John Flanagan by Storm Peak

Author:Storm Peak
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

FORTY-ONE

He sat through the report with a mounting sense of disbelief. At the beginning, he’d made sure that he didn’t show any of the sense of anticipation he was feeling. It wouldn’t do to have Mrs. McLaren, or any of her other guests, get the idea that he was in any way pleased about the way the sheriff’s department, and that long-legged deputy in particular, were stumbling and fumbling along in his wake.

He’d assumed a thoughtful expression as the elderly landlady had turned on the big color set in her parlor. She always watched the six o’clock local news from Denver. Sometimes she might miss the later network bulletins, but the state news always held her attention.

Tonight, of course, even more than usual. Because tonight there was going to be a special report on the killings that had happened right here in Steamboat Springs. Two other guests, both elderly men, had quietly taken seats in the parlor to watch.

“It’s that Abby Parker-Taft doing the report too,” she’d told him with a certain air of confidentiality. “She’s almost a local girl you know. She was married to one of the local boys here a few years back. ”

Mrs. McLaren was a faithful viewer of the morning talk show on which Abby was co-anchor. She watched every morning. It made her feel that somehow Abby was an old friend.

As the report came up on-screen, he allowed himself the small celebratory gesture of popping the top on a can of Coors. None of the other people in the parlor noticed the gesture. Or if they did, they didn’t read anything undue into it. As Abby began her preliminary remarks, he raised the can to his lips in a silent toast to the upcoming public ridicule of the Routt County Sheriff’s Department.

Except it never came. He watched in puzzled silence at first, as Abby refrained from criticizing Sheriff Torrens. He thought that maybe she was saving the coup de grace till later in the piece, building a picture of a fair-minded, evenhanded report before she stuck the knife in. Then, as the report progressed, and Jesse Parker appeared on-screen, with Abby’s voice-over detailing his experience and record as a cop, he realized that the report was going to be a whitewash.

He drank a little faster, gulping the beer. It didn’t help to notice that Mrs. McLaren was nodding her head wisely whenever Abby referred to “hardworking cops, waiting for that one vital piece of information that would break the case open. Without realizing it, his grip had tightened on the almost empty beer can, crushing it out of shape.

He felt angry and cheated. The news was a lie. The report was a farce. He’d had the cops chasing their own tails for the past two or three weeks. They knew nothing now that they hadn’t known at the beginning of the whole thing. They had gotten absolutely nowhere with their investigations. They had made no progress.

He’d laughed to himself the day before, at the

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