Unearthed by Robert J. Crane

you to call them back,” Reeve said, feeling fury and disgust coming up in equal measure. “You tell them that I’ve got an officer who worked this beat for ten years lying dead on the side of the road from homicide, and that I would hope that if any of them ever died, their fellow officers would exhibit a courtesy they’re not displaying here.” He tensed, ready to kick something, then remembered that he was in a crime scene and bellowed instead. “Fucking pricks!” His foot skipped in the dust and stirred a small cloud that whirled along the side of the road for a few feet.
    “I’ll give ’em a call,” Fries said, nodding as he backed up. “See what they can do. Maybe you’re right, maybe mentioning that we got an officer down here—maybe that’ll get ’em thinking right.” Fries hustled away, not running but close.
    Reeve sat there for a minute, trying not to look at Reyes’s body. The man didn’t deserve this. Hell, no one deserved this. That neck was crushed like a gorilla had gotten hold of it. A gorilla, or a real big guy. Reeve felt his eyes narrow. The cowboy wasn’t all that big … but Arch Stan sure was.
    Reeve threw that thought away. There was a world of difference between being sneaky and hiding something, maybe lining his own pocket somehow, and being a murderer who would choke a fellow officer to death.
    Wasn’t there?
    The sound of an engine approaching at high speed broke off that line of thought for Reeve. He turned to see an old Honda come racing up, a little wobbly between the lines. He stared at it as it came to a halt with a screech of the brakes, pulling off the side of the road and parking at a cockeyed angle, like the driver was just angling into a diagonal space at Wal-Mart. “What the …” Reeve found himself muttering under his breath.
    Erin Harris threw open the driver’s side door and staggered out. Her petite frame took a little effort to lever out of the car, but she managed it on the third try, steadying herself by holding onto the open door. She was dressed in civilian clothes—hadn’t even bothered to change into her uniform—and when she got off the door she walked in a decidedly crooked path toward Reeve.
    He sat there under the darkening sky and felt himself simmer. He was boiling by the time she got up to him and said, “Hey, Sheriff.” The words hit him in the face along with a whiff of whiskey and beer, and he knew that if it was possible to get drunk just by breathing air, this would be the breath to do it to him.
    “What the hell, Erin?” He didn’t even hold back.
    She blinked at him. “What?”
    “You’re drunk, that’s what.” Reeve barely held it down, barely kept it from coming out in a yell so loud it’d send the paramedics racing away with their lights flashing, heading for the county line to get away from him. “I’d tell you to get out of here but I can’t spare anyone to drive you home.”
    Her eyelids fluttered at him. “Donna called, I came. You wanted me to stay at the bar? ’Cuz I figured you could use help.”
    “What kind of help are you gonna be right now?” Reeve put his hands on his hips. He hadn’t done the lecturing parent thing in a while. “I ask you to put up crime scene tape and I’ll be lucky if it don’t look like a fucking tangled ball of yellow yarn when you’re done. I can’t even put you on traffic diversion, because you’d probably get yourself run over. I mean, goddamn . Could you pick a worse time to get hammered?”
    “I had time off,” she said, sullen at the criticism.
    “Yeah, I had time off today, too,” Reeve said, turning his back on her. “But I didn’t take down a whole six pack during it.” He waved a hand at her, too disgusted to look. “Go … sleep it off in your car or something. You ain’t leaving here until you can pass a breathalyzer, so don’t even think about starting the ignition. Just lay down and pass out, will you?” He heard her shoes crunch on the dusty shoulder