Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

During the Gulf War buildup, she’d been one of three reserve officers we’d gotten as replacements assigned to the 40th Army Counterintelligence Office at Fort Lewis. Of the three, and looks aside, she’d been the only one worth remembering.

She’d only worked for us a short while — not very much longer than the war itself — so I didn’t get to know her well, but she’d struck me as better-than-usual reservist material. I’d liked her and had been sorry when she was deactivated.

“You look different out of uniform,” I told her, tapping the eight-pointed silver star on her jacket. “And it’s Sheriff Dilly, eh?”

“That’s right,” she said archly, “so mind yourself. What are you doing here anyway?”

“I’m on leave,” I told her. “I’ve rented a cabin up the road.”

“Fear Mountain Lodges?” she asked in a mildly surprised way.

I nodded. “I was just out for a run this morning when I came across that.” I waved at the body on the bench.

She nodded to one of the deputies who was hovering nearby.

He came forward shaking his head. “I don’t know what this is, sheriff. No wallet. No I.D. A hundred and twenty and change in his jacket pocket.”

“Not robbery, then,” she said.

“Nope.”

“Anyone know who he is?”

“Not so far.”

She started toward the bench.

“There’s a good couple of inches of snow covering him,” the deputy continued, “so we know the body’s been here at least eight or nine hours. It didn’t start snowing up here until after ten last night, and it stopped around midnight.” He waved a hand at the coroner, who stood patiently near the body. “Dave says he can’t see any obtrusive marks on the body, but he can’t be sure until he gets it into the lab.”

Dilly squatted down in front of the frozen corpse and looked into his face. “Indian?” she said.

“Or Mexican,” the deputy suggested.

“Or Asian,” I offered.

She examined the body’s jacket, a thin windbreaker, stood up, and shook her head. “Looks like he just sat down and died.”

Dilly started giving orders then, brisk, sensible commands that got the crime scene work finished, the body bagged and on its way to the morgue, and several deputies on their way to question residents in the area.

She gave a brief statement to the reporter, who wanted and got her picture. When the last gawker had gone, she turned back to me and asked if I wanted a lift.

“So,” I said, once we were under way, “I seem to recall you were with the Portland P.D. when you got called up.”

Dilly nodded. “I quit to come up here about a month after I was separated from the army. I was senior deputy when the old sheriff died last month, so...” She shrugged.

“Blood stripe,” I said.

She laughed. “It may only be temporary,” she said. “They’re holding a special election in three months.”

“And you’ll be running?”

“Oh, I’ll be running, all right, but people around here have fixed ideas about what a sheriff is, and it isn’t female.” She paused. “It’s more like Attila the Hun in cowboy boots.”

I laughed. “So change their minds,” I suggested.

“I’m doing what I can, but...” She changed the subject to a “whatever-happened-to-what’s-his-name” and “is-so-and-so-still-around” routine that lasted until we reached the entrance of Fear Mountain Lodges, an array of log-walled, big-windowed cabins deployed over several acres of pine-decorated mountainside. I directed her over the road that switch-backed up the south face of the mountain and led to my cabin.

“You up here for the skiing?” she asked.

“That was the plan,” I told her. “A friend of mine was supposed to come up here with me and give me some lessons, but that didn’t work out.” I shrugged. “My deposit on the cabin was nonrefundable, so I just came ahead on my own. I’ve got two more weeks here. I figure I’ll try out one of the ski schools if they get an opening.”

“Look,” she said, “we’ll need you to come in to make a formal statement.”

“No problem.”

“This afternoon?”

I told her I’d be there and started out of the car, but she stopped me with a hand on my arm. “It really is nice seeing you again.”

“Same here,” I told her.

“I mean it,” she said in a way that was semi-invitational.

I gave her a smile and said, “So do I,” in a way that was semi-accepting.

Once in my cabin, I took a long, hot shower, made a pot of decaf in the small kitchenette, then sat and watched the view outside my window for a couple of hours, drinking pointless coffee and wondering, among other things, if I really should be as glad to see Dilly as I was.

In my usual frame of mind, it wouldn’t be something I’d give a lot of thought to, but I was not in my usual frame of mind.

I was, in fact, in an unusual frame of mind — my head full of odd worries and doubts, unsettling ideas about my life that I was having a hard time living with — so I did.

Give it a lot of thought, that is, and what I decided was that I couldn’t decide.

It seemed too fast, somehow. Too quick. I needed some time yet. Time to readjust. Time to get my head right. Time to get things in perspective.

But then...

Loretta Dilly was a very handsome woman.