The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,21

a bourbon in one and a shot of pickle juice from the jar in the other.

“So after a while, I find the guy again near Riverside Avenue. But I’m so excited I’ve finally got him, I accidentally jump the curb with the unit. I go through a fence and a flower bed and knock over a big statue that’s standing in this woman’s front yard. I get out to chase the snatcher but I’m not in uniform, so the lady thinks I’m just some asshole who crashed on her lawn and is trying to run away. She comes out and smacks me in the face with a dictionary.”

“A dictionary?” I pursed my lips so I wouldn’t laugh.

“She must have been doing the crossword or something.” Clay sighed. “Anyway, another unit caught the guy down on the docks an hour later. The troops let me return the bag to the old lady, you know, which was nice. But when I hand it to her, she says it isn’t her bag. The guy must have snatched another bag after I lost him. Get this—the old lady calls me an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot, Clay,” I said. “You’re a fine and dedicated officer of the law.”

“Well, I try my best.” He sighed again, took a bite of his sandwich. “This afternoon was crazy. I’ve got a missing person. I mean a real-deal, genuine missing person. I don’t think I’ve had one in … well, years.”

“Who is it?”

“Guy named D’Aundre Newgate. Moved here from Boston about four months ago. Had a fight with his girlfriend this morning—she dumped their little girl on him and ran off in a huff. She comes back a few hours later, and the child’s at home but Newgate is nowhere to be seen.”

“Huh,” I said.

“I don’t even know where to start with something like that.” Clay looked stressed. He watched me for a moment, thinking. “Look, Bill. I don’t know how to say this, but if you … I mean, you’re someone who gets around town a bit …”

“If I can assist in any way, you’d like me to?” I asked. When I entered the kitchen I’d thought of giving Clay the gun I’d confiscated from the boy named Squid. But his distress and confusion at the missing-person case on his hands made me change my mind. I decided not to share my concerns about drugs in the town.

“I can’t ask you to assist.” Clay struggled to find the words. “Not without officially deputizing you. And I have men of my own, you know. It’s just … well, in Boston, you got big-city experience. That’s why some people around here ask you to do things, I suppose. You know how to handle big-city problems. Sometimes the badge is a blessing, and sometimes it’s a hindrance. You’ll work faster than me, not having to report on everything, and maybe if someone needs to have his head put in a vise, you’d be able to do that.”

The head-in-a-vise comment caught me off guard and I laughed. Clay seemed so gentle on the outside, but I sometimes wondered if a darker, harder man lived beneath the squishy, flabby exterior of the sheriff. A man who wouldn’t mind using pain as a tool. I’d watched Clay snarling at the television during a Red Sox game once and I’d been shocked at the malice in his voice and on his face.

“I’ll be your eyes and ears, Clay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

Clay smiled, satisfied. He washed a bite of the sandwich down with the bourbon and pickle-juice chaser, noticing as I grimaced. “You want me to make you a pickle-back?”

“Thanks, no.”

“You sure? They’re good.”

I never like to be the Debbie Downer in a room, so I relented. Clay poured me a pickle-back and I gulped down the salty, sour combination.

“Geesh!” I swallowed hard.

“Good?”

“I don’t know if that’s the word.”

“It’s ninety percent amazing,” he said proudly. “Ten percent terrible.”

“Like most things in life, I guess.” I squinted.

“Well, congratulations,” he said. “You’re a true local now.”

“I’ve been here two and a half years. I was already a local.”

“A few more of those pickle-backs and you could run for mayor,” Clay said. He fished something out of his jacket pocket. “While you’re here, can I give you this? It fell off this morning. I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

He put a brass doorknob on the table between us.

“Just what I need,” I said. “Thank you.”

The boards beneath us shuddered as someone hopped up the back stairs