Page 62 of JoyRide

“I’ll be careful. I’m super pissed at them now, and if I find out that Virgil went right back to them or back to his crack house in Conrad East, I’m going to be more than super pissed.”

Ted grinned as he waited with the keys to the squad in his hand.

Glenroy. Montana.

Ted drove to the last addresses we had for two of the boys who had been identified so far. They both came from the small town of Glenroy.

Knocking on the doors of the old addresses we had, the people living in those houses didn’t know who we were talking about. The boys may have lived there a few years ago, but their families didn’t live on that street anymore.

“If they got into trouble here when they were younger,” said Ted, “the sheriff’s office might know who we’re talking about.”

“Let’s try that.” I pointed at the post office. “I’ll run in and ask where the sheriff’s office is, and it will save looking for it.”

Ted parked out front and I ran in and asked the man behind the counter. “Do you have a sheriff’s office in Glenroy?”

“No, we don’t, Deputy. The office for the county is over in Chapman. It’s about seven miles from here.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I ran back and told Ted. “The office is in Chapman. Seven miles away.”

“Put it in the GPS, and we’ll head over there.”

Sheriff’s Office. Chapman.

Ted and I went into the sheriff’s office for Fairfield County. It was on the main street in Chapman down at the end near the library and the post office. A little cluster of government buildings.

We stopped at the front desk, and I asked if we could talk to the sheriff. “We’re from the Harrison County office in Coyote Creek, and I’d like to speak to your sheriff.”

“Sheriff Grant is kind of busy and I’m not sure he’s got time to talk to you today,” said the lady at the front desk. She seemed kind of grumpy, or maybe she figured I was too young to be a deputy. Whatever.

“Could you ask him, please? This is about a case we’re working on.”

“And you came down here in person?”

“Yes, ma’am. We drove right down here in person, me and Deputy Wallace, to talk to Sheriff Grant this morning.”

The woman got up off her generous butt and trudged down the hall to see if the sheriff could spare us a minute.

We waited and it didn’t take long before the sheriff followed the grumpy dispatcher out to the front desk to see what we wanted.

He wasn’t particularly friendly. Gray hair and a big belly hanging over his silver buckle. “Help you deputies with something?”

“We’re looking for a gang of kids who have been stealing cars and pickups and robbing people up our way. They have guns now and they shot one of our deputies. Have you had any stolen vehicles in your county lately, sir?”

“Let’s talk in my office, young lady. You don’t look old enough to be a deputy sheriff, but I guess you must be.”

“My father is Sheriff Frost in Harrison County, and he was shot by a gang of druggies. He’ll be back on the job in a week or so. He’d be here himself if he could be.”

“I heard about that shooting up near the Canadian border, but I’ve never met Sheriff Frost. He took over from Sheriff Monroe, didn’t he?”

“I think so.”

The sheriff sat down behind his desk and pointed to the other two chairs. Me and Ted sat down.

“We have had a couple of stolen vehicles in the past month and one of them involved a robbery of the owner.”

“Was the vehicle owner hurt?” I asked.

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