Teddy took a step closer. “What do you mean, Maybe not?” he said.
Cal felt his neck tense up. He didn’t move from Houston to take on this type of thing, he had left precisely to avoid it. Four years as a young cop in the city burnt him out. His nerves weren’t built for it, nor was his bleeding heart, and it eventually became clear that it was either move and start over in a place less stressful or find a new line of work. He was capable—his chief had told him that much—but the drinking, Cal, the drinking had become too much, and then the situation with the mother and that kid and the father. Everyone knew the next morning what Cal had done to that man, and quietly loved him for it, though they all said it was bad form. The chief even set him up with the sheriff’s position on the very morning he was forced to suspend him. It was in a place called Claypot, Wisconsin, population 1,999, county seat of Marigamie County, a sprawling, forested county, sparsely populated. Cal’s chief said it was the kind of place a cop could spend the rest of his days drinking coffee with his dog, painting up a cabin on a lake, dragging the occasional drunk out of a country bar if things got too stale. Cal immediately rejected the idea—he’d have to run for the position anyway—but the chief assured him that he knew some folks, had a cousin up there on a town board, said the last sheriff died two weeks earlier, sitting in a chair. A place like Claypot would gladly take him on as interim until an election took place. Don’t miss the opportunity, his chief said. It was now or nothing. Cal stood on the old carpet in front of the chief’s desk, rubbing the scab where he’d split the skin on that kid’s father’s jaw. He tried to picture his hand holding a paintbrush, a snow shovel, a match in a fireplace. Cal had never been north of Missouri. Never been in the woods either, except for Boy Scouts, which he wouldn’t have joined had his father not shamed him into it. He’d never had a dog, although he used to want one as a kid. The reality was, his chief reminded him, that as of the altercation with that kid’s father, Cal’s options in Houston or Dallas or anywhere else in God’s Own Country were gone. He’d do his best to avoid a paperwork trail, but word gets around, and no department wants to take on a young cop who beats up parolees in his free time. This was a chance to start again, brand new.
Teddy eyeballed him, made himself larger. “I said, what do you mean, Maybe not?”
Cal remembered himself. “Because, Ted, those boys are—”
“Sheriff Cal, Dispatch. Do you copy the call? Mrs. Meyers said she—”
Cal lifted the radio to his mouth but Teddy stepped forward and swatted it away. He was an old man, but not a small man, and Cal knew he still unloaded hay wagons by himself when his grandson wasn’t around.
“Never mind that damn call about Burt’s place,” said Teddy. “I stopped at Burt’s on the way over here to ask if he’s seen Fischer.” He shook his head in frustration. “All he’s been shooting at are coyotes in his field. Now say what you were saying about the boys.”
Cal backed one step away from the older man and raised his radio to his mouth. Teddy Branson had fear in his eyes, and anger too. Cal considered Teddy a friend in this town, but Cal also knew better than to stand too close to anger, his own or anyone else’s. And he didn’t appreciate having his radio nearly cuffed from his hand. He was sheriff, after all, even if he was young, even if he always felt like a fake. He took a metered breath.
“I copy the call,” he said, and added, “It’s just Burt, shooting coyotes.”
“Dispatch copies. Oh, and Bobby wants you to know he’ll be right there for the ambulance call once he gets out of the bathroom.” Bobby was the county constable, the closest thing Cal had to a deputy. Bobby was a seventy-year-old, plump retiree with bad knees. He could be found most often sitting at Dispatch, a package of cookies and a blanket on his lap. Cal liked him well enough, when he stayed put. The last time he accompanied Cal on a lost person call, it took Cal an hour and a half to help Bobby back up a hill to his car.
“That’s a negative, Dispatch. I repeat, that is a negative.” Cal paused a moment. “Tell Bobby to stay where he is. Please. I’ll call if I need him.”
Cal turned the radio off. “What I was saying, Ted, is that those boys might be in bad trouble.”
“Why?”
“Because Bread’s dad was headshot.”
Cal was deliberate in using the word was. It implied a shooter other than the victim. He saw Teddy swallow, and knew his point wasn’t lost on the man.
Teddy frowned, annoyed. “Jack probably did it to his damn self,” he said, as hopefully as a person can say that sort of thing. “He messed with that gun when he was drunk.”
The sheriff shook his head.
Teddy waited.
“There ain’t a gun here, Ted,” said the sheriff. “If he shot himself, there’d be a gun.”
A bat attached itself to the window screen, rattled its wings, and dropped away. Both men looked out at the square of darkness, standing still in the quiet kitchen, blood still soaking along the lines of linoleum, the smell of lilacs in the air.
“We gotta find them boys,” said Teddy. “Right now.”
The sheriff nodded. “That’s why I called you,” he said, and then looked at the floor and then back into Teddy’s eyes. “I need help.”
FIVE MILES AWAY IN TEDDY’S BACK FIELD, BREAD AND FISH LEANED
