Crime Plus Music: Twenty Stories of Music-Themed Noir by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Collections & Anthologies
ISBN: 9781941110454
Google: jIYwjwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1941110452
Goodreads: 28593041
Publisher: Three Rooms Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

UNBALANCED

BY CRAIG JOHNSON

THE ONLY PART OF HER clothing that was showing were the black combat boots cuffed with a pair of mismatched green socks. She was waiting on the bench outside the Conoco station in Garryowen, Montana. When I first saw her; it was close to eleven at night and if you’d tapped the frozen Mail Pouch thermometer above her head it would’ve told you that it was twelve degrees below zero.

I was making the airport run to pick up my daughter, Cady, who had missed her connection from Philadelphia in Denver and was now scheduled to come in just before midnight. The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time was extraordinarily upset but had calmed down when I’d told her we’d stay in Billings that night and do some Christmas shopping the next day before heading back home. I hadn’t told her we were staying at the Dude Rancher Lodge, one of my favorites because of the kitschy, old brick courtyard and fifties coffee shop. Cady hated it.

In my rush to head north, I hadn’t gassed up in Wyoming and was just hoping that the Conoco had after-hour credit-card pumps. They did, and it was as I was putting gas into my truck with the motor running that I noticed her stand up, a blanket trailing out from her shoulders through the blowing snow to where I stood.

She paused at the other side of the bed and then raised her head to look at the stars on the doors of my truck and me, the eyes tick-tocking either from imbalance or self-medication. She studied my hat, neatly pressed shirt and the shiny brass nametag and other trappings of authority just visible under my sheepskin coat.

I BUTTONED MY JACKET THE rest of the way up and looked at her, expecting Crow, maybe Northern Cheyenne, but from the limited view the condensation of her breath and the cowl-like hood provided, I could see that her skin was pale and her hair dark but not black; a wide face and full lips that snared and released between the nervous teeth. “Hey.” She cleared her throat and shifted something in her hands, still keeping the majority of her body wrapped. “I thought you were supposed to shut the engine off before you do that.” She glanced at the writing on the side of my truck and the shotgun locked to the front hump, something I was sure she’d already noticed. “Where’s Absaroka County?”

I clicked the small keeper on the pump handle and pulled my glove back on, resting my hand on the top of the bed as the tank filled. “Wyoming; Bighorn Mountains.”

“Oh.” She nodded but didn’t say anything more.

About five nine, she was tall and her eyes moved rapidly taking in the vehicle and then me; she had the look of someone whose only interaction with the police was of being rousted; feigned indifference with just a touch of defiance—and maybe just a little crazy. “Cold, huh?”

I adjusted my hat to keep the blowing snow out of my eyes.

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