"Take your fingers off that retention strap, Travis," Cal said. His voice was lower than before, flat as river stone. "You pull iron in my dining room over a blue sheet of county stationery, and I kick the under-counter toggle to the state police barracks in Waynesboro. Troopers take twelve minutes on the bypass. Let's see how much your badge number explains to a district captain."
Miller’s thumb stayed hooked on the black leather snap of his holster for three long seconds. His breath hissed through his nostrils, carrying the rank sourness of cold tobacco and stale coffee. His gaze shifted from my face to Cal’s chest, measuring the distance across the counter, calculating whether the old man’s knuckles were close enough to the silent alarm switch wired beneath the cash drawer.
The diner was dead quiet except for the wind whipping sleet against the roadside plate glass. Two long-haul drivers in the far booth sat frozen over their toast, their eyes fixed stubbornly on their plates, pretending a uniform with a county patch wasn't cornering a woman against cracked red vinyl.
Slowly, Miller let his fingers slip off the leather flap. He smoothed the dark fabric of his trouser leg, but the blood stayed high in his neck, mottling his throat in ugly purple splotches.
"You think this is a game, Vance?" Miller said, keeping his voice down, pitched strictly for my booth. "You think you're going to pin a carbon scrap on me and walk across the county line? You took those documents out of an active investigative file. That's grand larceny of municipal records. That's tampering with a fatal incident scene."
"You can't tamper with a fatal scene," I said, "when the person in the ditch is sitting here drinking water."
I reached up, unhooked the safety pin from my jacket lining, and folded the blue certificate twice. My knuckles were swollen, caked with dry dirt from crawling two miles through the laurel scrub along the creek bed, but my hands didn't shake. I slid the certificate and the yellow tow slip into the zippered pocket of my fleece vest, pulled the brass runner tight, and zipped the canvas shell all the way to my chin.
"You signed the release at five-thirty, Travis," I said, leaning forward until my face was four inches from his brass collar pins. "The nine-one-one log didn't take the call from the timber haulers until seven-fifteen. My car didn't touch the hemlocks at Blue Creek until nearly six. You called Henderson's flatbed while I was still sitting at my desk in the deed registry with the office lights on."
Miller didn't blink. The arrogance that came with four generations of Millers running the county road commission settled back over his features, hard and greasy. "You drove off the ledge because you were hysterical. Everyone in the courthouse knows you were coming unglued after the probate audit started. You ran your mouth about missing deed books, took off into the storm, and lost the road. If Henderson had a truck rolling early, that's called proactive emergency response during a winter gale."
"A proactive death certificate?" Cal said from the counter. He hadn't picked up the scraper, but he had crossed his thick forearms over his flour-streaked apron. "Stamped by Coroner Peake before the wrecker even hooked the bumper?"
"Cal, shut your mouth and tend your hash," Miller snapped, turning half a shoulder toward him. "Peake signed a preliminary notification based on the first responder radio dispatch. The car was upside down in six feet of runoff, the roof was crushed to the headrests, and the driver's side door was jammed shut. When the boys pried the trunk, nobody saw her in the brush. We assumed she was under the chassis. It's standard field protocol until the diver clears the cab."
"Then why did you take my keys from my office drawer before I even left town?" I asked.
Miller’s jaw worked. A muscle twitched under his left eye. "Nobody touched your desk, Nora."
"My spare ring was on the peg behind the counter," I said. "Three keys: the front glass of the registry, the basement vault, and the brass padlock on the 1974 road easement ledger. When I went down to the archive at four o'clock on Tuesday to pull the timber right-of-way maps for the Blue Creek expansion, the padlock was already cut. The ledger was gone. And your cruiser was idling at the curb with the exhaust blowing toward my window."
Miller stared at me for another second, then pulled his lips back over his teeth in something that wasn't a smile. He took half a step backward, letting the gap between my booth and his hip widen, but his eyes never left mine.
"You're sick, Nora," he said loud enough for the truckers in the corner to hear. "You took a hard knock on the crown of your head, and you're wandering the county telling ghost stories. But you aren't leaving this booth. I'm calling county social services and an ambulance transport. You sit right there until medical gets on scene, or you go into the back of my cruiser in irons for public disturbance."
He didn't wait for Cal to answer. Miller wheeled around on his heavy boot heels, pushed through the diner's double glass doors, and stepped out onto the gravel lot.
The sleet caught him instantly, gray and thick, plastering his dark uniform jacket against his shoulders. He didn't get into his car. He walked over to the front bumper of cruiser 214, pulled his portable radio off his shoulder strap, and keyed the mic, his eyes locked on the diner's front windows.
"Lock the latch, Cal," I said, sliding my boots out from under the booth. My ribs sent a white, hot spike of pain straight through my collarbone the second I stood straight.
Cal didn't argue. He moved faster than a man his age usually did, reaching the front door in three long strides, turning the heavy deadbolt with a loud metallic click, and twisting the cardboard sign from OPEN to CLOSED.
"He's boxing you in," Cal muttered, staring through the fogged glass at Miller’s cruiser, which sat parked directly across the exit apron, nose angled toward Route 9. "He's not calling an ambulance, Nora. He's calling his brother at the road depot, or he's calling Sheriff Boyd."
"I know what he's calling," I said. I hobbled toward the end of the counter, catching myself on the laminate stool backs. "Cal, let me use the wall phone behind the register. I need three minutes."
Cal reached under the register, pulled out a battered yellow landline receiver on a coiled black cord, and set it on the counter next to a dish of mints. "Keep it short. Line runs through the local switchboard down at Blue Creek junction. If Miller's brother is on the board, he'll know the line is active within ninety seconds."