Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  She looked like a movie star out for a casual stroll, the sole reason behind it being having great photos snapped of her by the paparazzi.

  He got out of the door but held it open for her. She glanced at him as she walked out, also shooting her gaze toward Larry in the truck before he took her elbow and stopped her just outside one of Lou’s windows, in full view of the salon.

  “Don’t have a lot of time, Greta,” he told her when she looked up at him.

  “Okay, Hix.”

  She wasn’t hiding she was guarded, but also curious.

  “I didn’t get your number, was gonna call down to the salon yesterday, wanted to have lunch with you. Somethin’ came up. Was gonna call down this morning. Something else came up and me and Larry gotta drive down to Grant County.”

  He fished in his jeans, got his wallet out, flipped it open and pulled out a card.

  He shoved the wallet back as he handed it to her.

  She took it.

  “Hopefully,” he continued, “what we’re lookin’ into will sort itself out today. So maybe we can have lunch tomorrow, you can fit that in your schedule. Don’t have time to program you in my phone right now. You text me, I’ll program you in when I got a second and then I can call you direct.”

  She was staring up at him, lips parted.

  “Now I gotta go,” he said.

  “Right,” she whispered.

  “Lunch tomorrow if we can, yeah?”

  She stared some more, seemed to pull herself out of it and a small smile hit her face.

  “Yeah, Hixon. Definitely.”

  He nodded to her, wanting to smile back, pleased as hell she was clearly into that idea, but he had other shit on his mind. Shit he had to focus on, not doing it thinking Greta may be wondering, after what had gone down between them, why she hadn’t heard from him or seen him.

  He was not that guy who got off and took off.

  He also wasn’t that guy who played games, liked you, but felt the need to play it cool and waited days to connect so you wouldn’t know he did.

  “Later, sweetheart,” he murmured.

  Her smile got bigger and nearly blinded him.

  He’d take that and keep it as the next hours unfolded because he had a feeling deep in his gut he’d need it.

  “Later, Hix.”

  He shot her a small grin, turned and walked to the truck.

  He was starting it up, looking out the windshield at Greta walking back into the salon, doing it half-turned, arm up, waving his way, looking over her shoulder, still smiling that smile.

  He lifted up his chin to her, and as the door closed, his eyes moved to the rearview mirror and he started backing out into Main Street.

  “Don’t get pissed at me when I point out that woman is fine,” Larry remarked.

  “Mm,” Hix replied.

  There was silence as Hix put her in drive and started them on their way.

  Three blocks in, Larry said quietly, “Good for you, man. Good for you.”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Like I said, good for you, man. And I don’t mean that snarky, Hix. She’s pretty. Looks sweet. Great fucking smile. Friend or whatever, after what you been through, you deserve a smile like that aimed your way. So good for you.”

  Hix didn’t reply.

  But Larry was right.

  More than just Greta’s smile was good for him.

  Now he’d connected with her, she had his card, his number, she knew where he was at.

  So he could clear his mind and focus on finding Nat Calloway.

  “Not thinkin’ Nat Calloway is gonna walk in those doors, Hix.”

  Hix took his attention from where it was aimed through the windows of dispatch to the outside windows facing the street and looked at Ida who took over for Reva doing the nighttime dispatch shift, three to eleven.

  Dispatch wasn’t McCook County Sheriff’s dispatch. They didn’t have enough going on to have their own dispatch.

  It was McCook County everything dispatch. Sheriff, fire, emergency, and a couple of hotlines (suicide and sexual assault). The county’s 911 number ran through that room so even Dansboro Police, the only town in the county that was big enough to have their own force (albeit there were only three people on that force) used that dispatch.

  But the county was sleepy enough, five days a week, it was only operated from seven in the morning to eleven at night, the weekend shift going all the way to one in the morning mostly just because. The 911 calls were redirected to a service for the midnight hours due to the fact that no one called in during those hours because most the county was asleep, but it was still willing to pay for cover.

  Hix had spent the day getting more of what Faith Calloway said about her husband, Nat.

  Good guy. Hard worker. Family man. Loved his wife. Loved his kids. Might miss church on Sunday but only because that was one of the few chances he got to sleep in, though Faith didn’t miss it and took the kids.

  He was liked.

  Hell, Flynn Grady was beside himself, and not just because his foreman was missing, but because that foreman was Nat.

  Hix had call to know Grady after Hix’s deputies had been called in by the sheriff of Grant County to assist with some cattle rustling mess that had happened a few years earlier.

  Grady was a decent man, but he was crotchety. The kind of man you would know he liked you when he kicked the bucket and put you in his will.

  But he liked Nat. So much, he’d suspended operations that day to set his hands on the roads to see if they could find him.

  Not one of those men had protested or dragged their feet. They set out for their trucks practically before Grady finished giving the order.

  That said a lot without using a single word.

  Hix didn’t argue with this interference.

  Mostly because he wanted that man found.

  They’d also learned that no one thought Nat and Faith would work out, but he’d loved her at seventeen, and according to everyone they asked, he loved her now. He wouldn’t cheat. Worked too hard to get caught up in anything—another woman, booze, drugs, gambling. But it wasn’t the fact he didn’t have time, it was the fact he loved his wife too much. When he wasn’t working or on the road, he was with his family or his football league buddies.

  Simple man. Simple pleasures. Simple life.

  And now he was missing. No clues. His truck was nowhere to be found. They couldn’t locate his phone so it was either turned off or destroyed. Last person who saw him was one of Grady’s ranch hands and that man had seen him get in his truck and drive away.

  Still, it was nearly eleven and Hix was at the station. He’d gone over his notes and copies of all his deputies’ notes and he’d done that repeatedly. He’d then gone out to the Harlequin and brought in dinner for him and Ida.

  After that, he’d hung out with her in the dispatch room, his eyes often straying to the windows, his mind filled with Nat Calloway.

  “You got a bad feeling,” Ida noted.

  “Yup,” he agreed.

  She nodded.

  “You know the Calloways?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Think they go to the Methodist church.”

  For some in that town, what church you attended was the social divide. Ida was a Baptist. She was one of Keller’s flock. She was a fine woman but her social stratum wasn’t all that layered.

  “We don’t have much in the way of this kinda thing in this county, ’less a man or gal gets itchy feet,” she remarked. “Reckon in the big city you saw more of this. So I reckon your bad feelin’ isn’t a good thing.”

  She was very right.

  “Nope,” he agreed.

  She leaned to him. “It’s late, Hix. Go home. Get some rest. It’s as bad as you’re thinkin’, you’re gonna need it. It isn’t, then you got a decent night’s sleep.”

  It was good advice.

  So Hix nodded, took the sole of his boot off the chair he’d pulled in front of him and his ass off
the one he was sitting on.

  He looked down at Ida.

  Round, red cheeks, hair going gray and she wasn’t about to do a thing about it, something he knew because the “going” part of gray had almost went. If she dissed Lou’s House of Beauty and trimmed the long ends herself, Hix wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “Your shift’s over in twenty minutes, Ida. Could wait. Walk you to your car.”

  “You need company to keep your mind off things, Hix, you’re welcome to stay. But I’m used to the solitude and I like it. Got four kids at home who fight more than my husband and I did before he pulled on his boots and took off, and that’s saying something. Quiet does me a lot of good.”

  Her four kids were actually four adults still living with their mother. Hix couldn’t figure out if they were sucking her dry or loyal to the bone after their daddy left her with them when they were a whole lot younger. This was mostly because she fought with them as much as she said they fight with each other.

  There was love there, though, and Ida seemed content.

  Not to mention, it wasn’t any of his business.

  “Right, Ida. Catch you tomorrow.”

  “You will, Hixon. Try to sleep good.”

  He lifted his chin. Gave her a low wave. Went to his office, shut it down, shut the bullpen down, leaving the lights over reception on for Ida.

  He gave her another low wave before he left, got in his Bronco and drove to his apartment.

  He threw back a beer watching late night TV and trying to unwind, clear his head, find tired.

  But he was still wired.

  Even so, Ida was right.

  Until they figured out what had become of Nat Calloway, he’d need to have his shit together so he needed his sleep.

  He picked up his phone first, going to texts and finding Greta’s.

  Now you got me. Hope things went ok with what you were looking into. That means hope I see you tomorrow.

  That was Greta. She didn’t play games either.

  For his part, Hix hadn’t texted a woman not his wife, one of her friends, Donna, Bets, or one of his daughters in nineteen years. He had things going but he’d felt a reply was needed and he didn’t have any damned clue what to say.

  He’d gone with, Good to see your text. Things aren’t going great but call you tomorrow.

  She hadn’t replied and Hix suspected this was because she was giving him space to get done what he needed to do.

  Greta on his mind, he hit his shower before hitting the sack, because he didn’t jack off in the bed his daughters slept in.

  So he did it in the shower, thinking of Greta.

  Then he hit his bed, closed his eyes, and it took a while, but finally he found sleep.

  While he slept, the rain came.

  Really, Really Bad Day

  Hixon

  WHEN HIS PHONE rang, waking him up, the first thing that hit Hix was that it was raining.

  The second thing that hit him was seeing from his alarm clock it wasn’t quite yet six in the morning.

  And grabbing his phone from the nightstand, the last thing that hit him was that it was Bets calling.

  He felt a compression in his gut, an acrid taste in the back of his throat as he got up on a forearm, took the call and put it to his ear.

  “Bets.”

  “Hix, I found him.”

  Hix pushed up, the covers falling off, and he swung his legs around so he was sitting on the side of his bed, doing all this asking, “Where?”

  “Game trail some hunters use. Hix . . . boss . . . shit.” She paused before she hit him with it. “He’s dead.”

  Hix closed his eyes for only a beat then he pushed up and started moving. “It’s raining, Bets.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Ran to my car before I called you. Have a tarp in the back. It’s a new one, Hix. I was gonna do some painting, so I bought it this weekend and thank God I did. It was in a packet. It won’t screw with the scene. I took a bunch of pictures best I could in this light and then threw it over him.”

  “Good,” he grunted, dragging on some shorts. “Now, we end this call, text me directions to exactly where you are. Then you get on the line and you call Donna. You tell her where you are, you tell her to bring a tent and you tell her to get her ass there fast. Then you get on with Larry. Tell him to bring lights and get his ass there. After that, you get on with Hal and you tell him to get his ass there and do it bringing a shit ton of coffee.”

  “Right, boss,” she replied.

  Hix kept talking, phone wedged between his ear and shoulder as he did up his jeans. “You get done with that, I want you to get on the line to the forensics boys up in Cherry County. Tell them to come down and do it fast. I’ll call Lance on the way there.”

  “Okay, Hix.”

  Hix took the phone from his ear long enough to pull on a clean undershirt then he put the phone right back.

  “His truck there?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  Goddamn it.

  Where was that truck?

  “You up all night lookin?” he went on.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good job,” he said. “Now make those calls.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “See you soon.”

  “Yeah.”

  He hung up, tossed his cell on his bed and went to his closet to grab a clean sheriff shirt. He shrugged on his shirt, buttoned it up, tucked it in, wasted precious time transferring his badge from the shirt that was on the floor to the shirt he was wearing. He hit his closet and grabbed his sheriff slicker then went back to his bed. He sat on it, put on his socks and boots, shoved his wallet in his jeans, tagged his cell and the slicker and hauled his ass out through the rain to his Bronco.

  Hix stood under the big marquee tent they’d set up over the body and stared down at the man who was now on his back. After Lance, the county coroner, had done his thing and Hal and the forensic boys had taken their pictures, they’d turned Nat Calloway, who’d been on his stomach, to his back.

  He’d seen pictures Faith had emailed Larry so he already knew. And what Calloway had, even death and rain didn’t do much to dim it.

  Pretty wife. Good-looking husband.

  They fit.

  Perfect match.

  He tore his gaze from the body as Lance approached him.

  “Right, Hixon,” he started, cleared his throat and launched in. “Man’s been dead ’round about thirty-six hours, give or take. Got a gunshot wound to the back, right shoulder, another to the back of his neck, which unfortunately went through and through and part of what it went through was his jugular. Bled out fast. Reckon you figured this out already, but that didn’t happen here. This is the dump site. Crime scene is somewhere else and,” he looked to the ceiling of the tent, indicating without words how unlikely what he said next was now going to be before he aimed his eyes back at Hix, “there’ll be a goodly amount of blood.”

  Hix nodded.

  Lance kept going.

  “Gunshot isn’t at close range. My guess, this man was running away from the shooter, and the shooter was either a good shot and was aiming to kill or he got lucky or seriously unlucky, depending on what he wanted to go down. Shoulder hit and a rip in his shirt at his right biceps that looks like a bullet went through it but didn’t hit flesh says it’s the last. No other indications on the body how many shots were fired, but right now it’s lookin’ like at least three.”

  Hix nodded again and told Lance something he knew, “Man’s wallet is in his jeans. Money in his wallet. This wasn’t a robbery, unless he desperately wanted a cell phone, which our man has but he doesn’t have on his person.”

  This time, Lance nodded. “Nothing to give indication he was tied up or there was a struggle either. No obvious defensive wounds, may be some I find after I cut his clothes from him, but nothing I can see so it doesn’t look like there was a fight. He’s got abrasions on the heels of his palms with dirt and small rocks dug in, probably from falling forwar
d once he was hit. My best guess right now, it’s from goin’ down on concrete. Other than that, don’t know what it is at this point except the obvious, it was a shooting.”

  Hix looked back down at Nat Calloway.

  “Can’t know more until I get him on my table, but forensic boys are done with the body. Gonna get him into town and get down to gettin’ you some answers right away,” Lance went on.

  “Right,” Hix murmured. “Thanks.”

  Lance gave him a look, clapped him on the arm and moved to spread out his body bag.

  Hix walked to the leader of the two-man forensics team from Cherry County.

  “Anything you can give me to go on?” he asked even if he knew the answer.

  He got that answer right away when the guy shook his head. “If there was anything, the rain fucked it up. Got no footprints. Got some cigarette butts and litter, but all we got of that’s been out here since maybe 1977. We still bagged it just in case. This being the dump site, minimal blood.” The man’s chest puffed out with his big breath before he concluded, “With this rain, this spot is what this spot was before a body was dumped in it. It’s just a spot on a game trail with a man’s body in it. We got dick for you, Drake. But we’ll keep lookin’.”

  “I’m leavin’ Hal with you to help do that,” Hix told him.

  The guy tipped up his chin.

  “And you need anything, he’s your man,” Hix continued.

  “’Preciated, Drake.”

  “Nope, it’s appreciated you boys comin’ down here to help us out.”

  The guy dipped his chin and lifted a hand.

  Hix held his eyes a beat then walked away, turning his attention to his deputies, Bets standing to the side watching, Hal the same but not close to Bets, as Larry and Donna were in squats, helping Lance transfer the body onto the opened body bag.

  Hix waited until they had Nat Calloway zipped in and had lifted the body onto the hand stretcher. Something Lance could carry a quarter mile through tall grass and mud, but he wouldn’t be able to carry it back loaded with a body.

  “You can hang tight for five, Lance,” Hix called out, “wanna give my deputies direction and then we’ll help you get ’im out.”