Private investigators deal daily with the same bunch, although occasionally there’s one who doesn’t fit into the box. Temple called me that afternoon. “It’s Amber Finley again,” she said. “She’s in on a drunk and disorderly. She also hit a cop. Actually, she threw her underwear in his face.”
“Why is she calling you?”
“She’s burned herself with every attorney in town. At least with the good ones,” she replied.
“She wants me to represent her?”
“She’s not a bad gal, Billy Bob.”
“Answer is no.”
“You pretty busy now?”
“She can call her father. I don’t want to get involved.”
“She says she knows why Johnny American Horse was carrying a pistol.”
“How does she know anything about Johnny?”
“They’ve been seeing each other. At least that’s what she says.”
“Her old man must love that.”
“You want me to tell her to get lost?”
A few minutes later I walked over to the sheriff’s department and a deputy escorted me to a holding cell, where Amber Finley sat on a metal bench, her legs crossed, looking at the wall. She was around twenty-five and wore beat-up cowboy boots, jeans hitched tightly around her hips, a Harley T-shirt, and long earrings with blue stones in them. Her hair was blond and cut short, her eyes an intense blue. Even though she was hung over, her face still possessed the lovely features and complexion that Hollywood had idealized and turned into a national icon in the Technicolor films of the forties and fifties. But Amber Finley’s mind-set was far removed from that earlier, more innocent time.