“I’m sorry about the way things turned out.”
“Our son found out that his father’s been suspended,” she said, still looking at the TV. “It was on the Internet. He’s very upset by that, of course, but he’s also upset because his favorite coach was gunned down in front of the courthouse. He wants to come home. I told him to give it a few days and see if he doesn’t change his mind. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, that his father isn’t ready to see him yet.”
“He hasn’t been suspended. He’s just on administrative leave. With pay. And it’s mandatory after a shooting incident.”
“You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.” Now the answer onscreen was This nurse was wretched. “He says he may be off for as long as six months, and that’s if he agrees to the mandatory psych evaluation.”
“Why would he not?”
“He’s thinking of pulling the pin.”
Samuels raised his hand to the top of his head, but tonight the cowlick was behaving—at least so far—and he lowered it again. “In that case, maybe we can go into business together. This town needs a good car wash.”
Now she did look at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve decided not to run for re-election.”
She favored him with a thin stiletto of a smile that her own mother might not have recognized. “Going to quit before Johnny Q. Public can fire you?”
“If you want to put it that way,” he said.
“I do,” Jeannie said. “Go on out back, Mr. Prosecutor For Now, and feel free to suggest a partnership. But you should be ready to duck.”
2
Ralph was sitting in a lawn chair with a beer in his hand and a Styrofoam cooler beside him. He glanced around when the kitchen’s screen door slammed, saw Samuels, and then returned his attention to a hackberry tree just beyond the back fence.
“Yonder’s a nuthatch,” he said, pointing. “Haven’t seen one of those in a dog’s age.”
There was no second chair, so Samuels lowered himself to the bench of the long picnic table. He had sat here several times before, under happier circumstances. He looked at the tree. “I don’t see it.”
“There he goes,” Ralph said, as a small bird took wing.
“I think that’s a sparrow.”
“Time to get your eyes checked.” Ralph reached into the cooler and handed Samuels a Shiner.
“Jeannie says you’re thinking about retiring.”
Ralph shrugged.
“If it’s the psych eval you’re worried about, you’ll pass with flying colors. You did what you had to do.”
“It’s not that. It’s not even the cameraman. You know about him? When the bullet hit his camera—the first one I fired—the pieces went everywhere. Including one into his eye.”
Samuels did know this, but kept quiet and sipped his beer, although he loathed Shiner.
“He’s probably going to lose it,” Ralph said. “The doctors at Dean McGee up in Okie City are trying to save it, but yeah, he’s probably going to lose it. You think a cameraman with one eye can still work? Probably, maybe, or no way?”
“Ralph, someone slammed into you as you fired. And listen, if the guy hadn’t had the camera up to his face, he’d probably be dead now. That’s the upside.”
“Yeah, and fuck a bunch of upside. I called his wife to apologize. She said, ‘We’re going to sue the Flint City PD for ten million dollars, and once we win that one, we’ll start on you.’ Then she hung up.”
“That will never fly. Peterson had a gun, and you were in performance of your duty.”
“As that camera-jockey was in performance of his.”
“Not the same. He had a choice.”
“No, Bill.” Ralph swung around in his chair. “He had a job. And that was a nuthatch, goddammit.”
“Ralph, you need to listen to me now. Maitland killed Frank Peterson. Peterson’s brother killed Maitland. Most people see that as frontier justice, and why not? This state was the frontier not that long ago.”
“Terry said he didn’t do it. That was his dying declaration.”
Samuels got to his feet and began to pace. “What else was he going to say with his wife kneeling right there beside him and crying her eyes out? Was he going to say, ‘Oh yes, right, I buggered the kid, and I bit him—not necessarily in that order—and then I ejaculated on him for good measure’?”
“There’s a wealth of evidence to support what Terry said at the end.”
Samuels stalked back to Ralph and stood looking down at him. “It was his fucking DNA in the semen sample, and DNA trumps everything. Terry killed him. I don’t know how he set up the rest, but he did.”
“Did you come here to convince me or yourself?”
“I don’t need any convincing. I only came to tell you that we now know who originally stole that white Econoline van.”
“At this point does it make any difference?” Ralph asked, but Samuels at last detected a gleam of interest in the man’s eyes.
“If you’re asking if it casts any light on this mess, no. But it’s fascinating. Do you want to hear or not?”
“Sure.”
“It was stolen by a twelve-year-old boy.”
“Twelve? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope, and he was on the road for months. Made it all the way to El Paso before a cop bagged him in a Walmart parking lot, sleeping in a stolen Buick. He stole four vehicles in all, but the van was the first. He drove it as far as Ohio before he ditched it and switched to another one. Left the ignition key in it, just the way we thought.” He said this with some pride, and Ralph supposed he had a right; it was nice that at least one of their theories going in had proved correct.
“But we still don’t know how it got down here, do we?” Ralph asked. Something was nagging him, though. Some small detail.
“No,” Samuels said. “It’s just a loose thread that isn’t loose anymore. I thought you’d like to know.”
“And now I do.”
Samuels drank a swallow of beer, then set the can on the picnic table. “I’m not running for re-election.”
“No?”
“No. Let that lazy asshole Richmond have the job, and see how people like him when he refuses to prosecute eighty per cent of the cases that land on his desk. I told your wife, and she didn’t exactly overwhelm me with sympathy.”
“If you think I’ve been telling her this is all your fault, Bill, you’re wrong. I haven’t said a word against you. Why would I? Arresting him at that fucking ballgame was my idea, and when I talk to the IA shooflies on Friday, I’ll make that clear.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“But as I may have already mentioned, you didn’t exactly try to talk me out of it.”
“We believed him guilty. I still believe him guilty, dying declaration or no dying declaration. We didn’t check for an alibi because he knows everyone in the goddam town and we were afraid of spooking him—”
“Also we didn’t see the point, and boy, were we wrong about tha—”
“Yes, okay, your fucking point is fucking taken. We also believed he was extremely dangerous, especially to young boys, and on last Saturday night he was surrounded by them.”
“When we got to the courthouse, we should have taken him around back,” Ralph said. “I should have insisted on it.”
Samuels shook his head vehemently enough to cause the cowlick to come loose and spring to attention. “Don’t take that on yourself. Transfer from county jail to the courthouse is the sheriff’s purview. Not the city’s.”
“Doolin would’ve listened to me.” Ralph dropped his empty can back into the cooler and looked directly at Samuels. “And he would have listened to you. I think you know that.”
“Water over the dam. Or under the bridge. Or whatever the hell that saying is. We’re done. I guess the case might technically stay in the open file, but—”
“The technical term is OBI, open but inactive. It will stay that way even if Marcy Maitland brings a civil suit against the department, claiming her husband was killed as a result of negligence. And that’s a suit she could win.”
“Is she talking about doing that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t scraped up enough nerve to speak to her yet. Howie might give you an idea of what she’s thinking.”