Sheriff Daniel Keller was fifty-seven. His hair had gone silver at the temples, and his face had the hard, familiar lines of someone who had spent years learning how to make people answer a question without raising his voice. He had served in the county sheriff's department for twenty-three years and held the elected office for eight. In Cedar Hollow, his name could settle an argument before anyone examined its merits.
He looked around the diner. The conversation did not stop completely, but it became oddly careful. He walked to Cole's booth, pulled out the chair opposite him, and sat down without asking permission.
"Cole Vance."
"Sheriff Keller."
The sheriff showed the smallest reaction. "You know me."
"I know who holds the office."
"My nephew says you assaulted him this morning."
"Your nephew grabbed a waitress in front of witnesses, tried to push me across the diner, and threw a punch. I stopped him and released him as soon as he agreed to leave."
"That's one version."
"It's the one people saw."
The sheriff's gaze drifted toward the counter. Lily had turned away and was wiping a spot that was already clean. Cole followed the glance, then looked back at him.
"Have you spoken to Lily?" Cole asked.
"She hasn't made a complaint."
"That wasn't my question."
Daniel Keller leaned back. "I know this community, Mr. Vance. I've spent more than two decades taking calls from people who have a tendency to misunderstand one another when emotions are high. Domestic disagreements can be complicated."
"Grabbing her hard enough to leave marks wasn't complicated."
"You don't know their relationship."
"I know she told him to let go. He didn't."
The sheriff's expression barely changed, but his hands folded more tightly on the table. "You're relatively new here. Three years isn't very long in a place like Cedar Hollow. You may not understand the connections involved."
Cole considered his words. "The connections don't change what happened."
"You're making an unfortunate situation worse by appointing yourself the judge of it."
"I didn't judge anything. I saw a man hurt someone and asked him to stop."
"Your kind of involvement can create a great deal of unnecessary trouble."
Cole looked at the badge clipped inside the sheriff's jacket. "Are you here to investigate what happened, or to discourage the witnesses from saying what happened?"
Keller's eyes hardened. "Be careful."
The warning hung between them. Cole did not respond immediately. He remembered a conversation twenty years earlier with a different official in a different state, another man who had used the phrase be careful as though he were offering kindness while carefully concealing the threat beneath it. He had learned then that anger was often the response those men wanted. An angry witness could be described as unstable. A man who raised his voice could be reduced to the volume of it.
"I'll be careful," Cole said. "I'll be accurate, too."
"My nephew is not a criminal."
"Then a fair examination of what happened shouldn't frighten you."