Patricia Staunton Nyeberger lay face down on the sidewalk in front of the store. From inside terrified customers gazed out at her through the revolving doors. Her arms were outflung, one hand sparkling with rings still clutched a validated ticket for the store parking lot. Blood and blobs of brain matter were sprayed across the cement. A puddle of urine was seeping out between her sprawled legs.
There had been no time for her bowels to evacuate.
The top of her head had been blown off.
Whittaker regretted the chocolate cake he had eaten at Lynnda’s.
In the service alley beside the department store was a man wearing a khaki jacket and cargo pants. He was holding a rifle. “They ought to pin a medal on me!” he shouted, drawing the sheriff’s attention. “You hear me? They ought to pin a medal. She was passing our military secrets to the enemy, but I stopped her. Didn’t I stop her? Didn’t I? They ought to pin a medal!” For emphasis he raised the rifle and fired again.
The pedestrians screamed and scattered.
By evening the entire town knew what had happened without benefit of any form of electronic communication. The unidentified shooter was in jail, Tricia Nyeberger’s body was at Staunton Memorial awaiting postmortem and Sheriff Whittaker had performed the unenviable task of informing both her husband and her father. Old Man Staunton had taken the news with apparent stoicism. His son-in-law had gone in search of a weapon of his own, vowing to “restore justice.” Sheriff Whittaker interpreted this as a threat to enact vigilante law and sought a restraining order against Dwayne Nyeberger. From a civil court that had grown increasingly dysfunctional.
Staunton went to Bea Fontaine.
He found her at home, waiting for Jack to come back. When the news about the murder at Goettinger’s spread through town he had gone in search of more information, leaving his aunt to worry.
“Miz Bea?” said the stooped figure standing on her porch in the twilight. “Can I come in? I’ve got a favor to ask.”
She gave him a stiff brandy and her sympathy. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through, Oliver.”
“I can’t imagine it either. There are pictures in my head… you know I had to identify her body?”
“Don’t think about it.”
“I’ll never think about anything else. But I have to, for the sake of—”
“Your grandsons, of course! Do they know yet?”
“Unh-unh, they’re still recuperating and we don’t know how this will affect them. Right now my housekeeper’s with them at their house, but that’s not going to work out. If and when Dwayne shows up he’ll do what he always does, order Haydon around like she’s his slave. I need her in my house, damn it. Besides, she doesn’t even like children. I’ll have to find another solution, one that cuts Dwayne out of the picture and won’t involve making them wards of the court.”
He fixed his eyes on Bea’s. “You know I can’t take on five rambunctious boys, Miz Bea; the bank takes all my energy. You raised your nephew and did a damned good job, would you consider…”
She had seen this coming. She held out her hands, palms facing him, and shook her head. “I’m too old to cope with five little boys, Oliver. Don’t you have any relatives?”
“A couple of cousins in New Mexico and a few others in Canada; distant cousins, we’ve never even met. That’s how America is these days. The way things are, I can’t send my grandchildren hundreds of miles away to strangers.”
His lower lip was trembling.
19
Shay called from the back door of the vet clinic, “Hold this open for me, will you!”
Paige hurried to help. “What are you going to do with those boards?”
“They aren’t boards, they’re planks. And two-by-fours and… never mind, help me get them inside. We’re going to start boarding up our windows.”
“Do you really think we need to?”
“We keep drugs in here, Paige, but more than that, there are kooks in town who are beginning to go off the rails. I got these supplies from the lumberyard and brought them back in Evan’s cart. A lot of people are starting to buy timber.”
As Paige watched him carry an armload of two-by-fours inside, she said, “I think I’ll keep Samson with me all the time from now on.”
Bill Burdick was not boarding up anything. Bill’s Bar and Grill remained defiantly in business, though Bill was keeping a couple of guns under the bar.
Business was brisk. The usual regulars were always present, their number increasingly augmented by others in search of sanctuary.
“The good old days were good,” Hooper Watson intoned, “because folks didn’t know how bad they were. They lived their lives and just got on with it…”
“Listen to the philosopher of Bill’s Bar and Grill,” said Morris Saddlethwaite.
Watson in full flow was not to be interrupted. “… and just got on with it. They didn’t know where the Ukraine was or what was happening in Korea and they didn’t want to know, nothin’ to do with them. Then along came the internet and instant communication and we were run over with information. Knocked down flat in the street and run over.”
“Don’t be such a Luddite,” said Bill Burdick.
“A wha’?”
“Someone who hates technology.”
“I don’t hate it,” Watson rejoined, “I’m as modern as you are. But I’ve seen the damage it can do. My wife, Nadine, just went on a shopping spree on the internet and ran up bills I’ll never be able to pay off. Then she took off with some salesman she’d met on social media and left all her debts in my lap.”
“Has she come back yet?”
“Naah, why’d you think I’m in here drinking in the afternoon? Speaking of drinking, how long has it been since you refilled this glass?”
“Your daughter was in here only yesterday asking me not to let you get loop-legged again. Angela’s a good girl, Hoop, she’s trying to look after you.”
“She should mind her own business.”
There were days when Watson irritated Bill Burdick. A man behind a bar should be sympathetic, but he might also have his own problems and be sick to the back teeth with hearing about someone else’s. “She doesn’t have much business to mind since you scared her boyfriend away,” he told Watson.
“I didn’t do that! Sunnavabitch is a two-timing liar and she caught on to him, that’s all. If he ever comes around her again I’ll put a bomb down his britches.”
“Plastic explosive, maybe?” Burdick asked sarcastically.
“You know what I mean.”
“I know that kind of talk is dangerous, Hoop. People are hair-trigger enough as it is. The town’s been hemorrhaging jobs since the Change began, and now people are taking the law into their own hands. They say the Nyeberger murder proves we don’t have enough law enforcement.”
“That’s the bloody truth,” a customer interjected. “Hey, Jack!” he called to a man who was just entering. “You think we got enough law in this town?”
Jack Reece sat down at the bar and nodded a greeting to Burdick. “Is this an argument I should get into, Bill?” he asked in a low voice.
“It’s harmless, they’re just blowing off steam.” Burdick cast a glance around the room. “With the exception of you and me there’s not a person in here who still gets a salary, thanks to the Change.”
“I work for myself,” said Jack. “Which reminds me—I’ve taken on another sideline.”
“In addition to tires, you mean?”
“Premium-quality tires are gone anyway, but this is one you’ll appreciate. Beeswax candles. You’re using candles in here already; let me put you on my list.”