“Don’t ask me to leave you. Please, please.” She pressed her face to his. He was so cold. Too cold.
“Not asking. Telling. My job. Don’t make me a failure. Go. Go now.”
“I’ll get help.”
“Run. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Out the window. Now.”
He waited for her to reach it. “Count to three,” he ordered as he crawled for the door. “Then go. I’ll keep them off you.”
“John.”
“Make me proud, Liz. Count.”
She counted, slid out. She gripped the gutter as rain lashed against her face. She didn’t know if it would hold her, didn’t think it mattered. Then she heard the volley of gunfire, and shimmied down like a monkey.
Get help, she told herself, and began to run.
She was less than fifty yards away when the house exploded behind her.
Brooks
This above all—to thine own self be true.
And it must follow, as the night the day.
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
7
Arkansas, 2012
Sometimes being the chief of police in a little town tucked into the Ozarks like a sleepy cat in the crook of an elbow just sucked right out loud.
As a for instance, arresting a guy you played ball with in high school because he grew up to be an asshole. Though Brooks considered being an asshole a God-given right rather than a criminal offense, Tybal Crew was currently sleeping off several more than one too many shots of Rebel Yell.
Brooks considered overindulging in whiskey, on occasion, another God-given right. But when that indulgence invariably caused a man to stumble home and give his wife a couple of good, solid pops in the face, it crossed the line to criminal offense.
And it sucked. Out loud.
And it sucked louder yet as sure as daisies bloomed in the spring, Missy Crew—former co-captain of the Bickford Senior High School cheerleading squad—would rush into the station before noon, claiming Ty hadn’t clocked her, oh no. She’d run into a door, a wall, tripped on the stairs.
No amount of talk, sympathy, annoyance, charm, threats would persuade her—or him—they needed some help. They’d kiss and make up as if Ty had been off to war for a year, likely go home and fuck like rabid minks.
In a week or two, Ty would get his hands on another bottle of Rebel Yell, and they’d all go around again.
Brooks sat in his preferred booth at Lindy’s Café and Emporium, stewing over the situation as he ate breakfast.
Nobody fried up eggs and bacon and home fries like Lindy, but the fat and grease and crunch just didn’t cheer Brooks up.
He’d come back to Bickford six months before to take on the job as chief after his father’s heart attack. Loren Gleason—who’d tried to teach Ty Crew and just about every other high-schooler the mysteries of algebra—bounced back. And with the nutrition and exercise regimen Brooks’s mother had put the poor guy on, he was healthier than he’d likely been in his life.
But still, the incident had left Brooks shaken, and needing home. So after a decade in Little Rock, a decade on the Little Rock PD, the last five as a detective, he’d turned in his papers and scooped up the recently open position of chief.
Mostly, it was good to be home. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed it until he’d moved back full-time. It occurred to him that he’d probably say the same about Little Rock, should he ever go back, but for now, Bickford suited him just fine. Just dandy.
Even when the job sucked.
He liked having breakfast once or twice a week at Lindy’s, liked the view of the hills outside his office window and the steadiness of the job. He liked the town, the artists, the potters, weavers, musicians—the yogis, the psychics, and all the shops and restaurants and inns that drew the tourists in to sample the wares.
The hippies had come and settled in the sixties—God knew why his mother, who’d changed her name from Mary Ellen to Sunshine and still went by Sunny, wandered down from Pennsylvania about a decade later. And so Sunshine had charmed or corrupted—depending on who was telling the story—a young, first-year math teacher.
They’d exchanged personal vows on the banks of the river, and set up house. A few years and two babies later, Sunny had bowed to the gentle, consistent pressure only his father could exert, and had made it legal.
Brooks liked to taunt his sisters that he was the only Gleason actually born in wedlock. They rebutted that he was also the only Gleason who had to pack heat to do his job.
He settled back with his coffee, easing himself into the day by watching the goings-on outside the window.
While it was too early for most of the shops to open, The Vegetable Garden had its sign out. He tried to spread his patronage around, so he stopped in for soup now and again, but he was an unapologetic carnivore, and just couldn’t see the purpose in something like tofu disguised as meat.
The bakery—now, they were doing some business. And Cup O’ Joe likely had its counter full. February had barely turned the corner into March, but the tourists from up north often moseyed down early in the year to get out of the worst bite of winter. The Bradford pears hinted at blossoms. In a week they’d put on their show. Daffodils crowded together in sidewalk tubs, yellow as sticks of butter.
Sid Firehawk’s truck farted explosively as it drove by. On a sigh, Brooks made a mental note to give Sid one more warning to get his goddamn muffler replaced.
Drunken wife smackers and noise polluters, Brooks thought. A hell of a long way from Robbery-Homicide. But mostly it suited him. Even when it sucked.
And when it didn’t, he thought, straightening in his seat for a better view.
He could admit to himself he’d planted himself in that seat early, on the off chance she’d come to town.
Abigail Lowery of the warm brown hair, exceptional ass and air of mystery. Pretty cat-green eyes, he thought, though she mostly kept them behind sunglasses.
She had a way of walking, Abigail Lowery did, with a purpose. She never moseyed or strolled or meandered. She only came into town every couple of weeks, shopped for groceries. Always early in the day but never on the same day. On rarer occasions, she went into one of the other shops, did her business briskly.
He liked that about her. The purpose, the briskness. He thought he might like more about her, but she kept to herself in a way that made your average hermit look like a social butterfly.
She drove a big, burly, black SUV, not that she did a lot of driving around that he’d noticed.
As far as he could tell, she stayed on her own spread of land, pretty as a picture and neat as a pin, according to the FedEx and UPS guys he’d subtly pumped for information.
He knew she planted both a vegetable garden and a flower garden in the spring, had her own greenhouse and a massive bullmastiff with a brindle coat she called Bert.
She was single—at least she had no one but Bert living with her, and wore no ring. The delivery guys termed her polite and generous, with a tip on Christmas, but standoffish.
Most of the townspeople termed her odd.
“Top that off for you?” Kim, his waitress, held out the pot of coffee.
“Wouldn’t mind, thanks.”
“Must be working. You looked cross as a bear when you walked in; now you’re all smiles.” She gave him a pat on the cheek.
She had a motherly way, which made him only smile wider, as she was barely five years his senior. “It’s getting the motor running.”
“I’d say she got it running.” Kim lifted her chin toward Abigail as she walked into the market on the near corner. “Got looks, anybody can see that, but she’s a strange one. She’s lived here almost a year, and not once has she stepped foot in here, or any of the other restaurants. She’s barely gone into any of the shops or businesses, either. Orders mostly everything online.”