The Leftovers

come in here some morning and find me keeled over on my desk, just wipe the crumbs off my face before the ambulance comes.”
    “Sure,” Kevin said. “You want me to comb your hair, too?”
    “It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left.”
    Kevin nodded, letting his silence mark the transition to official business. If you weren’t careful, small talk with Ed Rogers could last all morning.
    “Any trouble last night?”
    “Not much. One DUI, one domestic, a pack of stray dogs on Willow Road. The usual crap.”
    “What was the domestic?”
    “Roy Grandy threatened his wife again. He spent the night in the holding cell.”
    “Figures.” Kevin shook his head. Grandy’s wife had gotten an order of protection over the summer, but she’d allowed it to lapse. “What are you gonna do?”
    “Not much. By the time we got there, the wife was claiming it was all a big misunderstanding. We’re gonna have to turn him loose.”
    “Anything new on the Falzone thing?”
    “Nah.” The Chief looked exasperated. “Same old story. Nobody knows anything.”
    “Well, let’s keep digging.”
    “It’s blood from a stone, Kevin. You can’t get information from people who won’t talk. They’re gonna have to realize this is a two-way street. If they want us to protect them, they’re gonna have to play ball.”
    “I know. I’m just worried about my wife. In case there’s some kinda nut out there.”
    “I hear you.” The Chief’s somber expression turned sly. “Though I gotta tell you, if my wife took a vow of silence, I’d support her a hundred and ten percent.”
    *   *   *
    THREE WEEKS had passed since the body of a murdered Watcher had been found near the Monument to the Departed in Greenway Park. Since then, aside from conducting routine ballistics tests and identifying the victim—he was Jason Falzone, twenty-three, a former barista from Stonewood Heights—the police had made very little progress with the investigation. A door-to-door canvas of the neighborhood bordering the park had failed to locate a single witness who’d seen or heard anything suspicious. It wasn’t all that surprising: Falzone had been killed after midnight, in a deserted area several hundred yards from the nearest house. Only one shot had been fired from close range, a single bullet in the back of the head.
    The investigators had also been stymied in their efforts to locate the victim’s partner, or interview anyone within the G.R. itself, which refused, on principle, to cooperate with the police or any other government agency. After a contentious negotiation, Patti Levin, the Mapleton Chapter’s Director and spokesperson, had agreed “as a courtesy” to respond in writing to a series of questions, but the information she provided led absolutely nowhere. The detectives were especially skeptical about her insistence that Falzone was alone on the night of the murder, since it was common knowledge that the Watchers traveled in pairs.
    We don’t always have an even number of personnel on duty, she wrote. Simple math dictates that some of our people will have to work independently.
    Offended by what they saw as stonewalling, not to mention Levin’s condescending tone, some members of the investigation team had raised the possibility of using more aggressive measures—subpoenas, search warrants, etc.—but Kevin had convinced them to hold off. One of his priorities as Mayor was to dial down the tension between the town and the Guilty Remnant; you didn’t do that by sending a group of heavily armed officers into the compound on a vague mission to round up potential witnesses, not after what had happened the last time.
    As the days went by without an arrest, Kevin expected the police to come under fire from frightened residents—murders were exceedingly rare in Mapleton, and unsolved, apparently random ones were unheard-of—but the outcry never materialized. Not only that—if the letters to the local paper were any indication, a fair number of citizens believed that Jason Falzone had gotten more or less what he deserved. I’m not trying to justify what happened, one writer declared, but troublemakers who deliberately and repeatedly make nuisances of themselves shouldn’t be surprised if they provoke a reaction. Other commentators were more blunt: It’s long past time to expel the G.R. from Mapleton. If the police won’t do it, someone else will. Even the