After he finished cleaning the grill that night, Carlo walked into the sheriff’s office out of the dark alley, carrying a cold bottle inside a narrow paper sack. He put two squat glasses on the corner of the desk and poured three ounces of red wine in each, then waited in silence until the sheriff finished signing the top sheet of a tall stack of paperwork. When Carlo raised his glass, the sheriff sat back, sighed, and raised his.
‘Reason I asked about the cars,’ Carlo said, after a sip. ‘I heard something.’
‘Story time, I love it,’ Tasker said. He pulled out the bottom left-hand drawer and propped up his feet. ‘Tell me.’
‘You know, sometimes at night I sit outside for a while before I go home,’ Carlo said.
‘To smoke one of those cigarettes you gave up a year ago. I know.’
‘This year I’m really trying to quit. But eight kids, before you even get ’em all raised, the older ones start bringing you grandkids. So sometimes I sit on my bench out there in the dark, not even smoking, just letting my feet cool a little.’
‘Till your wife gets some of the kids in bed, huh? So you’re sitting there, not showing a light, and you hear something.’
‘Remember that new couple, what you said? He’s noisy, she’s shy, the perfect couple?’
‘Something like that, yeah. What about it?’
‘They both talk different when they’re alone.’
‘How different?’
‘Like she’s the one in charge. After that fight in the alley she said, out there in the dark as they were locking up, “I told Pepe before we moved here, we have to be the only dealers in McGill County or it’s no deal.”’
‘Hard voice like that?’
‘Yup. She was having a kind of a hissy fit while they closed the store. She says, “Kurtz has gotta get it through his head, he gets all his supplies from me and he takes orders from me. I say who we sell to and who we don’t. And I won’t have his wannabee addicts hanging around back here in the alley, complaining and starting fights.”’
‘Harley’s happy when he hears her like this?’
‘She’s the hammer, he’s the nail. I don’t know who’s happy. That time he said something like, “Drugs wasn’t what that fight was about,” but she just blew him off. She said, “If Kurtz wants to be my dealer he better get his ass in here and sign off on this deal, or I’ll get Pepe to send me somebody who will.”’
‘Got a mouth on her.’
‘Yes. And then she says the most amazing thing – says she’s not letting Kurtz’s people have any more product till he agrees she calls the shots. They still owe her money from that first order.’
‘Wow,’ Tasker said. ‘Queen of the jungle, huh?’
‘Can you believe it? Just got to town and she’s saying she won’t sell to somebody? And she must be still holding out for what she wants, because it’s been very quiet back here ever since.’
‘Well, I appreciate your spy service but I think you should go home now, Carlo,’ the sheriff said, turning back to his bottomless stack of paper. ‘If your feet are cool enough.’
‘Just one other thing.’
‘You hear so much better when you don’t smoke.’
‘What, you don’t want to hear this?’
‘Don’t be so feisty, of course I want to hear it. What?’
‘They may be married, but they don’t always sleep together. They drive two cars, leave at different times, and once I heard her say, “Don’t stay up all night with your pretty playmate tonight. I need your help tomorrow.”’
‘So it’s kind of an open marriage, but with henpecking rights, is that it?’
‘Anything is possible, I guess.’
‘I got the links,’ Lyle Underwood told the sheriff the next morning, ‘to those opioid stories you wanted to see. Amazing what went on there in West Virginia for so many years. Those little towns were flooded with thousands of doses of powerful drugs.’
‘None of it ever reported?’
‘Actually, some of it was reported by conscientious workers. And the reports were neatly laid away in drawers at the other end.’
‘But Harley and Lorraine don’t show up as store owners there?’
‘No. They were working for one of the dealers and they got out just before the hammer came down. Our Attorney General is in touch with theirs, though, and they’re forwarding some records – they’ve almost enough on Harley to make an arrest.’
‘Are you getting any of their mail?
‘None of their mail’s been forwarded from Vidalia, but I found an envelope full of it in the trash. Vidalia’s in one of the counties in West Virginia that’s mentioned in the stories. They got connected here very fast. It looks like they were able to bring their connections with them, but somehow leave everything else behind. Clever.’
‘Good job,’ the sheriff said. ‘So our trash collectors are helping just as we asked?’
‘Yes. The solid waste guys have been terrific, keeping everything from the drugstore separate. The empty boxes contained more Oxycontin and more Fentanyl doses than we got people.’
‘They’re fast workers, aren’t they? What about the new shipping company?’
‘Tri-State Shipping is theirs, I think. I can’t find it anywhere else.’
‘So it must be registered in Montana as a new corporation. Look for a license application, credit affidavits …’
A few days later, Lyle said, ‘Effie at the post office says the Dahlgrens still haven’t had any mail forwarded, but I found a lot of old mail in the trash. Mostly unpaid bills and credit card applications. Nothing personal.’
‘Same name or—?’
‘Some. But mostly another name – Dick and Doris Wheeling. All at that same address in Vidalia, West Virginia. Since they moved here, all the mail is coming to Dahlgren. Looks like they made a clean break – they haven’t received anything here addressed to either Wheeling.’
‘OK,’ Tasker said. ‘How are we coming on the cemeteries?’
‘I’ve found two Dahlgrens in Vidalia. No Harley or Lorraine so far on the headstones, but we know they’re using the social and drivers’ licenses of a deceased couple who died there in the nineteen thirties.’
‘Good. Hopefully this won’t drag on much longer and we can make arrests.’
‘You won’t hear any complaints out of me, Sheriff. This is the most fun I’ve had in some time.’
‘That so? Sounds like you need to get out more.’
‘Not according to my wife. She says I need to stay home more.’