But rebuilding and expanding the department after years of neglect was a struggle. Griffin had only recently managed to secure funding to replace what had passed for their best patrol car – a used Crown Vic without air-conditioning or heating, and troubled by a seat stuck in a semirecumbent position – with a means of transport that permitted a driver to sit up straight and not suffer dehydration in summer or risk hypothermia in winter. He’d raised salaries to the maximum the town could afford, and used his own money to buy some vests that might potentially stop a bullet, or at least slow its progress. The mayor and council had been as supportive as they could, given their limited resources, because the alternatives were to amalgamate with one of the neighboring townships, all of which were worse off than Cargill; rely solely on the state police, who already had their work cut out; or strike a deal with the Burdon County Sheriff’s Office, and Griffin would rather have resigned than take that last step. So, in order to retain its chief and provide a police service that was fit for purpose, Cargill had ponied up.
But it was also in the town’s interests to invest in law enforcement, because decisions were being made in Little Rock and Washington, D.C., that might yet prove to be its salvation. Sometimes, one had to spend money to make money …
On this particular evening in downtown Cargill, Griffin was finishing up some paperwork, and contemplating the possibility of getting home in time to consume a leisurely dinner, followed by an hour in front of the TV with his wife. He caught sight of his reflection in the window as he glanced into the night and concluded – not for the first time – that his wife ought to have found herself a younger, better-looking mate. He was grateful that she had not, and was so far resisting any inclination to trade him in for a superior model, but Griffin was a modest man with, he felt, much about which to be modest. He was approaching fifty, and had recently been forced to purchase a new belt for his pants due to an insufficiency of holes in the previous cincture. He still retained much of his hair, which was a blessing, but the dark luster of youth was a distant memory. Napping had become habitual to him, and his feet often hurt. Wherever he looked, downhill beckoned.
Griffin had recently relocated his office from the back of the building to the front because the view was depressing him. Tornadoes had begun to shift east in recent years, meaning that Tornado Alley – previously the preserve of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, for the most part – now included regions of Arkansas, including Cargill. The first of the year’s twisters had struck a couple of weeks previously, leaving a trail of wrecked homes and ruined lives. In the days following, Griffin had discovered the remains of a mongrel dog stuck up a bald cypress. The dog was trapped in the topmost branches, and was entirely undamaged – apart from being dead, which, Griffin supposed, was about as damaged as a dog could get. The equipment wasn’t available to remove the dog, being required more urgently elsewhere, and so its body had remained in the tree for days. By an unfortunate quirk of fate, Griffin’s office window had provided a direct line of sight to the dead dog. Even when it was eventually retrieved, he could still see the tree and picture the animal, so he moved his office because it wasn’t as though he didn’t have enough to feel depressed about.
Griffin was currently reading a governmental memo relating to the threat to law enforcement posed by the Y2K problem. With a little less than three years to go to the new millennium, the worrywarts were prophesying a version of the end times, with planes falling from the sky and computers exploding because no one had thought about what might happen once all those nines turned to zeroes. Griffin wadded up the paper and threw it in the trash. He hated flying, which meant his only worry on the Y2K front was ensuring that he wasn’t under any malfunctioning planes as they dropped, and the department’s sole computer was so old that it ought to have come with a key attached in order to wind it up. The computer would be doing him a favor if it went up in smoke, because Griffin couldn’t use the damned contraption anyway.
Kevin Naylor, one of the full-timers, appeared at his office door. Griffin liked Naylor. The kid was barely into his twenties, but brighter than any three members of his extended family put together, and was somehow managing to combine his obligations to the department with a course in public administration. But he was supposed to be off duty, and should by rights have been home studying, or even just resting that big brain of his for a while.
‘Kevin,’ said Griffin. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I think we might have a problem.’
‘What kind of problem?’
Naylor chewed his bottom lip, as he tended to do when troubled. Griffin had spoken to him about it because he felt it made Naylor appear unsure of himself, or possibly mentally deficient, neither of which was desirable, but it was a habit the boy was struggling to shake.
‘Someone,’ said Naylor, ‘is asking questions about Patricia Hartley.’
Cargill boasted six bars – if ‘boasted’ was the right term, which it probably wasn’t; ‘could fess up to’ might have been more appropriate – of which three were unspeakable, a fourth was tolerable as long as one didn’t eat the food, another was functional at best, and the last might just have managed to keep its head above water even in a town with a greater range of more acceptable drinking and dining options. That establishment was Boyd’s, which was clean, served average food in above-average portions, and was generally untroubled by outbreaks of alcohol-related violence, which meant that Griffin regarded it with a tolerant eye. Boyd’s took its name from Boyd Kirby, who had opened its doors back in 1972, and departed to wipe down that great counter in the sky in 1991. Since then, Boyd’s had been in the hands of Kirby’s widow, Joan, who ran the place much as her husband had done, minus the swearing, Boyd Kirby having regarded the spaces between every syllable of a word as an opportunity to exercise the range of obscenities at his command, which had been considerable.
Boyd’s was quiet when Griffin and Naylor arrived, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays being the days when Joan made the majority of her money, the rest of the week representing pocket change. The bar had a well-stocked jukebox, although light on soul and R&B, which meant none at all. It was currently playing something by the Eagles, because somewhere in town was always playing something by the Eagles, and it might as well be Boyd’s as anyplace else. Griffin counted a dozen customers, of whom he could have named eleven. The twelfth was sitting in a corner booth with his back to the wall and a window to his left. From this vantage point, he could watch the parking lot, the bar, its clientele, and the door. A copy of the Washington Post was folded before him, next to a slightly diminished roast chicken platter and two glasses, one half-filled with soda, the other with water. As Griffin approached, the man placed his hands flat on the table, where they could clearly be seen. Naylor hung back by the main door, and joined everyone else in watching Griffin, just in case anything more interesting than the Daytona previews might be about to unfold.
The stranger was in his early thirties, Griffin guessed: not tall, and of medium build. His hair was dark, fading prematurely to gray at the sides. He was wearing a heavy blue cotton shirt that hung loose over his jeans, and a dark T-shirt underneath. Naylor hadn’t been able to tell if he was armed, but Griffin thought he looked like the kind of man that might be. It was the way he held himself as the chief approached. He didn’t appear nervous to be the object of police attention, which meant he was used to it. That made him police, criminal, or a private investigator. Police would have had the manners to introduce himself before asking questions about Patricia Hartley, and private might have had the good sense to do the same.