Page 6 of Mountain Man Officer

“Of course.” He seemed to be in a better mood.

“I like it. I’d like to buy it off you. I have cash, if you’ll knock some figures off the price.”

“I could go down by five thousand dollars,” he said cautiously.

“You can do better than that.”

“Six thousand, final offer.”

I inhaled, looking up at the sun visors. “Done.”

“Great!” the guy said, perking up just like I knew he would. “Give me a few days to get the paperwork together and some other things.”

“As soon as possible,” I said.

“Of course,” he agreed.

Feeling better, I stuck the key in the ignition and drove off to find the two known felons.

Iknocked on the door, and a little old woman answered, tiny and wrinkled in a pink sweater.

“Good afternoon. I’m looking for Earl Petty,” I said.

“What’s he done now?” she wondered.

I smiled. “I just want to talk to him.”

“Earl!” she shouted, moving away from the door and into the recesses of the house. The storm door swung shut in my face, snapping out my view of the kitchen. In that split second, I had been able to see into the home, I could tell it was a mess.

Dressed in a stained white T-shirt and blue sweatpants, Earl came to the door a few minutes later, “What?”

“My name is Detective Jason White with the Singer’s Ridge police department,” I said calmly.

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Earl replied.

I ignored that. “I’d like to talk to you about some drug overdoses, if you have a minute.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no people dyin’.” He leaned against the storm door, itching to go.

“You were convicted of distributing controlled substances and spent two years in jail,” I reminded him.

“I did my time,” he confessed.

“What can you tell me about the meth trade in Singer’s Ridge?” I asked.

He narrowed his eyes. “I can’t tell you nothin’.”

“Anything you say will be kept completely confidential,” I assured him. “If you give me a name, it won’t get back to you.”

He grinned, showing off missing teeth. “If I knew a name, I wouldn’t tell you, but it just so happens that I don’t. This new drug that you’re after, it’s not coming through my channels—or channels that I might have been aware of at one point,” he corrected himself.

“You’re sure?”

“I heard it’s more expensive,” he said pointedly.

“How did you hear that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t recall.”

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