Conard County Justice

God, he missed his brother, even though they’d been estranged for a while. Which made him ponder yet again how he—or anyone else, for that matter—allowed such rifts to grow when life was so short. You never knew…

He should have learned that after so much time in deadly environments. Life could often be too short, truncated by unexpected events.

Shaking himself out of impending gloom, he focused instead on rage. He’d have time to grieve later, once Larry had his justice.

He found a couple of pairs of shorts and some shirts and walked back to the motel. Man, he needed to run. A long, fast run.

Then he’d figure out what to do next.

WELL, THAT HAD gone well, Cat thought as she walked back to the office. Not. He’d managed to embarrass her, which wasn’t easy in her line of work. Or maybe anger had heated her cheeks, not embarrassment. Regardless, after that she could easily dislike him.

It wouldn’t help anything to dislike him, though. Not one thing. Besides, she could understand his thirst to find his brother’s killer. She’d known more than one family who had been pursuing justice for a dead relative decades after the killing. Not unusual. Some called it closure, some referred to it as justice, but there was no escaping the fact that people needed a resolution. That need could consume them, and possibly their lives.

Cops understood that. They understood it so well that departments with sufficient resources ran a cold case unit. No one wanted to forget the dead.

A few cops even investigated cold cases after they retired, so haunted were they by some crimes.

So yeah, she got it. Totally. Which meant she needed to quell her reactions to Duke. They were too strong. Too reactive. She’d dealt with worse than a difficult relative before.

And that was what he was. However intimidating, however angry, he was still a grieving brother who needed his resolution.

Needing it in three weeks was the only unreasonable part. Larry hadn’t been here long enough to create a big list of persons of interest. A poker group, eight people max? Not much to go on.

Nor were the regulars he’d met at Mahoney’s, although they wouldn’t be overlooked as the department worked to peel back the layers on this case. If there’d been an argument or altercation, Mahoney would know. If it had been bad enough, he’d have reported it. Nothing had seeped out of that bar.

When she returned to a desk she shared with other officers, she realized she was at loose ends. Her assignment to keep an eye on the major made it impractical to follow any kind of duty that she couldn’t quit immediately.

Damn it. She liked to work. In fact, she liked it so much she averaged about sixty hours a week. That curtailed her social life, but that was okay. She was an introvert in an extrovert’s job. Interacting with people all day made her crave solitude with a book or a movie. Recharging.

Or maybe she could work out in her tiny gym in her basement. The house her mother had left her on Poplar had made it possible, which was good because this town had one gym open to the public: at the college. Public hours were limited, of course, making its use more difficult.

The house was cozy, which suited her. Just two bedrooms and a dine-in kitchen, no dining room. One full bath. The extra bedroom served as her home office and contained the daybed she’d slept in while caring for her mother.

It was a newer house than many neighboring ones that had been built during the waning days of the Victorian era, but it displayed nice touches with dark woodwork and matching solid-core oak doors. Over the time since her mother’s death, she’d started repainting the interior and had indulged her love of color, such as the Wedgwood blue in the living room and sunshine yellow in the kitchen.

When she walked through the door, she initially felt sorrow. Despite having many good memories here, she also had a lot of sad ones, and every time she entered the house, she missed hearing her mom call out, Hi, honey.

Sometimes she was almost sure she’d heard the greeting. Each time it happened, it arrested her. Even in midstep, she’d pause, listening.

She changed quickly into her workout clothes and headed down into the basement. There her weights, her exercise bike and her treadmill awaited her. This wasn’t her favorite part of the house, but it was a necessary one, holding the washer and dryer, a utility sink and various boxes of stored items.

Items that she kept thinking she should give away. She had no use for her mother’s clothes, for one thing. She’d already saved what she cared about.

An hour later, wishing for a TV so she’d have something other than her own rambling thoughts to keep her company while she exercised, she took her sweat-soaked body upstairs for a shower.

Then it was time to consider dinner. Dang, her life outside of her job had become a totally predictable routine. Exercise, dinner, book or DVD, or sometimes some browsing on the internet.

Occasionally she wondered if that was a reaction to all the many months she’d spent looking after her mother. A time to heal, maybe a time to hide from personal cares.

Whatever. She was in no mood to do anything about it just then. Major Daniel Duke was probably going to invade her entire life with his quest. He’d taken over the job part of it. Now she could live in expectation of getting a phone call even at night as he told her what harebrained thing he was planning to do.

She caught herself. “Not fair,” she said aloud to the empty house. She had to stop ascribing things to him she couldn’t yet know.

He’d really set her back up, right from the time he’d first walked into the office.

Why?

When it came, the answer annoyed her no end. He was attractive. Very attractive. A trickle of warmth passed through her as she visualized him. Oh yeah.

She needed that like a hole in her head.

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