“I could say the same about working with men, only more than once.”
She felt him glance at her before he spoke. “Then I suggest we focus on the badge and not the packages we’re wearing. I trained at Quantico and I’ve been a cop in one shape or another for seventeen years.”
She gave a short nod. “I did Quantico, too. Twelve years as a cop, mostly in investigations. All over the world.”
“Good. Well, we’re entering a different world here. You let me know if it reminds you of any place you’ve been before. People in this town are pretty tight. Just about everyone’s going to be upset about the missing boys. Then there’s a ski resort they started to build this past summer. Some new people from that. Some who came with the semiconductor plant and didn’t leave when it died. But most folks were born here and will be buried here. That kind of place.”
“I’ve been in villages like that.” She’d run into them in the Appalachians on a couple of cases involving military personnel, and overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tight, cliquish and distrusting of outsiders. How was that going to help them?
She looked out the side window again, feeling as if the day’s gloom was settling into her bones. Some nuts were impossible to crack, and this sounded like one. How the hell were a couple of pretend travel writers going to get any real information from anyone? It would give them the freedom to move around without suspicion, but little else.
The more she thought about it, the less she liked this whole cover story. Profiling, in which they’d both been trained, could only get you so far. After that, you needed solid information.
“You know,” she said presently, “this cover story stinks. The whole town is going to be upset because kids are disappearing. Does anyone think they’re going to want to talk about that with travel writers?”
He didn’t answer for a minute. The car noises seemed to grow louder until he spoke. “That crossed my mind. But you tell me, Dawkins, how else we can insert a couple of strangers into a small community like this? No matter how we do it, we’re going to stand out and nobody’s going to want to talk. This cover story at least elevates us above a couple of dubious drifters and doesn’t give away our real mission.”
He was right. “So we back up the local law. I can deal.”
“Yeah. They’ll probably give us most of the information. We’re the ones who need to help pull it together. And who knows? We’re talking about one thing and looking for another. We might learn something useful just by keeping our eyes and ears open.”
“You mean the unsub could slip up.”
“We can hope.”
Amazing how much of law enforcement came down to someone slipping up and someone else having the wit to notice the slip. She drummed her fingers on her thigh. They had been called up because of their training in profiling. She didn’t have the highest regard for it, but it could occasionally provide some useful directions to an investigation.
She spoke as they passed the sign announcing that they were entering Conard County. “We’d better get on a first-name basis fast.”
“Yeah. Why’d you tell that barkeep that you were going to tout his burgers? He’ll be looking for an article.”
“Nah. He has a business card and a story to tell. That’ll make him happy. He’ll brag and our cover will be established.”
“True.”