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Maureen. I’ve had to fight you and that son of a bitch Hogeland for every minute with her. Would I do that if I didn’t care about her?”
    “Dwight’s twice the father you are to her. She—”
    “Dwight’s your goddamned
lawyer
, Maureen! He’s not her father. I’m her father, and I have a right to—”
    “Take her to Fogarty’s so she can hang out with a bunch of lesbians and bums and cops? Dwight’s been telling me about that crowd. No, Beau—”
    “Maureen, don’t do this again!”
    “You’ve got to learn a lesson. You have to take your responsibilities
seriously
, Beau.”
    Jesus, that voice. It was in his ear like a wasp. He fought to keep the tremor out of his voice.
    “I have the right, Beau. The agreement says—”
    “Hey, Maureen.
Fuck
the agreement! And fuck Dwight!”
    “Thanks, Beau. Maybe I will.”
    And she was gone.
    McAllister stood there for a long time, breathing in and out rapidly and looking at his reflection in the black screen of the television on top of the filing cabinet.
    He saw a forty-five-year-old cop in a rumpled tan uniform with two days of beard on a face like old leather and more gray than black in his hair. He saw a man with a large ragged salt-and-pepper moustache and tired blue eyes who had done a lot of damage for one Friday shift; he’d shot a man in the ass when he was aiming for his foot, he’d let a bunch of Indians shoot
arrows
at him and then walk away smiling, and he had just now totally torched his chances of getting to see his daughter on her sixth birthday.
    What he saw did not impress him.
    He put both his hands on the inside lip of Joe Bell’s desk and heaved it hard upward. It flipped over away from him, papers and drawers flying, pens and pencils clattering and spinning, a tremendous crash and clang as the gray metal desk hit the floor ten feet away. The drawers spilled out all overthe greasy tiles, a ragged fan of porn magazines, slips of paper, loose bills.
    There was a large mass of duct tape attached to the underside of the bottom drawer. If Bell had put that packet there, whatever was inside it was kind of important to him.
    But Joe Bell wasn’t the target of an investigation right now. McAllister had no legal right even to be
inside
Bell’s office, let alone throwing his furniture around like a drunken cowhand in a bar fight.
    And
if
Joe Bell did become the target of an investigation, then anything McAllister found inside Bell’s office
before
getting a legal search warrant would be inadmissible in a court of law. Fruit of a Poisoned Tree. Fourth Amendment. Weeks. Mallory. All that voodoo.
    Beau knew damned well what a good cop would do now. He’d leave it alone. Yes sir—that was what a good cop would do.
    McAllister got down on his knees and used a corner of a stapler to pry up a section of the silver mound of duct tape. It came away from the gray metal easily. There was a flat plastic box in the center of the mound. And inside the plastic box, something flat and rainbow colored glimmered like a jewel.
    Hell, it was a computer disk!
    Why the hell would Joe Bell be hiding a computer disk under his desk? He started to rip the tape away when he heard somebody clearing his throat in a theatrical way.
    A short black man in a starched and razor-pressed Montana Highway Patrol uniform was leaning on the doorjamb. He had his hat pushed back away from his shiny bald blue-black head, and his exceedingly muscular arms were crossed over his weightlifter’s chest. His badge glittered in the downlight. His shoulder bars gleamed. His clean-shaven face was fine-boned and hard-looking. He was grinning the kind of grin you give your kid when you catch him with his head stuffed inside a bottle of your favorite bourbon.
    Beau McAllister got slowly to his feet. They both looked around the room awhile. McAllister tried a smile.
    “Afternoon, Eustace,” he said, shuffling a boot through apile of papers. “I suppose you’re wondering what the hell’s going