“I might have met him, I’m not sure.” And, oh, yeah, he screwed my mother, but who am I to hold that against a dead man?
“This thing with your sister must have you on edge.”
“Ralston?”
“Not what I was thinking about, but at least she won’t have to worry about him for a while. I’m going for the maximum sentencing. I mean, the library?”
Colin shared the sentiment. Threatening to bomb the courthouse or the public safety building? Inconvenient, but sure. Scaring all those moms and little kids was something else. “By the way,” he said, “will you be talking to his attorney?”
“Undoubtedly. Why?”
“Tell him Cait says no. She’s not interested in any more apologies from him and sure as hell isn’t going to indulge him by letting him issue one in person.”
“Can’t say I blame her. Do you have any idea who took those potshots at her?”
People kept asking Colin that. It really grated that he had to shake his head. “So far, the investigation has stalled.” Only a few people knew that her assailant and Hegland’s killer were likely one and the same.
“I haven’t met your sister yet, but someone pointed her out to me. In fact, I saw her out with the mayor the other night,” Floyd said casually.
Colin still didn’t know what Cait was thinking, but Noah had begun to grow on him. The last thing either of them needed was to be the butt of gossip. They weren’t using their heads, but Colin knew why. He’d seen the way Noah looked at her.
Now he shrugged. “Maybe work-related, but I guess they’ve gotten to be friends.” He hesitated. “Something you might not have heard yet, Ronald. You know those bones we dug out of a backyard? We’ve identified the guy. He turned out to be Noah Chandler’s father.”
“What?” The D.A. stared at him in shock.
“You heard me.”
“But…Chandler isn’t even from around here.”
“Apparently he came to Angel Butte because it was his father’s last known address.”
Floyd swore a few times. He was still shaking his head when he left.
Growing pains. Colin brooded, leaning back in his leather desk chair. Who was he kidding? Angel Butte never had been the safe small town they had all believed it was, and Butte County wasn’t the rural backwater they’d deluded themselves it was, either. Too many of the recent crimes had their roots in the past.
It was time he quit waffling and threw his hat in the ring. He could make as much or more difference as county sheriff as he could have as Angel Butte police chief.
The job, he reminded himself, that Noah Chandler had robbed him of.
And my sister is sleeping with this man.
The sound he made in his throat was not a happy one.
* * *
SUNDAY MORNING, before most people were awake, Noah ran to the top of Angel Butte and back home again. Early as it was, the day was promising to be hot. Draining a bottle of water, he thought about staining the now stripped woodwork in the two front bedrooms and couldn’t work up any enthusiasm. Better he wait until he had the floors sanded anyway. Last time he’d done the two jobs ass-backward, he’d had to touch up the stain.
He wondered what Cait was doing this weekend. The look of desperation he’d seen on her face a few times kept tormenting him. She couldn’t go for a run or head out for an aerobics class at the health club if she’d joined yet. Her new town house was gathering dust. As far as he knew, the only times she left her brother’s house or city hall was when she was with Colin, hidden behind the tinted windows in his SUV.
Or with me.
Would she rather have spent the weekend with him? The thought was insidious. If Colin didn’t talk, no one would know she was there. What would she have said if he’d asked her? Noah wondered. It wasn’t too late. What would she say if he called and asked her to spend the day with him?
Noah wished he knew whether she’d so much as given him a thought the past few days. If so, there was no reason she couldn’t have called him, was there? he asked himself defensively.
And do what? asked an irritating voice in his head. Invite you to hang out at her brother’s house?
This was a woman who had no privacy and damn few choices these days.