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  Nikki bounced onto the stool next to Perez. “Hi, Boss. What’s the scuttlebutt?”

  Perez looked into the kitchen and wondered what could possibly be taking so long for them to grill his burger. He rubbed his hand against his jaw and felt a stray hair he’d missed shaving, it would irritate him all day thinking about it. “You’re an Army brat, aren‘t ya?”

  “Yeah. So?” she said, setting her sunglasses on the counter, her grey eyes always scanning what was around her.

  “Isn’t ‘scuttlebutt’ a Navy term?”

  Nikki drummed her fingers on the counter and asked for a coffee from the waitress. “Mom was Army, Dad was Air Force.”

  This was information Perez already knew, but he still liked to prod her whenever he got the chance. She was a good partner, and while he didn’t feel the particular need to inflate her ego, he was grateful for her father’s time served in the Air Force; had it not been for that, she wouldn’t have been relocated to the Midwest while he was off guarding missile silos.

  “Besides,” Nikki said, “I just like the way it sounds.”

  Finally, a hamburger and fries were half-dropped, half-set in front of Perez by the waitress, who always gave off the air that she was far too busy, even when the diner wasn’t full.

  “Not a whole lot to say. I heard there was some kind of scuffle out at Shirley’s Bar last night, but nothing was reported. Probably the Wheelers getting their panties in a wad about something. You know how those boys are after a few rounds of liquor. They’re just about the only ones dumb enough to start anything around Betty anyway.” Perez tucked his tie into his shirt before pouring ketchup onto his plate in a heap. He took a bite of his hamburger and realized that not one cook in town was capable of understanding “medium”; the thing tasted like beef jerky on a bun, and he had to add more ketchup and some Tabasco just so he wouldn’t choke on the sawdust-like monstrosity. Somehow, it was horribly dry and greasy all at once.

  “Wanna go check it out?” Nikki asked as she added four packets of sugar to her coffee.

  Perez, with a mouthful of alleged hamburger, simply shook his head. It took him a few extra chomps and some water to get the bite down, and he finally answered, “Probably a waste of time. If there’d been an actual fight or anything Marty or Betty and the sight of her sawed-off couldn’t handle, they would’ve called us.”

  “A waste of time, huh? Why? You got some other big plans for the day, Boss?” Hamill asked. “The way I see it, we’ve got nothing better to do. Court docket is clear until we have that hit-and-run deposition. Larson and Williams took over the investigation of the assault on that dealer over on Elm. Tox and autopsy on that dead girl we found last week were supposed to come in this morning, we could always go check on that.”

  Perez took another bite of burger. The thing about living in North Dakota was that they seldom ever had too much—or enough—on their docket. Sure, on a day-to-day basis, there were a few rowdy oil workers getting a little out of control, and there was an occasional drug bust or warrant, but besides that, they had little to do. Everything else could be handled by the patrol officers who walked the beat, dealing with misdemeanors and status offenses.

  The bell on the front door of the diner jingled, and Perez looked over his shoulder to see a woman walking in the door; from the looks of her, she had to be a stripper. She had full makeup on, and her hair looked as if she’d taken time to style it, at least to some degree. She wasn’t exactly wearing anything as ostentatious as six-inch stilettos, but in Bluff Falls, she fit the stripper profile. The guy who was with her held the door for her as she walked in, and she smiled at his chivalry. Perez had to admit that it wasn’t the most common thing for a man to hold a door open for a lady anymore, especially one his age, early thirties, unshaven with a scruffy, lazy look to him. Perez wondered if the stripper’s companion was just there to buy her a hard-earned lunch after a roll or two in the hay or if it was his version of dinner before hauling her off to some shitty trailer for a little flesh-for-cash exchange.

  The waitress walked over to their booth. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, handing the menus to them and acting breathless, as if she were overwhelmed by the three or four diners in the place.

  The man tipped his hat to her. What a funny thing to do.

  A second later, Perez turned his attention back to the remaining half of his burger, but he set it down with dismay, no longer feeling as hungry as he had when he’d ordered it. “I suppose we could always take a swing by Shirley’s on the way to the medical examiner and see if there was anything more to the scuffle. Maybe something went down that nobody wants to talk about.”

  Nikki smiled and finished the rest of her mug in what must have been a borderline painful gulp of still-steaming coffee.

  Perez pulled his wallet out and was in the middle of looking through it when the waitress came up from behind where he was seated and set a picture on the counter.

  “Hey, Sergeant, that guy over there just asked me if I’ve ever seen this girl,” she said tapping a fake red fingernail on the photo. “I was gonna go ask our grill man, but it dawned on me that she kinda looks like that girl they found around the corner. An officer came around a few days back showing people a picture of the poor girl and asking the same thing. You think it’s her?”

  Perez looked down at the picture then back over his shoulder at the couple in the booth. He passed the picture over to Hamill. “It’s her, right?”

  Nikki didn’t need to say anything; she just looked and followed Perez’s stare toward the window: at the stripper, and the guy in the porkpie hat.

  Chapter 4

  Charlie had never been one for percentages and odds, but he had friends who were, so when the police officer came over to the table where he and Dee Dee were about to enjoy a nice breakfast, showed his badge, and asked how he knew the girl, he had to wonder: what were the odds that of the other two people in the diner, both would be cops and recognize the girl in the picture?

  “Well? Plan on answering him?” the female officer asked. She introduced herself as Sergeant Nikki Hamill.

  Charlie would have pegged her more for a cheerleader than a cop; either that, or she’d had too much caffeine, based on that little shift she kept doing from foot to foot, waiting for answer. “A friend,” Charlie said, which wasn’t really a lie.

  “A friend, huh?” said Perez, the male officer, raising his eyebrow as if he thought Charlie’s lackluster response was vague bullshit.

  Charlie thought Perez looked out of place, as if an inept casting director had given him a role in a movie. He was a bit too Hollywood, too big city to be the acting law and order in such a small community. He was confident when he talked, but not in the bully kind of way that Charlie usually saw in small-town or small village law enforcement. “That’s right, a friend,” Charlie told him. “I haven’t seen her in years and heard she was living in the area. Thought I might stop and say hi.”

  “And you just so happen to be passing through Bluff Falls?” Sergeant Hamill asked.

  “Not really,” Charlie said, “but sometimes it’s good to go a few extra miles for a friend. Why the twenty questions? It’s not illegal to be friends with somebody, right, Officers?” he said more snidely than he would have liked.

  There was a moment of silence as Perez looked like he contemplating how much he could or would tell Charlie.

  Charlie, meanwhile, wasn’t really all that curious; he knew he’d get his answers sooner or later. The only thing that really bothered him was the cop’s hesitation to spit it out. He worried that she might be in jail or worse.

  Finally, Perez spoke up. “Well, I’m afraid we haven’t yet made a positive identification, but we think your friend…”

  In Charlie’s ears, the rest drowned out to white noise. He knew Kay was dead even before the words came out. He took a moment to register what an appropriate response would be and decided on a soft “Oh my God” with a glazed-over look would suffice. When Dee De
e touched his hand thoughtfully, he knew he’d played the part well. Charlie stayed silent and kept his eyes gazing down at the tabletop, compartmentalizing his emotions, just like he’d done since he was a kid, a skill that served him well in his current vocation. The difference was, this time, he was pretty sure he’d have his chance to vent his frustrations. “How did it happen?” Charlie finally asked.

  “We aren’t at liberty to go into details,” Perez said, “but we’d appreciate it if you could come with us to the coroner’s office to give us a positive identification.”

  The request didn’t entirely sit well with Charlie, who was hungry and eager to finish his meal. If Kay was dead, she wasn’t going anywhere and wouldn’t become undead if he took the time to fill his belly. On the other hand, he knew it would make more sense for him to play the concerned citizen and friend role and make the positive ID. He had been looking forward to waffles, it had been years since he had any that didn’t come from a toaster. Then again, he thought, trying to look on the bright side of things, maybe it was the out he needed to part company with Dee Dee. She was a nice girl, but she wasn’t exactly an asset to him, and he needed to travel light. If Kay was dead, someone was responsible for killing her. It had taken him over a week just to find out she’d moved to North Dakota from St. Louis; Charlie had a talent for finding people who didn’t want to be found, but the search for Kay had been an arduous one, even for him. He knew she’d had good reasons for moving, because it wouldn’t have been like her to make the trip on her own. There was a time when Charlie would have been able to say he knew Kay really well, when it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to consider her anything other than just a friend. She must have followed the drugs though, he realized. A dealer? Maybe a pimp? He wasn’t sure how to feel about Kay being pimped out, but then again, she probably wouldn’t have known how to feel about the things he’d been doing for the last eight years either. In any case, for Charlie, North Dakota had just gotten a whole lot more complicated, and it was going to get a whole lot less populated soon. “Sure, Officer,” Charlie said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  Dee Dee offered to ride along, but Charlie said he needed some time alone. He gave her a kiss on the top of the hand and said he’d see her soon. Charlie saw the disappointment in her eyes, maybe even that flash of feeling used. It was a pain pretending to be a normal person, whatever the hell normal was.

  The coroner pulled the body out of the cooler, and Perez watched Charlie slowly shuffle over. He looked apprehensive, just like anyone else Perez had ever asked to come in to identify a body. The only difference was that Charlie held his hat in his hands; he was only thirty-something, but by his shuffling gait and the way he held that hat between his hands, he looked like a seventy-year-old man.

  Perez did his best not to act or sound cynical; after all, the guy had just found out a friend of his was dead. “Well?” he asked, unable to say much else.

  “Yeah,” Charlie confirmed after the coroner unzipped the bag, “that’s her.”

  “Can you tell us her full name?” Hamill asked over Charlie’s shoulder, almost hovering.

  Charlie didn’t answer right away and just looked down at the body. Perez thought his hesitation was just from the shock of the situation, but something about the guy’s eyes didn’t seem right. It was almost an impartial look.

  “Kay Joyce Burke,” Charlie finally said, but not until he’d turned to walk out the door.

  Perez put out a hand to touch the man’s shoulder; he had a few more questions to ask.

  Charlie stopped and gave another look, a very different one—a far-off, disconnected expression.

  “Can you tell us a little more, like where she’s from? Anything that might help us identify a next of kin? We found no matches on her fingerprints,” Perez said, wondering how the out-of-towner would react at the implication of a criminal past.

  “Sure…” Charlie paused. “Um, can you tell me, did anyone, I mean, I know there are tests for if she was…” the words just never quite got out, but Perez knew he wanted to know if Kay had been sexually assaulted.

  “The tests came back negative for assault,” Nikki said while Perez still considered if it was acceptable to give out that information. He still held the tox and autopsy results in his hands. Besides ridiculous levels of methamphetamine in her blood and the resulting damage to her organs from prolonged use, there was nothing wrong with her, at least nothing that would have contributed to her death. Nikki’s eyes mirrored Charlie’s, far off. She needed to learn to be more detached.

  The room was cold, and the man had just seen a dead body, so it made sense that Charlie wanted to make an exit, but still, something about Charlie wasn’t quite right. Perez wondered who he was. The story of Charlie being just a friend passing through town didn’t wash, but he was glad it had at least resulted in a positive ID on the dead girl.

  Perez, Hamill, and Charlie went back to the police station for a leisurely getting-to-know-you session. A cup of coffee and a couple not-quite-fresh donuts were all it took to perk Charlie up, and soon his spirits lifted. Charlie had a strange way of talking in tangents, each story led into another or stopped halfway to talk about something else. He sounded more like he needed a dose of Adderall over another cup of coffee. Still, he said please and thank you with his every request and it was hard not to get him what he asked. Charlie talked kind of slow, but once Perez and Hamill started to ask questions, it was hard to get him to stop from talking on and on. Charlie Kelly sounded more like a male version of Nikki than anyone Perez he’d ever met, and Perez did what he could to keep the line of questioning under control.

  “Where do you know the deceased from, Charlie?” Perez asked, having to steer the conversation away from baseball. For the life of him, Perez couldn’t figure out how Charlie had gotten to talking about baseball in the first place.

  “Indiana. We grew up together. We lost touch not long after I graduated high school though, but we’d see each other a couple times a year, usually around summer vacation. She was younger by a year,” Charlie said and asked for another cup of coffee.

  “When did you last see her?”

  Charlie took a moment to think about it. “It would have to be almost ten years ago, back when I got that picture of her. I’ve been carrying it ever since. It’s kind of lucky, I guess. I don’t really remember ever taking a picture of Kay or the two of us together, but we were at a carnival, and she had one of those disposable cameras. Do they even still make those things? Weird,” he said, shaking his head. “These days, the whole world’s gone digital. Anyway, we were just being goofy, like kids…” Charlie took a sip of coffee, and his eyes dropped a little as he dug deeper and deeper in his memory to drum up recollections of Kay.

  Perez could see the genuine sadness there, something he hadn’t seen at the coroner’s office; before, it had seemed the man was doing a good job of putting on a show.

  “Kay had been moping around, complaining about some jerk in school—you know…boy trouble and all that stuff twenty-year-old girls complain about. I won that huge teddy bear for her at one of the carnival games.”

  “Shooting gallery?” Perez asked, a ham-handed approach to see if he could find out a little something about the man who might or might not have been involved with the girl’s murder.

  “God no, I hate guns,” Charlie said emphatically. “My dad made me take firearms safety when I was twelve. No idea why, as we never went hunting, and there were no guns in the house, at least not that I ever knew of. I learned pretty quick that I’m no marksman. I can’t shoot for shit. Besides, I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a situation where a gun would have made things any better. I kinda don’t see the point,” Charlie said. “No offense.” He smiled and nodded in the direction of Perez’s gun.

  “Have you been in a lot of situations where guns were used?” Perez asked.

  Nikki shot him a strange glare, as if she thought it was a dumb or poorly executed question.

  �
�I was speaking in generalities,” Charlie said. “Personally, I try to avoid talking about them altogether, as they seem to be something of a hot-button issue these days. When I was coming into town, I saw someone with a bumper sticker that said ‘Piss off a liberal. Buy a gun.’ What’s that supposed to mean? That we should go around pissing each other off? Or the flip side, placing blame where it doesn’t belong? I mean…” Charlie looked down at Perez’s holster. “Well…what kind of gun do you carry?”

  Perez hesitated a moment but found no reason not to tell him. He slightly turned his hip away from Charlie, defensively, and answered, “Sig P225.”

  “Okay. What if your Sig P225 was used in some kind of a shooting and people started to picket outside of Sig Incorporated or something?” Charlie stopped and looked at Nikki when she snickered.

  “It’s Sig Sauer, not Sig Inc.,” she said with a smile, clearly finding his naivety endearing.

  “Sorry,” Charlie said. “I don’t know guns too well. Anyway, if that happened, would you stop carrying that particular type of gun, even if they were still legal?”

  “Um…well, I—” Perez could barely follow Charlie’s train of thought and desperately wanted to start asking close-ended questions.

  “Of course you wouldn’t, because you’re a law enforcement officer. People go around yelling about this and that, picketing, loading up their cars with bullshit bumper stickers, and trying to get each other mad, when they really oughtta just sit down and talk things out like the civilized, rational human beings we’re supposed to be.”

  Perez felt a tension headache coming on and decided it was time to excuse himself to the bathroom in hopes that his partner, Sergeant Nikki Hamill, would be a little better suited to listen to the ramblings of the man with the weird hat. He promptly made his way to the men’s room and splashed cold water on his face. He didn’t sleep much anymore and coffee didn’t always do the trick, especially when it came to ramblings of meth heads, trailer trash, or Charlie Kelly.