91

Carla.”

Carla Windermere awoke to the smell of fresh coffee and to Kirk Stevens standing above her booth, a strange expression on his face.

Windermere sat up, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Looked around the restaurant. The place was getting a smell to it, like your college dorm halfway through winter exams, a bunch of stressed-out bodies with no time to sleep and no time to shower, everyone starting to go a little funky.

Windermere knew she was as guilty as the rest of them. She’d been in the same clothes for, what, three days now; wondered if she would ever get back to Butcher’s Creek, the Northwestern Hotel, her suitcase. Wondered what she would pay for a stick of deodorant, clean underwear, decided she would empty her wallet.

At least the snow had stopped falling. Outside the diner, dawn was still largely theoretical, but already Windermere could see across the highway to the gas station, could even see the mountains to the east of town, the Anchor Valley. There was snow everywhere, obviously, piled up on the vehicles jamming the parking lot outside, heaped in mounds by the snowplows that had waged war with the winter on the highway all night. Windermere figured it would take some time to get cleaned up, dusted off, organized, but the brunt of the storm had passed. And that meant they could get back to work.

Windermere ran her hands through her hair. “I was dreaming about Hawaii, partner,” she said. “So whatever it is you have for us, I hope it’s worth interrupting my beach time.”

Stevens didn’t look dissuaded. Didn’t change his expression. “I just got off the phone with the deputies in Stryker,” he told her. “They had a slow night, they said. Not much traffic but a Lincoln County deputy passing through. Someone named Finley.”

“Right. Finley said she was headed up to Eureka, remember? Some drug case or something.”

“I remember,” Stevens said. “But the Stryker boys seemed to think the deputy had been reassigned to Butcher’s Creek, said we’d told her to go up and liaise with the train crews.”

Windermere frowned. “We did no such thing, Stevens,” she said. “Unless you changed the play while I was catching zees.”

Stevens shook his head. “Nope. That’s not even the weird part. Those boys at the checkpoint seemed to think Deputy Finley was a he.”

“What?” Windermere set down her coffee. Didn’t need it anymore; she was wide awake. “What the hell does that mean? Where’s Finley?”

“Damned if I know,” Stevens said. “Those boys in Stryker said they saw a man rolling through in a Lincoln County Explorer. Said they were sure it was a man; they could tell by the beard.”

Windermere felt that coffee lurch in her gut, fought the urge to be sick. Hurley. Shit.

“Find us a helicopter, partner,” she said, already halfway to the door. “We need to go north, and we need to go now.”