Free Cat's Cradle by William W. Johnstone Page A

motel in Richmond, Mille met with Kenny Allen. Since the pullout of the troopers and the FBI super-pigs, press interest in the mysterious happenings in Ruger County had waned. But Mille was still feeling the sting of Sheriff Dan Garrett’s irreverence toward what she considered the untouchable press corps. The fact that most of the other reporters present that day of her rebuff had found it all rather amusing had not entered her mind.
    The First Amendment, done in beautiful calligraphy, hung in her bedroom in her apartment in Washington. Mille took that amendment very seriously, and read into it much more than the founding fathers had intended. Very seriously. Religiously. Fanatically. If Mille had been a praying person, she would have built an alter, with the First as the centerpiece.
    She glared at Kenny, not believing what he had just told her. “Are you telling me you can’t find any dirt on Dan Garrett?”
    Kenny shook his head. He looked like a large frog. A very ugly frog. He would have looked a great deal better had he done something with his hair, long, fine, and stringy. Kenny was not the type long hair enhances. He looked like an ugly hairy frog. Without warts. And a frog had more scruples.
    “The man is Mister Clean,” Kenny repeated. “His service record is spotless.”
    “Army super-spook,” Mille spat the words. She didn’t like military types either. Uniform lovers. Just as bad as pigs. Maybe worse. An army type had beat up her older brother once. After her brother had spat on the sergeant.
    “He had to have screwed up in college,” Mille persisted.
    “Well, he didn’t. I tell you the man is clean.”
    “No wild frat parties? No chasing women? No hard drinking? Come on Kenny!”
    “Garrett didn’t belong to any frat house. He didn’t have time. He worked his way through the university. He has maintained a three-beer limit ever since he was old enough to drink. I don’t believe the man has ever been drunk. He’s a top-notch lawman, Mille. You’re wasting your time and your money.”
    “It’s my time and my money, Kenny,” she reminded him.
    Kenny shrugged. She could well afford it. No sweat there.
    “Don’t tell me that hotdog hick sheriff has never had a fling with another woman?”
    “Solid family man, Mille.”
    “Bull!”
    Kenny shook his head. “I tell you, Mille, I’ve checked him from head to toe. Nothing.”
    “All right. Maybe. He never had a prisoner abused in his jail?”
    “Yes. One.”
    “Ah- hah !”
    “He fired the deputy who beat the prisoner and then brought charges against the man.”
    “Damn!” Mille looked disgusted.
    “I’d give it up, Mille.”
    “No way. All right. Let’s go after his family. How about his kids?”
    “Clean. Neither one uses any type of drugs and very little alcohol. The oldest son is a junior at the university. The daughter is in high school. They’re clean.”
    “I suppose the son is going to be a cop like his father?”
    “That is correct.”
    “What’s the daughter going to do?”
    “That, I couldn’t say.”
    “How about Garrett’s wife? She married a pig, there can’t be much to her.”
    “Clean, Mille. Solid and respected.”
    “Too good to be true. Kenny, you know as well as I do, everybody has dirt.”
    Kenny drained his beer and popped open another, taking a toke on a joint. He offered the joint to Mille. She hit on it and passed it back.
    “What’s the matter, Mille?”
    She waved him silent and sat for a time, staring at the motel wall and its tacky paintings. Her mind was busy, hard at work. Had Mille been a bit more moral, had her attitude not been misdirected by the older brother (who had been a dope-head, a pusher, a thief, a violent demonstrator back in the ’60’s, and who finally met his end from a policeman’s gun), Mille could have been and probably would have been a much more respected world-class reporter, for she was brilliant, with a fine mind. The fact that her brother had pulled a knife on