"Which one?" he asked, remembering the earful he had just gotten from Betty Reynolds, who owned the five-and-dime downtown.
"Cleaners," she said. "Old man Burgess accidentally set it off."
Jeffrey wondered at Maria, who was well into her seventies, calling Bill Burgess an old man, but he let that slide. He asked, "Anything else?"
"There was something at the diner Brad called in, but they didn't find anything."
"What'd he call in?"
"Just said he thought he saw something, is all. You know how Brad is, calls in his own shadow." She gave a small chuckle. Brad was somewhat of a mascot around the station house, a twenty-one-year-old man whose round face and wispy blond hair made him look more like a boy. It was a joke among the senior squad to steal Brad's hat and hide it around various landmarks in town. Jeffrey had seen it resting on top of the statue of General Lee in front of the high school just last week.
Jeffrey thought of Sara. "Frank is in charge tonight. Don't page me unless someone's dead."
"Two birds with one stone," Maria chuckled again. "The coroner and the chief in one call."
He tried to remind himself that he had moved from Birmingham to Grant because he wanted to be in a small town where everyone knew their neighbor. Everyone knowing his own personal business was one of the few tradeoffs. Jeffrey was about to say something innocuous to Maria, but stopped when he heard a loud shriek from the parking lot.
He leaned around the corner to take a look just as a girl's voice yelled, "Fuck you, you fucking bastard."
Maria said, "Chief?"
"Hold on," he whispered, feeling his gut clench at the anger in the girl's voice. He knew from experience that a ticked-off young girl was the worst thing to have to deal with in a parking lot on a Saturday night. Boys he could handle, it was all a pissing contest and, for the most part, any young man wanted to be stopped from getting into an actual fight. Young girls tended to take a lot to get riled up and a hell of a lot more to get calmed back down. An angry teenage girl was something to fear, especially when she had a gun in her hand.
"I'm going to kill you, you fucking bastard," she yelled at one of the boys. His friends quickly peeled off into a semicircle, and the young man stood alone, the gun pointed at his chest. The girl was no more than four feet away from her target, and as Jeffrey watched, she took a step closer, narrowing the gap.
"Shit," Jeffrey hissed, then, remembering he had the phone in his hand, he ordered, "Get Frank and Matt over to Skatie's right now."
"They're over in Madison."
" Lena and Brad, then," he said. "Silent approach. There's a girl with a gun in the front parking lot."
Jeffrey slipped the phone back into its cradle, feeling his body tense. His throat was tight, and his carotid artery felt like a pulsating snake inside his throat. A thousand things went through his mind in the course of a few seconds, but he pushed these thoughts away as he took off his suit jacket and slid his paddle holster behind his back. Jeffrey held his arms out to the side as he walked into the parking lot. The young girl glanced his way as he came into her line of sight, but she still kept the gun leveled at the boy. The muzzle was pointing down toward the boy's gut and as Jeffrey drew closer he could see that her hand was shaking. Thankfully, her finger was not yet tucked around the trigger.
Jeffrey positioned himself so that he was parallel to the building. The girl's back was to the rink, the parking lot and highway in front of her. He hoped that Lena had the sense to make Brad come in from the side of the building. There was no telling what the girl would do if she felt crowded. One stupid mistake could end up killing a lot of people.
When Jeffrey was about twenty feet from the scene, he said, "Hey," loudly enough to get everyone's attention.
The girl startled, even though she had noticed his approach. Her finger slipped around the trigger. The weapon was a Beretta.32, a so-called mousegun, which was certainly not a man-stopper but could do plenty of damage up close. She had eight chances to kill somebody with that gun. If she was a good shot, and even a monkey would be at such close range, she was holding eight lives in the palm of her hand.
"Y'all get back," Jeffrey told the young men standing around. There was some hesitation before this sunk in, and the group finally moved toward the front of the parking lot. The smell of pot was pungent even at this distance, and Jeffrey could tell from the way the intended victim was swaying that he had smoked a great deal before the girl had surprised him.
"Go away," the girl ordered Jeffrey. She was dressed in black, the sleeves of her T-shirt pushed up past her elbows, probably to fight the heat. She was barely a teenager, and her voice was soft, but she managed to project it well.
She repeated her order. "I said go away."
Jeffrey stood his ground, and she turned her gaze back to the boy and said, "I'm gonna kill him."
Jeffrey held his hands out, asking, "Why?"
She seemed surprised by his question, which was why he had asked it. People with guns don't tend to do a lot of thinking when they're holding them. The nose of the gun tilted down slightly as she addressed Jeffrey.
"To stop him," she said.
"Stop him from what?"
She seemed to mull this over in her mind. "That's nobody's business."
"No?" Jeffrey asked, taking a step closer, then another. He stopped at around fifteen feet from the girl, close enough to see what was going on, but not enough to threaten her.
"No, sir," the girl answered, and her good manners put him a little more at ease. Girls who said "sir" did not shoot people.
"Listen," Jeffrey began, trying to think of something to say. "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes, sir," she answered. "You're Chief Tolliver."
"That's right," he told her. "What do I call you? What's your name?"
She ignored the question, but the boy stirred, as if his pot-altered brain had just clicked in to what was going on. He said, "Jenny. It's Jenny."
"Jenny?" Jeffrey asked her. "That's a pretty name."
"Yeah, w-well," Jenny stammered, obviously taken aback. She recovered quickly, though, saying, "Please just be quiet. I don't want to talk to you."
"Maybe you do," Jeffrey said. "Seems to me like you've got a lot on your mind here."
She seemed to debate this, then raised the gun back to the boy's chest. Her hand still shook. "Go away or I'll kill him."
"With that gun?" Jeffrey asked. "Do you know what it's like to kill someone with a gun? Do you know what that feels like?" He watched her digest this, knowing immediately that she did not have it in her.
Jenny was a large girl, probably fifty pounds overweight. Dressed totally in black, she had the appearance of one of those girls who blends in with the scenery as a way of life. The boy she was aiming the gun at was a good-looking kid, probably the object of an unrequited crush. In Jeffrey's day, she would have left a nasty note in his locker. Today, she was pointing a gun.
"Jenny," Jeffrey began, wondering if the gun was even loaded. "Let's work this out. This guy's not worth getting into trouble over."
"Go away," Jenny repeated, though her voice was not as firm. She used her free hand to wipe her face. He realized that she was crying.
"Jenny, I don't think-" He stopped as she disengaged the safety. The metallic click was like a knife in his ear. He reached around to his back, putting his hand on his weapon but not drawing.
Jeffrey tried to keep his voice calm and reasonable. "What's happening here, Jenny? Why don't we talk this through? It can't be that bad."
She wiped her face again. "Yes, sir," she said. "It is."
Her voice was so cold that Jeffrey felt a chill on his neck. He suppressed a shiver as he slid his gun out of its holster. Jeffrey hated guns because, as a cop, he saw what kind of damage they could do. Carrying one was something he did because he had to, not because he wanted to. In his twenty years on the police force, Jeffrey had drawn his weapon on a suspect only a handful of times. Of those times, he had fired it twice, but never directly at a human being.