She took a deep breath and sat the mug down, pulling the afghan around her a little closer. She gripped the blanket in a distracted manner, her fingers poking into the holes of the thing as she pulled it tighter.
Vic had given a name to the technique that we both used when questioning suspicious persons; I called it waiting, whereas she called it running the Zamboni, a term she’d brought from Broad Street, Philadelphia, where her beloved Flyers played—ask your question and then let the machine polish the ice.
“It’s me.”
Her voice had been so small I had to ask. “Excuse me?”
“I’m the one that’s been making the withdrawals.”
I glanced at Vic and then back to her. “You.”
“Yes, me. I thought that if I kept the amounts under two hundred dollars that no one would notice.”
I thought about the statement that showed that most of the withdrawals were well above two hundred dollars and let my eyes scan the decrepit house. “The money is Roberta’s?”
She kept her head down. “A trust that her father left for her, but I’ve been using it to live on.”
“For how long?”
“For a month now. There isn’t any other money than what’s in that trust.”
“And that’s why you’ve been trying to obtain a certificate of death in absentia for the last few weeks?”
She nodded and took off her glasses, wiping what I assumed were tears. “Yes.”
I could feel Vic’s eyes on me. “Mrs. Payne, it’s clear that you’ve gone through a lot of difficulties lately, and we’re not really here to add to your burdens but we need answers. We’re just interested in your daughter, her disappearance, and the connection it might have with these other women.” I pulled out one of my cards and placed it beside the stacked mail and then shoved my hands in my pockets. “We’ll leave your home now, but if you do think of anything that might help us in the investigation, I’d appreciate it if you would give us a call.”
Vic stepped in front of me and picked up the card, writing her cell number on the back and then handing it to the old woman. “Mrs. Payne, call this number and you’ll get a faster response.”
We walked out of the house and down the steps as my undersheriff punched my arm. “Okay, that’s two visits that make me want to cut my wrists . . . Is Campbell County always this uplifting?”
“You should’ve seen what it was like before you got here.”
“I improved your spirits?”
“Yep.”
“I have that effect on people.” She pulled out her phone and looked at it. “Uh oh . . .”
I pulled up, and we looked at each other from across the hood of my truck. “What?”
“Missed call.”
“Patrolman Dougherty?”
“No, your daughter.”
I froze, both figuratively and literally. “Cady?”
She thumbed the device. “Wait, there’s a text.” She read it and looked at me. “You’re in trouble.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
“Bad bad, or just bad?”
She began reading from her phone.
“Dad, where the hell are you?! I’ve been calling the office! The doctors are talking about inducing and wanted to know if I had a magic number as a birth date for the baby, but I told them I was waiting till my father got here! The doctor I want for the delivery is only available one day this weekend and I want to make sure you’re here! Would you please call me right now? Signed, your very pregnant daughter!”
Vic looked up at me.
I climbed in my side as she opened the door on the other. “That’s not so bad.”
Closing the passenger-side door behind her, she continued reading. “PS: Now, or I’m going to kill you!” She glanced at me. “The now and the kill are underlined.”
I nodded.
“PPS: I mean it!” She lowered the phone and studied me. “PPPS: I really mean it!” She smiled. “Speaking from a personal standpoint, whenever a woman uses more than a half dozen exclamation points, four underlines, and three postscripts—you are in deep fucking shit.”
“Gimme the phone.”
She dialed the number and handed the device to me.
I put the thing to my ear and held it there as I fired up the truck and hit the wipers, barely able to move enough of the snow to clear the windshield. “Did I see an Office Depot back near the Douglas Highway in our travels?”
“Why, you want to go buy a chair to hit Sadie Payne with?” She thrust her chin toward the house we’d just left. “Little hard on the old broad, weren’t you?”
I listened to the phone ring as I pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of my coat and studied it. “It was quite a performance.”
“You’re not buying it?”
The phone continued to ring. “Not particularly.”
She studied me for a moment and then shrugged. “So why do we need an Office Depot?”
The phone rang some more. “So I can make a copy of this bank statement that says most of these ATM withdrawals in the last month were made at the Buffalo Gold Rush Casino in Deadwood, South Dakota. Some very large withdrawals . . .”
I turned to look at her just as somebody, a very angry somebody in Philadelphia, answered the phone in a tone of molten righteousness and wounded indignity.
“Hello?!!”
I could almost hear the exclamation points as I put on my best nonchalant voice. “Hi punk—you looking for me?”
8
“So, bad bad.”
I nodded. “Pretty bad, yep.”
“Have you called her since the one-legged bandit waylaid you?”
“Once, twice with just now.”
Vic cradled her face in her hands. “Oh, Walt.”
“I kept thinking I’d get out of here.” I looked past Dog, now sitting between us. “Which is why I have to get this wrapped up by the end of the week when the two of us are going to have to get to Philadelphia.”
She raised her head, brushing a wide swoop of black hair from her face, and looked at me. “Do you have a ticket?”
“An airline ticket?”
She glanced at the clock on my dash and tapped it. “If you take the bus, you’re going to have to leave now.”
I nodded and took a right on 85 onto the snowpack that was Main Street and then headed down the hill into Deadwood. “She says I have one for noon.”
Vic shook her head and looked out the window at the snow that was continuously falling along with some freezing fog. “We’ll need to get me one.” She looked up at the curtains of flakes falling gold in the illumination of the streetlights. “That is, if anybody’s flying.”
Deadwood, South Dakota, is a tourist town and, like most tourist towns, doesn’t look its best off-season, but the architecture has been preserved here, and when snow covers the globed streetlights, I can almost see Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock sauntering down the avenues of my imagination. “You’ve never been here?”
“No, but I saw the TV series.”
“There was a TV series set in Deadwood?”
“Yeah. I liked it—they said ‘fuck’ a lot.”
It had been a hard-fought battle getting here, and a South Dakota highway patrolman had pulled me over near Spearfish only long enough to tell me I was nuts. I crept up Deadwood’s snow-covered brick streets and pulled my truck in front of the Franklin Hotel as a valet came out to meet us; he looked at the stars and bars. “You’re in the wrong state.”
Vic and Dog were already at the door of the hotel when I handed him the keys. “I think of myself as having a wide-reaching jurisdiction.”