“Hold on.” He yawned and opened a miniature fridge, then set out a container of potato salad, a hard-boiled egg, and a carton of milk that sloshed like it had chunks.
I’d rather have feasted on my dirty laundry.
He pointed up the road. “There’s also a diner in town.”
Who knew when Brynner might see fit to rise and shine? I could at least have my glyph tables ready and maybe read a little of Osiris to get back in the groove. By daylight, Bentonville looked even smaller. If you sneezed on one side of the town, you’d get a bless-you from the other side of the tracks.
I pulled into the town square and parked, then walked through the unkempt grass to the diner. When I opened the door, the communal conversation paused as everyone catalogued the newcomer. After a moment, the buzz of a dozen conversations returned.
A Hispanic woman at least twenty years my senior pointed to the bar. “No tables.”
I didn’t need a bar stool for two. “What’s good?”
“Nothing. He cooks everything in bacon, everything in fat.” The waitress, Isabella, according to her tag, pointed with the menu to the fry cook.
“Two eggs. Whites only, not runny, fresh fruit, and coffee.” I handed her the menu.
Her gaze darted to my BSI tag before moving on, then she shouted in Spanish, something that sent the fry cook into a frenzy.
“Morning, ma’am.” From behind me, a black man spoke, his accent placing him from the Deep South. He slid onto the seat beside me. His shaved head gleamed, dark skin complementing the police uniform he wore. “I’m Sheriff Bishop. You must be part of the Carson field team.”
“I am.” The words came easily. Not a lie. I was part of it, if only a temporary part.
“Good to see a real BSI team once in a while. We get reports now and then. ‘Meat-skins took my dog,’ or ‘Meatskins ate the chickens in the coup.’ I check them out, but most of the time it’s just a coyote.” He handed his menu back to the waitress without looking at it. “I’ll take it all.”
My plate came. I’d only ordered two things. I got three. Not one of them resembled my order. The eggs, sunny-side up stared up with blind yellow eyes. A slab of bacon like half a pig sat to the side, with a sea of gravy slathered on top of biscuits. “This isn’t what I ordered.” I flagged down the waitress on her next orbit. “Ma’am? Where’s my fruit?”
Sheriff Bishop laughed, a deep rumble that started in his toes. “You ordered fruit? From here? We don’t do healthy, lowcalorie, or low-cholesterol. Eat hard, work hard, sweat it off in the sun.”
Sheriff Bishop watched me while I reluctantly dug into my meal. “You do me a favor? Like I said, mostly, we get coyotes, not meat-skins. But two nights ago, something tore up one of the Donaldsons’ horses.”
“Was it a wolf?”
He glanced around the restaurant before continuing. “I didn’t say ate. I said tore up. I think it’s all still there, though could be some guts missing. It’d do me a favor if you and Brynner looked. Coyotes I can handle.”
How much I should tell him about our assignment wasn’t a subject Brynner and I had discussed. So I did the safe thing. “I’ll tell him, but it’s his call. Could you tell me which way Brynner’s house is?” I mopped up the last bit of gravy with a biscuit.
Again, he rumbled with laughter, then hit the radio on his shoulder. “James, I need you to see the nice lady here with Brynner out to his house. And take that parking ticket off her windshield, too.” He showed me a smile of white ivory. “It’s good to have Brynner back in town. When he wasn’t tearing up graves or taking the high school girls up to the quarry, he was a good kid.”
“He did that a lot?”
“The graves or the girls? Only dug up a coffin once. Only God knows how many girls he— Hey, there’s James.” At the diner door, a dingy white car with “Deputy” on it pulled up. I paid, left a tip just in case I needed to eat there again, and ran to my rental car.
We drove out beyond the city limits, off onto side roads, until I pulled up at a familiar ranch house. The deputy honked the horn three times, then pulled off, leaving me alone at the edge