Nolan kept his eyes on Ancil. "We got a notice this morning from Washington County. You probably got it too, Mattie. I forwarded it to you."
"I got it."
"Man in his sixties, gray hair, work clothes, older white pickup. Going around to pharmacies in Salem and Scottsburg with altered scripts for Schedule IIs, saying they're for his wife." He let that sit. "I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying that's what came across this morning. And I'd be a poor sheriff if I heard a Dilaudid called out across the counter for an older gentleman in work clothes the same day and didn't at least say hello."
"You said hello," Mattie said.
"It's all right, Mattie," Ancil said.
"No, it isn't." She took her glasses off. Her face was red up to the hairline. "Nolan, this prescription came to me electronically, directly from the prescriber's software, this morning. Nobody altered anything. There's no paper to alter. I called her office and spoke to her nurse and verified it. I checked the PDMP. I checked his identification and recorded it, which I am required to do. I have known this man all my life and his wife fed me lunch for six years. I am not going to stand here and do this."
"You're not doing anything, Mattie. I'm talking to Ancil."
"In my consultation booth."
Nolan looked at her then. He looked at her a long time, and she looked back at him, and the store behind them had gone quiet in the way a small store goes quiet, not silent, but with everybody in it suddenly very interested in the cough drops. Ardella Gaither had stopped in front of the greeting cards with a card in her hand. The young mother with the toddler had come back in for something and was standing just inside the door with her mouth open a little. Elmo Pickens, fresh from the barber chair with the back of his neck shaved pink and talcum still on his collar, had come in for his heart pills and stopped at the end of the middle aisle with his cane.