Alec Pelley and Howie Gold helped Marcy to her feet, being careful not to step on the body of her husband as they did so. Howie said, “That might be true, Detective Anderson, but there wouldn’t have been a fuck-ton of other people all around him. He would have stood out like a sore thumb.”
Alec only looked at Ralph with a species of stony contempt. Ralph turned to Yunel, but Yune looked away and bent to help the sobbing blond anchor from Channel 7 to her feet.
“Well, you got your dying statement, at least,” Marcy said. She held out her palms to Ralph. They were red with her husband’s blood. “Didn’t you?” When he made no reply, she turned away from him and saw Bill Samuels. He had come out of the courthouse at last and was standing between the bailiffs at the top of the steps.
“He said he didn’t do it!” she screamed at him. “He said he was innocent! We all heard it, you son of a bitch! As my husband lay dying, HE SAID HE WAS INNOCENT!”
Samuels didn’t reply, only turned and went back inside.
Sirens. The Camaro car alarm. The excited babble of people who were returning now that the shooting was over. Wanting to see the body. Wanting to photograph it, and put it on their Facebook pages. Howie’s coat, which the lawyer had draped over Terry’s hands to conceal the cuffs from the press and the cameras, now lay in the street, streaked with dirt and splotched with blood. Ralph picked it up and used it to cover Terry’s face, eliciting a terrible howl of grief from his wife. Then he went to the courthouse steps, sat down, and lowered his head between his knees.
FOOTSTEPS AND CANTALOUPE
July 18th–July 20th
1
Because Ralph hadn’t told Jeannie about his darkest suspicion concerning the Flint County prosecutor—that he might have hoped for a crowd of righteously angry citizens at the courthouse—she let Bill Samuels in when he appeared at the door of the Anderson home on Wednesday evening, but she made it clear that she didn’t have much use for him.
“He’s out back,” she said, turning away and heading back into the living room, where Alex Trebek was putting that evening’s Jeopardy contestants through their paces. “You know the way.”
Samuels, tonight clad in jeans, sneakers, and a plain gray tee-shirt, stood in the front hall for a moment, considering, then followed her. There were two easy chairs in front of the television, the bigger, more lived-in one empty. He picked up the remote from the table between the two and muted the sound. Jeannie continued looking at the television, where the contestants were currently munching their way through a category called Literary Villains. The answer onscreen was She demanded Alice’s head.
“That’s an easy one,” Samuels said. “The Red Queen. How is he, Jeannie?”
“How do you think he is?”
“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’?”