No Immunity

here this afternoon.”
    “And you were in Las Vegas this afternoon.”
    “Fine, then let me speak to the person who says he saw me dumping that body off.”
    “Maybe you weren’t paying attention. I just told you, he’s out of town.”
    She opened her mouth, but there were too many questions to ask, and, she knew, no answers forthcoming. She let her mouth close, and she sat staring from the back of the fallen frame on Fox’s desk to the photograph of the dank and cruel nineteenth-century jail built in the era when accusation and guilt were one and the same.
    Her silence seemed to stump Fox as no previous assault had.
    After a moment she stood up. “Sheriff, I know nothing of this dead woman. I didn’t bring her here. You’ve got no evidence to merit charging me. So call your deputy and have him drive me back to Las Vegas.”
    “The bus comes at seven A.M. Hotel’s two doors down.” She took her time poking her arms into her coat sleeves, hooking her pack onto her belt, glancing at the jail. What had she been thinking to let herself be stranded in a desert village with not even a bus out till morning? She was as trapped as the photo in the overturned frame.
    Idly she reached for the frame, tacitly daring Fox to make a territorial fuss.
    “Sheriff, maybe you don’t realize the potential danger this dead woman puts you in. You and everyone in Gatozzi and beyond. We don’t know what she has, but it could be contagious enough to wipe out anyone downwinnd. Jeff and I didn’t go near her without protective gear. We’re talking epidemic, bleeding out—”
    “That’s going to be your defense, huh?”
    She bit back her normal retort. This was too important. She leaned her hands on the edge of his desk. “What can I e you to convince you?”
    “You can confess.”
    She took a final look at Sheriff Fox. The man was no fool. Behind his pudgy face was the mind of a fox, she was sure of it. A fox used to big empty fields where the hem had nowhere to hide. He’d be a fox who didn’t have to scheme any too often. Was he just plain bored enough to break the law for the hell of it? Was the idea of epidemic too awful to consider? That didn’t follow the law of reason, but when you’re the law, the law’s however you want it to be.
    Before she stood, she righted the frame and looked at the photo. “Oh, shit!”
    “Excuse me?” Fox exclaimed with smarmy righteousness.
    In the picture Fox stood smiling in a boozy way, each arm around a plumed and bikini’d chorus girl. In the background was a banner for the Nevada Casino Board. “Sheriff, you can believe me or not, but don’t fool around with this. If you’re thinking of covering up an epidemic so it doesn’t ruin your tourist trade in Nevada, you’re crazy. It’s way too great a risk to take.”
    “For billions of dollars?” he asked.
    “What’s your life worth?”
    “Like I said, bus leaves at seven.”

CHAPTER 20

    Of course Jeff Tremaine’s office was dosed, Kiernan thought as she stood banging on his door. It was after dark Saturday night. Even if he hadn’t been avoiding her, he’d be gone. He and his too-fine wife, who’d figured Kiernan had seduced him. She glared through the glass door into the reception area. Rats.
    The wind whipped clown the mountain snapping her ‘^adequate jacket against her ribs. She couldn’t even figure how cold it was. Snow weather. Nothing was open but a Cafe, the saloon where Fox had so generously directed her for the night, and a bar up the street with only the AR lighted in the window. She ran across the street to the saloon. She’d use the phone, get a drink, and get out of here. Spending the night was something she definitely was not doing. If Jeff Tremaine had lied to the sheriff about her, she could hardly count on his veracity about calling Public Health. So far she had met three people in this isolated town, and they’d been ruthless, suspicious, and treated truth like something from an alien dimension. Were they joined in a conspiracy to hide the possible danger from the town? Or was there more to it, more people involved? She needed to get a hold of her own connections in the Centers for Disease Control. Those numbers were at home.
    She tried her cell phone and got an earful of static, “Phone?” she called to the bartender over the jukebox, The bar could have been lifted from a back lot at Paramount—a Western set. Long, wooden, with a brass foot rail, it curved to an end halfway into the