Just after sundown that day, Cam sat in an old rocking chair in the shadows of Kenny Cox’s front porch. It had cooled off considerably, and he was wearing jeans, a red flannel shirt, his black mountain man hat, and a bulky hunting jacket. He’d driven the old Merc, not willing to let anyone who knew him see him in his new truck quite yet. And his Mercedes was known. He’d passed a Sheriff’s Office cruiser set up as a radar trap while leaving Triboro, and the deputy had waved at him. Just for the hell of it, he’d deliberately misspelled his name on the new truck’s registration papers, hoping to evade the web of curious computers.
He’d brought along his favorite sidearm from his small collection, a replica single-action army Colt. 45. He knew that a single-action revolver would not be very useful in most tactical police situations, but he’d been taught to shoot at a Marine Corps school, which stressed the efficacy of wellaimed fire over the fire-hose approach. Having to pull back the hammer for each shot forced the shooter to slow down and take careful aim. The only things it required when some hopped-up bad guy was shooting at you were a steady hand and unblinking courage. Right now, the big Colt made a heavy, comforting lump in one of the coat’s roomy pockets.
He’d parked the car right where Kenny usually parked his own pickup truck-on the circular gravel drive in front of the house. He wanted to talk to Kenny, not surprise him. There was a sliver of a moon out, and silvery gray clouds were blowing across it in the night sky. The farm consisted of almost fifty acres, most of it bottomland along the banks of the Deep River. The two-story farmhouse was on a small knoll at the back of the property, surrounded by aging oaks and within earshot of the river when it was up and running. Kenny maintained the yard around the house, but the fields and fences had long ago reverted to nature. He could just make out the silhouette of an ancient tractor that was turning into a pillar of rust out in one of the fields.
The house itself was set back nearly a thousand feet from the county road, which gave Cam plenty of warning when Kenny finally pulled into the driveway. The truck’s high beams fully illuminated him on the porch for about five seconds before they were turned off. Kenny got out, closed the door, and came up the porch steps. He was in uniform.
“You didn’t tell me about all the meetings,” he said, stopping on the top step.
“Bureaucratic popularity,” Cam said. “Comes with the private cube and all that extra money.”
Kenny sighed. “You want a drink?”
Cam stood up and followed Kenny inside the house. They went straight back to the kitchen, where Kenny turned on some lights and retrieved a bottle of single malt. He poured them each a measure, handed one glass to Cam, and then hooked a chair out from under the kitchen table. Cam sat down and put his hat on the spare chair.
“One day and you already look different,” Kenny said.
“So do you. Congratulations on the promotion.”
“Very temporary,” Kenny said. “I hope.”
“Maybe not,” Cam said. They both drank some whiskey and stared off into the middle distance. Cam thought Kenny looked tired.
“About the other night,” Cam began, but Kenny waved him off.
“I was out of line,” he said. “You’d just been kicked in the teeth. I had no business being there, or bringing up that… other stuff.” He looked over at Cam. Even sitting at the table, he was still big enough that he had to look down to make eye contact.
Cam nodded for a moment, not trusting himself to speak without saying something stupid. “What’s the word on the bombing?” he asked.
“Can’t say,” Kenny replied. Cam raised his eyebrows.
“Sheriff told me you were on LOA,” Kenny explained. “One of the conditions of my taking over was that I wasn’t to tell you anything about anything.”
“What else did Bobby Lee tell you?”
“That if I did talk to you, it probably wouldn’t be a big problem, on account of the fact you’d be leaving town directly.”
“He say that?” Cam asked, trying not to show his surprise.
“What’s that you got in your jacket pocket there?” Kenny asked.
“Peacemaker,” Cam replied. “Replica.”
Kenny snorted. “Why bother?” he asked. “Single-action revolver-that’s useless.”
Cam shrugged, and in the process he palmed the revolver into his right hand and brought it up. Kenny stiffened when the gun appeared. Cam pretended to admire the heavy weapon. “Bobby Lee said I had to hand over all of my Sheriff’s Office gear,” he said. “But then he made sure I owned some personal weapons. I took that as a hint. So this is what I carry these days. I can still group pretty good at fifty feet.” He turned the gun over, half-cocked it, and spun the cylinder. He was careful not to point it at Kenny, whose empty hand was no longer visible, he noticed. Cop instincts. He let down the hammer on the one empty cylinder and slid the gun back into his jacket pocket. By then, both of Kenny’s hands were back on the table, and they sipped some more whiskey.
“So what are you going to do?” Kenny asked.
Cam shrugged again. “Don’t know yet,” he said. “Part of me wants to go digging around in this bombing case, but I know that would just piss everybody off.”
“Feds would grab your ass up for interfering,” Kenny said. “Especially the ATF broomhilda they have on this case.”
“Yeah, I do know that. I may just take that trip everyone keeps talking about.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Kenny said. “Remove yourself from temptation.”
“It’s hard, though,” Cam said. “So much unfinished business.”
“That’s our problem now,” Kenny said, finishing his scotch. “I think all we have to do is find Marlor, and then this whole mess-that chair, the bombing-will unwind for us.”
Cam nodded. “About that other theory,” he began. Kenny didn’t shut him off this time.
“One guy couldn’t pull all this off,” Cam said. “So it would have to be a small cell, people who trusted one another implicitly. I’m talking experienced people. Veteran cops.”