-ten-and-a-half, with a broad frame hauling north of three hundred pounds. Some of it was muscle. Some of it, he liked to growl to deputies, was just pure mean.
You’re going to keel over from a heart attack , she’d said. In the hospice. Last days. Last breaths, and she used them to reproach him for his weight.
You spent your life taking care of yourself, and look where that got you , he’d retorted. Lightly.
Making plans is the surest way to tickle God’s funny bone , she’d said.
He’d only had one plan, and it had had two simple components: Be the sheriff and live a long life with Joyce.
God had guffawed and taken away one. Now He was fixing to take away the other.
No good time for A Dead Girl, of course. Let’s not pretend otherwise. A Dead Girl is always a tragedy, no matter the time of day or year or precisely where we sit in the election cycle for county sheriff.
But can we agree—can we admit —that there may be a worse time for A Dead Girl? And right now would be quite possibly the worst time imaginable.
The election was a month away. Halloween crap festooned the local stores, had done since around Labor Day. In one month, the people of the county would go to the polls and vote for big-ticket items like senator and representative and a handful of judges. They would also vote to determine who would sit at the sheriff’s desk at the county office in Lobo’s Nod. G. William had run unopposed in every election since his second, when his popularity had proven an effective deterrent to also-rans who saw fit to try to wrest his job from him. But this year—this goddamned year—a town cop over in Calverton had decided to challenge G. William.
The local papers had a field day with the announcement. They still read mostly newsprint in this part of the country, and both the daily and weekly rags wrung some extra sales and chortles out of the mere idea of an upstart challenge to the venerable G. William Tanner, the man who’d policed the Nod and its
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