No Immunity

unhooking themselves and escaping the garrote that hung in their future, the cellblock was surrounded by another building as if the two were Russian nesting dolls.
    The sepia-toned photograph hung on the side wall of sheriff Fox’s office where the present-day interrogee could study it in horror and the sheriff could ponder better days gone by. “Gives you pause, doesn’t it?” he said. “What it tells you is, in the state of Nevada we don’t lose prisoners In Nevada we’ve had a century of practice keeping them.”
    Fox nodded toward the photograph, vibrating his lower chin in the process. There was nothing of the fast, lithe fox in his bearlike build, his wide nose, brush of a mustache, his round red cheeks. It was as if the fox were in costume and visible only in the tight hazel eyes that peered out beneath his fluffy red-blond eyebrows. At a distance, Kiernan thought, Sheriff Fox’s big, soft body, his round face, could have lulled the unwary onto his lap to present their Christmas wishes. “We don’t,” he repeated, “lose our prisoners.”
    “Congratulations.”
    He might have mumbled something in response, but Kiernan couldn’t hear it. The voice that shouted in her head was Tchernak’s, repeating his oft-repeated maxim to her: “No taunting, no speeding, no defenestration!” Well, she’d already blown the first one. If she didn’t watch it, she’d have to count on the last two—in reverse order.
    Fox leaned forward, his red-blond brows scrunched angrily. “Look, lady, you don’t dump a dead body, not in my district.”
    “You want to talk law, let’s talk about kidnapping. I’m willing to discuss Jeff Tremaine’s dead woman with you, but if you continue to threaten me, you’ll be talking to my lawyer.”
    “You better think carefully before you make your one and only phone call.”
    She took a deep breath and then another. No way was she going to let Fox find out, but she wanted to know his take on the dead woman as much as he did hers. She breathed more slowly, until her skin no longer vibrated in anger. “The policeman is your friend,” Tchernak had teased her the last time he’d launched into his lecture on dealing maturely with authority figures. She hated authority, and the authority she hated most was this kind of asshole made omnipotent by his isolation.
    She had ended up in jail three times before. This jail in Gattozzi was not one she wished to make number four. She took a deep breath and said, “Dr. Tremaine called me to confirm his findings on the cause of death of the deceased. I am a pathologist. We worked together in Africa and we had both seen Lassa fever deaths. This woman’s condition appeared to be similar. But there’s no way to tell until your pathologist does a complete postmortem and gets the results of toxicology reports. Doctor Tremaine would have told you all that if you had bothered to ask him instead of dragging me back here.”
    “I interviewed him, all right. Know what he told me? He told me you dumped this body and ran.”
    For an instant the room seemed to swirl. She gave her head a sharp shake. “Why would he say that?” She put up a hand to forestall his retort. “I mean, what reason would I have? I’m a licensed—” This was not the place to mention being a PI; she didn’t need Tchernak to remind her of that—“physician in San Diego. I flew in this morning, rented a car, and drove up here. The only place I stopped—the only place to stop—was the Doll’s House Cafe. Are you suggesting I came all the way from California to transport a dead body from there to here?”
    Fox jerked back as if she’d punched him. Then he hunched forward, as if protecting that bruise. “I don’t know you flew in. The airline will tell me someone with your name came in.”
    She held up one finger. “Someone who had to show a Photo ID.”
    Fox laughed. “Someone who’s got their picture on the ID that says Kiernan O’Shaughnessy.”
    She lifted a second finger. “So pull up my motor vehicle file from California.”
    Slowly, deliberately, Fox glanced around the room “Darn, I guess the big fancy computer the taxpayers out here bought us just up and disappeared.”
    Her fingers crushed into a fist. “What kind of lawman are you? You’re so determined to believe I’m a fraud, you won’t check the evidence. You’re wedded to the idea of me crossing a state line to relocate a corpse I have no connection with. Do you have psychedelics in the