Free Dakota by Gwen Florio Page A

sacrifice-addicted cleric. It was almost as if some long-ago law had mandated bars and churches in equal numbers, providing the balance of a Sunday morning recovery from Saturday night’s revelries. Maybe North Dakota was different, she thought.
    An American flag, standing stiff in the wind above a frame building, caught her attention, along with the most welcoming sight of the very long day. Homestead County, a sign said. And, below it, a smaller sign: “Sheriff’s Department.” Lola flicked the turn signal and pulled into a parking lot and found her notebook and Judith’s photo from the newspaper. She flipped through the notebook until she came to the notes she’d made about Burnt Creek. The sheriff’s name was Thor Brevik. She’d met just enough sheriffs in her brief time in Montana to know that Charlie’s youth made him a rarity. Brevik was almost certainly one of those leathery-skinned specimens whose tarnished belt buckle from his rodeo days would likely outdo his badge when it came to grabbing attention. She imagined him tall, the beginnings of a stoop, another pale Scandinavian like Jorkki, the hair already so light as to render the transition from blond to white unremarkable. She looked at her watch. It was just before five. No matter what Thor Brevik looked like, if his workload were anything like Charlie’s, he’d be at his desk another hour yet.

CHAPTER TEN
    T he man in the sheriff’s office wasn’t particularly old. And it was impossible to tell if he was leathery, despite the discomfiting amount of flesh on display. Tattoos from wrist to shoulder wrapped bare arms that bulged like boulders from a denim shirt with the sleeves ripped out and buttons long gone. The visible strip of chest and stomach appeared to be similarly adorned, albeit covered with such an impressive mat of hair—she’d been right about the blond, at least—that it was nearly impossible to make out the designs that twisted like so many snakes through the shrubbery. An inked strand of barbed wire provided the only demarcation between neck and jaw. In some trepidation, Lola shifted her gaze upward. Thor Brevik’s blond curls framed a cherubic face that in no way went with the body below it. His pretty pursed lips parted in a smile of surpassing sweetness. A gold tooth shone. Lola blinked.
    “Aren’t you cold?” she blurted, looking at the exposed arms and flesh.
    “Wouldn’t be if you’d shut the door behind you.” Something soft and Southern in his voice, a little syrup to flow pleasingly over all those crags.
    Lola slammed the door shut. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
    He waved her apology away with a hand weighted with silver rings that reached to the knuckle of every finger, including his thumb. Lola saw a skull, a cobra, a Stars and Bars, and one featuring two carved silver women, hands grabbing one another’s ankles, mouths bent to . . . she looked away. Each of the rings stuck up at least half an inch, rendering Brevik’s fist a fearsome weapon.
    The tooth flashed again. “Help you?” He’p.
    Lola slid her hand into her pocket, ran her finger along the ragged edges of the clipping with Judith’s picture. It seemed obscene to show the photo to this hulking aficionado of girl-on-girl action. If the people of Homestead County had elected this man as their sheriff, the county was rougher than she’d thought, reluctantly conceding to herself that Jan may have had a point.
    “Y’all probably want the sheriff, right?”
    “You mean—” Lola’s sentences kept stopping before she was finished with them. The final cup of coffee, just before she drove into Burnt Creek, probably hadn’t helped.
    The man’s laugh exploded in the small room, ricocheting off the walls, blasting Lola back against the door. She felt for the knob. “You thought I”— Ah —“was the sheriff? That’s a good one. I’m Dawg. This here”—the rings beat a drum solo on an inner door—“would be Thor.”

    T