2

Case Jackson’s Saturday started off on a bad note. If anyone had asked him last night what his plans were, they would never have included waking up in a small town drunk tank and coping with a splitting headache.

What the hell had happened? He hadn’t had more than two beers in one night since college.

“Oh, you’re up.”

Case struggled to lift his head and look in the direction of that sound. The cheap fluorescent lights felt like they were stabbing into his eyes.

The voice came from a toothpick-skinny deputy who barely looked old enough to drive. He had his thumbs hooked into his belt loops and was obviously trying to look tough, but Case’s first impulse was to give the kid a sandwich and tousle his hair. He decided not to tell him that.

“I’m up,” Case said. “How did I get here?”

“We scraped you up off the floor along with your friends in there.”

Case reluctantly twisted his neck around to look at his fellow drunk tank residents. They looked vaguely, fuzzily familiar, but that was it.

“I don’t think I really know these guys.”

“You knew one of them well enough for him to crack your head open with a bottle,” the deputy said.

Huh? Case touched his throbbing head and instantly regretted it: his hair was crusted over with dried blood, and the bruises and split scalp underneath it all flared up with fresh pain at the tiniest bit of pressure.

Well, that explained the headache, anyway. He didn’t have a hangover, he was concussed.

“Not to tell you how to do your job,” Case said, “but I feel like you should have maybe taken me to the ER instead of jail. I’m covered in blood.”

It would be a good opening for one of his books, actually, but he was too tired and dazed to do much plotting right now.

The deputy shrugged. “It looks worse than it is.”

Easy for him to say. It wasn’t his head.

“I had a doctor check you out,” the deputy went on.

“And he left me with an open wound?”

“He didn’t exactly have any sutures on him. Did you, doc?”

“No,” said a raspy, Southern-accented voice to Case’s left. It belonged to an older man with a trim white goatee, who smelled like he’d fallen headfirst into a brewery vat. “No, I did not. But you’ll be fine. Head wounds always bleed like hell.” He turned his bloodshot eyes to the deputy. “How about some breakfast, Jeremy?”

“You got it, doc,” Jeremy said amiably. “You want something too, new guy?”

“Case,” Case said automatically. “Casey Jackson. And should I eat with a concussion?”

The definitely-hungover, possibly-still-drunk doctor who was his only source of medical advice here said, “Eh, it’ll probably be fine.”

It wasn’t the most reassuring answer, but Case gave a thumbs up to breakfast and watched Jeremy amble out.

He turned back to the doctor. “You’re not the one who hit me over the head, are you?”

The doctor drew himself up as proudly as he could when he was still listing a little to the left. “I, sir, am a pacifist.” He stretched out his hand. “Dr. Ambrose Reynolds. Or just doc, if you want to imitate our young friend here.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“ Dean is the one who hit you with the beer bottle,” Doc said, jerking his head in the direction of the third man in the drunk tank, who was still snoring away. “No idea why, but he’s a world-class jackass, so I’m assuming you aren’t to blame.”

Good to know. From what Case was starting to piece together about his Friday night, he didn’t think he was to blame either. Not by his standards, anyway. He wasn’t sure whose side the law would come down on. Small towns weren’t always too enthusiastic about outsiders, especially ones they could tar as troublemaking drifters.

“Troublemaker” wasn’t a fair assessment, but “drifter” was, even if Case preferred “rambler.” He’d spent most of his adult life on the road, going from place to place with no particular direction in mind. He was a jack-of-all-trades when it came to manual labor—a certified welder and licensed electrician with plenty of construction experience—so it wasn’t usually too hard to find work. And he always had his writing to fall back on. He liked fresh air and quiet, wide open spaces. He liked new faces and chance encounters. It was a good life, but it wasn’t always one people smiled upon.

Well, he would have to see how it shook out in the end. Worrying about it wasn’t going to do him any good.

Plus, he really could use this experience in a book. Maybe every mystery author should wake up in a cell at least once, just so they could write that kind of thing with more verisimilitude.

“You didn’t get caught up in the fight, did you?” Case said. “You’re okay?”

Doc waved him off. “Oh, I’m fine. I fetch up here about one Saturday a month. I’m retired, and I was straitlaced most of my life, so I feel like I’m entitled to drink myself stupid every so often these days. Besides, it gets me breakfast from Mabel’s Diner on the county’s dime. Important to economize in your golden years, you know.”

“I’ve heard that.”

Case lay back—wincing as he tried to find a position that didn’t make his head throb even more—closed his eyes, and tried to get his muddled thoughts clear again.

He’d gone to an outdoor concert last night. Case liked a lot of the small, scrappy bands who toured around in out-of-the-way towns like this one, and he tried never to pass up the chance to see a live show.

He was supposed to listen to some music, drink a couple of beers, and maybe buy a T-shirt to remember the night by. Simple pleasures.

Well, that could have gone better .....

He’d pieced almost all of the night together by the time Deputy Jeremy returned with two steaming takeout containers full of pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs.

Case didn’t think he would ever get blackout drunk just to get it all for free, but it did look like a pretty good breakfast.

“Eat fast,” Jeremy said, passing Case’s helping to him through the bars. “We’re kicking you out. Your boss pulls a lot of strings in this town.”

It took Case’s still-aching head a moment to remember who his boss at the moment even was, and then it took him another moment to realize who Jeremy actually meant. He wasn’t talking about the on-site foreman overseeing construction of a second branch of a local bank. He meant, Case was pretty sure, the owner of the bank itself, Guthrie, who liked to show up and throw his weight around. He was the real town powerhouse.

Case was surprised Guthrie had bothered to help him out, though. Case had done his best to hide it, but he’d never really liked Guthrie much, and he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. After Guthrie’s first visit to the construction site, the foreman had taken Case aside and sheepishly told him to watch his step: Guthrie didn’t like people who didn’t have what he called “the right background.”

The snoring lump that was the world-class jackass suddenly came to life. “Special favors!” he sneered. “You should rot in here! You punched my lights out!”

“You hit me over the head with a bottle,” Case snapped.

“You shoved me first!”

“I shoved you because you tried to kick an old man’s service dog. It’s like you were playing asshole bingo. Anyone would have shoved you, I was just the only one who was close enough.”

Dean blew a raspberry at him.

“You tried to kick a dog?” Jeremy said. “I’m not buying one of Mabel’s breakfasts for a man who tried to kick a dog.”

“It was in my way,” Dean said with an aggrieved sniff. He curled back up on his cot and went straight back to sleep, snoring away again with the clear conscience of the unapologetically awful.

Case rolled his eyes at him, even though it cost him another pang in his head, then tried to concentrate on his breakfast.

It wasn’t easy. The food was delicious, but his concussion clearly didn’t think he should get a chance to enjoy it. After only a couple bites, his stomach tightened up like a fist. It left him feeling sick and woozy, and he couldn’t even think about trying the paper cup of coffee Jeremy had for him. He was a little relieved when Jeremy got a phone call—“Yes, sir. Right away, sir!”—that made him shoo Case out the door before the syrup on his pancakes could cool.

The bright sunlight outside made him blink, and more pain lanced through him. He was having trouble focusing on Guthrie, but he did his best.

“What were you thinking?” Guthrie said, his voice laden with contempt.

Case did his best to choose his words carefully. Guthrie had done him a favor, after all.

“I don’t know how much you know about what happened last night, but I didn’t exactly pick a fight. I stopped a guy from kicking a service dog, and then—”

“I don’t care!” Guthrie said. “I knew you’d be trouble. Men without roots always are. That foreman spoke up for you, said you were a good worker, but I don’t like people I don’t know. And I was right. Do you think I want people going around saying some stranger I employ is getting mixed up in brawls?”

If they understood the circumstances, Case had trouble believing most of them would care. But apparently Guthrie still cared, and that was all that mattered. It wasn’t about right or wrong, it was about appearances, about who fit in and who didn’t. Case didn’t belong, and as far as Guthrie was concerned, he never could.

“Okay,” Case said levelly. “Are you saying I’m out of a job, then?”

“I’m saying I want you out of town! Immediately!”

Yesterday, he’d liked this place a lot, but this conversation had taken a lot of shine off the apple. He wasn’t going to kick up a fuss about leaving. But he wasn’t going to abandon all dignity and act like he’d done something wrong when he hadn’t, either. Guthrie had the right to fire him, but he didn’t have the right to shoo him out of town like he was a bad smell. Case would go, but he was going to go with his head held high.

More importantly, he was going to go with his head properly stitched-up and all the blood washed out of his hair.

“That’s fine,” Case said. “If I don’t have a job, I don’t have much reason to stay anyway. But I have a concussion, and I’m going to get that looked at before I start off on a long drive.”

Guthrie sneered at him. “All you’re doing is making excuses,” he said, like he couldn’t see the blood matted in Case’s hair. Case was pretty sure his pupils were unevenly dilated, too, but Guthrie was determined to ignore it. “What do you want, a payoff? I’m not going to slip you a bribe to get you to—”

“I don’t want your money,” Case said. At this point, he was tempted to say he wouldn’t take Guthrie’s money even if he was starving to death, but that seemed a little melodramatic. “I’m just telling you the facts.”

“Go to hell,” Guthrie said. He turned on his heel and stalked off towards his car, which was, Case had to admit, pretty nice. Being a small town kingpin evidently paid all right.

It was funny, Case thought. If Guthrie cared so much about his reputation—and if he really wanted to get Case out of town as soon as possible—it would have made more sense for Guthrie to give him a ride to the ER instead of making Case either stumble there on his own or call for a ride. But apparently Guthrie wasn’t going to spend too much time and effort on it, no matter how much he valued appearances. On top of everything else, he was lazy.

Maybe it was the concussion, but Case suddenly felt exhausted. It wasn’t even about feeling unwelcome or unwanted (though he really was getting tired of that). It was just ... Guthrie. He’d run into too many Guthries in his life. Not every town had one, but too many of them did, and the towns deserved better. It was dispiriting to know that in most cases, they weren’t going to get anything better—and he couldn’t do anything about it. Strangers never could.