C. Box - The Highway

“We’re off duty,” she said.

“Still, you stink of it,” the bartender said. “No offense.”

She could feel her face flushing again. Cody cleared his throat and readjusted himself on his stool so his jacket opened and his.40 Sig Sauer could be clearly seen in its holster. He said to the bartender, “Get us our drinks, you mouth-breathing little ferret. And keep them coming if we want them. Because only one of us is off duty. The other is just an angry man with a gun who could blow chunks of your heart out your back before you cleared that knife. And believe me, I’m in the fucking mood to pop somebody. Do we have an understanding?”

The bartender’s eyes got huge and his mouth just hung there. After a few beats, he nodded and turned meekly toward the bar.

“I could never do that,” Cassie said, climbing on a stool and leaning across the tabletop toward Cody. She said sadly, “Please tell me you’re not drinking?”

“Not yet. Maybe I’m building up to it, though. This is club soda,” he said, pinging a fingernail on the rim of the glass. “It tastes like … the end of the world as I know it.”

Then he growled, “This is where it helps you to be a chick. Because if you weren’t, I would have kicked your ass the second you walked in that door.”

* * *

She’d heard stories about the infamous Cody Hoyt even before she graduated from the academy. He was a polarizing presence within law enforcement and throughout the state. Some LEOs (law enforcement officers) hated his guts, others winked when his name was mentioned. No one, it seemed, was neutral.

Cody had grown up in East Helena, from a long line of Hoyts, who were known as white-trash outlaws. The Hoyts were poachers, cattle rustlers, small-time crooks, and grifters. Somehow, Cody had chosen law enforcement and had worked himself up through police and sheriff’s departments in Montana, Wyoming, and eventually became the lead homicide investigator for the Denver Metropolitan Police Department. His record of convictions was remarkable, but as his reputation grew so did the whispers. He not only cut corners, department gossips (and defense attorneys) alleged, he invented new corners to cut. Although his work resulted in a firefight that brought a serial pedophile down, his methods-including the appearance of his uncle Jeter brandishing a ten-gauge shotgun-got him thrown off the force.

Given his reputation, most Montana LEOs were surprised when he landed a job as investigator at the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department. Stories of his carousing rivaled stories of witness intimidation, brutality, and tampering with crime scenes. But again, his results were inspiring. Two years before-after being suspended for shooting the county coroner in what was later deemed an accident-Cody came to the conclusion that a serial murderer responsible for the death of his AA sponsor was on a multiday wilderness horseback trip in Yellowstone Park. So was his estranged son, Justin.

Without authorization or backup, Cody had recruited an old-time wilderness guide and ridden into Yellowstone in a fury. When it was all over, bodies littered the trees and two large-scale conspiracies were brought to light, including one that involved the department. Cody had reconciled with his son and convinced his ex-wife to move back to Montana. Rather than prosecute his subordinate, Tubman-under pressure-had supported Cody. But he’d bided his time until he could pull the trigger.

Cassie realized now she’d ended up as the one holding the gun.

* * *

After the bartender delivered the drinks-a plastic cup of cheap Merlot for Cassie and an amber shot and a pint of beer for Cody-Cassie handed the man her credit card.

“Cash only,” he said, but without the attitude from before. She dug into her purse and handed over her only twenty and he went to make change.

“Run a tab,” Cody called after him. The bartender nodded.

“Can we talk about this,” she asked Cody insistently, “or should I just go home? This isn’t much fun for me, you know. I know about you,” she said, gesturing toward the drinks on the table. “I know you’ve been clean and sober for three years. I know that’s why your wife and son moved back. Everybody in the department warned me about you when I got hired. How you’d show up drunk in the morning, how you’d insult anybody who crossed your path. How you bent the rules when you wanted to. But I also heard you were the best investigator around and you’d cleaned up your act. I wanted to learn from you. I wanted to work with the best.”

“If you wanted to work with the best,” he said, “why’d you sneak around behind my back and fuck up my career? Hmmm?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer, except to say Tubman had ordered her to follow him. It wasn’t like she could refuse …

“Bullshit,” Cody said, cutting her off. “You could have handled it a dozen ways if you had any … balls . I understand you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and you’re eager to please. But you haven’t been around much. You don’t know how things work.”

She sipped her wine. It was awful. She took a gulp. “What could I have done?” she said. “He gave me an order.”

Cody rolled his eyes with disgust.

“What?”

He fixed his horrible smirk on her and held out a hand and started counting the fingers on it with the other. “One, you could have said you lost me when I drove out of town. Two, you could have accidentally deleted the shots after you took them. Three,” he said, making sure she noted he was extending his middle finger toward her, “you could have told Tubman to fuck himself and send somebody else, because partners don’t rat on partners. Four, you could have begged off at the last minute. Said your son was sick or your mom fell down and broke her hip. Some kind of bullshit that would stick. And five, we could have worked it together so we still got the bad guy which, last I looked, was what I thought we were supposed to do out here.”

She held her tongue because she could tell he wasn’t done.

“How many murder cases have you worked?” he asked.

“You know,” she said.

“That’s right: none. How many major felony cases? Oh, same number: none. But you went to the academy and you got hired right away and promoted right over the heads of people who’ve been in that department for years. So I guess you know it all.”

“I don’t know it all,” she said with anger, “and I never act like I do. And I could have partnered up with Markey or Stegner or Curley. But I fought to be able to work with you. And you know why? Because I’d heard you were the best. That you were a bulldog and that you’d cleaned up your act.”

His face reddened and his eyes bulged. He looked like he was ready to explode. She looked away because the intensity of his glare was almost violent in itself. Then he surprised her by snorting again and he laughed softly, shaking his head. He seemed suddenly more interested in the untouched shot and beer than he was in her confession.

After a long pause, he said, “I know it was Tubman and you’re too green to go up against him, plus you owe your job to him. He used you, and you let yourself get used.”

“I know. I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Are you?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

His eyes bored into hers. She was surprised when they softened.

He said, “You’ll find, Cassie, that it’s us against the world. We do our damnedest to put away degenerates and douche bags so innocent people won’t be hurt by them, but all the forces out there are set up to make us fail. We’ve got county attorneys that won’t take on a case unless it’s airtight, judges who want to invent the law instead of enforce what’s there, defense attorneys who want to show publicly how fucking incompetent we are, and juries who want to stick it to the man. So when we’ve figured out that someone is guilty as sin, sometimes we need to stack the deck a little. You know what I’m saying?”