by Ed Gorman

In addition to the short-story collection reviewed in this month’s Jury Box, The End of It All and Other Stories, Ed Gorman has recently produced a new novel. Starring Sam McCain, a character who first appeared in print in EQMM, the book, entitled Ticket to Ride (Pegasus), received this praise from Booklist: “An insightful portrait of small-town dynamics and plenty of deadpan humor.” Mr. Gorman’s new story for EQMM is equally insightful, but in a more serious vein....

* * * *

At least the caller had the good grace to wait until Amy and I had finished making love. What with a kid and both of us working, the old days of spontaneous and frequent lovemaking were long gone. Now we made appointments, and to-night we’d penciled in a frolic in our bedroom. I can’t say it was a frolic as such, but it was one of those times when lust and tenderness reminded me of how much I loved my wife of nine years and how nice it was afterward to lie with her sleeping on my chest.

We’d been a little late getting started because she’d gotten a call from Paula Crane, a fellow high- school teacher. She’d wanted to know all about the English teacher who joined the faculty recently. Since Amy also taught English, Paula assumed that she’d have lots of gossip about the man. Several of the female teachers had been at the house a few weeks back and all they’d talked about was this Bruce Peters. Apparently the women couldn’t stop flirting with the handsome bachelor. As Amy hung up, she’d laughed and said, “Sorry, honey. If I didn’t know better I’d swear Paula wasn’t married. She talks like she’s still single.”

The clock radio said 11:24 as I reached to pick up the receiver. I had to roll to my right to reach it. I tried to do this without waking Amy up but my acrobatic skills failed. Her blond head snapped up and she looked at me with the fuzzy confused gaze of a child. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“The phone.”

“Oh.” Then, brushing hair from her face, alert now: “Oh, God.”

I suppose that is a phrase common to many women married to law-enforcement officers when their phone rings late at night. A mixture of irritation and vague fear.

She sat up and began running a slender hand across her face.

By now I could see Caller ID. My father.

“Just got a call that David Neely is dead.”

“Dead? How?”

“All I know is that he’s lying on the river road straight down from the cliff behind his A-frame. Dink Hopkins was out on his motorcycle and found him about five minutes ago. Didn’t call the shop. Phoned me at home.”

“I’ll meet you there in about ten minutes.”

“Tell Amy I’m sorry about the late call.”

Amy was up and hurrying out the bedroom door to check on our daughter. Even though Cindy is six, she still checks on her three or four times a night, the way she did when she was smaller.

I grabbed socks, my L. L. Bean Bison Chukkas, black sweater, jeans, and the plastic loop that carries my official ID, dressing quickly in the Halloween shadows from the naked tree limbs on this cold October night. The last two items were my fedora—and I’m well aware of the vanity involved with wearing it—and the .38 I holster on my belt.

Amy was back in a rush, sliding her arms around me, holding me tight, letting me smell the good clean scent of her hair and recently showered skin. “Did somebody die?”

“David Neely. Dink Hopkins found him on the river road a few minutes ago. That’s all I know.”

She leaned back. “Oh, God. I wonder if he was murdered—I wonder if it was one of his married women.” Then: “Oh, listen to me.” Her hands dropped from my sides. In the wan streetlight she looked like a sensual college girl. “Can you be any more of a bitch, Amy? I shouldn’t have said that. The poor man’s dead. It’s just that he was—”

“An asshole.”

“Yes. An asshole. He ruined my best friend’s marriage.”

“Well, Donna had a little something to do with it, too. He didn’t exactly force her into that affair.” I leaned in and kissed her. “I need to get going. I’ll call you on your cell in a while so it won’t wake Cindy.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

* * * *

Alveron, population 4,680, is in Northern Illinois, fifty-three miles from Lake Michigan. At this time of night everything except a few taverns and convenience stores is closed and the houses, which tend to be small except for a handful of McMansions on the eastern edge of town, are hunkered down in dreams and darkness. There was no reason to use a siren. My father, the county sheriff, would already have dispatched an ambulance as well as the county medical examiner, a capable middle-aged black doctor who had yet to find complete acceptance in the mostly white community. I liked him. Our previous M.E. had been something of a showboat. Our new man had come here to get his kids out of the city. We had the lowest murder rate in the state. Our badge of honor.

I couldn’t drive these streets without being at the mercy of memories good and bad. Being the son of the sheriff in a small town means you’ll have lots of friends, whether you want them or not. You enjoy something like celebrity. My folks are good and decent people. My father believes that physical force is always the last resort and he has fired more than a few men over the years who have taken their problems out on their prisoners. Last year he hired a young woman as his newest deputy. She and Dr. Thomas face about the same amount of resistance. A black doctor? A female officer? What the hell is going on here? That’s Chicago foolishness and not at all for Alveron.

I was the detective in the five-man sheriff’s department, meaning that I had gone through the police academy in Chicago and taken four night-school courses in criminology. At that, I was lucky to be anything in the way of law enforcement. I had been the law-breaking son of the town cop. Drugs, reckless driving, more than a few fights, and ten nights spent in one of my father’s cells over a two-year period. Amy had been my salvation. We’d been high-school lovers until she could no longer deal with my drinking. Four years after graduation, when my father had a serious cancer scare, he made me promise that I would give up drinking. Even though I promised, it shouldn’t have worked. Liquor trumps loyalty. But between giving my word and meeting Amy again after she’d worked in Chicago for a few years, I’ve managed to stay dry since the day I told the old man I would.

The river was on my right. Pale full moon riding the far piney bend in the river; the silver-limned water cold and forbidding; and several cars lined behind the blue-flashing box of ambulance.

I could see my father talking to one of the paramedics. Like most of us males who bear the name Winters, Con (for Conor) Winters is a tall man who gives the impression, and a true impression it is, of rangy prairie-boy power. He has the red hair, now going to gray, and thoughtful, somewhat melancholy face of our tribe. His pride is that he is not a hayseed lawman. He is, like his own father who preceded him as county sheriff, a reader and a thinker and a man who weighs his words.

The limestone cliff loomed in the lights. I parked and started walking toward the ambulance. Behind me I could hear cars pulling up, parking. The vampires. No matter how late at night, no matter what the weather conditions, they come out. To stare at death. Maybe they think it will buy them some extra time of their own. Voodoo.

The paramedic saw me before my father did. “Here’s Cam now,” he said, watching me approach.

The night was cold enough for breath to run silver. Mike Sullivan was the paramedic’s name. We played softball on the same team in the hot months.

My father said, “Neely’s on the gurney over there.”

If we’d been alone I would have pointed out that procedure was to leave the body for the detective and the medical examiner before moving it. But I didn’t want to criticize my father in front of Sullivan.

“Looks like he won’t be bed-hopping much anymore,” Sullivan said.

“Not anymore he won’t.” My father had disliked Neely from the first day the man had moved here six years ago. I remembered sitting in Millie’s Cafe and my father saying, “He’ll be trouble, you wait and see.” Neely had been here all of two days then. His feelings had never changed. Even the mention of Neely had always brought a harshness into my father’s blue gaze.

“Head caved on the left side from the fall,” Sullivan said. His lean face brightened into a smirk. “I’m sure even Dr. Thomas’ll be able to figure this one out.” Sullivan was one of those who found it hard it believe that a black man could be a competent doctor.

“You think you and your crew will ever give him a break, Mike?” It came out harsh, the way I intended.

“You think you two could hold off the bullshit till we figure out what happened here?” my father said.

The children had been chastised.

I walked over to the gurney and pulled back the sheet. In the beam of my flashlight the left side of Neely’s head was a stew of blood and bone and brain. His carefully kept dark beard gleamed with soaked red highlights. Neely had been a commercial artist working from the A-frame he rented. But his real work had been in posing as a serious painter. He lectured at the local library frequently, spending most of his time talking about Van Gogh and hinting that his own work, which even I could see wasn’t very good, might someday be compared to the man he called “his mentor.” If he hadn’t been a swaggerer and a pretty-boy none of the married women he’d slept with would have paid any attention to him.

Sullivan came over and stood next to me. “I piss you off?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I shot my mouth off.”

“Dr. Thomas is a good man. I’m sick of you and everybody else in this town cutting him down.”

“I’ll watch it.” He nodded to the body. “You can see bone sticking out of that arm.”

“Yeah.”

“Your dad found three of his imported beer bottles near the cliff. He must have been drunk off his ass. He drank all the time anyway. I saw him half in the bag plenty of times in the afternoon. I was surprised he could service so many women when he was like that.” Neely had indeed had a problem with alcohol. Two DUIs and a pair of drunk-and-disorderlies.

Sullivan smiled. “I have a few too many and my little man goes right to sleep.”

My father stood beside us now. “Dr. Thomas just pulled up, Sullivan. You heard what Cam here said.”

“I hear you, Sheriff. I already apologized to Cam.”

“You want to get to work, Cam? I’m assuming this is an accident, but I won’t settle on that until you tell me that that’s what it is.”

* * * *

In the academy I learned all about such modern crime scene techniques and tools as blood spatter and flight interpretation, electrostatic dust print lifters, portable lasers, and alternate light sources. The problem our little shop has is that these are way too expensive for our budget. On a homicide, we have to get the state boys and girls involved.

One other thing I learned in the academy is that most detectives approach crime scenes pretty much in their own way. They develop their own approach over the years. The two rules are to gather evidence scrupulously and to document everything to help the county attorney make the case when the time comes.

Josh Cummings, our night deputy, arrived at the scene after helping the highway patrol with a two-car accident on the asphalt strip north of the town limits. Teenagers drag racing. Bad pileup, nobody killed. I tried to sound as angry about it as Josh did, but since I’d done a lot of drag racing in my teenage years I suspect my words sounded hollow.

We spent an hour inside the A-frame. At one point, Josh came out grinning. He held a super-size box of super-size condoms. “No wonder the ladies liked him.” That was the highlight of our search. No evidence of any foul play. Three dozen or more bad paintings lay against the wall of Neely’s large office. No sign of any of the advertisements or brochures he produced. He apparently wanted to keep them secret even from himself.

When we got back outside, my father was working the backyard with a flashlight big as a trapped sun. He had his pipe going, too. The cancer scare had had to do with throat cancer. My mother and I had badgered him into quitting for a few months, but he started smoking again down at the shop and gradually eased back into it at home. My mother told me that she lights a special votive candle once a week for him. But she’d quit arguing with him about it. My father reasoned, quite unreasonably, that all the bike riding he did kept him healthy. A bright, ordinarily realistic man kidding himself into an early grave.

Josh and I used our smaller flashlights to join in the search. The brown autumn grass gleamed with frost. I walked toward the pine trees that formed a windbreak on the far side of the A-frame, the scent of them sweet on the cold night. A narrow trail ran down the center of them. Long before the A-frame had been built, kids my age had ridden their bikes up here much against their parents’ will. The cliff, of course, dangerous to play near. And, in fact, since both my grandfather’s time as sheriff, there had been three deaths of children who’d fallen from it, smashed on the road below. I’d walked right on the edge of it many times; one time, on a dare, blindfolded.

When the light found something red flashing in the grass I stopped and bent down to see what it was. A large reflector used on the rear fender of a bicycle. With a jagged crack down the middle.

“You find something?” Josh said as he walked toward me.

“Nah,” I said, slipping the reflector into my pocket. “I dropped my keys and was just picking them up. You find anything?”

“Just a few beer cans. He sure liked his booze.”

We drifted back to the A-frame, where my father stood talking to Dr. Thomas. The doctor is a quiet, slender man who, at forty-five, is starting to lose his hair. His clothes of choice run to button-down long-sleeved shirts, dark neckties, and dark slacks. He carries both a beeper and a BlackBerry. In addition to being the county M.E. he also oversees our little clinic, which he’s improved considerably with the meager funds the county has been able to give him.

“Evening, Stephen.”

“Evening, Cam.”

“I was just telling your father that I should have something for him around breakfast time.”

“That makes for a long night. What’s the rush?”

My father put his hand on Stephen’s shoulder and said, “Cam doesn’t understand how us old-timers like to get things done right away.”

I smiled at Stephen. “Dad’s sixty-three, in case you didn’t know.”

“Oh, that’s all right. My kids think I’m an old-timer, too. I’m used to it. And I don’t mind pulling an all-nighter. Have to earn my keep.” He nodded to the A-frame. “Well, he didn’t die the way I thought he would.”

“Oh?” my father said.

“He’s been a patient of mine for the last year. The alcohol was starting to do serious damage to his liver. I suggested him trying AA or even going to a rehab center somewhere. He wouldn’t hear of it.” He zipped up his blue windbreaker and said, “I’d better get going. Night, everybody.”

We said goodnight and watched him walk to his gray Saab.

“Good man,” my father said. Then: “I guess that’s about it for tonight. Thanks, Cam. Sorry I had to drag you out of bed.” He pointed to Josh. “You may as well start making your rounds for the night.”

“Right,” Josh said. “See you two later.”

As we were walking back to our cars, my father said, “You all right?”

“Tired, I guess.”

“You never could kid me, Cam. You seem tense. Everything all right at home?”

“Why wouldn’t everything be all right at home?”

He stopped and looked at me. Studied me, actually. “You’re wound pretty tight, Cam. I just asked a question. A harmless one. And you climbed on my ass. Now I’m asking you, is everything all right at home?”

He was wrong. I’d kidded him all my life and gotten away with it. I kidded him now. “You’re right, Dad. We just had a little argument tonight about that outboard motor I want to buy. You know how Amy is about staying on a budget.” There’d been no argument, of course. But in the chill and shadow and weariness of the moment it sounded true.

“I knew it,” my father said. “I knew something was wrong. And I’m the same way Amy is about budgets. About staying on them. You’ve always been like your mother. Budgets are just something you write down and then throw away. I’d give that new outboard some more thought before you buy it. The one you’ve got now is fine.”

“Good idea, Dad.”

Then we said good night and got into our cars.

* * * *

In the morning I drove over to the county seat. I had to testify in a trial in which a drunken driver I’d arrested had caused considerable damage to a house he’d rammed his car into. When I got back to the shop just before lunchtime I stopped where my father’s bike was padlocked to a steel pole. He rode the ten-speed back and forth to work. I saw what I was afraid I would find.

Millie’s was crowded. Tuesday lunches are meat loaf and mashed potatoes. They’re as good as the Wednesday spaghetti lunches are bad. There should be a federal investigation into what Millie can do to spaghetti.

My father was in the last booth with his newspaper. It was town etiquette that you did not bother the high sheriff when he was reading his newspaper. Sons were the exception to this rule.

“How’d it go in court?”

“No problem. Open and shut.”

He yawned. “Late nights remind me that my retirement’s coming up in another year or so.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing it all right. Even if I didn’t want to turn in my badge, your mother would force me to. She watches those damned travel channels on cable all the time. She thinks we should spend the rest of our lives being tourists.”

“Here you are, Cam.”

Millie had gotten her hair tinted red again. The color clashed with her pink waitress uniform. Her dentures gleamed in one of her soft smiles. “Now tomorrow, young man, I want you to tell me how good my spaghetti is.”

I’d been coming in here since I was fourteen. I would always be “young man.” “As long as I don’t have to swear it on a Bible.”

“I think you should arrest this boy of yours, Sheriff.”

We laughed as we always laughed. It was a ritual, the dialogue, the smiles, the laughs.

I cleaned half my plate before I said anything. “I saw the autopsy on your desk.”

“Accidental death, just the way we figured.”

“Drunk and walked too close to the edge.”

“Forty-five-foot drop. That’d kill anybody. Plus, he landed on his head.”

“Still.”

He had his coffee cup halfway to his mouth when I said it. He looked at me straight and hard. And set his cup back down. “Still? Still what, Cam?”

“It’s possible—just possible—that somebody gave him a little help falling off that cliff.”

“You read the autopsy report.”

“Nothing wrong with the autopsy. But an autopsy doesn’t give us any sense of whether he fell off or was pushed off.”

The blue of the eyes was that special simmering color of my teens and twenties, the eyes that assessed me with anger and disappointment. “I’m halfway through finishing up my report. I’m listing it as an accidental death. Nobody who knew him would have any doubts about that.” He made a show of smiling. “Except my son the detective.”

I took it from my shirt pocket and laid it in the center of the formica-covered table.

“What’s that?”

“Bike reflector.”

“I can see that. But what’s it supposed to tell me?” But the voice was tighter now and the gaze nervous.

“Nothing special about the reflector. Round, red. One of those that ignites in the dark when light strikes it. There’s just one thing wrong with it. Notice the crack down the center.”

“I’ve got eyes, Cam.”

“Same as your bike reflector. Cracked in shipping. You took it because it was the last one they had.”

He sat back in the booth. “All right. And this is amounting to what?”

“It’s amounting to nothing, Dad. I found it near the pine trees at Neely’s last night. Right about where the trail was. All I’m wondering is why you didn’t tell me you were up there recently.”

“I ride my bike all over this town. Up on Indian Cliff included. Not that it’s any of your particular damn business. I lost that reflector several days ago—though I don’t know why the hell I owe you an explanation about it.”

“Look at the condition of it, Dad. That reflector hadn’t been there very long. The adhesive on the back still works if you press it against something hard enough. It rained yesterday morning and there was frost last night. The adhesive would have been ruined by either one of those if it had been there for more than a few hours. . . . And you had the body on the gurney before I could look at it.”

He was out of the booth before I could say anything else. Out of the booth and out of Millie’s front door.

* * * *

Halloween came and went with the usual damage to a few gravestones and dirty words spray-painted on the high school. In a town this size, it was easy to find the culprits and put them to work undoing their damage. Cindy insisted on wearing her Halloween Cinderella costume every night before bedtime. We had a light snow one night but it melted by noon. And the few downtown stores that had survived the outlet malls a few miles to the west started putting up Christmas decorations. Or Xmas decorations, as a few of them insisted on calling them.

I never mentioned the bicycle reflector again to my father. I’d even begun to wonder if he’d been telling the truth after all. Maybe the reflector really had been in the grass for several days. The first few days after our talk at Millie’s had been strained, but one night he and my mother were sitting at our dinner table talking to a delighted Cindy. She much preferred them to Amy and me. They never gave her orders or scolded her. And they gave her a king’s ransom in gifts. Finally, Cindy, as she often did, climbed up on my father’s lap and gave him a kiss. Seeing them together I realized how much I loved him and how I needed to let it go with Neely. I wasn’t sure what had happened. And now I didn’t want to be sure. I wanted to will it all out of existence.

After the meal we were father and son again. With icy rain coming down every other day, we were busy with traffic accidents large and small. And it was because of one of the accidents that I found the photographs.

I was alone in the office, working late, on the computer. Even with a Mac, reporting on traffic accidents is tedious work. My father was bowling that night and I told him I’d file his work, too. I was grabbing his reports when I realized that I needed a requisition form for more supplies. The town council takes its work too seriously. We always joked that one day they’d make us requisition permission to take a piss. The requisition forms were in my father’s middle drawer. There was a pile of them. I skimmed three off and was about to close the drawer when I saw the edge of a photograph sticking out from under the stack I’d dislodged.

Who can resist looking at a photograph? I tugged it free and held it up. A minute later I’d pulled four more photographs from under the requisition forms. I took them back to my desk and sat down and stared at them for a long time. They were the kind of thing a private detective takes for a client worried that his or her mate is cheating. They’d been taken with the digital camera my mother had bought my father for his last birthday.

I spent five minutes with them. Given that they showed David Neely and two different women from town entering one of those old-fashioned garden motels, they didn’t need to be pornographic to tell their story. In some ways they were worse than pornographic. The prurient mind, and I certainly have one, could paint any picture it wanted to.

The clock stood at nine. My father would still be bowling.

* * * *

I had two beers while I sat in the cafe section of the bowling alley. I’d never taken to the game. I had too much cool-kid arrogance left over from my youth to ever wear one of those shirts, for one thing. And for another, there was something suffocating about watching adults take it all so seriously, a certain desperation, I guess. Amy always said that I was a snob and in many ways I suppose she was right.

My father came up a couple of times but I didn’t mention the photographs. I wanted to be alone with him. The second time he stopped by I caught a look of concern in the blue eyes. He stared at me a bit too long but didn’t say anything.

Outside in the parking lot, after all the interminable beery good nights among the two teams, my father started toward his car but I grabbed his arm. “I need to talk to you, Dad.”

“Everything all right at home?”

“Fine.”

He seemed confused. He had his pipe going. “Then it couldn’t have waited till later?”

“I found the photographs, Dad. I was looking for a requisition form in your desk and I came across them.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.”

He not only knew what I was talking about, he gaped nervously around to make sure that we were the only ones in this section of the parking lot.

“Maybe it’s not what you think.”

“Then again, maybe it is.”

He nodded to his car. “Get in. I don’t want to talk out here.”

He started the engine and turned on the heater. We sat next to each other but didn’t talk for some time. His pipe smelled good. The wind was strong enough to rock the car. The lane shut off its lights. There was a prairie loneliness to the way it looked now, a pastel green icon alone on the fields.

“You followed him and then you killed him.”

He angled himself so that he could face me. His yellow bowling shirt was gaudy inside his open brown suede jacket. “I’m going to tell you something and after I’m done you can decide what to do about it.”

“I’m listening.” Then: “I don’t enjoy this, Dad. I’m pretty sure you killed him. Murdered him. This isn’t easy for me.”

“I know it’s not, Cam. But at least listen to me.”

I listened.

“When your grandfather was sheriff he had three murders in the first few years after he took office. One of them was a tavern fight and two of them were husbands killing wives for being unfaithful. The women had both slept with the same man, a car salesman named Blount. Your grandfather didn’t like that at all. Here were two women dead and two men in prison—one of them eventually got executed—and two entire families destroyed. And here was Blount still strutting around town looking for more women to land on. And he seemed to prefer married women, I suppose because there couldn’t be any permanent attachments. Well, one day your grandfather saw this Blount coming on to the wife of your grandfather’s best friend. The marriage was having some problems so he was afraid the woman might be vulnerable. He told me that after that day he wondered what life would be like here without Blount causing so much pain. But he didn’t do anything about it until a woman who worked at the courthouse got into a shouting match with her husband over at Millie’s. The story was that Blount had been sniffing around the lady and the husband was jealous. A couple of days later, Blount drowned. It was all accidental, of course.”

“Grandfather killed him.”

“Then another tomcat showed up a few years down the line. He was even worse than Blount. He was a rock musician. Nobody famous, mostly played little jobs up and down the lake here. But he flaunted it. He wanted people to know he was a lady-killer. Your grandfather watched him ruin the lives of three different families and then he just couldn’t put up with it anymore. This Boehner kid electrocuted himself with his guitar equipment one night.”

“Grandfather again.”

“There was a woman once, too. Came back here when her Chicago sugar daddy dumped her because she’d had the gall to turn thirty-five. Sarah McBain was her name. Damned good-looking woman. And she cut a wide swath. Caused three divorces the first year she was here. Died in a tragic fire.”

“And now you’re carrying on the tradition. That was what Neely was all about.”

“You have any idea how much pain that man caused the people in this town? You ever see the faces of the little kids when their folks are going through a divorce? And here was some drunken so-called artist not giving a damn about any of it. I was pretty damned patient. I even warned him. I was careful not to make it a threat—not anything he could sue the town for—but he got the message and all he did was laugh at me. Said I was just jealous. I would’ve been mad but I figured that was just par for the course with somebody like him.”

“You committed first-degree murder.”

He looked straight at me. “Yes, I did. And I don’t regret it.”

“You’ve just confessed a capital crime to me, Dad.”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Cam? I was sheriff while you were still riding a tricycle. I know damned good and well that I just confessed to a capital crime. But I’m not going to turn myself in for it. I’m going to leave that up to you.”

He angled back so that he faced the steering wheel. “Now I need my sleep, Cam. I’m not as young as you, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He put the car in gear and waited for me to get out. He didn’t have to wait long.

* * * *

“Hey, you didn’t eat any of that macho-man breakfast I fixed you.”

Soy bacon. Egg Beaters and wheat toast with soy margarine. I guessed that was what passed for breakfast macho these days when I was trying to keep weight off and avoid a heart attack before fifty.

“It’s good, Dad,” Cindy said. She pointed her fork at her empty plate. “I ate every bite.”

The smile and the blue, blue family eyes made me reach across the table and take her small hand. “I’ll do my best.”

“Unfortunately, Cindy, you’ve got to get ready,” Amy said. “The bus’ll be here in less than ten minutes. Scoot now. I’ll help you with your backpack.”

Leaving me alone with a breakfast I had to force myself to eat.

Cindy always went out the front door. She ducked into the kitchen, gave me a tiny wet kiss on the cheek, and then charged through the house, Amy right behind her.

I managed to eat one piece of bacon and half the toast by the time Amy reappeared.

“If I had time I’d find out what’s bothering you, honey. But that’s always a long, involved process so I’ll have to wait until tonight. I counted you getting up three times in the middle of the night and you were sitting down here staring into space when I came down for breakfast. I worry about you. But you know that.”

This kiss was on my mouth. And it lingered. But as I was kissing her I had a thought that made me hate myself. Neely had certainly gotten around with married women. . . . Amy had her nights out. I’d always taken her word that she was out with her female friends, usually shopping at the outlet malls and then getting a pizza afterward.

I brought her to me. Kissed her tenderly, ashamed of what I’d been thinking. Then, like Cindy, she was gone.

All the way to the shop I prepared myself for an awkward morning. I wondered if I’d even be able to look at my father. He murdered a man. And basically he was daring me to turn him in.

This morning was his turn to put in a court appearance, so he didn’t come through the front door until after eleven o’clock. I was at my desk on the phone, enduring my monthly call from an auxiliary deputy who had a library full of ideas on how to turn our sheriff’s department into the same kind of brave and fearless crime-fighting he saw on cop shows every night.

My father remained in the doorway, watching me as I watched him. After I hung up, he said, “Mason want us to start carrying grenades?”

“Ground-to-air missiles.”

“Sounds good to me.”

He came in and poured himself some coffee and went over and sat down at his desk. His in front of mine. He swiveled his chair around. “It wasn’t easy to tell you what I did last night.”

“It wasn’t easy for me to hear it.”

We didn’t have to worry about being overheard. Daytime we had two officers in the field—three when I had the time—and so we were left alone frequently. The dispatcher and the jail cells were in a small adjoining building.

Long, lean fingers drew his pipe from his suit-jacket pocket. “You ever think Amy might step out on you?”

The terrible thought I’d had at the breakfast table came back to me. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask.”

“Think of what would happen to little Cindy if you and Amy split up. If she’d stepped out.”

“Well, she hasn’t stepped out and she won’t step out. Any more than I’d ever step out on her. We’re not programmed that way.”

“That’s what your grandfather used to think. And I used to think it, too. But there’s always somebody who comes to this town—usually a man but sometimes a woman—and they destroy people. I’m not naive. They don’t force people to sleep with them. Unfortunately, the people want it. Want excitement, want something strange and new. But if that person hadn’t come to town, hadn’t offered them the opportunity—”

“You murdered a man.”

“I’d murder him again. He was going to cause at least two families to come apart. Good people, by and large. Friends of mine. People who belong in a town like this, where they don’t have Neelys prowling around like some rabid animal.”

“You murdered a man.”

He stuck the pipe in his mouth. “Then turn me in, Cam. Pick up that phone and turn me in.”

He swiveled back to his desk and went to work.

* * * *

I enjoyed a hearty meal at the Quick-Pick’s microwave. Nothing more refreshing than standing in a convenience store that smells of disinfectant and gulping down a hamburger of questionable origin. But I didn’t want to face my father at Millie’s.

The manilla folder was on my desk when I got back. I sat down at my desk and opened it up. Inside were copies of three divorce notices from the local weekly. I knew two of the families very well. I’d gone to high school with the man and woman from one divorce and with the woman from the second divorce. The third couple were younger than me.

My father came in just as I was closing the folder. “They missed you at Millie’s.”

“And the point of this is?” I said, jabbing my finger at the folder.

“The point of it is that when you count up all the children involved, the number comes to nine. One of the fathers is now a useless drunk. One of the women is living on food stamps and can’t get much medical care for her kids. And one of the kids who was a very bright student has now turned into a monster who may get kicked out of ninth grade. And Neely was involved in all of it.”

“And you murdered him.”

“And I murdered him because this is my town and I care about the people here, and because I owe it to them to help them through life as well as I can. And given all the things you did when you were younger—and given the way the town forgave you—I’d say you owe it to them, too. And another thing—” The blue eyes blazed; the voice was furious. “You’re so damned smug about this. Like I said last night, you’re lucky Amy’s never been unfaithful. I half wished I could have told you that she was one of Neely’s conquests. She wasn’t, but I know damned well how you would have reacted. So don’t be so quick about judging me. Now give me that folder back and get it over with.”

I was so caught up in his rage that I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

He cleared it up by reaching over to my phone and picking up the receiver. “You know the number of the county attorney. Tell him what I told you. Tell him that he knows where he can find me and that I won’t be any trouble at all.”

He shoved the receiver at me and then went to his desk and sat down, facing the door.

I don’t how long I sat there with it in my hand. Long enough for the dial tone to change into a beeping sound. I wasn’t even aware of hanging it up or going to the back near the four empty cells. In the bathroom I washed my face and stared into the mirror. He’d murdered a man. And my grandfather had murdered even more. And now he wanted me to carry on the tradition if I started to see the same pattern happening again.

He was gone when I came up front. I spent the afternoon working on several things, enjoying the luxury of temporary amnesia. He came back later. The temperature had dropped to the low thirties, so his gaunt cheeks were red and the green woolen scarf he wore looked almost festive.

He stood at my desk once again. “You need to turn me in, Cam. For your own sake. I had no right to drag you into this thing, and I don’t have any right to ask you to act the way your grandfather and I did. Just give me a little advance notice before you make the call. I’ll need to prepare your mother.” Then came the real surprise. He leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder and said: “I love you, son. You’ve turned into a hell of a good man. A lot better man than I’ve ever been.”

My father never played on my sympathies. He was straightforward. Nobody had ever called him a coward, and he wasn’t being a coward now.

“I told your mother I’d pick up a pot roast for her over at Shop-Rite. I should be home in half an hour if you want to talk to me.” He nodded goodbye and left.

* * * *

Given all that had happened I’d almost forgotten about picking up Amy at school.

Alveron High came into existence ten years ago when three different small high schools consolidated into one. Better for the budget and for attracting more qualified teachers and expanding the curriculum. Amy had been there six years. She’d spent Cindy’s first year at home, but given my salary she had to go back to teaching.

The building was two stories and red brick. The windows were on fire with the dying sun. I pulled up out front. Twisted brown leaves scraped across the grounds, collecting around the silver flagpole. The students were long gone. Teachers began drifting out in twos and threes, talking and laughing. Not that I paid much attention. I was thinking about my father and the copies of the divorce proceedings he’d shown me. And what he’d said about me being so smug. I hadn’t suffered any of it, but now as I thought about it, I remembered some of the domestic disturbances I’d covered. The rage and the pain. There is no equivalent to a domestic, seeing people at their rawest. The children are the heartbreakers, crouched in the corner, sobbing and pleading with their parents, or so stunned and afraid that they are frozen in the moment, scalded in their misery, lucky even to have a heartbeat. And the Neelys of the world—some of them married, some not—are often at the center of it all.

And what my father had done was try to relieve some of his people of some of their pain. I saw that now even though I still could not forget that in protecting his town—and I had no doubt he thought that was exactly what he was doing—he’d had to take a life.

And then Amy was coming out of the front door. Sight of her comforted me. I wanted to be home, sitting with Amy and Cindy on the couch. Being goofy the way we got so much of the time. A good dinner finished and a lazy night of watching some good TV shows.

Then he came out right behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder to slow her down. He was laughing and she was smiling. I had no doubt who I was seeing. The new English teacher. The one even Amy’s married friend had a crush on.

He was tall and tanned, with dark curly hair. In his white shirt and blue V-neck sweater and chinos he had a young preppy look about him. He was very handsome.

Amy stopped and he came up to her and slipped a piece of paper from one of his books and handed it to her. It was the way she stood hugging her books and staring up at him. A familiar sight from our own high-school days. Except instead of him, it had been me.

Then she said something and started walking toward my car.

I thought of my father and how he said I’d been spared the pain that had ripped apart so many other families.

I was going to have to keep a very close eye on Mr. Bruce Peters. And not only for myself, but for all the good true people of our little town.