“She was with me last night,” Clete said.
“Where?” the sheriff said.
“Here, at the cabin,” Clete replied.
“It’s funny you say that,” the sheriff said. “Detective Boyd came out here when we first got the report on the motel incident. Except your Cadillac was gone, and so was her pickup. Where were you, Mr. Purcel?” Clete started to speak. The sheriff raised his hand. “You lie to me again, you’re going downtown, too,” he said.
The deputies were putting Gretchen behind the wire-mesh screen in a cruiser, her wrists cuffed behind her.
“You’re charging her with homicide?” I said. I saw his eyes waver, his confidence slip. “What are you not telling us?” I asked.
“What makes you think we need to tell you anything?” Jack Boyd said.
“I’m asking you for the same information you give out to the news media,” I said.
“You’re not the news media,” he replied.
I looked at the sheriff and waited.
“Take her in,” he said to Boyd.
“Yes, sir,” Boyd said. “Sheriff, I made a joke to Bill Pepper. I didn’t mean for the girl to hear it. I was wrong. I hope that clears up the matter once and for all.”
“All right, Jack. I’ll see you back at the department.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Miss Gretchen is not a ‘girl,’ buddy,” I said. “That’s a term you guys can’t seem to lose. I also think you guys have a way of keeping your distance from Love Younger. Don’t feel bad. I grew up in the same kind of environment. People with money got a free pass on just about everything, sometimes including homicide.”
“It doesn’t work that way here,” the detective said. His black hair was shiny, his eyes liquid and iniquitous, his sideburns flaring like grease pencil on his cheeks. Inside his narrow-cut suit coat, he wore a white snap-button shirt with silver stripes in it. I could hear the wind channeling in the trees and the horses nickering by the barn. There was something wrong with the procedure, the way Bisbee and the detective were going about it, the circuitous nature of their conversation. And the sheriff knew that I knew.
“What was the weapon?” I said.
“That’s not your business,” the detective said.
I looked at the sheriff again.
“You heard Detective Boyd,” he said.
“You don’t have a warrant for the cabin, do you?” I said.
His eyes were empty, the white tips of his mustache lifting in the breeze.
“What was the weapon?” I repeated. Clete was staring at me now.
“Did you hear what the sheriff said? Butt out,” the detective said.
I waited for the sheriff to speak. He put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. “Put her in the interview room when you get back to the department,” he said to the detective. “I’ll wrap up things here.”
“If any of your people hurt my daughter, you’re going to wish your mother used a better diaphragm,” Clete said.
“You’re about to find yourself under arrest, Mr. Purcel,” the sheriff said.
“Try it. See what happens if one of these guys puts his hands on me.”
The detective and one of the uniformed deputies drove away, Gretchen leaning forward on the backseat, her wrists cuffed behind her. When she twisted her head and looked through the rear window, I thought of a balloon snipped loose from its string, floating away in the wind stream.
“The judge wouldn’t give you a warrant for the cabin, would he?” I said to the sheriff.