Probably because the bright lights of the Trans Am were in his face, I don’t think he ever saw me because as he blundered in my direction I tripped him easily, sending him face first in a sprawling heap into a drift of snow, and it was over.
Virginiak — Man of Action.
Dilly, who was uninjured, save her dignity and a broken thumbnail, handcuffed the young man roughly, retrieved the coat he’d dropped in their brief struggle, and, despite the fact that it made no sense to me or to her deputies, put both in the back of her own car, telling the deputies that she would handle things from there on. A few minutes later we were back on the highway, headed toward Big Pine.
“Damn,” Dilly muttered, sucking her thumb.
“Where are you taking me?” the man in back asked her.
“Where do you think?” she replied angrily.
I heard him take a few sharp breaths. “I don’t wanna go to jail,” he moaned in a little-boy voice. “Please?”
I looked back at him and saw him holding his head in his hands.
He was young, younger than I first had thought, with long black hair that he wore straight. He was flat-featured, a little pudgy, and very frightened.
“What’s your name?” Dilly asked.
“Charley White Hand,” he said softly. “I live over in Bull Run.”
Dilly looked at me and said, “Reservation.” She squinted at him in the rear view mirror. “How old are you, Charley?”
“Eighteen,” he said, glancing at me. “I’m sorry.”
Dilly snorted.
“I don’t wanna go to jail,” he moaned again. “Please?”
“Knock it off, Charley.”
“Please?”
Dilly gave him a hard look in the mirror. “Well, I’ll tell you, Charley,” she said. “That’s a thousand dollar coat you stole...”
“I’m sorry...”
“...which is grand larceny...”
“I’m so sorry...”
“...which is good for three to ten in the state prison.”
“Oh God no, please...”
“And you’ve assaulted a peace officer, which in this state means a mandatory three years.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry...”
“Are you listening to this, Charley?”
He shook his head but he was listening.
“Now, you say you don’t want to go to jail,” she went on, “but answer me this, Charley.”
He blinked at the back of her head.
“Just where the hell,” Dilly blurted, “did you think you were going to end up?”
“Please...”
Dilly made a sound of disgust.
“Please!”
Dilly shook her head.
“The coat was for my grandfather...”
She laughed archly. “Very thoughtful of you, Charley.”
“He’s old,” he explained. “He lives up on Raining Ridge. All by himself. It’s a cold winter, sheriff. He can’t go outside it’s so cold. He needed a coat...”
“Are you trying to break my heart, Charley?” Dilly asked.
He started to explain further but gave it up and put his face in his hands once again.
He looked even younger then than he had a moment before.
And Dilly looked... cold.
Back at the Big Pine sheriff’s station, Dilly parked on the street in front, grabbed a nightstick from under her seat, got out, and hauled the young man from the car.
“Please. Please. Please,” Charley White Hand moaned, over and over as she started him toward the front stairs.
“Move it, Charley!” she snapped, prodding him in the back with the stick.
I’d gotten out of the car myself by then and followed them.
At the stairs, Charley hung back, and Dilly had to nudge him a bit more to start him up toward the big glass door.
“Come on. Come on!” Dilly ordered.
And Charley moved, but slowly.
Up the stairs to the door, where just inside, behind a counter, several deputies were waiting with small smiles on their faces.
“Dammit!” I heard Dilly mutter. “Dammittohell!”
Through the door then, and I was a few steps behind, and the young man was still dragging his feet, but putting up no real struggle, into the small reception area.
Where Dilly pushed him forward toward the counter as I turned to close the door...
“Goddammit!” Dilly shouted suddenly. “You sonofabitch!”
And I looked back in time to see her, grabbing the boy by his collar, swing him around and bounce him hard against a wall. “You little bastard!” she snarled as she did it again. “You punk!” she growled as she rapped him across the backs of his knees with her nightstick. “You sonofabitch!” she spat as she watched him collapse in a pile on the floor.
“Loretta!” I said sharply.
“Damn,” she breathed angrily, standing over him.
“Loretta?” I said again, moving toward her.
She ignored me, glaring down at the boy, nightstick held in a daring-him-to-move-an-inch way.
“Loretta?” I said a final time, close enough now so if she’d made another move on the boy I could have taken that damned stick away.
“Damn,” she said again, but the show was over.
She tossed the nightstick clatteringly across the counter. “Book him,” she said breathlessly to one of the now unsmiling deputies on the other side. “Robbery one and assaulting a peace officer — and get him out of my sight.”
Which they did.
A limp-bodied, whimpering little boy — around the counter, down some stairs, out of sight.
And as they took him away, Dilly, her face flushed, her eyes slightly glazed, looked at me, and some of the shock in my own face reflected suddenly in her own.
Which quickly transformed into a hard, what-do-you-know-about-it look.
Which put me in my place, I suppose.
But settled any confusion I’d felt earlier.
Half an hour later, back in Billy’s Trans Am, on the way up the mountain to my cabin, the relaxed, warm feeling that had grown up between Dilly and me had evaporated.
The sky had gone to a dull gray-black, heavy with sudden clouds, and it was quite cold now, inside and out. It was a long, quiet drive, all the way.
When we arrived at my cabin, Dilly parked, sagged back in her seat, and said, “So — where were we?”
I looked at her. “Nowhere, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “That kid was really scared.”
“So?”
“So, you were pretty damn rough with him.”
Her eyes glittered with sudden anger. “Oh?”
I looked back at her, not with any anger of my own but with a genuine question.
“Look,” she said grimly. “I’m the law in this county. You know what that means?”
I shrugged.
She sighed. “We don’t have a lot of crime up here,” she told me. “But what we do have is usually violent, and that means I’ve got to be somebody that people look to as the damned cavalry. As somebody they can trust to keep them safe, and if that means being a little rough on a perpetrator now and then, that’s how it is.”
I said nothing, and the air seemed colder.
“I’ll tell you something,” she continued. “What I did back there at the station will be breakfast gossip around town tomorrow morning, and do you know what they’ll be saying?” She nodded with certainty. “They’ll be saying, ‘Whew. That Sheriff Dilly is one mean bitch, isn’t she? Don’t want to get on the wrong side of her, no sir. Barrel knew what he was doing when he hired her, I’ll say. She might make a good sheriff after all, she might.’ ”
“So,” I said. “When you bounced that little boy off the wall, you were making a political statement, is that it?”