would have never done in any other circumstance. He lied to an officer of the law. “I don’t know why he pulled the gun. He just pulled it and began taunting us.”
Amy acknowledged her husband’s lie and never flinched. They were sharing more than the same page; they were sharing the whole damn book.
“Taunting?”
“Yes!” Amy piped up. “Admitting that he had been watching my husband and I make love last night. Admitting that he was peeping through our bedroom window like some sick—”
Patrick took his wife’s hand to stifle her outburst.
The sheriff’s expression made a sudden shift from skepticism to surprise. “A confession?” he asked.
Amy gave a pathetic chuckle. “And then some.”
“So he pulled a gun and confessed to being on your property last night.”
“Yes.”
“And this other man—you say he stole your daughter’s doll?”
“Not exactly,” Patrick said. “He bribed her with candy at a restaurant. He’d been following us.”
The sheriff’s chin retracted. “What would a grown man want with a child’s doll?”
“Well you know what, sheriff? We’ve been asking ourselves that very same question,” Patrick said, his sarcasm impossible to suppress.
The sheriff stroked his long gray moustache. He swallowed the sarcasm silently, appearing to let it pass for now.
“Does it matter though?” Patrick continued. “We could care less about the doll. The point is, is that these two men have been playing games with us the second we got up here, and it’s escalated to the point where we now fear for our safety. Hell, I’d be willing to bet that the cabin we saw them in wasn’t even theirs.”
“You believe they broke into someone’s home in order to antagonize you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well if that’s the case, then maybe we’ve got something serious going on here. But then we’ve got to ask ourselves, where does that leave the true owners of the cabin?”
“I don’t know…in danger? I’m telling you there’s something very bad about these two men, sheriff. I mean for Christ’s sake we even found a finger in our bait container this afternoon.”
The sheriff turned an ear to the couple and leaned in. “Say that again?"
“We went fishing today, and there was a severed finger in our bait container,” Patrick said. “Right about now I’d bet good money those two men were behind it somehow.”
The sheriff leaned back, raised one of his gray, bushy eyebrows. “A finger in your bait container? Why on earth didn’t you call me then?”
Patrick glanced at his wife who returned an equally frustrated look. “A dog…he…” Patrick sighed. “He ate it.”
“A dog ate it?”
Wait for it, Patrick thought.
“Are we talking about a finger here, or some homework, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert?”
Ta-Da!
The sheriff delivered his remark with subdued delight, his huge gray mustache failing to mask a smirk.
Amy’s face reddened, her hand squeezing Patrick’s. The couple chose silence, hoping the sheriff was finished with his questioning and was now ready to take action.
“Well alright then,” the sheriff said, hoisting his belt, the belly bouncing again. “Why don’t I go check out that cabin?”
“We’ll take you,” Patrick said.
“Oh no,” the sheriff said. “No, you folks are staying right here. Lock your doors and stay put. I’ll come back to you once I’ve checked—”
“Do you even know which cabin it is?” Amy blurted.
The sheriff titled his head and gave a patronizing smile. “No I sure don’t, Mrs. Lambert. And if you’d given me a chance to finish my sentence I might have gone and asked.” He turned and spit on the driveway, a dark, heavy wad the size of a quarter. Patrick realized he was dipping tobacco. “So…let’s try this again.” He wiped his mustache clean with his thumb and index finger. “Do you think you folks would be so kind as to point me in the direction of that cabin?”
30
The time that passed before the sheriff returned to the Lambert’s cabin after his search had been agonizing. Every click or crack heard from outside caused Amy and Patrick to flinch. Worse yet, Norman had yet to return with the kids.
“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, but there isn’t a soul in that house,” the sheriff said. “No signs of forced entry either. Truth be told, it even looked as if they cleaned up and shut down for the season.”
Patrick, Amy, and the sheriff stood on the Lambert’s front porch. The sheriff’s previous skepticism to the whole ordeal (which, for a fleeting moment earlier, Patrick hoped was gone; he and Amy had finally managed to convince the sheriff that something foul was indeed afoot, and perhaps Sheriff