The Witness

like the topography. I like the quiet.”
    “You don’t get lonely out there?”
    “I like the quiet,” she repeated, and took her change.
    Brooks leaned on the counter. She was nervous, he noted. It didn’t show, not on her face, her eyes, her body language. But he could feel it. “What do you do out there?”
    “Live. Thank you,” she said to the clerk when he’d loaded the market bag she’d brought with her.
    “You’re welcome, Ms. Lowery. See you next time.”
    She shouldered the market bag, slipped her sunglasses back on, and walked out without another word.
    “Not much for conversation, is she?” Brooks commented.
    “Nope. Always real polite, but she doesn’t say much.”
    “Does she always pay in cash?”
    “Ah … I guess so, now that you mention it.”
    “Well. You take care now.”
    Brooks chewed it over as he walked to his car. Lack of conversational skills or inclination was one thing. But the sidearm added an element.
    Plenty of people he knew had guns, but there weren’t many of them who hid them under a hoodie to go out to buy raspberry vinegar.
    It seemed like he finally had an excuse to take a drive out to her place.
    He stopped in at the station first. He commanded three full-time deputies on revolving shifts, two part-time, a full-time and a part-time dispatcher. Come summer, when the heat moved in like hell’s breath, he’d put the part-timers on full-time to help handle the tempers, the vandalism that came with boredom, and the tourists who paid more attention to the views than the road.
    “Ty’s being a pain in the ass.” Ash Hyderman, his youngest deputy, sulked at his desk. Over the winter he’d tried growing a goatee without much luck, but hadn’t quite given it up.
    He looked like he’d smudged his top lip and chin with butterscotch frosting.
    “I got him breakfast like you said to do. He stinks like a cheap whore.”
    “How do you know how a cheap whore smells, Ash?”
    “I got imagination. I’m going home, okay, Brooks? I pulled the night shift since we had that stinking Ty back in the pen. And that damn cot about breaks your back.”
    “I need to take a run. Boyd’s due in about now. He can take over. Alma’s due in, too. We’re covered as soon as they get here.”
    “Where you going? You need backup?”
    Brooks thought Ash would like nothing better than if they’d had some gang of desperados scream into town, blasting at everything. Just so he could be backup.
    “I just want to check something out. Won’t be long. I’m on the radio if anything comes in. Tell Boyd to try to talk some sense into Missywhen she comes crying how Ty never touched her. It won’t work, but he should try.”
    “The thing is, Brooks, I think she must like it.”
    “Nobody likes a fist in the face, Ash. But it can get to be a habit. On both sides. I’m on the radio,” he repeated, and left.
    A BIGAIL STRUGGLED WITH NERVES , with temper, with the sheer irritation at having a task she particularly enjoyed spoiled by a nosy police chief with nothing better to do than harass her.
    She’d moved to this pretty corner of the Ozarks precisely because she wanted no neighbors, no people, no interruptions to whatever routine she set for herself.
    She drove down the winding up-and-down private road to her house in the woods. It had taken weeks to devise a blueprint for sensors, ones that wouldn’t go off if some rabbit or squirrel approached the house. More time to install them and the cameras, to test them.
    But it had been worth it. She loved this house of rough-hewn logs and covered porches. The first time she’d seen it she thought of it as both fairy tale and home.
    A mistake, she knew. She’d weaned herself off attachments, but she’d fallen for this spot. So wonderfully quiet she could hear the creek bubble and sing. So private and secluded, with its deep woods. And secure.
    She’d seen to the security herself, and she trusted no one else.
    Well, she thought, as she stopped the car. Except Bert.
    The big dog sat on the covered front porch of the two-story cabin. Body alert, eyes bright. When she got out of the car, she signaled release. He bounded to her, all hundred and thirty pounds of him wriggling in joy.
    “There’s my good boy. Best dog in the world. So smart. Just so smart.” She gave him a brisk rub before retrieving her market bag. “You wouldn’t believe the morning I had.”
    She took out her keys as they walked to the house together on the narrow