“Sorry,” I hear from behind me, not sure which one is doing the talking. “I must have listed a little to the side myself right there.”
I stay where I am, keeping my hands against the side of the truck, just turn my head enough to see them get back into their car and slowly begin to pull back out on 31.
But as they begin to pass me, they stop.
The one on the passenger side rolls down his window.
“To be continued, asshole,” he says.
Then they’re gone. No flashing lights. No sirens. Just gone into the night, toward town.
Yeah,I think to myself.To be continued.
FIFTY-EIGHT
WHEN SHERIFF NASH HADER arrives at his office the next morning, Helene Mayes is waiting for him.
“I let myself in,” she says.
“I can see that,” he says, taking off his hat as he walks over to his desk. “By whose authority, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Hader knows who she works for because they both know he’s made a call to the governor’s office inquiring about her and her presence in Cross Rivers, Helene Mayes having made no secret whatsoever about being very much in town.
“Oh, let’s not fuck around, Hader,” Helene says. “You know who I am. You know who I work for, unless you’ve forgotten everything you ever knew about being a good cop, which I admit is a distinct possibility.”
Maybe it’s something in her completely relaxed manner. Or maybe Nash Hader is just the latest person to find out that the person across from his desk isn’t somebody with whom he would ever want to fuck around, the way he does with almost everyone else in his jurisdiction and has for far too long a time.
“So how can I help you?” Hader says brusquely, making it sound as if helping this woman is the last thing he wants to do.
Helene Mayes offers him a wide and completely insincere smile in response.
“See, that’s the thing,” she says, opening her battered leather briefcase and pulling the folder out. “You already have helped me, in more ways than you know.”
She places the folder on the desk in front of her.
“Oh,” she says, “and you had two of your goons rough up Silas Tucker last night for no good reason.”
Neither one of them speaks as Helene Mayes meticulously lays out the photographs her surveillance team had taken of Nash Hader going in and out of the Chester Inn, about twenty miles away. All of the photographs are time-stamped so it’s clear that a few minutes after those entrances and then exits an hour or so later, Hader was followed by Mindy McCall, a sixteen-year-old member of the cheerleading squad at Cross Rivers High School.
There are also a few photographs of the two of them making out—Helene isn’t entirely sure if kids even still use that expression—in an unmarked county police car.
“And before you waste any of my time,” she says, “don’t give me any happy horseshit about how it’s not what it looks like, because it’s exactly what it looks like, you dumb-as-your-dick old fool.”
Hader looks at the photographs and then back at Helene Mayes.
“I thought you were here about Briar Crockett,” he says in a dead voice.
“Oh, of course that’s why I’m here,” she says pleasantly. “Of course my mission was to make you stop conducting county police business from inside Crockett’s pocket.” She grins. “Look at me, I just made a rhyme.”
Nash Hader looks back down at the pictures of him with the high school girl, then back up at Helene Mayes.
“And now you’ve hauled off and made it this easy for me,” she says. “But I will say this, being a person who looks for the positives in things: at least you seem to know where one girl in this county is.”
Hader starts to say something. Helene holds up the big right hand she once used to swat away shots at Georgetown.
“Even you’re smart enough to know that you’re through,” she says, “as painful a breakup as this is going to be for you and Mr. Crockett.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to tell him?” Hader asks. The same dead voice, or at least dying, like it barely can make it all the way up and out of him.
