He sits across the table from me. “I know it’s a cliché, but Eric saved me. When my term’s up, I only hope that I’ve made myself useful enough that I can stay and keep repaying that debt. And, yeah, that’s partly because I don’t want to go back. I’m happy here. But I do owe him. I owe him big, and anything he wants from me? It’s his.”

He fingers his mug, and it seems as if he expects a response, so I say, “All Eric wants from you is exactly what he’s getting: a damned fine deputy.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “Thanks. What I mean, though, is … I get the feeling … but I don’t want to step aside if there’s no reason to, but if …”

I wait for him to go on, but he only fusses with his mug. Then his head lifts. “Shit! The eggs.”

He’s hurrying back to the stove when a rap comes at the door. It’s a familiar knock. One hard rap, pause, then a second, almost reluctant one, as if the caller would really rather just knock once for efficiency but then it would be mistaken for a bang and he’d have to start over again.

I call, “Come in,” and I swear I hear the knob turning before I even say it. Dalton’s heavy boot steps cross the living room, and he sticks his head into the kitchen.

“Knew you’d be up already. Thought I—” He sees Anders and stops.

“I crashed on the couch,” Anders says. “Now I’m making breakfast.”

“Doing a shitty job of it, smells like. How the hell do you burn scrambled eggs?”

“It’s a special talent.”

Dalton walks to the stove. “No, it’s having the damned fire too hot. Get out of the way.” He looks at me. “You want scrambled eggs?”

“That’s fine. I—”

“Do you want scrambled eggs?”

“Over easy would be better.”

He looks at Anders. “Sunny side up?”

“Yes, please.”

“You know what would help, Will? If the one kind of eggs you can make is the kind you actually like to eat. Get out the bacon or sausage or whatever Casey has in the icebox, and then pour me a coffee while I make breakfast.”

“Yes, boss.”

Nine

We eat. We head to town. We make a public statement. Or I do. Once again, Dalton stands beside me, arms crossed, so when the time comes for questions, no one opens their mouth. This time, though, Dalton says, “If you’ve got any, you have sixty seconds to ask. After that, if you come by the station or stop us in the street, I’ll charge you with obstruction of justice.”

“And what’s the penalty for that?” someone asks.

“I haven’t decided. Forty-five seconds left.”

He does let it go a little longer than that—allowing two questions. One is asking whether there will be water restrictions until our stock is replenished.

“No restrictions,” Dalton says. “But the price of water and wood just doubled. However, we’ll be looking for people to join a logging expedition and folks to haul water from the springs. Double pay for that.”

The next question is from Kenny, who wants to know if there will be a moratorium on carpentry. He’s not really asking so much as getting Dalton to announce it, so no one comes to him wanting work done. He’ll be busy rebuilding the lumber shed with others.

Val shows up then. Not to the actual statement—God forbid, because someone might ask her a question—but immediately after, to tell Dalton that the council wants to speak to him.

“Come on,” he says to me.

“The council only wants—” Val begins.

“Too bad. Butler is in charge of the case, and presuming that’s what they want to talk about, this will be a hell of a lot faster than passing on questions through me. Now run ahead and get them on the line. We’re a little busy here.”

The council is one faceless guy on a static-stuffed radio frequency. The others are apparently listening, probably by teleconference, but we only hear from that one guy—Phil.

“We’ve received a case update from Valerie,” Phil says after she introduces us, cutting off my hello.

“And there’s nothing more we can add,” Dalton says. “Detective Butler just issued a statement. There were no questions other than housekeeping shit. Now, the longer we’re on this call, the longer we’re not investigating the crime.”

“Crimes,” Phil says, emphasizing the plural. “You seem to have a lot of them, Eric.”

“Yeah, we do. Weird, isn’t it?” Dalton muses. “The few people here who’ve committed crimes had justification. Otherwise, we wouldn’t let them in, right?” He continues before Phil can answer. “Mick’s death was probably unconnected to the other murders—”

“Which is worse, isn’t it? Two killers working in Rockton suggests an outbreak.”

Dalton snorts. “Yeah. A contagious homicide rash. What happened last night was about those damned drugs you aren’t interested in helping me clean up.”

“Because, relatively speaking, rydex is no more dangerous than alcohol. More so, given that we average an alcohol-related death every eighteen months. It’s the price you pay for isolation.”

I clear my throat. “If you have questions on last night’s events—or on the other case—”

“No, Detective Butler, we do not. We trust you have the other matter in hand. We also agree with Sheriff Dalton that last night was the very unfortunate result of recreational drug use. We’ve decided on a verdict.”