Page 15 of Making His Bones

“You obviously ran a list of guys on the sex offender’s list.”

Elektra rolled her eyes. “Yeah, when they were done suspecting me.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“So you want them to run another five thousand guys with your new database?”

“Yes, there obviously aren’t five thousand guys in Seeker, so it would involve the surrounding burgs.”

“How do you get authorization for that? Sheriff?”

“Luckily, no. That rat bastard was of no help whatsoever. Fact, he seemed determined at every step of the way to cover up whoever did it.”

“You think he knows?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

I could check and see what dealings the Bare Bones had had with Dave DeFreeze. And then, sic them on the lameass. Elektra didn’t have to know. That’s how the club operated.

She said, “I can get Booker Maverick to authorize the search. He knows the hell I’ve been through.”

I frowned. It seemed very time-consuming and also, maybe a little bit of an invasion of privacy. What would this new database be used for in the future? The next time someone sold a bit of meth to someone? I could see the Boners being hugely against this. Much better and easier just to fuck the sheriff up a bit. “Why don’t you hold off on that a couple days? I mean, you might get a lot of pushback from guys who think it’s raising privacy concerns. And of course, the guy who did it is long gone.”

She sat up straight. “It’s my only hope! Why would you want to kill my only hope? Thirty percent of people in the FBI’s CODIS base can be linked to a sibling, parent, or child in a consumer database. If you combine the two it narrows it down even more. I mean, we’ve got eye color!”

“Well, there you go. Only ask men with that eye color to give DNA.”

Elektra wiped away a tear. “Fuck, Gray! They handcuffed me and kept me under lock and key for whole fucking week because a fucking Navajo pipe I had on my wall had Delilah’s DNA on it! Well, of course it did. She played with it!”

I grabbed one of her shoulders and held on tightly, trying to commiserate with her. I shuddered. Could I imagine being accused of murdering my own kid? Like it wasn’t bad enough, your only child is found in a suitcase assaulted, but then you’re accused of doing it? How much farther beyond despair would you be, locked in a jail cell? Did they really think something the size and length of a native pipe could have raped her daughter? I guessed they had let Elektra go when her DNA didn’t match that found on the suitcase—the DNA Elektra was going off now.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m going to go talk to Galileo and find out more about this Mexican kid he recognized from the film two days ago. Maybe they’ve made more progress in locating who made that film, obviously someone nearby. Can you promise me you’ll hang out here until I come back with news? Take a swim.”

“I don’t have a swimsuit.”

I thought. Of course, while thinking, my active fantasy life took control. “Go in your bra and panties. I swear there’s no one to look. Check out the neighbors—they can’t see. Find a ton of towels in that little shed there. There’s a six of cold Red Stripes in the fridge. I haven’t drank ‘em since I was tasked with this new job.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t drink.”

She said it so rigidly, I assumed there was something horrifying in her past involving alcohol. “Okay. There’s a bunch of mineral water.”

I rode off on my Harley, convinced she’d stay put for awhile. Or, at least, long enough for us to get a posse together and harass this shitbird sheriff.

W

I corralled all the men at The Bum Steer—Knoxie, who was kind of their enforcer, Dr. Driving Hawk, their sergeant-at-arms, Baron Funkhauser, back from his RICO beef, Wolf Glaser, and Fox Isherwood, a new guy who ran a rehab place for birds of prey outside of town.

Agreeing to choke the intel out of Dave DeFreeze was easy. Deciding on our strategy was the hard part.

“I will kick his butt so hard his asshole will be between his shoulder blades,” promised Wolf Glaser.

“Yeah,” agreed Funkhauser. He was a giant, buff guy with a greying “sparrow” beard, two tails hanging down onto his clavicle. “Let’s bugsmash him into next century.”

This was my gig, so I held up my hands. “Hold your fucking horses. We’re talking about the sheriff of Seeker. There could be a lot of blowback onto Pure and Easy, don’t you think?”

“I agree,” said Lytton Driving Hawk, the rational one. He was the spitting image of his half-brother Ford, who I’d grown up with. Fiery, dark, and dangerous. “It’s too much exposure to dick-slap that douchetard in his office. I say we lure him out of his little hole by offering him something he’d think of as fancy. Like lunch at the casino.”