600 Hours of Edward

residents, the cops zero in on two suspects—a teenage boy and his girlfriend—who are detained in Arizona on a warrant.
    The suspects are mouthy. The boy answers all of Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon’s questions by reciting state capitals. He even says that the capital of Nevada is Reno. Officer Bill Gannon, who can track down criminals and win geography bees, corrects him and points out that the capital of Nevada is Carson City.
    The girl, Camille Gearhardt, tells Sergeant Joe Friday that his eyes are nice—for a cop.
    He then tells her that her mother probably had a good bark. Sergeant Joe Friday doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
    One of the things I like best about this episode is that it doesn’t just show how a crime is solved. It also shows how crime affects the people who witness it or know the victim. The death of the man at the apartment leaves his best friend without a companion.
    Tonight, I am thinking a lot about crime and why it happens and what it does to people. I am flummoxed.
    – • –
    Mike Simpson:
    I did not think it was possible to detest you more than I did that night that you tried to choke Donna Middleton in her driveway. Today, in court, you elevated things to the level of hate. I hate you. It’s not a word I use lightly.
    If there is any upside to your horrible outburst today, it is that Judge Alan Robeson saw with his own eyes what a horrible person you truly are and denied you bail accordingly. While I cannot know how long you will remain behind bars—I can only guess, and I prefer facts—I do know that Donna Middleton is going on with her life without you and your controlling, deceitful, harmful ways.
    She is much the better for it. While that will no doubt make you angry, it makes her family—and especially her boy—happy. And I am happy for them.
    Regards,
    Edward Stanton
    I print out the letter and place it in the green office folder I prepared days ago, taking the time to alter the tab so that it reads “Mike Simpson” and not just “Mike.”
    I hope it’s the last time that I ever have to take it out of the filing cabinet.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28
    I am in a room that is empty save for a table and three cardboard boxes—one red, one blue, one yellow.
    I walk over to the table and lift the lid on the red box, and Mike Simpson’s head pops up.
    “What if I don’t go to jail, Edward?” Mike Simpson’s head says to me. “What then?”
    And now I am in another room, also empty, save for three doors on the wall across from me. They are marked with a 1, a 2, and a 3.
    I walk over and open door number 1. Mike Simpson is standing behind it.
    “What then, Edward?”
    And now I am in yet another room, this one filled with people of different sizes and shapes, yet all of them with Mike Simpson’s anvil-like head, all of which whip around to look at me.
    “What then, Edward?” they say in unison. “I will kill you, that’s what then. You’re dead.”
    – • –
    And now I am awake, my heart thumping loudly against my sternum. It’s 6:45 a.m. I don’t dare return to sleep for fear of seeingthat face again. I reach for my notebook and record the time, and my data is complete.
    – • –
    The rain, it says here in the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, will linger through the week, a prospect that is neither here nor there to me. I am interested in the facts of the situation, and the only facts about the weather that today’s
Herald-Gleaner
can provide are yesterday’s high and low temperatures and precipitation. I record them in my notebook, and my data is complete.
    I remember when I was attending school at Billings West High School, during my junior-year English class, I had a teacher who would talk endlessly about symbolism in literature. She said that rain in a scene always portended (I love the word “portended”) a parting of ways. And yet I have years’ worth of data on the weather patterns here in Billings that suggest it’s not true. Rain is caused by cloud droplets that become too big for the clouds to hold. Water vapor below the clouds condenses into these droplets, which then fall from the sky. That has nothing to do with the parting of ways. The science of the matter is that it’s always raining somewhere on Earth, and while there may also always be parting of ways on Earth, that’s a coincidence, not science.
    This teacher also told us that a move east portended disaster. She justified this by quoting Horace Greeley, who famously said, “Go