600 Hours of Edward

bills. As you’ve probably surmised, the fake examiners don’t do that. They just take the money.
    Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon end up running a ruse. Officer Bill Gannon poses as the son of an elderly woman who is targeted by the phony bank examiners, and he gives the men the money. Sergeant Joe Friday then busts in from the kitchen with a gun and puts them under arrest.
    Sergeant Joe Friday always gets his man. He also would never be thrown off by the smooth talking of a con man. Not for the first time, I wish I were a lot more like Sergeant Joe Friday and a lot less like I really am.
    – • –
    After
Dragnet
, I prepare a new green office folder for my files.
    Dr. Neil Clark Warren:
    I have an issue to take up with you, sir. Your ubiquitous advertising of eHarmony fails to come clean on two points:
    First, you can’t find matches for everyone. You certainly could not for me, and thus I ended up having to pursue online dating through Montana Personal Connect.
    Second, you portray online dating as a wonderland in which happy couples come together as soul mates who have every little thing in common. You ascribe this to your twenty-nine levels of compatibility, but I must say, sir, that I ascribe it to your living in a fantasy world.
    I did not find a soul mate. On your site, I found nothing. On Montana Personal Connect, I found an erratic woman who was progressively hostile toward me, culminating in her calling me an “asshole” and a “looser.” Her poor spelling skills aside, I found those comments to be demeaning and hurtful.
    In short, my online dating experience was not enjoyable. Had I never seen your ads, I might not have been prompted to try online dating. I can safely say that had I not tried online dating, I would not be in the torpor that I’m currently experiencing.
    I ask you to reconsider your advertising campaign and choose an approach that is more honest about what online dating is really like. I would think that a clinical psychologist of thirty-five years, as you profess to be on your website, would be interested in honesty above all. I know that my own psychologist, Dr. Buckley, values truth and honesty. I trust her. You, I don’t trust.
    Regards,
    Edward Stanton

MONDAY, OCTOBER 27
    Donna’s knock on the front door comes promptly at 9:00 a.m. I’m impressed by her punctuality. I’ve been up since 7:38 a.m., eating my breakfast of corn flakes, taking my eighty milligrams of fluoxetine, reading the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, and canceling my membership to Montana Personal Connect, which I had neglected to do in the flurry of messages from Joy-Annette on Saturday. I had been skittish about logging on, for fear of finding yet another message from Joy-Annette, but there was none.
    I answer the door and see Donna Middleton standing there, looking more formal than I’ve ever seen her. She’s in a pair of brown slacks, a blue knit two-piece top, a long leather coat, and dress shoes (flats, I think they are called). Her dark-brown hair is swept back in a ponytail, and her face is made up. She looks very pretty.
    “Hello,” I say.
    “Hi, Edward. Are you ready to go?”
    “I am. My data is complete.”
    – • –
    On the short drive downtown, Donna Middleton is silent. I am not supposed to take my eyes off the road, but I can see that she is gripping both hands, making her knuckles look like small white rocks popping through her skin.
    “Are you nervous?” I ask.
    “No,” she says. “Determined.”
    We’re driving along Lewis Avenue, past bungalows and churches. Although this is one of Billings’s well-traveled secondary thoroughfares, it’s mostly quiet at this hour. Children have headed off to school. Those who work nine-to-five jobs are already at them. We see a few walkers and a few elderly drivers. Other than that, Lewis is ours.
    “What’s happening today, the arraignment?” I ask.
    “Yes.”
    “It should be a short appearance. Arraignments usually are.”
    “I hope so.”
    “A lot of times, victims don’t attend arraignments.” I don’t know if Donna Middleton is looking for a way out of this trip to court, but if she needs one, I want to provide it.
    “I’m going to be there,” she says, “every time he is.”
    – • –
    The Yellowstone County Courthouse is one of the distinctive buildings in the Billings skyline. To be fair to other skylines, Billings’s isn’t that impressive. Despite its prodigious growth over the past decade or so,