Shallow Graves

man.”
    “Good. Let me go. I’ll be one less burden for you.”
    Moorhouse looked him up and down—the shirt stained with dirt and ruddy-black dots of blood, the blotched jeans, the hair upended from a night on a stiff pillow.
    “To be honest with you, sir, we aren’t inclined to keep you around here for any length of time ourselves.”
    Sir sir sir . . .
    The sheriff rocked on his thick heels; a board creaked.
    The light was painful as a dull razor. Pellam’s eyes were watering. He waited. Moorhouse was trying to tell him something. Something he was supposed to be picking up on. Something that was not quite right for the town magistrate to be asking—even this town magistrate.
    Pellam sniffed and blinked the tears.
    “You got a cold, sir?”
    “That truckload of dirt I was mentioning.”
    “Ah.” Moorhouse looked at the sheriff. “Tom, why don’t you leave us be for a minute.”
    “Sure, Mayor.” The lean man pivoted on his heels and walked out of the room in as near to a march as a man could get without Sousa playing in the background.
    “Pellam, your presence here’s been, what’s the word? Disruptive.”
    “No more disruptive than two assholes driving around town beating up people who’re minding their own business.”
    “Ha, there you go.” Moorhouse shook his head. “Did you know that the clinic near to burned down last night?”
    Pellam blinked. Trying to make the connection, how this figured in his case. He asked, “What, exactly—”
    “You know what was destroyed in the fire?”
    Oh. Interesting. He said, “Those drugs the Torrens boy had.”
    “Yes, sir.” Moorhouse raising an eyebrow.
    “Oh, come on, you charging me with arson too? You’ve got no probable cause for that.”
    Moorhouse’s other eyebrow joined the first and they seemed to be asking: How come you’re so familiar with words like “probable cause”? How come, sir?
    “Mr. Pellam, you’re the kind of outside influence isn’t good for our community.”
    “Outside influence might be just the ticket,” Pellam said, “you being the inside influence.”
    Moorhouse, smiling, sucked air in through his white teeth. “I may have to add contempt to your growing list of infractions, you aren’t careful—”
    Pellam put his hands, balled into fists, on the desk, and leaned forward. Light shot off the steel cuffs. “I want bail set and I don’t care if you’re busy fixing DWI tickets for the sons of your clients—I want a trial tomorrow. I’m calling my lawyer in Manhattan and getting him up here today with a habeas corpus writ and you fuck around any more with me and I’ll sue your ass for abuse of judicial process and failure to get an injured prisoner adequate medical attention—”
    “Now, just let’s calm down here. Let’s—”
    “You tell me,” Pellam said between angry jaws, “how easy your town treasury’ll afford a judgment of two, three hundred thousand?”
    Moorhouse kept the false smile. His face reddened and he faked a cough to swallow. His eyes strayed to the phone. Pellam could see he was furious. Somebody’d put him in this tough position. “My, my, you are a touchy one. I’ll tell you what. You just leave our town, and I’ll drop all the charges.”
    Pellam said softly. “What’s bail?”
    The smile twisted and became lopsided. “Bail is set at five thousand dollars.”
    The door behind Pellam squealed open. He hardly heard it. A broad trapezoid of light fell into the room. He snapped, “How much? Where am I going to get that kind of money on Sunday?”
    A woman’s voice said, “From me. A check’ll be okay, won’t it, Hank?”
    He frowned. “Morning, Meg. What’re you doing here?”
    She walked up to the desk. “A check?” She was already writing it out.
    “You don’t have to—” Pellam began. She glanced at his face, which must’ve been in worse shape than he’d thought since her eyes flashed wide for a second.
    Moorhouse was peeling a piece of tape off the dispenser and rolling it up. He chewed on it absently. “Meg, this isn’t a good idea.”
    She finished writing out the check. Pellam said to her, “How did you know?”
    She ignored him.
    “Meg,” Moorhouse tried again. “It really isn’t a good idea.”
    Meg dropped the check onto his desk. “A receipt. I’d like a receipt.”
    He couldn’t find one and had to write one out by hand on a yellow pad.
    Meg pushed through the door. Pellam, frowning, looked after her. Moorhouse spit the tape out