Empire Falls

would have wanted to catch him parked just here. When Jimmy rolled down his window, the young cop abruptly walked back to the Camaro. Miles watched their conversation in the mirror, smiling when the officer took off his dark glasses. In such situations, apparently only the ranking officer got to keep his glasses on. The conversation was short, then Jimmy Minty did a U-turn and headed back down the street in the direction he’d come from. The young officer, clearly disappointed, watched him go, then returned to Miles and handed back his license and registration. “Might be a good idea to take care of these today,” he said, the confrontational edge gone from his voice now.
    “You’re not citing me?”
    “Not unless you think I should, Mr. Roby.”
    Miles put the license back in his wallet, the registration back in the glove compartment.
    Now that they were pals, the cop seemed anxious that there should be no hard feelings. “You lived in that house there?”
    Miles nodded, slipping the Jetta in gear.
    “Huh,” the young cop said. “Looks haunted.”
    T HE M OTOR V EHICLES D IVISION office was being run out of the Whiting mansion, or rather “the Cottage,” a large outbuilding nestled in a grove of trees behind the main house. This arrangement was only temporary, until renovations at the courthouse, whose domed roof had partially collapsed after last winter’s ice storm, were completed. Since then, justice—never swift in Empire Falls—had ground to a virtual halt. Except for traffic court, most legal matters were being processed out of nearby Fairhaven, whose docket had grown so crowded with the legal business of both towns that everything from building permits to property disputes to small claims to assessments was backed up for months. Even the simplest legal transactions, like Miles’s uncontested divorce, seemed endlessly bogged down. Since he hadn’t wanted the divorce to begin with, he wasn’t terribly troubled. In fact, last spring he’d hoped the holdup might cause Janine to reconsider, though by now he knew that she was determined to marry the Silver Fox, and that somehow she held this legal delay, which had ruined her plans for a summer wedding, against Miles. So determined was she to marry Walt Comeau the moment her divorce became final that Miles had begun to suspect that in some part of her brain, the workings of which still mystified him, Janine realized that this second marriage was some pure folly she needed to commit quickly, lest she come to her senses first.
    Miles parked in the small lot between the main house, now headquarters of the Dexter County Museum and Historical Society, and the cottage, which housed, in addition to the temporary DMV, the permanent offices of the Empire Falls Planning and Development Commission, which over the last decade had become something of a joke, since no one had developed anything in Empire Falls during that period, nor was anyone planning to. Mrs. Whiting, as director of the board, kept an office there, however, and when Miles saw her Lincoln parked in the lot, he hurried across the lawn, head down, in the hope that she wouldn’t spy him out her window. He’d been avoiding “the State of the Grill” since his return from vacation, and despite the restaurant’s improved business, he was even more reluctant than usual to spend an afternoon going over receipts and making projections.
    Safely inside, he joined a short line and awaited his turn at a window marked AUTO REG . The entire mahogany counter, he realized, had been transported from the courthouse, and would no doubt be ferried back again. The other furnishings, including the paintings and photographs of Whiting males that decorated the walls, all belonged to the museum collection. Miles studied these men while he waited. For direct lineal descendants they didn’t look all that much alike except, Miles decided, for one feature. Even as young men, they appeared prematurely old, or maybe just distinguished, their hair white, their brows chiseled in cogitation. Or perhaps they were reflecting with satisfaction that the history of Empire Falls, indeed of Dexter County, was little more than the history of their own family.
    After a few minutes, he noticed Jimmy Minty’s red Camaro pull into the lot. Leaving the car idling, the police officer got out and came toward the cottage, angling off the walkway that led to Motor Vehicles and proceeding across the lawn to the back of the building.