style="font-size:15px;"> Then there had been the disagreement about where to get coffee. Crap, that beat it all to hell. She wanted the expensive place; he’d have been happy with any roadside diner. So he took her to the chain coffee shop and then she’d ordered ordinary coffee. Not a fancy drink, just a gigantic cup of black and strong. Same as him. So why the argument?
He hoped they found this serial killer soon, preferably before one of them killed the other in a shoot-out at high noon.
“I need to eat,” she announced. Her first words in 250 miles.
Not we need to eat. No, just announcing her own wishes. Of course, maybe she was used to that. He’d heard she’d been an officer, kind of way up there or something. Maybe she said jump and was used to having everyone do it. Well, he wasn’t used to jumping and wasn’t about to begin.
“You see a place to stop?” he asked mildly enough. Not exactly a courteous response on his part, and even he knew it. But he figured if he gave DeeJay Dawkins an inch, she’d take a country mile.
“Next place,” she replied.
“Greasy spoons from here on out.” He hoped she’d object to that. After all, she was the type who went to specialty coffee shops to get ordinary coffee. Next he’d be hearing about organic food restaurants and how she lived on fresh salads.
She shocked him by saying, “Fine.”
Man, the conversation in this car was a real crowd-pleaser. The thought of having to share a house with her until they finished this investigation made him want to change jobs. Except he mostly liked his job, so he wasn’t going to let anyone, especially her, make him throw it away.
Focus on the job, he reminded himself. Not the partner. They were after a serial killer, or at least the local sheriff thought so. One who was taking adolescent boys. No bodies yet, but apparently it had happened a few years ago, too, then abruptly stopped. They didn’t find the evidence until later. Much later. Now the sheriff feared it was starting again.
Not unusual. Some serial killers were fairly smart. They often changed locales and evaded the law until they died. Or they went to prison for a while for some unrelated crime and their trail went cold. If the sheriff was right, they couldn’t hope for a stupid killer this time, because that would be a really idiotic assumption on their part.
It had happened before; now it was happening again, and half a decade was a long time for a copycat to suddenly show up. Ergo, it had to be the same creep.
Around a tight bend in the road, settled into a hollow almost out of sight, he spied a roadhouse. One of those places that somehow hung on in the middle of nowhere, serving people who lived too far from a town to want to make a lengthy trip for a drink, some socializing and a lousy sandwich or overcooked burger.
Without a word, he flipped on the turn signal and nosed them in. Only a couple of dusty pickups sat in the gravel lot, but the open sign blinked red neon at them. Rusty, ancient-looking signs announced beer, food and cigarettes. Sort of an outdated convenience store, except there’d be a bar. There was always a bar. He just hoped the place didn’t house any trouble right now. He and DeeJay, dressed in brand-new Western clothing and boots to fit their assumed roles, might as well be wearing neon signs of their own: dude alert.
He climbed out and waited. DeeJay followed a moment later. He’d already learned not to open a car door for her, even though they were supposed to look married. He hadn’t fought that one much, though, except to annoy her.
She came to the head of the car, and he watched her size up the place with experienced eyes. Then she glanced at him, and her dark gaze seemed to say, We can handle them.
Yeah, they could. If it became necessary and it probably wouldn’t. He wondered how many times in her career as an MP she’d had to walk into places like these, probably a hell of a lot more crowded with drunks. Maybe not much, if she’d been an officer. How the hell would he know? She wasn’t talking, and he was damned if he would ask.
When they reached the battered door, at least she didn’t argue about him opening it. He was on the left. He’d have let anyone on the left open it given the way it swung. He walked in behind her and took it all in, familiar from countless places in the past. Wood everywhere, darkened, stained and scratched by the years. A long bar, also scratched and stained, stools that had needed to be replaced forty years ago, the stench of stale alcohol, tobacco, sweat and other things he didn’t care to pick out. No scouring in the world would get rid of those odors now.
The jukebox was wailing some bluegrass, the bartender, maybe owner, looked like a leftover from gold-rush days. A number of old men gathered at a corner table, watching them suspiciously.
DeeJay took one look around, then strode up to the bar as if she owned the place. Cade stayed by the door. The Native ancestry stamped on her face could still cause problems in some parts. He waited to see how she’d be received.
“Coffee,” she said to the bartender, “and a menu. Please.”
The gray-bearded man hesitated only a moment, his old pale eyes darting to Cade, then he grabbed a ceramic cup from the stack on the counter and filled it from what looked like a fresh pot. He carried it to DeeJay, then slapped down a plastic-covered menu that was probably sticky. Weren’t they always?
Cade meandered over to take a seat by DeeJay. The bartender had issued the message We don’t want no problems here.
Good enough for him. He ordered his own coffee, and agreed silently with DeeJay that a burger was probably the safest thing to choose, not that the menu was big. Soon the smell of frying beef rose from the griddle and it was like someone let the tension out of the room.
Lunch without problems. Always a good way to go.
Then DeeJay astonished him almost to speechlessness. She lifted her head from her burger and said, “This is a great burger. Just the way I like them.”
The bartender froze and stared at her. He probably received a compliment once every hundred years or so.
DeeJay pushed her jacket out of the way, reached into her hip pocket and pulled out one of the phony business cards they had for this trip. “We’re travel writers,” she said. “We write about great places to stop. If you have a card, I’d like to tell folks about your burgers.”
Now the bartender’s jaw dropped. Silence fell from the far end of the room, except for Hank Williams Sr. wailing tinnily about cheatin’ hearts. You could almost hear the ice in the room crack as it thawed.
“Ain’t got no card,” the bartender said. “Take one of them menus, iffen you want.”
“I’ll do that,” DeeJay said. “Thanks.”
For her efforts they both received a complimentary piece of apple pie.
Cade let DeeJay pay, figuring this wasn’t the time or place to get into an argument about who was buying lunch, and it was all the state’s money anyway. When at last they stepped back outside, he drew in lungfuls of fresh cold air and remarked, “Great job.” He didn’t even sound grudging.
“The pie crust was heavy,” she remarked, her only response.
Stifling a sigh, he climbed back in behind the wheel and set them once again on the road to Conard City.
However
