Chapter 19
When she came out of her office, Kelly was standing at the barrier gate.
“Why are you still here?”
“Ma’am, I get the feeling you’re very displeased with the men in those cells.”
“Do you have any rubber hoses stashed somewhere?”
“Harry took the last one with him. It was his favorite. We do have pepper spray and a Taser. And we have some electrically charged nipple clamps that we confiscated.” When she raised an eyebrow, Kelly said, “Even in Dominion, you can order anything over the internet.”
“Better get me the Taser.”
“I’ll get the clamps, too; dibs on the twins.”
“After you’ve had something to eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kelly hopped over the gate and left.
She checked the key ring on her belt before going back to the cells.
Bobby and Billy were sitting side by side on the cot, which sagged halfway to the floor. How long could a flimsy metal frame and straps hold up over five hundred pounds?
“One of you get off that,” she said and turned to face Harding’s cell. “You want to talk to me?”
Harding came to the bars. “I want to apologize. This was not exactly an auspicious start to our relationship.” There was a natural twinkle to his eyes that conveyed a myriad of attitudes with just the slightest squint or raised eyebrow. He might not have been trying to charm her earlier.
“What relationship? You’re in there and I’m out here with the keys. I don’t see any relationship.”
His emotionally prismatic eyes squinted. “I concede to your authority, Sheriff. And I accept that I deserve to be in here. But I’d rather not have our discussion with those two troglodytes as witnesses. I promise I will behave myself.”
“What makes you think we’re going to have a discussion?”
“An interrogation, then.”
There was a little too much conceit in those eyes and that slight crook of a smile. She turned to leave.
“Sheriff McGowan.”
“What?”
“I did say I was sorry.”
“This is not the principal’s office. You were—”
“Being an asshole, I quite agree. I should not have let two creatures who understand English less well than a disobedient dog get under my skin, but I did. Again, I am sorry.”
She unlocked the door and let him out. “Come on.”
The twins were furious that he was being let out but they had to stay put. They both came to the bars and growled in unison. She wondered if they might reach through them or spit out a word or two. The cot hadn’t fully recovered.
She followed Harding to her office. He waited for her to open the door before entering.
“You left university to join the army.” She sat down at her desk.
He sat down once she signaled her permission for him to do so. “I graduated early. I was in my first year of med school. After two tours of duty, I returned for two more years of med school before transferring to veterinary medicine.”
“Why? Don’t you like people? Did you see too much in Afghanistan?”
He didn’t react to her poke. Instead, grey-blue confidence smiled back at her. “We have to go where our passion takes us. Why did you become a cop?” He leaned across the desk. “Let me answer for you. You wanted to do something significant. You wanted to do some good. You wanted to catch hardened, notorious criminals like me and put them behind bars.”
“Oh, shut up.”
He leaned back, his grey-blues bringing her with him. “Of course, in Dominion, there are all kinds of ways you can serve.”
She leaned back. “What do you mean by that?”
“You are currently working with people in power who are determined to push through their plans for development despite encroaching on the habitats of local wildlife.”
“People come first, surely you agree with that.”
“If we are out in the wild, their wild, and a bear charges us, yes, we might have no choice but to kill it. But I’m talking about invading their territory and destroying their homes to build ours. Wouldn’t you say they have no choice but to attack us? But they don’t. They just get pushed into areas that are not their natural environment. They are forced to compete with other species that are better adapted. They can’t find their normal food supply. They are crammed closer and closer together so they can’t avoid range overlap that leads to more conflicts and higher levels of stress. I’ve seen bears that are losing their fur due to the stress of having to live too close to other bears.”
“Don’t bears overlap all the time?”
“Good point. Yes, they do, but they also have their own territories to themselves. I’m talking about when there is nowhere else to go.” He brought his hands together to indicate a shrinking range. “Their immune systems weaken. They become susceptible to diseases they might otherwise fend off. The young are at greater risk of not surviving. And then there are all those convenient garbage cans laid out in a row.”
“Nice speech; you hardly took a breath.”
“And if I asked you about gun control, what would I get?”
“Touché. What do you propose as an alternative?”
“We need to leave a smaller footprint. On a philosophical level, we need to respect other species and their right to exist as well. We need to understand that we are a part of nature not apart from it. We can do it. We just need the political and monetary will.”
“In other words, it’s going to cost us more.” He was definitely passionate, but maybe too radical. Either way, she wasn’t up to any debate with him on the topic. He was too knowledgeable, too experienced and too practiced.
“It would mean higher density housing, yes, which would add to the cost of owning a home. It would mean larger green spaces, culverts under roads so animals could cross with less danger of being hit, which, I might add, saves human lives as well. It would preserve natural migration routes.”
“Anything else? Maybe a few billion of us could just die off for the good of the environment.”
He sighed, which, for some unfathomable reason, made her want to apologize. Maybe it was the glare of grey-blue that hadn’t stopped looking at her.
“I know how I sound. But I also know things are getting better because attitudes are changing. For people like me out there doing the research; however, that change isn’t coming fast enough. We are losing species at an unprecedented rate.”
This was getting monotonous. “I appreciate your passion for saving the environment and all the little critters in it.”
“Saving the environment is essential. We need it; it doesn’t need us. It’s the future for your daughter.”
She flinched. Did he get the dossier on her, too? “That’s an ambitious goal.”
“So is bringing Do-Dads and Karyon to Dominion and planning for the population to get to twenty thousand within the next decade or so. Both can be done with much less environmental impact if we’re willing to do it the right way from the start.”
Why spout all this at her? Did he ever think of anything else? Had he been haranguing the Cotton brothers with all this? It could be enough, especially if accusations came with it, to motivate Bobby or Billy to land one on his kisser, maybe blacken one of those grey-blues full of attitude.
“Kate and Deputy Strickland mentioned illegal traps and hunting. Is that what caused the disagreement?”
“We have no evidence that identifies anyone, but we know who is behind it all.”
“Morton Colter.”
“Aside from his farm, he runs a trophy hunting tourism business. He’s also a taxidermist. You get the idea.”
“I’m not a fan of trapping animals in any way, but my husband was a hunter. He brought home venison and moose. We ate both.”
Shana wouldn’t during her two years as an absolutely total vegan.
“I’m an omnivore, too. I see no reason to hunt at all, but I have no expectations regarding ent
renched views one way or another. My only hope is to put limits on it and require people to do it legally and humanely.”
He really did have the whole topic down pat. “You believe Colter is using illegal traps and bringing in people for illegal hunting expeditions?”
“We have the traps, but nothing that connects them to Colter. The truth is, they appear to be too simple to have come from his people, but that could be a feint.”
“I’ll check out your allegations when I visit his farm.”
“He invited you?”
“I met him, and those two in the back, last Friday when my daughter and I rode out to Greens’ Point.”
“Colter will tell you there are poachers in the mountains, hence the simple trap designs, but we’ve never found one or evidence there are any. Whoever’s doing it is able to avoid our cameras, steal them or destroy them. My people are very frustrated.”
This situation felt more and more like she had stepped into the middle of Dominion’s own version of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. This Colter-Harding feud was about trapping and hunting but verged on being just as ludicrous and maybe as dangerous.
The bell above the front door tinkled. She waited to see if Kelly passed by the clear pane of glass and got up when she didn’t.
“Stay,” she said to Harding.
“Cute.”
“I mean it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kelly was escorting Colter through the gate when she came out of her office.
“I do apologize, Sheriff McGowan,” Colter said, “for Bobby and Billy’s unacceptable behavior.”
“This is the third time this year.”
He bowed his head. “If you will just tell me what the bail is, I will post it.”
“Deputy Strickland can take care of that for you.” She followed Kelly and Colter to Kelly’s desk. “I would like to accept your invitation to visit your farm if it’s still open.”
“It most certainly is, Sheriff.” Colter looked past her and smiled.
She saw Harding standing at the clear pane watching them. He backed away when she waved him off.
“I can swing by tomorrow.”
“Thursday morning would be better. We’re very busy right now with new construction. The contractors are coming tomorrow.”
“Thursday morning it is.”
She lingered in the common area until Kelly completed the paperwork and took the cheque for bail, which she approved. Colter and the twins then left.
The idea of listening to more of Harding’s monologue seemed like just running in circles again, a common sensation since returning to Dominion. She only reluctantly headed back to her office and just got seated in her chair across from Harding when Kelly stuck her head in.
“Mayor Jones is here.”
She said to Harding, “It’s getting to be a parade out there.” She got up and pointed at him.
“I know, stay.”
She waved for Kelly to come in. “Take him back to his cell.”