But Garron wasn’t paying attention to Jericho anymore. Instead, he had turned toward the front door of the station, a wide smile on his face. Jericho didn’t think he’d ever seen the man appear happy before, and turned to see what was inspiring the expression.
Retired Sherriff Donald Morgan was one of the many townsfolk who hadn’t approved of Jericho back in the day, and his opinion hadn’t changed in the intervening years. He’d grudgingly helped Jericho track down the kidnapped kids, but only because his daughter had prodded him into it. Now, with no kids to save and no daughter to speak up for Jericho? The man had no reason to be tolerant.
He headed for the desk and looked Jericho up and down. “You dress like that to come to work?”
Jericho made his smile bland and cheery. “Hey, Mr. Morgan, it’s good to see you again. I hope you’re doing well?”
Morgan raised an eyebrow at Garron, clearly inviting him to join in a sad reflection on all of Jericho’s inadequacies, and Jericho knew his tentative new alliance with Garron wouldn’t stand up to that sort of pressure. Jericho might be a local punk, but he was still a punk. And there was nothing to be gained from trying to prove otherwise, not with these two.
“I’ll see you later,” Jericho said to Garron, then nodded at Morgan and headed for the door.
He was halfway outside when he heard Garron’s voice from behind him. “Mike spends a lot of time at the clubhouse,” he said, voice loud enough to make it obvious that he was talking to Jericho. “And you probably don’t want to visit that location without backup and a damn good reason. But he works at Scotty Hawk’s garage, and some of the boys hang out there too. You might want to check with Scotty.”
Jericho nodded. He was grateful for the information, but even more impressed that Garron had given it to him in front of Morgan. Either the old sheriff’s opinion of Jericho wasn’t as low as it had always seemed, or Garron had ignored his former boss in order to help Jericho out. Either way, it seemed like a sign. Maybe things were finally going to start going well.
Jericho had two legitimate choices of how to spend the rest of his afternoon. He could go home, run some errands, cook a nutritious dinner, and do some laundry. Or he could go change back into the beige polyester and return to the station for a little routine staring at paperwork. Poking into a federal investigation, even peripherally, was not a good idea.
Yeah, he knew that. But his main job was sorting through old files for evidence of police corruption, and he was uncovering all sorts of things. Clues for countless ongoing cases that might have been hidden or deliberately ignored by cops who’d been working harder at concealing crimes than solving them. Quite a few of those crimes involved the motorcycle club. So he’d just be doing his job. Talking to Mike DeMonte? All in a day’s work. Not his fault if the feds suspected the bikers in a triple murder. Jericho had no way of knowing who their suspects were, since he was out of the loop. He wasn’t interfering; he was following his own leads. That was his story. The feds wouldn’t believe him, of course, but he didn’t really care.
He whistled to himself as he strode toward the parking lot. It was good to have a plan.
