Free Dead Weight by Steven F. Havill Page A

him?”
    “When the time comes…if it comes. The first thing that has to happen is that we move beyond the anonymous note stage. If someone wants to come forward with the ‘documentation’ that the note promises and is willing to sign a formal complaint, then it’ll be a different ball game. But a sleazy unsigned note, sent to all the right people? I don’t think so.”
    I knew it sounded as if I’d dismissed the contents of the note from my mind, continuing on as if it had never been delivered. If Frank Dayan thought that, it was fine with me. I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone associated with the media, but he didn’t have to know the nagging little seeds of doubt that damn note had planted in my mind. In that respect, the writer had been successful.
    “So you tell me, Frank. What are you going to do? Are you going to run a story about it in the
Register?
”
    His reply was snappy. “Come on, Sheriff. We don’t print rumors. We don’t print letters to the editor unless they’re signed and we can verify them. We don’t even print ‘name withheld’ letters when they ask. No guts, no signature, no letter. It’s that simple. And this kind of personal attack, even if it was signed? I don’t think so.”
    “Commendable,” I said.
    “I don’t think the letter would have been written if it weren’t an election year.”
    “Oh? Not for me, it isn’t an election year.”
    Dayan turned as much sideways as his seat belt would allow and rested his left arm along the back of the seat. He laced his fingers through the grillwork of the security screen that separated the backseat area from the front.
    “Bob Torrez made a lot of people angry when he filed as an independent, Sheriff.”
    “Whoopee.”
    Dayan laughed. “I know, I know. You don’t care. You were appointed when Sheriff Holman got killed last spring and agreed to serve until after the election. And the first thing you did was appoint Bob as undersheriff.”
    “All that’s public record,” I said, shrugging. “So what?”
    “If Estelle Reyes-Guzman hadn’t moved out of town, you’d probably have appointed her, right?”
    I looked over at Dayan, amused. “I did appoint her, Frank. I appointed her for the last week that she was here. If that gave the county fathers conniptions, so much the better. And then she and her family moved, as you said. Torrez was the next logical choice.”
    “Sure he was. And then he files as an independent for the election, with probably as good a chance of winning as anyone, including Mike Rhodes, Sam Carter’s brother-in-law, who just happens to be the only Republican candidate, and Leona Spears, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary, even though she doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.”
    “And all of this means…”
    “You’re about as political as the amount of snow we get in the summertime, Sheriff.”
    “Thank you,” I laughed. “I try to lead a clean life.”
    “Have you wondered yet why
you
didn’t receive a letter?”
    “The thought crossed my mind. But what good would it do to write to me? If there was some grand scheme to fleece the public, wouldn’t I be just as suspect as my deputies? Hell, if it were true, I’d just cover it all up, wouldn’t I? That’s how things are done these days in what little of the political world I ever hear about.”
    “You know what I think?”
    “What do you think.”
    “I think it’s someone who knows you pretty well. They know that trying to get a rise, a reaction, out of you is probably a waste of time. Whoever it is knows that they can’t smear you personally. You’ve been around too long. Too many people know you, know what kind of a hardheaded old…” He paused, groping for just the right tone of insult that wouldn’t leave him stranded by the side of the road.
    “Son of a bitch,” I prompted. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess,” I chuckled. “But I think you’re blowing it out of proportion, Frank. If