LITMIR.BIZ

      SO WHAT DID A WORKAHOLIC public servant do off duty?

      Was that even pertinent to her article? Shouldn’t she stay here and soak in some of the town flavor? Suss out the issues? Meet the residents who were directly affected by the local law?

      At the front of the room—in the official meeting—people were hotly debating methods for slowing traffic on the main drag. Yawn. The back of the room wasn’t much better. Talk of feed prices, boundary disputes, the sheriff’s wedding and some investment scheme making the rounds. Double yawn.

      She gave him a couple of minutes’ head start, then slipped out of the room. At the entrance to the town hall, she observed him making his way across the parking lot to his cruiser. Not a private vehicle. And the deputy was off duty. Was that by the book? She’d have to check. Something else came to mind. She hadn’t caught all of Whittaker’s conversation when she’d come upon him in the meeting hall, but she thought she’d heard the man he’d been talking to mention something about Whittaker’s having turned to liquor. A joke, or serious? If it had been serious, what did it have to do with the execution of the man’s duties?

      If he was on the up-and-up, he had nothing to hide from her investigation.

      As she made her way to the Yugo, she felt a twinge of doubt. Was this investigative reporting…or was this creative nonfiction? Had she singled out Whittaker because he was the deputy in charge or because he was an enigma? That fact-finding challenge she so loved. A man the residents of Applegate relied on, respected and worried about. A man who softened—slightly—only when he was up a tree, rescuing a tomcat.

      June Parker had warned her not to use Whittaker’s pain to sell papers. But the woman couldn’t have known the personal pain that drove Chloe to uncover the facts and dispel speculation.

      As the deputy pulled out of the parking lot, she put her own car in gear. Firsthand observation led to facts. The facts, once they fell into a pattern, would constitute the truth. And the truth, however painful, was the foundation of life.

      Following at a discreet distance, she was mildly surprised when he didn’t pull into the sheriff’s office parking lot but continued through town. On the outskirts, where the streetlights ended, he turned left and crossed the railroad tracks. A full planter’s moon provided the only real light.

      Chloe knew that in many small towns in the south, “the wrong side of the tracks” wasn’t merely an expression. Despite its new upscale subdivisions, Applegate still had a seamier side, and this was it. Not part of the groomed in-town neighborhoods, but not rural farmland, either. The road meandered between houses too close together and in need of repair.

      The evening being mild for April, Chloe rolled her window down. Many of the residents clustered on front stoops—talking, drinking, smoking or listening to music. Although it was fairly late and a school night, kids were everywhere. Adolescent boys with attitude hung with men who eyed the women. The women eyed them right back. The aromas of barbecue and simmering salsa melded with a sweet scent Chloe knew couldn’t be legal. Didn’t Deputy Whittaker smell it? If so, he didn’t stop.

      About a mile down the road, as the houses became less regularly spaced, the cruiser slowed, then came to a stop in front of one particular house, its weedy front yard strewn with plastic toys. The deputy got out of his patrol car and walked over to a woman leaning on the front porch railing. Her hair was big…her tank top small. And her jeans looked as if they’d been painted on. In the porch light she looked tired.

      Chloe slowed the Yugo as she drove past.

      Mack Whittaker pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, took out several bills and handed them to the woman. Stuffing the money in her top, she slid her arm around his back and drew him into the house.

      Now what was Chloe to make of that firsthand observation?