Jude Devine Mystery Series (76 page)

Finally, with a quick flash of relief, Hawke said, “Your loyalty at this critical time means more than I can say.”

Jude fidgeted like she was stressed out. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do,” he said coldly. “I’m not going to allow a few retards to destroy this movement. We are not going to play into ZOG hands this time.” He stomped over to the barred window and stared broodingly toward the desert. “Timothy McVeigh set the racialist agenda back by fifty years. It can’t happen again.”

“Do you think this could be some kind of setup?”

Hawke’s gleaming head spun her way. “What are you saying? Do you know something?”

“I used to work for the Bureau, remember? I know how they do business. Maybe they have a mole in the ASS. Someone they’ve turned. Think about it. How did they get their information?”

Hawke stared into space, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his thick neck. Purple blotches appeared on his angry red face. “I see your point. The feds instigate the plot, then look like heroes for stopping it. No one gets hurt, but we’re publicly disgraced and half our movement is arrested.”

“They’ll blame you,” Jude said. “You’ll be guilty by association.” She played the card Arbiter had insisted upon. “This is all about you. Don’t you see? The government doesn’t want you to lead. They know you’re a threat.”

Hawke’s face went rigid with shock before settling into the fatalistic frown of a man who realized he had a choice to make in his own dramatic destiny. He stalked to Jude’s side and bent to kiss her cheek. “Rest easy,
mein Schatz
. I’ll take care of this.”

Ushering her from her seat, he led her to the sideboard to collect her weapon. As they walked to the Dakota, Jude said, “If I can, I’ll update you on the briefing.”

“Take no risks on my behalf.” He opened the door for her. “One day, God willing, I will be in a position to show you the full extent of my gratitude.”

Not a prospect Jude wanted to dwell on. She glanced at the underling standing a few feet away, as if his presence was a factor in her reserve. Hawke clutched her hand to his chest in a rare public display of devotion.

“Be careful,” she told him. “Call me if there’s anything else I can do.”

Hawke returned her hand and stepped back. To the young man in uniform he said, “Take note,
Oberschütze
. This is how a proud Aryan woman conducts herself.”

“Yes,
Herr Oberst
.”

Jude put on her sunglasses, thankful to screen her gaze. As she waved good-bye, both men saluted. She waited until she was ten miles from the compound before she moved to the shoulder of the road and called Arbiter. “He went for it,” she said. “What now?”

“We find out how smart he is.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“I think you underestimate him.”

Scary thought. “We’ll see. Are you going to bring him in?”

“Hell, no. We need him.”

“I’m never going to turn him into a cooperating subject,” Jude warned. “He’s hardcore.”

“That’s okay, we have other assets. Hawke is going to plug us into a laundering op out of Argentina. Al Qaeda uses the same network.”

“I’m not making any headway in that department,” Jude said. Hawke was fond of mouthing off about the future of the white race, but he knew how to shut up when it came to his support network.

“On the contrary,” Arbiter said with silky satisfaction. “He now trusts you completely. It’s only a matter of time before he starts talking.”

“This isn’t about Telluride, is it?” Jude supposed she should have guessed her masters had a larger agenda.

“Telluride’s a win for us no matter what happens,” Arbiter said. “If the place goes up in smoke, we can name our terms for Patriot Three. If it doesn’t, we come out smelling of roses for arresting a bunch of terrorists.”

“I have a feeling Hawke is going to take the law into his own hands.”

“Still a win,” Arbiter said. “Because if he does, you’ll be the loyal girlfriend who helps him get away with it.”

A debt of gratitude Hawke would want to repay
very
personally. Jude cringed. “If that’s how it ends up shaking down, I want your orders in writing. On the record.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Just so you know, I won’t be hung out to dry. If I go down, it’ll be noisy.”

Arbiter chuckled softly. “Relax. You’re in good shape.”

“And I plan to stay that way.”

Jude ended the call and deleted the record on her disposable cell phone. She didn’t want to be part of a screwup. If this operation went south, she would be given a security transfer to another location, far from the Four Corners. The thought troubled her. She wasn’t ready to leave.

*

“Miss Harwood is having a soirée next Saturday,” Tulley said as soon as Jude’s shadow fell across his desk. “We’re invited.”

As he’d expected, his boss received the news with a pained expression. She was unmoved by independent cinema unless Bruce Willis was in it, and she thought Elspeth Harwood was overhyped.

“That thing is about to fly off its bracket,” she said like she had more important things to worry about than the social event of the year. She took off her sunglasses and stared up at the ceiling fan. “I suppose if I don’t fix it myself one of us is going to get decapitated. Remind me—why do I have a big, strong twenty-seven-year-old deputy sitting around this office? Other than feeding pig ears to his dog, of course.”

Tulley said, “I put in a maintenance call to Montrose. They said it’s on the fall schedule.”

They also said the Paradox Valley substation was low priority being as it was a fully renovated building, unlike some of theirs that were about to fall down on the heads of female deputies. Was that what Tulley wanted? No sir, he told the supervisor.

The stationhouse used to be a school until the Montezuma and Montrose sheriffs’ joint initiative. Now it consisted of an office, an interview room, a couple of holding cells, and a utility room out back. Jude kept her Bowflex in one of the cells since her house was too small for serious gym equipment. Tulley was thankful about this because having the Bowflex in plain sight gave him the motivation to improve himself. He worked out every day and could press two hundred pounds, a weight most MCSO deputies would never lift unless they had to rescue their wives from a burning building.

Tulley smoothed his shirtsleeves over his biceps and wondered if he should buy a bigger size uniform now that his was getting really tight. His best buddy, Bobby Lee Parker, said ladies like to see shirt buttons popping across a man’s chest instead of his gut. Tulley could accept that, but he wasn’t sure if he looked professional with his shirt all stretched.

“No one ever filled out a T-shirt like Marlon Brando,” Miss Benham said from the counter in their tiny kitchen. She must have noticed him feeling his muscles. “Women fainted in
Streetcar Named Desire
, did you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am. But ladies were shy back in the old days. Not any more.” To make his point, he said, “They weren’t fainting in
300
, they were
panting
.”

“
300
indeed,” Miss Benham sniped. “They should have gotten their historical facts in order before they made a film about Sparta.”

“It ain’t supposed to be a documentary.” Tulley was surprised that Miss Benham didn’t appreciate the film for its artistic visual style even if she thought the men were too naked.

“It’s pro-war propaganda,” she said with a delicate sniff.

“It’s a legend,” Tulley argued.

“You’ve been duped.”

“You sound like a schoolteacher.” That always got her. Miss Benham had taught right here in this room for about fifty years before she retired.

“I liked that movie,” Jude said. “I got it on DVD. Big screen would have been better.”

“Oh, man, it was awesome at the Regal,” Tulley told her. “Me and Bobby Lee went three times.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Jude zapped hairs off her seat with a sticky tape roller. “Has that hound been sitting on my chair again?”

Tulley patted his thigh and Smoke’m got up from his bed and plodded across the office for a smooch. “It’s mostly from his ears. He was laying his head there.”

“I don’t care where it’s from. I’d appreciate not having dog hair all over my butt every time I walk out of here.”

“Coffee, Detective?” Miss Benham already had the mug in her hand. She placed it in front of Jude along with the invite they’d received that morning.

Miss Benham said she was going to keep the card for a souvenir since Dr. Westmoreland had handed it to
her
. Tulley couldn’t see as that was fair. The envelope was addressed to him, too. It was handmade. That was one of Miss Harwood’s hobbies. A gifted actress like her, always in the public eye and working on two movies at once, longed for time out. Miss Harwood relaxed by squishing rags and paper into a pulp and making her own cards and envelopes. Only special people received them. Everyone else got whatever the publicist sent out. That’s what it said in the latest
Vanity Fair
magazine. Bobby Lee brought in his copies for Tulley when he was done reading them. He subscribed.

Now that Miss Harwood had moved here from England, she was in all the magazines. The fact that she’d just married Dr. Westmoreland from the ME’s office in Grand Junction was big news. No one in the Four Corners would have guessed they’d have a famous lesbian couple living here, of all places. Some people around the area had come out of the closet to show their support. Tulley thought they’d probably regret their noble impulses. It was all very well to flaunt your personal preferences when you were rich and famous. Regular people had to think about their paycheck.

Miss Benham said Dr. Westmoreland was a self-defining woman and Miss Harwood was a creative artist from London and therefore had Bohemian sensibilities and fluid taste in partners. She wouldn’t expect the Philistines in the Four Corners to understand such things. But she sure had that wrong. No one Tulley knew was offended by idea of Miss Harwood and Dr. Westmoreland together. Most guys at the MCSO said it was hot. Live and let live.

Tulley glanced over at Jude. She had a strange look on her face as she read the invite, and she’d had her hair cut again. Miss Benham thought it made her look too stern, but she about lived at the Le Paradox hair shop. Bobby Lee said with unique looks like hers, fancy hairdos and lipstick were pointless. Miss Benham said Bobby Lee was biased because he was her boyfriend. She thought the people who cared about Jude should encourage her to make more of her attributes. Tulley could see her point. It was one thing for a guy to be tall, dark, and handsome, but people wondered about a woman who looked like that. Things being the way they were, however, Miss Benham was dreaming if she thought Jude would ever wear a dress.

“I guess you two can hardly wait to rub shoulders with the Hollywood crowd.” Jude dropped the invite on a stack of files like it smelled bad.

Miss Benham snatched it up. “We’re one of the select few to receive this invitation, I’ll have you know.”

“I wish that did it for me,” Jude said.

“Philip Seymour Hoffman will be there,” Tulley said. “And they’re going to do a computer uplink to Lars von Trier.”

Miss Benham sighed. “All those phobias of his. If he could only bring himself to get on an airplane and leave Denmark, he could come out here and find out what this country is really like. Generalizations are the province of the uninformed.”

“Von Trier’s the director of
Dogville
,” Tulley informed Jude. He didn’t think much of the USA Trilogy so far, either. He wasn’t surprised when he found out von Trier was brought up by nudist, communist parents.