The Triggerman Dance Read Free

bodied Sharon Dumars, noted that Joshua spent a lot of his extra time with the Rebecca Harris files before him—a case from which his official participation was forbidden by Bureau policy. But since Joshua spent twelve-hour days on the job, he could easily take an hour here, a few hours there, to venture out into this sacred and unsanctioned ground. Dumars saw that Joshua's own private file—which he carefully locked away each night before he left—was growing in thickness.
Driven by curiosity, she glanced once at his time card to find that Joshua had officially charged no hours at all to his private investigation. The idea crossed her mind that she might be the only one who even knew about it. She certainly wasn't the only one who knew about his long telephone calls, since all Bureau calls were recorded and saved for an unrevealed period of time.
All she knew for sure was that he talked almost inaudibly during certain calls (the longer ones), with his thin shoulder blades hunched up like a vulture's wings, his neck down and his back to her. He would then hang up and swivel his chair around to look at her with a kind of fierce nonchalance before going back to his work. For all Sharon Dumars knew, Josh could have been talking to his mother back in Brooklyn.
Then, on a blazing September morning six months after the death of his betrothed, Joshua Weinstein rang off from one of his near silent telephone conversations, stared blankly for a moment at Dumars, then stood, locked his files and put on his suit coat.
"Come with me," he said.
    Following Joshua's lead, Dumars left the building with him failing to sign out or say a word to anyone. Never in her three years with the Bureau had she done anything so bold and so flagrantly against procedure.

CHAPTER 2
Sharon Dumars drove her white Bureau Ford because Weinstein asked her to. They headed in silence out toward Riverside on the 91, then picked up Interstate 15 south to Temecula, then branched southeast on State 79. The highway ran along a green valley rimmed with estates on the left, oaks and pastures to the right, fruit stands and white fences. The stables of a well known Arabian horse ranch passed by on the right.
"Where are we going, Josh?"
"We are going by context."
"What case do I bill this context to?"
"Personal Time."
"There's no case called Personal Time, last I checked."
"Just pay attention, and later, I'll ask you what you think."
Finally, they hit State 371, which took them east and higher in elevation. Dumars handled the car well on the curving, rising road, passing a cement mixer and a pickup filled with hay bales without taking her left hand from the armrest. In fact, her shoulder holster and 9mm were uncomfortable enough against the left side of her rib cage without moving around any more than she had to. There were just a few houses out here, set far back amidst the boulder-strewn hills. They looked planted. Occasionally, a dilapidated trailer peeked into view from a deep ravine or precipitous hilltop.
"I guess the people who move out here don't like anyone around them," Sharon offered. The landscape was quite pretty in an austere way.
"Or no one likes to be around them" said Josh absently.
They passed a sign that said "Cahuilla Indian Reservation", then, a few miles on, a sign for the city of Anza Valley, elevation 3,918 and population less than that.
The town appeared ahead of them. Dumars cut her speed to fifty. They passed a real estate office that was closed, a hardware store that was open, and a liquor store that had three pickup trucks parked in the dirt patch out front and windows filled with beer posters featuring beautiful women.
"We want Olie's Saloon—it's on the left," said Josh.
They drove past the market, the gas and propane station, a tire and brake center and the Feed Bin. Dumars slowed behind a faded gold Mercury four-door slung so low to the asphalt it looked like its trunk was filled with bowling balls. She could see through its dirty rear