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myself.”
    “No, you can’t. I’m a medical technician for God’s sake—if you’re not going to let me take you to the hospital, then you have to at least let me patch you up here.”
    Realizing I was fighting a losing battle, I acquiesced and turned to look at Dog. “Stay here, and don’t eat the steering wheel.”
----
    —
    I unlocked the door and, with the help of the banister, climbed the steps up to the desk where Ruby kept a large first aid kit. Sitting on the lower section of the counter, I shrugged off my coat and, grimacing a little, began carefully pulling out my shirttail and unbuttoning my shirt.
    She stood at the top of the steps and looked around. “How did you get stabbed?”
    “It’s a long story.” Getting the shirt out of the way, I could nowsee that the bleeding was coming from the bottom of the Ace bandage that Bloomfield and Nickerson had wrapped around me at the last dressing change. Giving up on discretion, I shouldered off my jacket, unbuttoned the rest of my shirt, and then slowly unwrapped the flexible bandage to reveal the gauze patch and medical tape that had come loose when I’d fallen.
    “Let me see.” Pushing my hands aside, she knelt and peeled the gauze back. “It’s not so bad—one of the stitches must’ve pulled, but it’s already stopped bleeding.” Pulling some antiseptic cream from the kit, she applied it onto a sterile pad and replaced the bloody one with deft hands. “So, who stabbed you?”
    “A drug kingpin, down in Mexico.”
    She continued to work. “Kind of out of your jurisdiction as a Wyoming sheriff, isn’t it?”
    “A little . . . he had my daughter.”
    There was a pause. “She in the drug business?”
    “No, worse—she works for the attorney general’s office in Wyoming.” Keasik glanced up at my face again. “It was personal—between him and me.”
    “Yeah, looks personal all right.” Finishing the work, she began rewrapping the flexible bandage around my midriff, her arms surrounding me. “How old is this wound?”
    “A month or so, why?”
    “It shouldn’t be draining like this after that much time.”
    I reached over, put on my bloody shirt, and changed the subject. “So, why the emergency in Colorado?”
    She stared at me for a moment and then reached out and flipped my collar down smoothing it. “Don’t you have a clean shirt?”
    “No.”
    Shaking her head, she began buttoning the dirty one for me. “I’m assuming you’re not married.”
    “And why is that?”
    “Married men always have a clean shirt—it’s one of the perks.”
    Unmoved by the distraction, I asked again. “Colorado?”
    She finished buttoning and stepped away to admire her handiwork. “I made that up. I’m not really leaving, but I thought it might motivate you. Instead, all it did was induce me into aggravated assault on a police officer.” She folded her arms. “You gonna book me?”
    “It would be a hard sell on a jury, considering you’re the one who scraped me off the parking lot and brought me in here to patch me up.”
    She nodded. “Also, I’m sorry about the parking ticket remark back at the hospital.”
    “I’ve heard worse.”
    She smiled, and there was warmth in it for the first time. “What are you going to do about Miguel?”
    “Ms. Cheechoo . . .”
    “Keasik, please.”
    It seemed stupid to try to remain professional after she’d seen my insides. “Keasik, the first thing I’m going to do is find out if there’s anything to investigate. I mean, if the man committed suicide there really isn’t anything . . .”
    “People can be driven to suicide, you know?”
    “I do, and if there’s anything like the treatment you’ve mentioned, we’ll act on it.”
    “Honest?”
    “Honest.” I crossed my heart and did the Cub Scout salute. “You seem sure that wasn’t a suicide, and if it was that there weremitigating circumstances.” I stretched my neck and looked at her. “How well did you know Mr.