“Well,” I say, “if you know police investigations, you know there’s a limit to what I can tell you. Short version is that we’re looking for a man who held a Rockton woman captive in a cave for over a year. And she may not have been the first he put there—just the first who survived the ordeal.”
He looks at Dalton. “She serious?”
“Does either of us seem like the type who’d joke about that?”
“Keeping a woman in a cave? That’s fucked up. And you say there’ve been others?”
“Possibly two.”
“Stretching back how far?”
“The first one disappeared from Rockton about five years ago.”
“After my time.” He nods in satisfaction. “Knew your daddy wasn’t up to the job.”
“Yeah, well, half as many people disappeared into the forest under his watch.”
“Mine didn’t disappear. They took off ’cause I scared them away. Weeding out the bad apples.” He looks at me. “So if we’re talking five years, that must cut your in-town suspects down to about zero. That why you’re rooting around out here?”
“It is.”
“Huh. Well, the problem, as I’m sure our boy told you, is that we don’t exactly have a high proportion of stable individuals in these woods. Ol’ Silas would have been a damned fine suspect. Other than that … Well, now that I think of it, I might have another lead for you.”
“Go on,” Dalton says.
“I was talking to your girl. I think my information is valuable enough to set a price. Tit for tat.” He leers at me. “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
“Enough,” Dalton says. “You fancy yourself a former lawman? Try showing her a little professional respect.”
“Oh, come on,” Cypher says. “Just a flash. Make an old man’s day. You don’t have to look, boy. We’ll do it behind the cabin over here.”
“Shut the fuck—”
“I’ve got this,” I say to Dalton.
His look says not to play Cypher’s game. Which doesn’t mean he actually thinks I’ll flash my breasts—just that he’s had enough of Cypher’s bullshit. When I head behind the cabin, though, he only grumbles. It takes Cypher a moment to follow. He does, and we’re out of sight, and he glances back around to check on Dalton.
“You trying to make the boss jealous?” he says as he walks to me.
“Why do you think that?”
“’Cause you’re sure as hell not going to flash me.”
“Then why ask? Oh, let me guess—you were just trying to rile me up.”
“Nah. You don’t give a shit. Him, though…” He jerks a thumb toward the front of the cabin and grins. “That boy’s got a serious case of puppy love, and I wanted to yank his chain.”
“So you don’t want to see my tits?”
“Fuck, no. I’m not a perv.”
I shake my head. “I called you back here so I can get the answers in a way Eric might not approve of.” I take off my jacket. “By beating them out of you.”
He laughs. Laughs so hard he has to lean against the cabin for support. Two minutes later, he’s flat on his stomach with his arm twisted behind his back.
“Shit,” he says.
“The bigger they are…”
“Huh.” He cranes his neck to look back at me, completely unperturbed. “Where’d you learn to throw down like that?”
“Black belt in aikido. I’ve also got a boxing championship, but it’s flyweight, meaning I can’t actually beat the answers out of you. Well, I could pin you down and kick until you talk, but that’s unsporting. It will get awfully cold, though, facedown in the snow.”
He chuckles, then shouts, “Boy? You listening in?”
“Of course,” Dalton says, coming around the cabin. “I don’t need to eavesdrop when it’s this quiet. I think you should get up, though. Lying like that, you won’t see anything when she flashes you.”
Cypher flashes Dalton—the finger, that is—but there’s no rancor in it. He rises and says, “When you say this woman was kept in a cave, was it Three Peaks or Bear Skull?”
“You’re the one offering the lead,” Dalton says. “You tell me.”
“Well, my lead is for Bear Skull. There’s a guy out here, second-generation Rockton departee, like you and your brother, only he’s not quick to volunteer that information. You know the First Settlement? The one over by Caribou River?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s from there originally. Pretends he just wandered in from down south and stayed.” He looks at me. “You know how many people actually do that? Most folks in this twenty-mile radius have a Rockton connection. Otherwise, it’d be the most populated stretch of the Yukon wilderness. But folks don’t go around saying that. Whatever happened to them or their families in Rockton, they respect the idea of it enough not to take a shit on those still there. Rockton was a safe place for us, and the best way to leave it safe for others is to keep our mouths shut.”
“But you know this guy is a second-generation settler,” Dalton says.
“Yeah. He let enough slip for me to figure it out. He knows the town exists but doesn’t know shit about specifics, which means second generation. He tried asking me more about it years ago, having heard I used to be sheriff. I shut him down. Reason I’m mentioning it is that he’s been taking a lot of interest in Rockton recently. Very recently.”