A Blind Eye by G. M. Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

you and they’re running on about your troubles with the New York Times and all that. If it isn’t you, it’s me or the state boys tellin’ ’em we got no comment. That’s how the Dallas boys got a line on you.” She used her right hand to massage the back of her neck. “Or worst of all, it’s Richardson running his mouth about how Eldred and Sissy have been lying out there for all these years right under my nose and how I never even had a clue.”
    “I watched a little of it earlier.”
    “He’s digging my grave, Mr. Corso.”
    “He’s sure as hell setting you up to fail. All that stuff about having a dramatic announcement for the press in the next few days is just an invitation for a retraction, if you ask me.”
    Corso watched as her eyes turned inward. She was silent for a moment. When she spoke it seemed as if her words had been rehearsed. “I’m too damn old to start over,” she said. “Richardson beats me in November…I mean…what in hell am I gonna do? Apply down at the Burger King? See if maybe I can’t get on with the Parks Department? Being sheriff is all I know. I just can’t see myself—”
    She caught herself. Stopped. Brought a hand to her mouth and walked around in a tight circle. “I’ve also got a pair of Wisconsin state troopers who want to ask you a few questions about finding the bodies.”
    Corso lifted his hands from the sheet and then let them fall.
    “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.
    She nodded. “And then there’s your friend Ms. Dougherty.”
    “What about her?”
    “Seems she’s got some pretty graphic images tattooed all over her.”
    Corso’s eyes narrowed. His tone was brittle. “How’s that a problem for you ?”
    “Nobody in these parts has ever seen anything like that before. The only way I could keep medical staff from making up reasons to go in her room for a peek was to post a guard on the door. That puts me an extra officer down.” She cast a glance Corso’s way, started to say something, and then stopped. He read her thoughts.
    “Somebody did it to her,” he said.
    “You mean…she didn’t—”
    “An asshole ex-boyfriend drugged her up and put that shit all over her.”
    “No kidding.”
    “She almost died from it.”
    She shook her head in amazement. “And I thought we had problems.”
    “Trust me, Sheriff, Hopalong Cassidy and Gabby Hayes there are gonna be a big problem for me.”
    She looked surprised. “All you gotta do is testify,” she said.
    “There’s a minor problem with that plan.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as I don’t have the information they think I do.”
    She was momentarily taken aback. “I was given to understand that you did.”
    “Me too,” Corso said. “But it didn’t work out that way.”
    She eyed him closely. “Well now…as a guy who once got canned from the New York Times for making stuff up…that leaves you between a rock and a hard place, now doesn’t it?”
    “It means they can hold me indefinitely without charging me with anything. Lawyers or no lawyers. No bail. No nothing. Anywhere from six to nine months in the hoosgow,” he said.
    “Grand juries have a lot of power,” she said.
    “Don’t suppose there’s any way I could talk you into telling those Dallas cops to take a hike,” Corso said. “As I understand extradition law, you don’t necessarily have to turn me over.”
    She nodded. “Ordinarily I’d have quite a bit of latitude in the matter. I’d be able to weight the value of cooperating with another department against the gravity of the crime and then make my own decision. Under regular circumstances I could make them fight for you in court. I could even let you walk, if I wanted.”
    “But…”
    “But…with the whole damn world watching on the six o’clock news, and my own deputy sheriff telling everybody this is just another example of me being out of touch with the community…I just don’t see as I’ve got any choice but to hand you over.”
    “A girl’s