“I was elected to enforce the law, not make the law, Roger,” Irv yells into the phone. “You talk to the state legislature if you want to know where laws come from. They will surely give you a guided tour of their own assholes. There’s always room in there for one more. Meanwhile, I cannot, will not, and don’t even want to talk about the Simmons case, which isn’t even a case anymore, as the judgment came in months ago. And I would like to remind you that the death of Jeffrey Simmons took place on the other side of an invisible jurisdictional line that the American people, in their infinite wisdom, have established, thereby turning what looks like one place into two places, so they can have someone else in charge over there who isn’t me. So go back to your rock, Roger!”
“But there’s a family connection between the Simmons case and Lydia Jones case, Sheriff. And the Jones’ case is in your jurisdiction. So what happened over there might have had an influence on what happened over here. There’s got to be a link.”
“Not a legal one.”
“Surely you’ve got an opinion, Sheriff?”
“Police work, Roger, is not a matter of opinion. In the name of the good Lord Jesus Christ, if I ran an investigation on the basis of opinion and ideology and not facts I’d be breaking the Ninth Commandment—God’s law itself—by, de facto, bearing false witness against my neighbor—or, more accurately—by bearing witness against my neighbor that I could not, in all good consciousness, swear was not false because I don’t have the facts. Do you see my point? What I’m saying is that I cannot be a good Christian and swear on His name without data. Science is not antithetical to the Christian spirit, Roger. It is the means by which we enact the justice that God has commanded of us to perform unto our fellow man. Why am I the only one who gets this? I remind you that I ran on a platform of ‘excellence through knowledge’ and I’m six years into repeating myself and if I wanted to be repeating myself ten times a day I’d still be married. Why do you keep calling me? Are you lonely?”
Irv pours the packet of sugar into his coffee, not dropping a grain to the ground.
“I got papers on the left side of my desk, Roger, that have to be moved all the way over to the right side. You think they’re gonna get up and move themselves? I’m busy here. Go do your Hunter Thompson thing someplace else.”
Irving hangs up.
He shouts his views to Melinda and Cory in the next room.
“You know why they want opinions? Because it’s cheaper and easier than finding the facts. Whatever happened to the days of Bartles and Jaymes or whoever the hell took down Nixon?”
Irving looks up from his coffee mug—World’s Most Average Dad—and finds he is alone in the office.
“Where the hell is everyone?” he mutters under his breath.
“WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE,” he shouts at the top of his lungs.
Cory Liddell pops his head into the main station room from the adjoining waiting room—christened the Green Room on account of people there waiting to “join the show”—and explains that everyone is in there.
“Well . . . why? It’s past eight. We’re supposed to be . . . working.”
Cory says it’s James’s birthday today so they were having ice cream cake, which is why everyone is in the other room.
“At eight in the morning?”
Cory says the freezer is on the fritz again so they have to eat it now.
“Well . . . that’s perfectly reasonable then,” Irving said. “Just remember, you’re all on duty. And you’re getting fat. I don’t like fat cops. Nothing more pathetic than a fat, wheezing cop trotting down a road after a perp, holding his belt up. There’s a video series on the internet now of all kinds of hoodlums filming the fat cops who are chasing them. Wheezing and puffing and turning bright red. At least the black cops don’t turn red. Still fat, though. God I hate seeing that. I can run a ten-K in fifty-two minutes and I’m forty-eight years old.”
Irving Wylie checks the local news, the state news, the national news, and they are all talking about a black man with a foreign-sounding name who may soon be elected president of the United States in November. Irving is a big John McCain supporter, and considers the senator—much like himself—among the last of the Real Republicans, but when McCain chose that reason-impaired bimbo from Alaska to be his running mate even Irv had to get off the GOP elevator. That doesn’t mean Irv is ready to jump ship and become a Democrat—because really, what is a Democrat?—but it does mean he can pretend it’s all not happening right up until the excruciating and bitter end, and by then, hopefully, the election will be a fait accompli and his vote won’t matter anyway.
McCain, though, is getting pudgy too, and he hates to think of Palin being one cholesterol-saturated heartbeat away from the presidency. The good news, he figures, is that elections couldn’t possibly get any weirder than this one.
The sheriff’s station—at Irving’s instruction—has a bell over the door so that people who come inside will be announced and feel like welcomed customers. Most find it disconcerting but he’s holding on to it. This morning when the bell rings, Irving looks across his coffee mug and watches a middle-aged, slightly disheveled, semi-OK-looking blonde walk in wearing aviators and carrying a motorcyclist’s messenger bag and a guitar case; all of which is incongruous enough to be suspicious.
The woman scans the police station like the Terminator, locks on to
