The Witness

Maybe dead.”
    “No.”
    “They know I’m in here with you, that I’ll fire on anyone who tries coming in the door.” As long as he could hold a weapon. “But they know I’m hit.” He gripped her wrist with his left hand. “It’s bad, Liz.”
    “You’ll be all right.” But she couldn’t stop the blood. Already her shirt was soaked through, and it just kept pouring out of him, flooding like the rain. “We’ll call for help.”
    “Lost the phone. Keegan, he’s got connections—in the service, he’s connected. He’s moved up fast. Don’t know who else might be in it. Can’t know. Not safe, kid. Not safe.”
    “You have to lie still. I have to stop the bleeding.” Pressure, she told herself. More pressure.
    “They should have rushed me. Planning something else. Not safe. Listen. Listen.” His fingers dug into her wrist. “Gotta get out. Out the window. Climb down, jump down. But get out. You run. You hide.”
    “I’m not leaving you.”
    “You’re going. Get your money. Can’t trust the cops, not now. More in it. Have to be. Get your money, what you need. Fast. God damn it. Move!”
    She did it to keep him calm. But she wouldn’t leave him.
    She stuffed the money in a bag, a few items of clothing at random, her laptop.
    “There. Don’t worry,” she said. “Someone will come.”
    “No, they won’t. I’m gut shot, Liz, lost too much blood. I’m not going to make it. I can’t protect you. You have to run. Get my secondary weapon—ankle holster. Take it. If one of them sees you, comes after you, use it.”
    “Don’t ask me to leave you. Please, please.” She pressed her face to his. He was so cold. Too cold.
    “Not asking. Telling. My job. Don’t make me a failure. Go. Go now.”
    “I’ll get help.”
    “Run. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Out the window. Now.”
    He waited for her to reach it. “Count to three,” he ordered as he crawled for the door. “Then go. I’ll keep them off you.”
    “John.”
    “Make me proud, Liz. Count.”
    She counted, slid out. She gripped the gutter as rain lashed against her face. She didn’t know if it would hold her, didn’t think it mattered. Then she heard the volley of gunfire, and shimmied down like a monkey.
    Get help, she told herself, and began to run.
    She was less than fifty yards away when the house exploded behind her.

 
    This above all—to thine own self be true.
    And it must follow, as the night the day.
    Thou canst not then be false to any man.
    W ILLIAM S HAKESPEARE

7
     
    Arkansas, 2012
    S OMETIMES BEING THE CHIEF OF POLICE IN A LITTLE TOWN tucked into the Ozarks like a sleepy cat in the crook of an elbow just sucked right out loud.
    As a for instance, arresting a guy you played ball with in high school because he grew up to be an asshole. Though Brooks considered being an asshole a God-given right rather than a criminal offense, Tybal Crew was currently sleeping off several more than one too many shots of Rebel Yell.
    Brooks considered overindulging in whiskey, on occasion, another God-given right. But when that indulgence invariably caused a man to stumble home and give his wife a couple of good, solid pops in the face, it crossed the line to criminal offense.
    And it sucked. Out loud.
    And it sucked louder yet as sure as daisies bloomed in the spring,Missy Crew—former co-captain of the Bickford Senior High School cheerleading squad—would rush into the station before noon, claiming Ty hadn’t clocked her, oh no. She’d run into a door, a wall, tripped on the stairs.
    No amount of talk, sympathy, annoyance, charm, threats would persuade her—or him—they needed some help. They’d kiss and make up as if Ty had been off to war for a year, likely go home and fuck like rabid minks.
    In a week or two, Ty would get his hands on another bottle of Rebel Yell, and they’d all go around again.
    Brooks sat in his preferred booth at Lindy’s Café and Emporium, stewing over the situation as he ate breakfast.
    Nobody fried up eggs and bacon and home fries like Lindy, but the fat and grease and crunch just didn’t cheer Brooks up.
    He’d come back to Bickford six months before to take on the job as chief after his father’s heart attack. Loren Gleason—who’d tried to teach Ty Crew and just about every other high-schooler the mysteries of algebra—bounced back. And with the nutrition and exercise regimen Brooks’s mother had put the poor guy on, he was healthier than he’d likely been in his life.
    But