Manitou Canyon Read Free Page B

oblivious, had wandered into the shoot-out. Cork’s father, in grabbing her and bringing her to safety, had taken a fatal bullet. Cork generally didn’t reflect much on his father’s death, except in this bleakest of months.
    After he finished his business in the bank, he walked to the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Office, just a couple of blocks away. He could smell the aroma of deep-fry coming from Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. He walked past North Star Notions, where the window had already been stripped of Halloween decorations and now sported turkeys and cornucopias and other symbols of Thanksgiving, more than three weeks away. He waved to Ardith Kane, who stood inside amid aisles and shelves filled with pine-scented candles and toy stuffed moose and dream catchers and Minnetonka Mocassins, and she waved back. He turned the corner at Pflugleman’s Rexall Drugs and walked another block to the Sheriff’s Department and County Jail. Behind the thick glass of the public contact desk, Kathy Engesser, who was a civilian employee and usually worked dispatch, sat bent over the St. Paul Pioneer Press, working that day’s New York Times crossword puzzle. With a pen. She looked up and smiled.
    â€œHey, handsome,” she said into the microphone. She had dark blond hair with a few solidly gray streaks. She pushed back a tress that had fallen over one eye. “Long time, no see. Where you been hiding yourself?”
    â€œClosing up Sam’s Place today, Kathy.”
    â€œAlready? Time does fly. What can we do for you?”
    â€œIs the sheriff in?”
    â€œShe’s here. Want to talk to her?”
    â€œIf she’s free.”
    â€œWorking on year-end budget stuff. Wouldn’t take much to pull her off that, I’m guessing. I’ll let her know you’re here.”
    She lifted her phone and punched a button. Cork watched her lips move. She nodded, put the phone down, and bent to the microphone. “She says, and I quote, ‘God yes, let him in.’ ” Kathy reached below the desk and buzzed Cork through the security door.
    He found Sheriff Marsha Dross at her desk, awash in a sea of paperwork. She had her elbows propped on the desk and her head in her hands. She looked as miserable as Cork had ever been when he’d worn the badge that was now hers.
    â€œWe’re broke,” she said hopelessly.
    Cork sat down on the other side of the desk and smiled at her across the chaos of documents. “You’ll find a way. You always do.”
    â€œWe’re driving cruisers that desperately need replacement. Our radio equipment is from the eighteenth century. Because of all the overtime on the Klein case last spring and the search for John Harris, my personnel budget is a disaster. In two weeks, I’m going to have to go to the commissioners and tell them that if they want a police force in this county at Christmas, they’ve got to give me more money. Frankly, I’d rather shoot myself.”
    â€œThey’ll probably do it for you.”
    â€œIf I’m lucky. Old Nickerson has never liked having a female sheriff.” She finally smiled, wanly. “What’s up?”
    â€œIn fact, it’s John Harris.”
    Dross was in her early forties, a not unattractive woman whokept her brown hair cut short and her body in good shape. She’d been the first woman to wear a Tamarack County sheriff’s deputy uniform, and it was Cork who’d brought her onto the force.
    â€œYou found him?” she asked with a tired smile.
    â€œI’ve been hired to give it another shot.”
    â€œHired by who?” Now she was serious.
    â€œHis grandchildren.”
    She nodded, as if it didn’t surprise her. “They weren’t happy when I pulled the plug on the search.” She eyed him. “You weren’t either.”
    â€œBut I understood.”
    â€œWhat do they want you to do that we didn’t do