'You could try charming me,' I said.
'Would that work?'
'No, but I wouldn't have to punch you in the balls.'
He rocked his spring-loaded swivel a little.
'Nobody wants this opened up,' he said after a while. 'The kids' parents, the school, the kids themselves.'
He looked at me heavily for a minute.
'I don't. Town doesn't. We want to wrap it up neat and put it away and get on with it.'
'How 'bout the people who lost someone in the shooting?' I said.
'They want it over. They know we got the bastards. They want to see them fry, and they want to move on as best they can. Nobody wants you opening up all the fucking wounds again.'
'They won't fry in this state,' I said.
'I know, just a manner of speaking,' he said. 'Been simpler if we'd shot them dead on the spot.'
'That would have required you all to actually go on in there and maybe interrupt things,' I said.
Cromwell nodded slowly. All of the General Patton crap seemed to have drained from him. He seemed gray and tired, almost human.
'I know,' he said. 'I know.'
'You didn't know what to do,' I said, 'did you.'
He shook his head.
'We're a small town,' he said. 'Upper-class. Quiet. We never ran into this sort of thing. Most of my guys never fired their weapons except on the range.'
'You?' I said.
He looked at the big six-gun on the corner of his desk as if he'd never seen it before.
'No,' he said.
'Hard to learn on the job like that,' I said. 'Most people aren't ready the first time.'
'God, I hope there's no second time,' he said.
'There'll be something,' I said. 'Sometime. And you'll be more ready.'
'You're not going to leave this alone,' Cromwell said.
'No,' I said. 'I'm not. Either of these kids got a history with you?'
'I don't give out juvie files,' he said.
'I'm not looking for files. Just information. You and me. Alone in the room. Either of them been in trouble you know about?'
'We talked to the Grant kid couple times,' Cromwell said.
He was looking past my left shoulder, out an office window, at the nice, neat stretch of lawn in front of the station. Orderly.
'He was shooting cats with a pellet gun,' Cromwell said slowly. 'Strays mostly, but he got a coupla pets and the owners complained and we brought him in and talked with him and his mother. He was maybe thirteen.'
He shook his head.
'I've met his mother,' I said.
'She just sort of said the hell with him. Like he's some sort of aberration. It's not my fault.'
'Talk to his grandfather?' I said.
'They begged us not to. Both of them. I felt bad for the kid, tell you the truth. His mother's just a waste of time.'
'The last hippie,' I said.
'Yeah,' Cromwell said. 'So we confiscated the pellet gun and told him he was on probation and we were giving him a break, so if he got in any more trouble, we'd go hard on him.'
'Did he?'
'Nothing official. I heard he hung out at the Rocks with the burnouts and freaks. But we never had any reason to bring him in again.'
'What'd you do with the pellet gun?' I said.
'Give it to my sister's kid, lives outside Stockbridge.'
'And he probably uses it to shoot cats,' I said.
Cromwell shrugged.
'Maybe,' he said. 'But he's not doing it here.'
