The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) by Margaret Coel Read Free Book Online

Susan. “Nobody should get away with murder.”
    “So you’re gonna camp out at the sheriff’s office…”
    “And ask a few questions,” Vicky said, getting to her feet. “Are you free for dinner tonight?”
    “I was hoping you’d propose more than dinner,” Adam said.

5
    THE BEIGE STONE building, bathed golden by the morning light, resembled the bluffs that rose unexpectedly out of the earth around Lander. Most of the building housed the detention center—the county jail—but the rear section was given over to the sheriff’s office. Vicky drove around the building and parked in a space marked Visitors. She walked across the asphalt that yawned like an alley between the rows of vehicles and the glass door next to the red Coco-Cola dispenser shoved against the wall. Black letters on the glass said: Fremont County Sheriff’s Office. Vicky let herself inside.
    The entry was small, an afterthought carved out of a corner when the mighty purposes of the building had been constructed. Squinting at the computer screen on the desk across from the door was a woman about thirty with shoulder-length blond hair brushed behind her ears and pinkish skin marked by a band of dark freckles across her nose and cheeks. It was a moment before she looked up. She didn’t say anything.
    “Vicky Holden,” Vicky said, snapping a business card on the desk. She’d probably been here a hundred times, but she’d never seen the woman. “Here to see Detective Coughlin.”
    The woman took another moment—the light gray eyes glancing at the card—before she said, “You got an appointment?”
    “I’d appreciate it if you would let him know I’m here.”
    The woman tossed her head to one side, as if she could toss away the disruption, and picked up the phone. The gray eyes fastened again on the screen. “You got a visitor, a Ms. Holden,” she said. Then she dropped the receiver and, still looking at the screen, said, “He’ll come and get you.”
    Vicky stepped away from the desk and looked around. Nothing but a pair of doors flanking the desk and cement-brick walls muffling the activity on the other side: the faint sounds of voices, doors shutting, people moving about.
    One of the doors swung open. Gary Coughlin, a big man dressed in blue jeans and dark, plaid shirt, leaned into the entry. “Vicky? Follow me,” he said, waving the folder in his other hand.
    Vicky brushed past him and waited until he’d closed the door and ushered her down a corridor with doors on either side. “Thanks for seeing me,” she said as he fell into step beside her.
    “Must say, I was surprised to get your call.” He veered sideways and handed the folder to a short, heavyset man who’d just emerged from behind one of the doors. “This what you’re looking for,” he said. The other man nodded and backed through the doorway.
    Coughlin stopped at the opened door across the corridor. He dipped his head a little so that the fluorescent ceiling light shone on the quarter-size scalp in the back of his dark hair.
    Vicky stepped into an office about the size of the entry. A wedge of sunlight bursting past the narrow window lay over the folders and papers stacked on the desk, taking up most of the space. A computer occupied a small table between the desk and a metal file cabinet. Pinned to the wall above was a map of Fremont County, crisscrossed with red and blue lines that marked off the boundaries of the reservation and the towns of Lander, Riverton, and Dubois from the vast spaces of the county itself—the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department. On both sides of the map were framed photographs: Coughlin posing with a petite blond woman and two small, towheaded boys; Coughlin in a fisherman’s vest and waders, grinning and holding up a trout that might have measured two feet; the two boys in swim trunks and orange inflated vests running through the water at the edge of a lake; the blond woman in a long, white wedding dress.
    “So I been asking