Niceville

shaved and, in a way, tried to stiffen himself for sirens in the distance and squad cars filling up Mrs. Kinnear’s driveway and police bullhorns telling him to come out with his hands up.
    He even dressed in his best clothes—the same sober business suit he had worn to the custody hearing—how long ago?
    God, less than twenty-four hours.
    At any rate, he put it on again, along with a clean white shirt and his best black lace-ups. If he was about to get cuffed and perp-walked, he wanted to look as good as possible while it was happening. One never got a second chance to make a first impression.
    He also checked his bank account—online—to make sure he had enough ready money to make bail and he also got his lawyer’s business card off the dresser—Ms. Evangeline Barrow, Attorney-at-Law.
    Barrow wasn’t a criminal lawyer, but she knew her way around the courthouse, and maybe she’d be able to keep Judge Theodore W. Monroe from hanging Bock out to twist in the wind while crows plucked his eyes out like fat green grapes.
    With that lurid image in his head, he spent another few minutes setting up a shredding program to begin the complicated work of erasing every conceivable digital trace of anything incriminating from his hard drive, a slow, exacting, but thankfully automatic process that would nevertheless take several hours to complete.
    Then he pulled himself together—with an effort—and turned his attention back to the television—he was recording the thing on his TiVo—just as a dark green Crown Victoria pulled up to the squad car tangle in front of the church and a tall broad-shouldered silver-haired man in a dark gray suit got slowly out, his angular face set and cold-looking.
    This guy, in civilian clothes but obviously a senior cop of some kind, was met by the large red-haired female cop, Staff Sergeant Mavis Crossfire, the NPD cop in charge, according to the news broad, and by the State Police guy, a lean blond cop in a crisp gray and black uniform, identified as Captain James Candles. The man from the green Crown Vic was not identified, but he stood out even in that elite company, an impressive-looking Clint Eastwood type with hard eyes and seamed leathery skin who moved well and radiated a kind of quiet menace, at least to Bock, who was very sensitive to menace wherever he encountered it, which was almost everywhere he went. The news pixie was speculating on who this guy might be when the cop walked around to the trunk, popped it, and extracted what was unmistakably a rifle case, which caused Bock’s throat to close up and his knees to go weak.
    Holy Shit
.
    They were ready to kill the guy
.
    Holy Leaping Jesus
.
    And they were letting the weapon be seen on camera, sending a clear signal to the citizens and specifically to Kevin David Dennison inside the rectory office that things were being kicked up a level. Bock had already heard that the record on the guy wasn’t accurate—horseshit,by the way, Bock did not make mistakes about data—and they were hinting that maybe there was some doubt about just how guilty this Kevin David Dennison guy really was. But apparently that wasn’t going to stop them from blowing his brains out on national television.
    And if
that
happened, if they did that, the root cause of this guy’s death—along with the deaths of anybody else who might get whacked this afternoon—the root cause of it all would be …
    Tony Bock
, that’s who.
    Jesus Christ
, he was thinking, sitting down on the couch and staring at the screen,
what the hell have I gotten myself into?
    This cop standoff was serious shit.
    Even if nobody got killed, those cops down there in the street, maybe even that silver-haired movie-star assassin in the dark gray suit, they were all going to come looking for the busy little asshole who started all this.
    And that busy little asshole was sitting right here, on his big leather sofa, staring at them from the other side of his flat-screen Sony.
    Bock flopped backwards into the couch, heart hammering, cold fear rippling up and down his belly and chest—he had a terrific aptitude for dread—his agile rodent mind darting about the basement floor of his life looking for some rat hole to duck into. It was at this unpleasant juncture that his phone rang. He leaned down to stare at the call display, which read: SECURICOM TECHSERVE .
    Okay
.
    Not good
.
    But not the cops
.
    Bock reached out, picked up the receiver, swallowed hard, and said, “Bock