Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  Still doing it, but while it was diminishing, he reached out, caught her behind the neck and pulled her to him.

  “I was just gonna say, thanks for goin’ all out to make me breakfast.”

  She stared into his eyes close up and whispered, “You’re welcome, Hix.”

  “Now I’m gonna say thanks for making me laugh after a shit day and facing another one.”

  “You’re welcome, baby.”

  He touched his mouth to hers, let her go and tucked in.

  After a few bites of crispy bacon, perfectly toasted toast and exceptionally fried egg, he said with mouth full, “Relieved to know the woman who forces breakfast on me can cook . . . sprinkles.”

  Her big eyes came to him, she gulped down the coffee she’d been drinking then it was Greta who busted out laughing.

  “S-s-sprinkles?” she asked through it.

  “Take that however you want,” he offered.

  She kept laughing.

  Hix went back to eating but did it smiling.

  “You name a dog Sprinkles,” she informed him.

  “Then we’re back to gum drop.”

  “Please, God, deliver me.”

  Hix chuckled and kept eating.

  He got done when she was half done, and he hated to say it but he had to.

  “I’ll clean up while you finish up and then I gotta go.”

  Her eyes came to him and the cheeriness was gone, the worry was back.

  “I’ll clean up, darlin’. You gotta go, just go.”

  “Need to get home, shower, change—”

  “Hix?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up and get outta here.”

  He grinned at her, picked up his plate, cutlery and mug and took it to the sink. He rinsed them all and came back to her, close to her side.

  She tipped her head back.

  He dipped his, running his hand along her neck at the back and curling his fingers around the side as he touched his mouth to hers and pulled a couple inches away.

  “Thanks again, sweetheart.”

  “You’re welcome, Hix.”

  He smiled at her, traced his fingertips along the soft skin at the side of her neck then let her go.

  He was at her front door and about to open it when she called out, “Catch ya later, stud muffin!”

  He bit back laughter but couldn’t quite stop his smile as he opened the door, lifted a hand, gave her a flick of the wrist and walked out.

  Hix wasn’t smiling when, two and a half hours later, he turned his eyes from the whiteboard timeline case profile he’d drawn up that was butted to the wall across from his desk—a whiteboard that had way too much white—to watch Bets and Larry come through the front door to the department.

  They both looked to him but only Larry walked back to his office. Bets went to her desk.

  Hix got up from behind his and had his ass leaning against the front of it when Larry walked in, coming to stand in front of him.

  “Faith has been updated and you were right. It was her Calloway had sex with the day he died. She told Bets they . . . he . . .” He cleared his throat and pushed through it. “She likes to get up with him. Get him breakfast. So after he showers, he wakes her up and they . . . take care of business.”

  “Right.”

  “Doesn’t rule out another woman,” Larry pointed out.

  “Lance didn’t say he found vaginal fluid from more than one woman, but I’ll call him later and make sure of that.”

  Larry nodded.

  “Do me a favor, man, and call the others in,” Hix requested.

  Larry turned to the door and walked out.

  Hix stayed where he was and watched the progression of his team as they filed into the office.

  Donna was last in and she closed the door behind her.

  They fanned out exactly as they’d done the day before. Donna at one end, Bets beside her, Larry beside Bets, Hal on the other end, like Larry was playing buffer for Donna and Bets against a colleague they both despised.

  In the rare times he had a briefing with them all, this was always the way they positioned themselves.

  He’d never noticed it.

  Now he did and Hix’s high estimation of Larry rose higher.

  “Right, unless anyone else had ideas since yesterday, I want us to start adjusting our focus and broadening our scope. We’re lookin’ for drifters. Homeless. And partners. We got nothin’ so nothin’ is out of bounds. Two men, man and a woman, even two women. Ask around. Hit the bars, diners, cafés and shelters in the county. New faces. Known folks. People actin’ hinky. People givin’ a bad vibe and gettin’ attention. Work as partners, Larry and Hal, Donna and Bets. Work it out amongst yourselves who’s going where. We struck out finding a crime scene, we have to focus on finding a suspect.”

  “So you think it was about the truck,” Bets noted.

  “Only thing missing is that truck,” Hix replied.

  “That’s the only thing I can think too. Figured, maybe he picked up a hitchhiker or something. Maybe a fugitive who needed a ride but not one he had to share.”

  That was a good idea, but unlikely. Unless the kill freaked him out, that brand of perp would take Calloway’s wallet, or at least the fifty-three dollars in it, especially if he took the time to move the body from the crime scene.

  Even so.

  “Run with that,” Hix ordered. “Anyone recently jumping bail who’s desperate enough to go to those ends to get his ass out of Nebraska. Do a search on that before you and Donna head out.”

  “We got a BOLO on that truck, Hix, and no hits on it,” Donna pointed out.

  “He might be layin’ low, Donna. I’ll start reaching out to law enforcement outside the adjoining counties at the same time hitting park services. Rangers get police alerts, gonna make sure they’re on the ball as well as get folks to put a bug in the ear of anyone they know in Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, South Dakota, doin’ the same myself.”

  “What about Iowa and Missouri?” Hal asked. “Not like roads don’t lead those places.”

  “Great stretches of nothin’ in the states I named, Hal,” Hix returned. “This man is on the run, he wants a lotta nothing. Not to hit a state where he’ll be nabbed by highway patrol or a town cop faster ’n he can say his own name. But bugs in the ear means be on the lookout same as BOLO actually stands for be on the fuckin’ lookout, so right now, havin’ dick, we gotta light some fires under people in hopes they’ll get motivated to lend us a hand. We also gotta go with hunches, attempt to create a focus of efforts and see if we can find a needle in a goddamned haystack then pin motive and opportunity on the damned thing.”

  Hal looked to his boots.

  Hix cut his gaze through his team. “Time to get moving.”

  They didn’t hesitate but Hix turned his attention to Hal.

  “Hal, a minute.” He looked to his door where Bets was the last to file out. “Close the door, Bets. Yeah?”

  She couldn’t quite fight back her grin as she muttered, “Yeah,” and closed the door behind her.

  Hix looked to Hal.

  “I’ll make this short because there’s shit to do,” he began. “You waste time sayin’ stupid shit during a briefing one more time, Hal, you’re suspended. I’m not fucking with you. We got a dead citizen and his grieving widow and kids in this county and I don’t need to be explainin’ to you how to do your job or the decisions I make. You got a genuine question or suggestion you wanna add, I’m open to it. You wanna bust my balls for whatever reason, shut it down.”

  “You’re threatening to suspend me during the first murder investigation in McCook County in fifty-two years?” Hal asked incredulously.

  “Yes, Hal, I am.”

  Hal straightened his back and puffed out his chest. “You’re giving preferential treatment to the other deputies.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Hix asked, now he was incredulous.

  “You told Bets to tell me to bring fucking coffee to a crime
scene yesterday.”

  “It was six in the morning, settin’ up to be a long day since we had the first murder victim on our hands that the county’s seen in fifty-two years, so yeah. I want my deputies alert and that means I want them to have some damned caffeine, and to get that not every one of ’em stoppin’ by Babycakes on the way to check out a body dump.”

  “I coulda brought the tent,” Hal pointed out irately.

  Hix could not believe what he was hearing.

  “You’re bustin’ my balls and wastin’ my time,” he warned low.

  Hal was and it would seem he couldn’t stop himself from doing it.

  “You’re handlin’ Bets with kid gloves ’cause it’s clear you got fed up with puttin’ up with her dewy eyes, obviously laid it out, and you gotta expend effort to kiss her ass and snap her out of it ’cause she’s a girl and not a man who first, wouldn’t give you dewy eyes and second, you could just say it like it was and he’d take it like a man. Not to mention, you left me behind as forensics’ errand boy while the rest of you started the investigation.”

  Hix couldn’t even think of his first point without physically getting in the man’s face.

  So he focused on the second.

  “Those Cherry County boys treat you like an errand boy?” he asked.

  “No,” Hal mumbled. “You did.”

  “Hal, I left you behind because you have experience at a murder scene so you’d know more what you’re lookin’ for working with forensics at a dump site. And I told you to show them McCook hospitality because those boys aren’t paid by our county and they coulda told us to go spit rather than hauling their asses down to another county to investigate a crime scene. It’s called interdepartmental relations and that leads to interdepartmental collaboration, somethin’ right now we need.”

  Hal opened his mouth.

  Hix lifted his hand.

  “Listen to me, Hal, and listen good. Your balls are so big you can’t bring coffee to your team and you got a problem handling orders or doin’ the job you’re paid to do for this county, then we have a bigger problem and that’s to do with your continued employment. From the very beginning, you wanted to blow this off. When my hunch this was serious played out, you’ve questioned nearly everything that’s come out of my mouth. Just now, Bets had an idea that, frankly, mired in the utter lack of shit that surrounds Nat Calloway, didn’t occur to me. She’s now workin’ that, and who knows, it might help us catch a killer. I can’t believe with your years on the job I gotta tell you this, but you’re either with us or you’re against us, and that us includes your superior officer and the two females we have in this department. My advice is, make your choice. Don’t make me make it for you.”

  “I want this guy found much as you, Hix.”

  “Then welcome back to the team.”

  Hal glared at him a beat before he asked, “We done, boss?”

  Since they were into it, he wasn’t.

  “No,” he answered.

  “What else?” Hal bit out.

  “I gotta partner you with Larry because he’s the only one who can work with you without lettin’ his feelings for you get in the way of that work. That doesn’t say anything about Bets and Donna. Watchin’ you alienate yourself from your colleagues, that says a lot about you and none of it is good. We need to find who killed Nat Calloway and we need to work as a functioning, healthy unit to do it. Again, with your time on the job, thought you’d sort yourself out with your fellow deputies, but you didn’t do dick to do that. So now I’m forced to share with you, you need to expend some effort, Hal. You razz Bets and you take it too far. You avoid Donna because she gave you some honesty you didn’t like to hear and you need to get over it. They don’t have to like you so much they ask you to Sunday dinner. But they do have to like you enough, trust you, know you got their back, to work with you on a job that in this place may seem like it don’t matter much, but we’ve got a dead man in the morgue proves that wrong.”

  Hal didn’t reply.

  So Hix asked, “Are you understanding me?”

  “Yeah,” Hal gritted.

  “Good.”

  “Now we done?” he asked.

  “I hope so, Hal.”

  Hix would swear he could hear the man actually grinding his teeth before he stalked out.

  He drew in a big breath and went back behind his desk.

  He put Hal out of his mind and picked up his phone in order to start first with park rangers to make certain they’d seen the BOLO and maybe motivate them to get some of their rangers out in their vehicles to search their parks for Calloway’s truck.

  He’d graduated to calling county sheriffs when his cell on his desk beeped and he looked to the screen to see it was from Reva, who was just across the way.

  It said, Terra Guide.

  His eyes went out the window and he saw Terra Snyder, editor of the town’s paper, the Glossop Guide.

  He lifted a one-minute finger to her through the window, noted she’d caught it and then set about tying up his phone call.

  He did this trying to think of Terra’s arrival as a boon. Their paper came out only once a week, on a Tuesday, that day had passed, and Hix hoped they had this solved by that day next week.

  However, they also had a website and if she could get word out that they were looking for anyone who saw anything on that stretch of road around six o’clock on Monday night, maybe they’d catch a break.

  In reality, this would probably just buy them a bunch of phone calls from people giving them crap they couldn’t use in an effort to be helpful or insinuate themselves into the situation in order to find out what was going on.

  But Terra was a good woman. She ran the paper practically by herself, was serious about her job even if it was mostly reporting on bridge club tournaments and high school sports, getting student interns from the high school or home for summers from college, and that was mostly it.

  So Hix pushed up from his desk, exited his office and walked out, calling a greeting to her when he entered the aisle between his deputies’ desks on the way to reception where she was standing, watching him.

  “Hey, Terra.”

  “Hix,” she replied, studying him closely.

  He didn’t talk to her over the reception desk. He moved through the swinging half door and went to stand close to her, resting a hand on the desk.

  “Heard you came by, sorry, been busy,” he remarked.

  “I bet,” she said. “Got anything for me?”

  Openly, he gave her what she needed to know, only what she needed to know. The victim’s name. Age. His occupation. The fact he was a family man. And that he was now sadly dead.

  “Got any suspects?” she asked, her head down, the fingers of one hand tapping away on the screen keyboard of a tablet she held in the other.

  “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, Terra,” he told her.

  She lifted her eyes to him. “Come on, Hix. Don’t shut me down like that. This isn’t Indianapolis. But it is the juiciest piece of news Glossop has had in near on two centuries.”

  All of a sudden he didn’t feel like this was a boon.

  “How about you go to Nathan Calloway’s widow and describe it like that?” he suggested.

  She looked instantly contrite and Hix was relieved he hadn’t been wrong that she might be a reporter, but she was a good one as well as a good woman.

  “That was out of line,” she muttered. “Sorry.”

  “Forgotten,” he replied. “Now you could do us a favor, you’re willin’ to help out.”

  She perked up and asked, “What’s that?”

  “Anyone who saw anything on County Road 56 from Glossop to the Grady ranch down in Grant County. Broken-down car. Hitchhiker. Sometime between the hours of five and seven Monday night. They saw something, they can call this department. Also lookin’ for a truck, it’s Nathan Calloway’s. White Ford F150, can shoot you the details on that through email.”

  “I can put somethin’ up
on the website, Hix.”

  “We’d be obliged, Terra.”

  She stared hard at him, remarking, “Could read from that you don’t got a lot.”

  “Read whatever you want,” he returned. “But I’ll tell you we’ve got all our resources at work on this, and we’re doin’ everything we can to find out who did this to the Calloway family.”

  She nodded, dropping her head to tap on her tablet before she looked back up at him. “Gotta know, citizens of this county have anything to worry about?”

  Hix shook his head. “Nothin’ leads us to believe that’s the case. Everything points to this being a random, one-time incident. But that doesn’t mean I won’t say what I say when I do my yearly talk at the middle school. Always be alert. Lock your doors. Let loved ones know where you’re at and when to expect you home. Though, again, sayin’ that only because it’s smart and should be routine for every citizen of this county.”

  “That’s good,” she muttered, tapping away. “Spin this also as a PSA, remindin’ folks they should look after themselves.”

  He didn’t like the idea of spinning a murder any way, but if there was a way it had to be spun, Hix would pick that one.

  The front door opened and Hix looked to it to see Henry Blatt, McCook’s last sheriff, strolling through.

  “Hope you ain’t talkin’ to the press, boy,” he declared loudly, his gaze swinging from Terra to Hix.

  Terrific.

  “Sheriff Blatt, what’s your take on what’s happened to Nat Calloway?” Terra called out as Blatt sauntered right to the swinging half door and also right through it.

  “My take is no comment,” he stated and kept talking and walking. “Drake, wanna talk to you. Office.”

  Hix watched him go, sighed and looked to Terra.

  “Just to say, off the record, which is not something a reporter usually throws out there, but thank God you’re in that office instead of him, this happened in this town, Hix,” Terra murmured, lifted her tablet his way and said, “Thanks. You shoot me the details of that truck, I’ll have some text to you to look over before I post it on the website. Work for you?”

  “Yeah, Terra, thanks.”