He turned toward the rusty motel sign and paused again, thinking about that help-wanted sign. Just then one of the police station doors opened and a lanky cop came out, settling his cap on his red hair. The latening sun twinkled on his badge. He took in Tim’s workboots, dusty jeans, and blue chambray shirt. His eyes dwelled for a moment on the duffel bag slung over Tim’s shoulder before moving to his face. “Can I help you, sir?”
The same impulse that had made him stand up on the plane swept over him now. “Probably not, but who knows?”
5
The redheaded cop was Deputy Taggart Faraday. He escorted Tim inside, where the familiar smells of bleach and ammonia cakes wafted into the office from the four-cell holding area in the back. After introducing Tim to Veronica Gibson, the middle-aged deputy working dispatch this afternoon, Faraday asked to see Tim’s driver’s license and at least one other piece of identification. What Tim produced in addition to his DL was his Sarasota Police ID, making no attempt to hide the fact that it had expired nine months before. Nevertheless, the attitudes of the deputies changed slightly when they saw it.
“You’re not a resident of Fairlee County,” Ronnie Gibson said.
“No,” Tim agreed. “Not at all. But I could be if I got the night knocker job.”
“Doesn’t pay much,” Faraday said, “and in any case it’s not up to me. Sheriff Ashworth hires and fires.”
Ronnie Gibson said, “Our last night knocker retired and moved down to Georgia. Ed Whitlock. He got ALS, that Lou Gehrig’s thing. Nice man. Tough break. But he’s got people down there to take care of him.”
“It’s always the nice ones who get hit with the shit,” Tag Faraday said. “Give him a form, Ronnie.” Then, to Tim: “We’re a small outfit here, Mr. Jamieson, crew of seven and two of them part-time. All the taxpayers can afford. Sheriff John’s currently out on patrol. If he’s not in by five, five-thirty at the latest, he’s gone home to supper and won’t be in until tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here tonight in any case. Assuming the motel’s open, that is.”
“Oh, I think Norbert’s got a few rooms,” Ronnie Gibson said. She exchanged a glance with the redhead and they both laughed.
“I’m guessing it might not be a four-star establishment.”
“No comment on that,” Gibson said, “but I’d check the sheets for those little red bugs before you lie down, if I was you. Why’d you leave Sarasota PD, Mr. Jamieson? You’re young to retire, I’d say.”
“That’s a matter I’ll discuss with your chief, assuming he grants me an interview.”
The two officers exchanged another, longer look, then Tag Faraday said, “Go on and give the man an application, Ronnie. Nice to meet you, sir. Welcome to DuPray. Act right and we’ll get along fine.” With that he departed, leaving the alternative to good behavior open to interpretation. Through the barred window, Tim saw the 4Runner back out of its spot and roll off down DuPray’s short main street.
The form was on a clipboard. Tim sat down in one of the three chairs against the lefthand wall, placed his duffel between his feet, and began filling it out.
Night knocker, he thought. I will be goddamned.
6
Sheriff Ashworth—Sheriff John to most of the townsfolk as well as to his deputies, Tim discovered—was a big-bellied slow walker. He had basset hound jowls and a lot of white hair. There was a ketchup stain on his uniform shirt. He wore a Glock on his hip and a ruby ring on one pinkie. His accent was strong, his attitude was good-ole-boy friendly, but his eyes, deep in their fatty sockets, were smart and inquisitive. He could have been typecast in one of those southern-cliché movies like Walking Tall, if not for the fact that he was black. And something else: a framed certificate of graduation from the FBI’s National Academy in Quantico hung on the wall next to the official portrait of President Trump. That was not the sort of thing you got by mailing in cereal boxtops.
“All right, then,” Sheriff John said, rocking back in his office chair. “I haven’t got long. Marcella hates it when I’m late for dinner. Unless there’s some sort of crisis, accourse.”
“Understood.”
“So let’s get right to the good part. Why’d you leave Sarasota PD and what are you doing here? South Cah’lina doesn’t have too many beaten tracks, and DuPray idn’t exactly on any of them.”
Ashworth probably wouldn’t be on the phone to Sarasota tonight, but he would be in the morning, so there was no point in gilding the lily. Not that Tim wanted to. If he didn’t get the night knocker job, he would spend the night in DuPray and move on in the morning, continuing his stop-and-start progress to New York, a journey he now understood to be a necessary hiatus between what had happened one day late last year at Sarasota’s Westfield Mall and whatever might happen next. All that aside, honesty was the best policy, if only because lies—especially in an age when almost all information was available to anyone with a keyboard and a Wi-Fi connection—usually came back to haunt the liar.
“I was given a choice between resignation and dismissal. I chose resignation. No one was happy about it, least of all me—I liked my job and I liked the Gulf Coast—but it was the best solution. This way I get a little money, nothing like a full pension, but better than nothing. I split it with my ex-wife.”
“Cause? And make it simple so I can get to my dinner while it’s still hot.”
“This won’t take long. At the end of my shift one day last November, I swung into the Westfield Mall to buy a pair of shoes. Had to go to a wedding. I was still in uniform, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I was coming out of the Shoe Depot when a woman ran up and said a teenager was waving a gun around up by the movie theater. So I went up there, double-time.”
“Did you draw your weapon?”
“No sir, not then. The kid with the gun was maybe fourteen, and I ascertained that he was either drunk or high. He had another kid down and was kicking him. He was also pointing the gun at him.”
“Sounds like that Cleveland deal. The cop who shot the black kid who was waving a pellet gun.”
“That was in my mind when I approached, but the cop who shot Tamir Rice swore he thought the kid was waving a real gun around. I was pretty sure the one I saw wasn’t real, but I couldn’t be completely sure. Maybe you know why.”
Sheriff John Ashworth seemed to have forgotten about dinner. “Because your subject was pointing it at the kid he had on the floor. No sense pointing a fake gun at someone. Unless, I s’pose, the kid on the ground didn’t know that.”
“The perp said later he was shaking it at the kid, not pointing it. Saying ‘It’s mine, motherfucker, you don’t take what’s mine.’ I didn’t see that. To me he looked like he was pointing it. I yelled at him to drop the weapon and put his hands up. He either didn’t hear me or didn’t pay any attention. He just went on kicking and pointing. Or shaking, if that’s what he was doing. In any case, I drew my sidearm.” He paused. “If it makes any difference, these kids were white.”
“Not to me, it doesn’t. Kids were fighting. One was down and getting hurt. The other had what might or might not have been a real gun. So did you shoot him? Tell me it didn’t come to that.”
“No one got shot. But… you know how people will gather around to watch a fistfight, but tend to scatter once a weapon comes out?”
“Sure. If they’ve got any sense, they run like hell.”
“That happened, except for a few people who stayed even then.”
“The ones filming it with their phones.”
Tim nodded. “Four or five wannabe Spielbergs. Anyway, I pointed my gun at the ceiling and fired what was supposed to be a warning shot. It might have been a bad decision, but in that moment it seemed like the right one. The only one. There are hanging lights in that part of the mall. The bullet hit one of them and it came down dead-center on a lookie-loo’s head. The kid with the gun dropped it, and as soon as it hit the floor, I knew for sure it wasn’t real because it bounced. Turned out to be a plastic squirt gun made to look like a .45 auto. The kid who was on the floor getting kicked had some bruises and a few cuts, nothing that looked like it would need stitches, but the bystander was unconscious and stayed that way for three hours. Concussion. According to his lawyer he’s got amnesia and blinding headaches.”