Open Season

by Linda Howard

  Chief of Police Jack Russo stood on the other side of the scarred, wooden checkout desk, looking impatient. Daisy knew him by sight, but had never spoken to him before, and she wished she wasn’t doing so now. Frankly, she didn’t think much of Mayor Nolan’s choice for chief. Something about him made her uneasy, but she didn’t know exactly what. Why couldn’t the mayor have chosen someone local, someone already on the force? Chief Russo was an outsider, and from what she’d seen in town meetings, he wasn’t averse to throwing his weight around. It was easy to dislike a bully.

  “I wouldn’t have yelled if anyone had been in sight,” he said tersely.

  “The door wouldn’t have been unlocked unless someone was here,” she replied just as tersely.

  Stalemate.

  Physically, Chief Russo was a good-looking man, if one liked jocks with thick necks and broad, sloping shoulders. She wasn’t silly enough to automatically assume anyone athletic was also stupid; still, Daisy had never cared for the type. There had to be something basically narcissistic about a man who worked out enough to maintain that sort of muscularity, didn’t there? She didn’t know how old he was; his face was unlined except for a few squint lines around his eyes, but his short-cut hair, while still mostly dark on top, was gray everywhere else. At any rate, he was too old to be devoting hours to lifting weights. Nor did she care for the cocky arrogance in his eyes, or the way his full lips always seemed to be on the verge of sneering. Who did he think he was, Elvis? Moreover, he was a Yankee—he had been a cop in either Chicago or New York, she had heard both—with a brusque, abrasive manner. If he’d had to run for office, as the county sheriff did, he would never have been elected.

  Daisy stifled a sigh. She was in the minority in her opinion of the chief. Mayor Nolan liked him, the city council liked him, and from what she heard around town, most of the single women thought he was the cat’s pajamas. So maybe she was wrong in her instinctive dislike of him. Maybe. She reminded herself it was only neighborly to keep an open mind, but she was still glad she had the checkout desk between them.

  “May I help you?” she asked in her best librarian’s voice, both brisk and friendly. Working with the public was a science, especially in a library. One had to encourage people, because of course you wanted them to read, but at the same time you had to impart a sense of respect for the library and other patrons.

  “Yeah. I want to sign up for the virtual library.”

  He couldn’t have said anything more likely to bring a beaming smile to her face. His stock automatically went up a few points. She was justifiably proud of the state’s virtual library; Alabama led the nation in that category. Any citizen of the state could register at any library and have on-line home access to thousands of newspapers, magazines, articles, encyclopedias, research material, medical journals, and the like. Some of the categories were targeted to specific age groups of children, for work in the classroom and for help with their home-work, or as general interest. Other states had virtual libraries, but Alabama’s was by far the most extensive.

  “You’ll love it,” she said enthusiastically, lifting the hinged countertop that allowed her to step out from behind the security of the checkout desk. “Come with me.”

  She led him to the reference section, where their on-line computer sat quietly humming, always ready. She took the chair in front of the computer and gestured to him to pull up another. He hooked a chair over, positioning it much too close to hers, and settled his large frame on it. He immediately leaned back and hitched up one long leg, crossing his right knee with his left ankle. It was the automatic position of a dominant male, that of a man accustomed to physically commanding the space around him.

  Daisy frowned and mentally deducted those points he had just gained. Didn’t he know he shouldn’t crowd people? She scooted her chair a couple of inches away and chalked up “bad manners” in his debit column.

  She took the required information from him, entered it into the system, and gave him his password. All the time she was aware that he was still too close; she glanced several times at that muscular thigh right beside her. If she scooted any farther away, she wouldn’t be able to reach the keyboard. Irritated, because he had to know he was crowding her personal space—cops in big cities studied things like that, didn’t they?—she shot an exasperated look at him and almost jumped, because he was staring at her. He wasn’t trying to hide it, either.

  She felt a blush heating her face. Ordinarily she would have finished as soon as possible and scurried back to the safety of her office, but today was a new day, a turning point in her life, and she decided she’d be damned if she’d let herself be intimidated. She’d already been rude to Mrs. Simmons, so why not the chief of police, as well?

  “You’re staring,” she said bluntly. “Do I have a smudge on my face, or do I look like a dangerous criminal?”

  “Neither,” he said. “Law enforcement officers stare at people; it’s part of the job.”

  Oh. She supposed it was. She ratcheted her indignation down a few notches—but just a few. “Stop it anyway,” she ordered. “It’s rude, and you’re making me uncomfortable.”

  “I apologize.” He still didn’t look away from her, though; he probably didn’t respond well to orders. His eyes were kind of an odd gray-green, more green than gray, and a tad out of place with his olive skin. Of course, she didn’t have any room to comment on anyone else’s strange eyes, since her own were two different colors. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Miss. . . Daisy, isn’t it?” His full lips quirked. “May I drive you somewhere?”

  Her face went way past blush, straight into tomato red. Since the movie Driving Miss Daisy had come out, countless people had thought it funny to make the same offer. She hadn’t laughed yet. She gave him two more checks in the debit column, because making fun of someone’s name was rude and deserved extra deductions.

  “No, thank you,” she said in such frigid tones he couldn’t miss the fact that she didn’t think he was amusing. She got to her feet and handed him his plastic card with his password written on it, then without another word marched back to the checkout desk and pulled down the countertop that closed her off from him. Thus barricaded, she faced him across the wooden expanse.

  “Sorry,” he said, which was the second time he had apologized in as many minutes. The problem was, she didn’t think he’d meant it either time. He leaned on the checkout desk and flicked the plastic password card in his long fingers. “I guess you get that a lot, huh?”

  “A lot,” she echoed, keeping her tone deep in the arctic.

  He flexed his shoulders, as if settling his shirt more comfortably, but she had read magazine articles about body language and thought he might be trying to impress her with his physique. If so, he had failed.

  After a long moment in which she remained stubbornly silent, refusing to acknowledge or accept his apology, he gave another shrug and straightened. He tapped the plastic card on the desk—goodness, what kind of signal was that? She tried to remember if tapping meant anything in body language—and said, “Thanks for your help.”

  Darn it, now she had to reply. “You’re welcome,” she muttered as she watched him leave. She was fairly certain she heard him snickering.

  Damn Yankee! What was he doing down here, anyway? If he was such a hotshot big-city cop, why wasn’t he in a big city? What was he doing here in Hillsboro, population nine thousand and something, tucked away in the north Alabama mountains? Maybe he was a dirty cop and had gotten caught. Maybe he’d made a terrible error in judgment and shot an unarmed innocent. She imagined he was capable of all sorts of things that would have gotten him sacked.

  Well, she wouldn’t waste any more time fretting about him. In the grand scheme of things, rude patrons weren’t important. Mentally she settled her ruffled feathers. She was a woman with a mission, and she wasn’t going home today until she had found a place of her own to live in.

  She sighed as she remembered her short list of choices. If she
kept that vow, she might be sleeping in her car tonight.

  THREE

  Mayor Temple Nolan loved his little town. Hillsboro was unusually compact for the south, where land was cheap and plentiful, and spreading out was easy. Hillsboro had never spread out much, but remained mostly nestled in a small valley, surrounded by the foothills of the Appalachians. He even loved the approach into town: the main road, lined with cedar trees, wound its way up a hill, then you rounded a curve and there was the town spread out before you, looking more like it belonged in New England than in the sunny south.

  There were white church spires piercing the sky, big oaks and hickory trees spreading their enormous green canopies, lawns bright with flowers; hell, there was even a town square. There wasn’t a courthouse, because Hillsboro wasn’t the county seat, but they had a square. It was only one acre, and they’d made it into a pretty little park with well-tended flower beds and benches for sitting, as well as the requisite cannon from the War Between the States, with a pile of rusted cannonballs stacked at its base. Enough of the citizens actually used the little park that he felt the cost was justified.

  City hall, a two-story yellow brick building, sat on one side of the square, flanked by the police department and the white-columned city library—the first ruled by Chief Jack Russo, a brusque, hard-nosed Yankee who kept the mayor’s town squeaky clean, and the latter by Miss Daisy Minor, as starchy an old maid as ever lived. Not that she was all that old, but she was definitely starchy. She was one of the mayor’s favorite characters in a small town filled with characters, because she was so very stereotypical.

  Various stores faced on the rest of the square, like the dry cleaners, the hardware store, a clothing store, several antique shops, the feed store, the dime store, a hobby shop. Hillsboro didn’t have fancy shopping, but the citizens could get everything they needed to survive and enjoy life right here. There were the usual assortment of fast food places in town, but none of them were on the square; they were all down the road toward Fort Payne. The only restaurant on the square was the Coffee Cup, which did a booming business for breakfast and lunch, but closed at six because the dinner business wasn’t that great.

  It was a peaceful town, as much as any gathering of more than nine thousand people could be peaceful. There weren’t any bars or nightclubs in Hillsboro; the county was dry. If you wanted something alcoholic to drink—legally—then you had to go to either Scottsboro, which had separated itself from the rest of the county and voted wet, or over into Madison County. Oh, people were always trying to bring booze back home, and the police department tended to look the other way as long as they did indeed go home, but the department cracked down on people who wanted to do their drinking and driving at the same time, as well as kept a sharp eye out for teenagers who were trying to sneak cases of beer back for parties. And there were always people who wanted to smoke marijuana or pop some pills, but Temple Nolan worked hard to keep drugs out of Hillsboro.

  That was one of the reasons he’d tapped Jack Russo as chief of police. Russo had worked in both Chicago and New York City; he had a lot of experience in the streets and alleys, and knew what to look for when it came to drug infestation. If his methods were sometimes a little rough for this part of the country . . . well, you had to take the bad with the good. The best thing about Russo was that he was an outsider. He could get the job done, but he wasn’t hooked into the old-boy network by which an astonishing amount of information and favors were passed around. A favor received was a favor owed, and before you knew it, things were being done that shouldn’t be done, information passed that should be kept quiet. By hiring an outsider, Temple had nipped that in the bud. Hillsboro was to stay peaceful and clean, the way he loved it, and the chief was too isolated to pick up on things he didn’t need to know. So far, that had worked out well.

  Temple had been mayor for nine years, having just won his third term of office the year before. He was only forty-five, a trim, good-looking man with blue eyes and neat dark hair. He’d grown up in Hillsboro, a popular boy who played all the sports—football, basketball, baseball—but never been the star of any of them. That hadn’t affected his popularity, or his plans. He’d never dreamed of making it big in the major league of any sport. And the star quarterback hadn’t been the one who married the head cheerleader; Temple had that honor. Jennifer Whitehead, lithe and blond, had become Mrs. Temple Nolan, in June, after he received his college degree in business administration. The next year had seen the arrival of Jason, and three years after that blond little Paige had been born. Their family portraits looked idealized, like a brochure for family planning.

  His kids had kept their noses clean, too; Jason had turned out to have a decent throwing arm, and attended college on the strength of it. But a life in the majors wasn’t his dream any more than it had been Temple’s, and he was currently in medical school in North Carolina. Paige, at age twenty, was also in college, with double majors in math and science; she wanted to work in the space program. They were great kids; thank God neither of them took after their mother.

  Yep, Jennifer was the fly in his ointment. Good old Jennifer; he should have realized that if she was easy in high school and college, marriage wasn’t going to change her. He reckoned she’d crawl into bed with just about anyone. If both his kids hadn’t resembled him so much, he’d have had their DNA tested. But at first Jennifer had at least tried to limit herself to his bed; he didn’t think she’d begun steadily cheating on him until Paige was about two.

  His political career would probably withstand the shock if he divorced her, but he had no intentions of doing so. For one thing, the kids loved their mother, and he didn’t want them upset. For another, Jennifer had her uses. He was certain she gained him some sympathy votes—the “poor Nolan, he does his best to hold the family together” type of thing—plus if he needed her to close a deal or pay a favor, Jennifer was always willing to drop her drawers and lie down.

  Of course, that meant he had to go elsewhere for relief. No way would he stick his click in her again, not after some of the trash she’d let crawl on top of her. He could have set up a liaison with any one of several available women in town—as well as some who weren’t supposed to be—had he been so inclined, but a wise man never fouled his own nest. No, it was best that he keep his urges out of town, and it wasn’t as if he ever had any trouble finding a woman when he needed one.

  His private number, distinguished from the other office lines by its distinctive tone, began ringing. After first glancing to make certain his door was closed, Temple answered the call. “Yes?” He never said his name, just in case—especially not on his cellular phone, but the habit had carried over to land lines, too.

  “We have a little trouble with the shipment,” said a voice he recognized.

  “Will there be a delay in getting it out?”

  “Yeah. You might want to see to this yourself.”

  Temple cursed to himself; he had a round of golf scheduled, if this damn rain ever let up. Now he had to drive almost to Huntsville. But Glenn Sykes was a capable man; he wouldn’t have said Temple needed to oversee this problem personally if it wasn’t something serious. “I’ll take a long lunch,” he said briefly.

  “Come to the barn,” said Sykes. “I’ll be there waiting.”

  Both men disconnected, and Temple slowly replaced the receiver. So long as there hadn’t been a successful escape, everything would be all right, and Glenn would have told him immediately if that had happened. But other problems sometimes cropped up, problems that had to be handled immediately before the situation became more complicated.

  Three hours later, standing in a dilapidated old barn, he looked down at the problem and silently swore as he estimated the lost profits. “What happened?”

  “Overdose,” Glenn Sykes said succinctly.

  It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess what had happened, the mayor thought sourly. “GHB?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mitchell.” Sykes didn’t c
ontradict him, and Temple sighed. “Mr. Mitchell is becoming a problem.” This wasn’t the first time Mitchell had closed one of the girls with GHB. The sick bastard preferred them unconscious when he fucked them; Temple guessed it made him feel as if he was getting away with something. Or maybe he thought that if they didn’t fight, then it wasn’t rape. Whatever his reasoning, this was the second time he’d killed one of the girls with GHB. Using the merchandise was one thing, but when he started cutting into the profits, that was serious.

  Sykes grunted. “Mitchell’s been a problem. The fucking idiot’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

  “I agree.”

  “Want me to set something up?”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to. Mitchell’s fun and games are costing us money.”

  Sykes was relieved. He didn’t like working with fuckups, and Mitchell was a Class-A fuckup. On the other hand, it was a pleasure working with a man like Temple Nolan; he never broke a sweat, but handled everything with a cool lack of emotion. Sykes indicated the bundle on the ground. “What do you want me to do with the body? Bury it? Or dump it?”

  Temple considered. “How long has it been?”

  “Almost four hours since I found out about it.”

  “Wait another couple of hours to be sure, then dump it.” The chemical composition of GHB broke down after six hours, making it untraceable unless a body was found and tests were run within that time limit. After that, the authorities might suspect GHB, but there was no way of proving it.

  “Any preferences as to where?”

  “Not as long as there’s no connection to us.”

  Sykes rubbed his jaw. “I think I’ll take her to Marshall County, then; when she’s found, they’ll think she’s just one of the migrant workers and no one will push very hard to identify her.” He glanced up at the tin roof, where the steady rain was drumming. “The weather will help; there won’t be any trace evidence left, even if the Marshall yahoos decide to make an effort.”