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“I fly freight.” Rye didn’t think that would cut it, and it didn’t.
“For who?”
“For whoever pays me.”
“What kind of freight?”
“All kinds. Big, little, dead or alive. You name it.”
“I’d like for you to name it. What were you flying tonight?”
“That.” The deputy followed the direction of his pointing finger to the box where it still sat in the chair adjacent to the door.
“What is it?”
“Exactly what it looks like.”
Impatience evident, the deputy shifted his weight. “What’s in it, Mr. Mallett?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
The first statement was true, the second a lie, and gauging by the deputy’s dubious expression, he knew it was. “The doctor didn’t volunteer it?”
“No.”
“Is that typical?”
“In my business, there’s no such thing as typical.”
“Who dispatched you?”
“The name of the company is Dash-It-All.” Rye gave him the contact information, and he wrote it down. “If you don’t mind,” Rye said, “I’d like to call the owner myself and be the one to break the news about his plane.”
“I do mind.”
He gave Rye a smile that Rye would’ve enjoyed wreaking havoc on. Instead, he gave an indifferent shrug and nodded down at the notepad. “You’ve got his number.”
Rawlins called over another deputy, who was older but apparently lower in the department’s pecking order. Rawlins ripped off the sheet of paper that had Dash’s phone numbers on it and gave it to the other officer. He muttered instructions to him that Rye couldn’t hear and pretended disinterest in.
Before the other deputy moved away, he said to Rawlins in an undertone, “Know who she is?” He bobbed his head toward Brynn.
Rawlins leaned back in order to see around the other deputy to where Brynn was being questioned. “Should I?”
“Wes O’Neal’s daughter.”
Rawlins’s eyes narrowed on her. “You don’t say.”
“Wasn’t sure at first, but then I heard her name. I’d see her around the department when she was just a kid. In and out of there a lot.” The older deputy withdrew, presumably to phone Dash.
Rye’s curiosity got the better of him. “Who’s Wes O’Neal?”
Rawlins said, “You’re not from around here, or you’d likely know. Where are you from, Mr. Mallett?”
“Not from around here.” Rawlins gave him a baleful look, and Rye decided that annoying him further wasn’t worth the time it would cost him. “Everywhere and nowhere. Air Force brat. We moved every couple of years, so I don’t claim a home town or even a home state.”
“Where do you live now?”
He rented an apartment in Oklahoma City only so he would have a mailing address. He had no personal attachment to the city. He’d chosen it for convenience. It was in the center of the country, making it easy to get into on his way back from somewhere and easy to get out of on his way to somewhere else.
