Page 22 of Dodge

“He shouldn’t even be here.” Her face revealed more disgust than anger as she nodded up the hall. “He wasn’t supposed to be the deputy going to meet the marshal. Braddock was going to give it to somebody else. Pete Jacobson. But he said he couldn’t do it. He had to take the day off. His mother was sick, he said. But he lied. He skipped work so he could go gambling, a poker tournament. The sheriff called Tony for the job.”

She sighed and her face went still as stone. “Tony wasn’t sure about it. Wasn’t sure he could do it—work with some big fancy US marshal. I talked him into it. I told him he could.”

Marlowe wondered if she’d cry. Close. But no, she controlled herself, merely shook her head. “I guess you want to see him but he’s probably still sleeping, I’m afraid.”

Marlowe said, “Let’s wake him up, why don’t we. I don’t think he’ll mind.”

She hid her orange Accord behind a dumpster in the parking lot of a metal fabricating company on the west side of Upper Falls.

Constant Marlowe then walked fifty yards to her motel, carting her backpack, green quilted rifle case and a plastic bag containing purchases from a deli.

Cozy Staye—the weird finalemaybe an attempt to Olde Englishize—was her real residence here, her base of operation. She’d checked in last night—after a fast drive from Vandalia County.

She reached for her key and found she still had Rudy’s gun, that little .25, in her pocket. She’d forgotten to leave it in a downtown trash can, as promised. Had he gotten coated with the dregs from discarded coffee cups and soda cans and yogurt cups as he dug?

Hope so.

The motel, horseshoe shaped, was in need of several new layers of bile-yellow paint. The parking lot was five years late for hot asphalt. The neighborhood was populated with some folk not of the finest moral stature, it seemed. You checked in at a window of thick Plexiglas in need of Windex, and it was there that you received towels and your TV remote control. The vending machine had one of the most impressive clasps and locks Marlowe had ever seen.

Inside her room, she set what she carried on the bed, chained the door and angled the desk chair under the knob; without any such measures, it could be kicked in by a sturdy twelve-year-old.

Marlowe opened her backpack and removed the yellow plastic bag whose contents had so tempted her as she waited for Offenbach at the Western Valley Lodge.

No distractions ...

Now, she was free to indulge.

From the bag she lifted out the package of Oreo cookies. She preferred the ones with double cream filling, though the deli had only the regular ones. They would do just fine.

Marlowe enjoyed three with a small bottle of whole milk, before her phone hummed.

A caller ID number popped up on the screen.

Hell ...

Don’t answer.

Then decided: better to know where she stood.

“Yes?”

“Constant.”

Richard Avery was the assistant special agent in charge of the IDCI’s Chicago office. He had a distinctive voice, light and melodic. She’d always wondered if he sang in a choir.

“I just heard from Downstate. You’re in Wisconsin?”

She’d known that news of Sheriff’s Braddock’s phone call to check her credentials would eventually make its way to Avery, who was her ultimate supervisor.

“That’s right.”

She’d hoped to stay in the brush until Offenbach was dead. But that plan had derailed after Deputy Tony Lombardi was shot.

“Explain.”

She tried to keep impatience out of her rough voice: “I got a tip Offenbach was here. From one of my CIs. Marcus Washington. South Chicago. You know him. He’s given us good stuff before.”

Avery, who was about fifty, looked the part of a special agent. Broad shoulders, atop a torso that narrowed to thin hips and legs, with a powerful chest and a taut gut in between. A law degree and some prosecuting experience figured on his résumé. Though he wore nice suits and adroit cuff links, he wasn’t above strapping on a body plate and kicking in a door to collar a suspect. She believed that, like her, Avery far preferred raids to paperwork.

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