Alan Vance was only twenty-nine years old, but he remembered the soda fountain, and he thought it was a damn shame old Bernard Mackeson had done away with it when he bought the store. He missed it.
Other than that, however, downtown Buckton looked as it had when Alan was a boy. Some of the storefronts had been freshened up, of course, and new signs added, but Alan never felt very far away from his youth when he walked along Pine Hil Road. Pine Hil - which did not become a hil until a half mile or so west of downtown - was the main street, but he'd always appreciated the fact that it was not called Main Street. It added character.
Most days, Alan walked through downtown with his chin up. Little Alan Nelson Vance had grown up to be Deputy Vance, and he was proud of it. The uniform felt right on him, the heavy leather belt and holster sat just so on his hip. As a kid, he had never been the best hitter in the bal park, or the last one standing at the Vermont State Spel ing Bee, but while a lot of his peers had been in a rush to leave Buckton, Alan had never wanted to live anywhere else. Even the time he had spent in col ege was too long away from his hometown.
His town.
Sheriff John Tackett was a good man, but he was also an old curmudgeon. Not that his being old was an excuse for his being cranky. Tackett had been sheriff for going on thirty years, and Alan had the idea he had been just as crotchety when he first got the job.
Someday Alan would have that job. Then it real y would be his town. For the most part, he had always been satisfied to wait until that day came. It had been enough to wear the uniform and to patrol the streets of Buckton with the good wil of the townspeople on his side.
Now, though, as he strol ed past the Jukebox Restaurant, where he'd taken Carrie Dietrich on their first date back in the sixth grade, and Travis Drug, where he had bought comic books every week right up until he left for col ege, Alan no longer felt as if he had the townspeople on his side. Nancy McCabe caught his eye from just inside the Jukebox. She looked sweet in her waitress uniform, and normal y she would have smiled and waved to him.
Today, she frowned and glanced away.
A few cars were on the road, but no one honked and slowed down to shoot the breeze with him. On the front step of Travis Drug Aaron Travis and Kenny Oberst sat in beach chairs, just old men soaking up the warm July sun, enjoying the breeze and the heat. Any other day Kenny would have glanced up and grunted the word deputy by way of greeting.
Not today.
Alan hitched his heavy belt up a little higher, set his back a little straighter, but his chin was not quite so high and his gaze was not quite so curious now, nor so friendly. He passed by the gorgeous faÆade of the Empire Theatre, and the smel of fresh popcorn wafted out the open front doors. For a moment he was tempted to go inside. Sitting in the dark with a bucket of popcorn would be running away, Alan knew that. But he thought in that moment that if the movie were good, if it distracted him enough, maybe he could forget how cowardly an act that would be.
"Damn it," he muttered under his breath, and his pace quickened as he kept going right past the Empire.
With a quick glance in either direction, Alan strode across the street. On the far corner of the intersection of Pine Hil and the Post Road sat the Paperback Diner. These days it would have been more accurate to cal it a cafÈ, but the owner, Trish Scharnhorst, had always loved the place when she was growing up, and had kept it, name and al , just the way it was when she bought it.
The front door was open - flies or not - and Alan walked in with his hands in his pockets. He was far more subdued than usual, but so was the Paperback. Trish was nowhere to be seen.
Old Burt Johnston was behind the counter, and the new girl, whose name he could never remember 'cause she wasn't local, was taking orders from the tables. There were maybe a dozen people in the place, al told. Burt was the only one who greeted him, and it wasn't with hel o.
The old man raised a hand, more of a salute than a wave. "Alan. Anything?"
"Working on it, Burt," the deputy replied, hating the helpless, useless taste of the words on his lips.
The Paperback Diner was unique in Alan's experience. It had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and brunch on Sundays, and it had the best coffee in town, but it also had books. On shelves built around the wide windows and along the back wal , there were hundreds of paperback books, al of which were available to customers. If al one wanted was a cup of coffee and a good book, that was more than acceptable, it was encouraged. The books could be taken home, as long as they were brought back eventual y.
When Alan surveyed the diner, he spotted Tina Lemoine almost immediately. She sat in a booth against the far wal by an open window, only a glass of water on the table. He could not
