The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

Jeffery Deaver Wrong lime, Wrong Place from The Best of the Best

He saw the car five miles down the road, lights swinging left and right as the driver went through the Harrier Pass switchbacks.

Pretty fast for this road, he thought. And found his damp right hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

“Mobile One.” The woman’s voice clattered from the loudspeaker on top of the Dodge. “Hey, Hal. You there, Hal?”

He reached inside the squad car and snagged the microphone from the dash.

“Go ahead, Hazel.”

“Cold out there?”

It was only mid-September but the weather in the Green Mountains could claim lives as early as October, and the wet air tonight was raw as torn metal.

“’Course it’s cold. Where’s Billy?”

“On Seventeen. ’Bout, lessee, five miles from the interstate. Stopped a drunk and’s got him in the car ’cause what else is he gonna do with him? Right? But no sign of the perps.”

She said the last word as if she’d been waiting a long time to drop it into a sentence and Runyer guessed this might’ve been the case. Pequot County had plenty of drunks and disorderlies, a few sickos, and, because of the school, cut-ups galore. But real honest-to-God perpetrators... well, Hal Runyer hadn’t had many of them.

“Anything more on the job?” he asked.

“What job?”

“The heist,” he said, irritated. “The stickup. The robb-er-y?”

“Oh, yeah. S’why I called. We got a call from Captain Jarrett. At Troop G. Known him ten years and he still calls himself Captain Jarrett. Anyway, he says the FBI’s taking over. Should we be feeling bad about that?”

“No, Hazel. We should be feeling good about that.” Runyer watched the lights grow closer. The car was moving damn fast. On the shoulder a time or two but not drunk careless. More urgent careless. He reached inside and flicked on the light bar. “Listen. Where’s Rudy? He at Irvine, like I told him?”

“Gaithersberg Road and Fifteen. That where you told him?”

“Close enough. When’re the feds coming up?”

“Dunno. I can—”

“S’okay. I gotta go, Hazel. Here’s a car needs checking.”

“Roger, Sheriff.” And added a snappy “Over and out.” Which Hazel always looked forward to ending transmissions with.

“Yeah, yeah, out.”

The wind blew hard and Runyer shivered. Around him were empty shacks and rusting cultivators and the black spikes of a billion trees. This was still supposedly leaf season but the weather’d been mean the past two weeks, and instead of going to vibrant reds and golds the leaves had suddenly turned sick yellow and leapt off the trees. They now lay on the ground like a ragged sou’wester covering the body of a drowned fisherman.

He watched the car lights growing closer through the dank mist, his hand kneading his revolver.

It’d been the biggest robbery in the history of Pequot County.

That evening, just before closing, a Secure Courier truck had pulled up to the back door of the Minuteman Bank & Trust in downtown Andover.

Witnesses said the whole thing couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. The driver and his first assistant opened the truck’s door, and the robbers “were just there,” Frank Metger, the bank’s security guard, said. “I dunno where they were hiding.”

He’d gone for his Smith & Wesson but a third robber stepped out of the shadows on the concrete retaining wall behind the strip mall and let loose one shot with his pistol, one of those huge ones with a telescopic sight on it, like the boys were always admiring down at Baxter’s Guns but never buying. “Ka-poweee! Hit ’bout an inch from my head,” Frank said. “And I went down fast. I’m not the least ashamed to say it. Not that I couldn’ta taken him, I had the old Smittie out and cocked.”

The perps jumped into two cars and sped off in opposite directions, taking with them three-quarters of a million dollars.

Not long after which the phone rang in Hal Runyer’s split-level. Lisa Lee handed him the cordless, interrupting some important business with his son. Runyer listened to his deputy and realized that the radio-controlled Piper Cub, laid out like a surgical patient in front of them, would have to remain wingless for the rest of the evening, at least.

Now lights like dying suns appeared behind the trees and the approaching car sped through the last curve before the roadblock. The surprised driver skidded the silver Lexus, exhaust simmering, to a stop ten feet from the cruiser.

Two men inside, their eyes following Runyer’s with curiosity. The driver seemed amused. They were young. Lean. Buzz cuts under worn baseball caps. Runyer got a faint whiff of beer and thought: Students.

“Hey, Officer,” the driver said cheerfully. “Roadblock, huh? Just like the movies.”

“That’s right. How you fellas doing tonight?”

“Well, truth is we’re not finding as many young lovelies as we’d hoped but ’side from that we’re doing fine.”

“Good, Runyer said and glanced across the seat. “You doing fine, too?”

“Yessir,” the passenger said. “Top-notch. You bet.”

“What exactly’s the problem, Officer?”

They seemed like good boys, fun-loving, here in Andover on jock scholarships, armed with Dad’s fine car and plenty of pocket money. But one of Runyer’s first lessons from his predecessor had been that, even in sleepy Andover, the friendliest-seeming folk often aren’t and you’ve got to be most cautious of the ones leaning hard to be on your side.

The driver kept both his hands on the wheel. His buddy’s right hand was just coming up from the crack beside the right-hand door. Putting it away at least — whatever it was — instead of picking it up. The bottle probably. But they weren’t impaired and Runyer decided to let a DUI check go.

“Where you headed?”

The driver grinned. “Just, you know, out for a drive.”

The flashlight strayed into the backseat. No ski masks or black pullovers. No canvas bags chocked with enough money to live on for a hundred years, in Pequot County at least. But what about the trunk?

“There’s some bar we heard about,” the passenger said. “I don’t know. Some action.”

“Action?”

The young man swallowed. “Well, we were looking for some action. That’s what I meant. You know.”

Runyer noticed that with every word his friend said, the driver was getting madder and madder. And he thought: Problem. We got ourselves a problem here. How do I handle it? He didn’t know. The bulk of arrests in Andover involved liquor, pot, or cars. Runyer couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually handcuffed somebody. He wondered if he could still do it without embarrassing himself or tearing flesh.

“I wonder if I could see your license and registration.”

“Well, you know, it’s funny,” the driver said, the words clipped. Like his mind was somewhere in front of his voice. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you got your license with you. That one time you don’t, you get stopped.”

“You don’t.” Runyer offered a grin of his own. “How ’bout the vehicle’s registration?”

“Sure, Officer.”

He searched the glove compartment and door pocket, then found it in the sun visor. The driver glanced at the small card as he passed it out the window.

Runyer read it and looked up. “That’s you? Thomas Gibson?”

“Yessir.”

The sheriff stared at the slip of DMV cardboard, afraid to take his eyes off it. Reading the name over and over, as if it was a fax about a deceased loved one.

Thomas Gibson...

Of 3674 Muller Lane, Portsmouth, Vermont.

The best-known OB-GYN in Pequot County. Who’d delivered Runyer’s sister’s first not long ago.

Who’d called Hazel exactly thirty minutes before the Minuteman robbery to report his car stolen.

“Fine,” Runyer said earnestly. “Good.” Wondering why on earth he had.

Pistol out. Stepping back, pointing it from one of the disgusted, sneering faces to the other. Their smiles were gone.

“I’m gonna say some things and you better listen. I want to see all four of those hands at all times. If one of them disappears, I’m shooting whoever it belongs to. If you reach for the gearshift lever, I’m shooting you. I’m going to ask you to get out of the car in a minute and if either of you runs, I’m shooting you. We clear on that?”

“Officer, come on,” the passenger whined.

“Shut up, Earl,” the driver barked.

Something flickered in the distance. A flash of light. The driver glanced in his rearview mirror and gave a slight smile. Another car was coming down the road and Hal Runyer knew in his heart it was their partner.

“Driver, hands on the wheel. And you, put ’em on the dash.”

“You—”

“Do it!”

“Oh-kay,” the driver snapped. This was all a huge inconvenience to him.

Earl’s shrill voice: “Gare, what’re we gonna do?”

“You’re going to be quiet is what you’re going to do,” Gare muttered, flexing his long fingers.

The second car had whipped through the switchbacks and was bottoming out of Harrier Pass. The lights vanished as the car went behind a hill. It’d be at the roadblock in three minutes.

“Driver, leave your left hand on the wheel and with your right reach out and open the door.” Was this how he should do it? He thought so. But he wished he knew for sure.

Gare sighed and did what he was told. He climbed slowly from the car, keeping his hands extended.

Earl was looking like a spooked bird, eyes flicking sideways in jerky little movements.

Runyer pitched his only pair of cuffs to Gare. “Get those on. Bet you know how.”

Light glowed on the near horizon of the highway. Runyer could hear the urgent shush of the tires on the damp asphalt.

Gare glanced toward the light and grinned slightly. He clicked the cuff on one hand.

“Come on, man,” Earl said to Runyer. “Can’t we work something out? We got plenty of money.”

“Oh, shut up,” Gare barked.

“So. We’re adding bribery to all this.”

Another flicker of light. The car was growing closer.

Gare tensed and Runyer’s pistol lifted slightly. “I want that second cuff on now!”

“How ’bout my boy Earl? No bracelets for ’m?”

The approaching car wasn’t more than a hundred feet away. “I have to put those on, I’ll ratchet ’em good and tight and leave ’em that way. You’ll wish you’d done it yourself.”

Earl opened the passenger door. Something fell to the ground at his feet. No bottle. It was metal.

“Freeze right there.”

Earl ducked a little but Runyer brought him up to standing again with the muzzle.

“Look, Officer—” Gare began. The gun swung back his way.

The car rounded the curve.

What do I do? With three of ’em here, what do I do? I should call in for help. Should’ve done that right up front. Hell. And the squad car’s thirty feet away.

“Now. I’m not telling you again.”

Click, click. The cuffs were on. Runyer led Gare to the front fender. Keeping his pistol aimed at Earl, he eased Gare facedown onto the hood, bent at the waist. His body made a wingless angel in the dew on the glittery silver paint.

“Now you,” Runyer said to Earl. “Come here.”

The car came around the curve fast and skidded to a stop. The man behind the wheel opened the door and it took Runyer no more than a second to glance at his face and realize he wasn’t the partner. But a second was all Gare needed. Fast as falling rock he snapped upright. His cuffed hands slammed into Runyer’s head, tearing his ear with the links. He grabbed the sheriff’s gun hand.

Earl bent fast at the knees and came up with the gun that had fallen out of the car when he’d opened the door.

Runyer held onto Gare like a college wrestler. The men rolled on the ground, through wet grass, mulchy leaves, oil, deer piss. Struggling to get Gare down and losing — the small man was strong as roots and Runyer had to keep away from the teeth especially.

“Don’t move,” Earl screamed, waving his gun in their direction.

“Officer!” the other driver called.

“Get outa here,” Runyer shouted.

The man hesitated only for a moment, then turned to leap back into his car.

Earl ran toward him. “You, stay there! Stay there!”

The gunshot was a short, sharp crack, swallowed by the misty dampness. The man flew backward.

Oh, Lord...

Then Gare elbowed the sheriff hard in the gut and won the pistol. He pressed the muzzle against Runyer’s throat, cocked the gun.

“No,” Runyer whispered.

“Maybe,” Gare answered smartly, grinning. He rubbed the muzzle over the sheriffs skin.

“Look what I done, Gare,” Earl whispered. “He’s dead. His whole head... look.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, quit whining! Put that sack o’ shit in the car and get rid of it. Do it!”

Earl gazed down at the limp body of the man he’d just killed. The eyes were open; they caught white moonlight and glowed eerily. Earl looked uneasily at his partner, wiping his palm on his unclean jeans. “Oh, man.” Finally he grabbed the body, muscled it into the car.

“Where—?”

“The bushes! Drive it into the bushes! Where d’you think?”

As Earl hid the car, Gare turned back to Runyer. He fished the cuff key from his uniform pocket and unlocked them. “Now,” he mocked, “we’ve got some rules. One is, get on your belly.” He shoved Runyer onto the cold asphalt.

“Rule two is you give me any crap and you get shot.”

“Gare—”

“What? What?”

“Tell him it wasn’t my fault. I mean, shooting that guy.”

“Of course it wasn’t. It was his fault, Earl.” He nodded at Runyer. “He shouldn’t’ve stopped us.”

“Look, mister,” Runyer said, “so far it’s just manslaughter. If you—”

Gare sighed, lifted the revolver, and pulled the trigger.

The powder granules hurt most of all, stinging Runyer’s face and his right hand, which he’d lifted defensively. He hardly felt the bullet, other than the punch in the stomach and the snap of his rib.

“Oh.” Runyer sank down on his elbow. “My.” He felt loose inside, unattached.

“I told you rule number two. Weren’t you listening?”

“Lisa Lee,” Runyer whispered. He held his belly. But not too tight. He was afraid to touch the bullet hole.

The cold autumn wind was powerful in the Green Mountains. It carried sounds a long way despite the hilly terrain. They could hear the sirens real clear.

The men looked up at the spiky horizon and saw a carnival of flashing lights.

“Two of ’em,” Gare said. “Shit.”

“Mebbe three. Could be three.”

Gare ran to the squad car, got inside. He shut off the light bar, then started the car over the cliff, stepping out just before it nosed over. It fell with the sound of crushing foliage.

Through a peppery haze Runyer saw Gare lift his head and look up into the hills. There were two faint yellow lights one hundred yards away. Porch lights. They flickered through the branches.

“Up there. Let’s go.” He nodded at the twin glow through the mist.

Runyer moaned as a wash of pain flowed through him.

Their eyes turned to him. The men looked at each other, then walked toward him.

He wasn’t going to plead, he told himself, hearing the skittery boots on the asphalt.

Gare and Earl stood over him, looking down.

“Please,” Runyer whispered.

“Get him in the car,” Gare said to Earl. “Move.”

He drove up the hill real slow, no lights, and that was how he surprised the couple in the cabin.

While Earl hid the Lexus out back, Gare kicked the door in, fast, pushing Runyer in front of him, poking the gun toward the man and woman, who sat on the couch, drinking wine. She barked a fast scream and the trim, white-haired man turned fast toward the shotgun over the mantel.

Through the haze of his pain Runyer was thinking: No, no. Don’t do it.

But Gare cocked the pistol and the man stopped in his tracks at the sound, turned back, hands up high, like in a movie. He was so surprised by the break-in that for a minute he didn’t even know he was supposed to be afraid. He squinted at Gare and the sheriff, then glanced at his wife. And you could see his face just cave, like loose shale. “Please,” he said, the word rattling from his throat. “Please don’t hurt us.”

“Just shut up and do like you’re told. Nobody’ll get hurt.”

Runyer lay on the floor, eyes darting around the place. Typical of a lot of the rental cabins around here. A big living room, wood-paneled, filled with mismatched furniture. Two small bedrooms downstairs, a loft upstairs. The walls and floors polyurethaned yellow pine. Glassy-eyed hunting trophies.

Then he found what he was looking for: the phone, on the wall in the kitchen.

But Gare’d been doing his own surveying. Runyer should’ve guessed that a seasoned perp wasn’t going to miss a telephone. He stepped into the kitchen and ripped the unit down.

“Any other phones?” he snapped.

“I... no.”

“Any cell phones?”

A pause. The husband looked mortified.

“Well?” Gare shouted.

“In my pocket,” the husband said quickly. “I forgot. My jacket.”

“You forgot. Right.” Gare smashed the phone under his boot. Then he called, “Get those curtains closed.”

The man’s wife — her white hair was in a French braid, the way Lisa Lee wore it for PTA meetings and church potlucks — hesitated for a moment. She looked at her husband.

“Now!” Gare barked, and she hurried off to draw the thick drapes covering the windows.

“Anybody else in the house?”

“I—” the man began. “We didn’t do anything—”

“Is there anybody else... in... the... house?” Gare demanded. Pointing his gun at the husband’s sun-wrinkled face.

“No. I swear.”

Earl stepped inside. “Hey. They got ’emselves a Lincoln out there. Let’s take it and—”

Gare snapped, “We’re not going anywhere yet. Keep ’em covered.” He stepped to the door, shut off the porch lights. Gazed down the hill. Runyer could see the flashing lights streak past on the highway. The cars — there were two — didn’t even slow up. Runyer’d never told Hazel where exactly on the road he’d set up the roadblock. Route 58 was thirty-seven miles long.

Gare closed the door, turned to the couple. The husband had sat down, he was breathing heavily.

“Too much excitement for you, old man?” Gare laughed.

“He has a bad heart,” the wife whispered. “Couldn’t you just—”

“And he’s got a bad gut,” Gare said, nodding toward Runyer. “So whyn’t you shut up, lady, ’fore you catch something, too?”

“Listen... Gare,” Runyer said. “There’re troopers out looking for you. We—”

“For us?” Earl blurted, panic in his round, peach-fuzzed face.

“Relax,” Gare said to him. “He doesn’t mean ‘us.’ Nobody can ID us.” He waved the gun at Runyer. “And you, quiet.”

The wife sat down next to Runyer and glanced at his wound. “I’m a nurse,” she said to Gare. “Let me take a look at him.”

“Go on. But don’t do anything stupid, lady.”

“I just want to help him.”

“Hold up there.” Gare found some clothesline and tied the husband’s hands. His wife’s, too.

“I can’t work on him this way,” she protested weakly.

“Then you can’t work on him,” Gare responded as he rummaged through the breakfront drawers.

In the light, Runyer could see he’d been wrong about them being college kids. He saw bad teeth, scars, callused hands. Their pedigree was all over them: day labor, taverns, construction jobs till they were thrown off the site drunk or thieving, maybe a teenage wife at home — a girl who cringed automatically whenever a man shouted.

“When d’you get shot?” she asked, struggling to open her nurse’s kit.

“Twenty minutes ago.”

She took his blood pressure, awkwardly with her bound hands. “Not too bad. And” — she examined the entrance wound — “from where you got hit, I’d say the bullet missed the major veins and arteries.” She taped a pad over the puncture in his gut.

“But I better get to a hospital pretty soon,” Runyer said.

She leveled her blue-gray eyes at him. “That’s right.”

“How much time do I have?”

The lie died in her throat, and she decided to tell him the truth. “Two hours, three,” shooting a prickly injection into his arm. In a few murky seconds the pain was floating out the window, along with the horror of what she’d just told him. He expected the dope would make him groggy and it did a little, but mostly with the pain gone he found he could think straighten

And what he thought was, once again: What’m I gonna do here? I’m willing, I’ve still got some strength left. But I don’t have a clue. Ten years of law enforcing in Andover doesn’t prepare you for this sort of thing.

He looked over the couple as they gazed miserably across the room at their captors. Runyer’d seen plenty of sorrow on his job, pain, too. Most of it as a result of car wrecks and domestic violence. But he didn’t think he’d ever seen two more sorrowful people than these two. On the table, by the wineglasses, were a few unopened gift packages and a cake. Written on it: “Happy Birthday, Martin.” They’d come up here from Boston or Hartford for the celebration and to spend the weekend looking at leaves and hiking. And now this had happened.

“How much of that dope you have left?” he asked, whispering.

She looked his way. “The painkiller? Isn’t it working?”

“I don’t mean that,” he said. “Any chance we could stick him with one of those needles?”

“But he’s got a gun,” the husband said quickly. “They both do.” He reminded Runyer of the young professors from UV, whose gift of smarts didn’t quite make up for their paltry self-confidence.

She shook her head and said to Runyer, “Not much. A couple more shots like the one I just gave you. Not enough to knock anybody out.”

“Please,” the husband gasped suddenly, lifting his tied hands.

“Please what?” Gare whirled around, snapping.

“Just, can’t you just take our car and let us be?”

“ ‘Let us be’?” he growled. “Listen, mister, I didn’t want to come here. This isn’t my fault. If that asshole hadn’t stopped us, we’d be long gone by now. And that fellow on the highway’d still be alive.”

“What?” the husband whispered.

Runyer answered, “They shot a man who stopped when I was trying to arrest them.”

The husband fell silent and stared at the floor. His wife muttered, “My God, my God.”

Runyer was looking at her. He saw a long, handsome face whose attractiveness was partly that she didn’t pretend to be young. The skin was matte, free of makeup except for a sheen of pink on her lips. She wore a white cashmere sweater and black slacks.

She wiped the sweat from Runyer’s forehead with her sleeve and he didn’t think he’d ever felt anything so soft as that fuzzy cloth. It reminded him of Pete’s baby comforter, a shabby blue thing the boy had carried with him everywhere till the age of five — when balsa wood suddenly took the place of wool and satin as his youthful obsession.

Gare glanced at the birthday cake and presents. “Lookit.”

Earl called, “Hey, we’re crashing a party, looks like.”

“That you, Martin?”

The husband nodded.

Gare asked, “So, Marty, how old?”

“I... uh.” His voice faded as he grew flustered, staring at the black barrel of the gun.

Gare laughed. “It’s not that tough a question.”

“I’m fifty,” the man finally answered.

“Whoa, that old?” Gare mused. “And you, what’s your name?”

“Jude,” the wife answered.

“Come on, Jude. We’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Marty. Hey, Earl, this’ll be a kick.”

“Stop it!” she gasped. “Please.”

“You better sing, too, Sheriff. That’s one of the rules.”

“You can go straight to hell.” Runyer said this before thinking and he fully expected Gare to shoot him again. But the young man was enjoying his game too much to pay the sheriff much mind. He sat down in between the couple and made a show of arranging the cake in front of Martin, who sat with his hands in front of him, nearly paralyzed. He put his arms around the couple. Rubbing the gun over the poor man’s cheek, Gare started singing in an eerie, off-pitch voice. “Happy birthday to you... Come on, Earl, let’s hear you!”

Earl kept a smile on his face but beneath it the fear and distaste were clear. “Gare...”

“Sing!” Gare raged. “You, too, goddamn it,” he barked at Jude. “Sing! Happy birthday to you... happy birthday to you...”

Their ragged voices grunted, or whispered, the words to the song. Martin’s eyes were closed and Jude’s hands quivered in her terror. Runyer watched the piteous spectacle: the gun caressing Martin’s face, Jude’s glazed expression, Gare’s mad smile as he boomed the lyrics, then called for everyone to take it from the top. The sheriff would’ve traded his house and land to have his pistol back in his hand for ten seconds.

The singing faded, replaced by another sound — sirens again.

Gare was suddenly all business. “Check it out,” he commanded Earl, who scurried over to the front window. Gare rose and stepped into the shadows near the door, the gun ready.

Runyer saw clearly that these two weren’t really partners at all. Gare was smart — he’d’ve been the mastermind behind the robbery — and in the end he wouldn’t have a lot of patience for people like Earl. And as for that boy... he kept looking at his friend every half minute, like a puppy. Earl, Runyer decided, was their key to freedom.

“Who are they?” Martin whispered.

“They robbed a bank downtown today. Nearly killed a guard. There’s another one, too.”

“Another one?”

“A partner. He took off in a different car. They do that sometimes. To fool us — ’cause we’d be looking for three men together.” Runyer didn’t add that he knew “they” did this because he saw it on a Barnaby Jones rerun, with his son sitting on his lap and popcorn stuttering madly in the microwave.

Runyer closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Man, I’m sweating. Why’m I sweating so much?

Jude wiped his forehead again. She didn’t seem like a nurse, not a hospital nurse anyway. With her dangling Indian earrings and her thin figure — from yoga or dancing, he guessed — she reminded him of Lisa Lee’s sister. A charmer but the family wacko, into herbs and crystals.

Thinking of his wife, he gave a distant laugh. Jude looked at him with a smile of curiosity.

“I was remembering something... Last week Lisa Lee and I were at this Autumnfest? In Andover?”

“That’s your wife? Lisa Lee?”

Runyer nodded. “We were leaving and I couldn’t find our truck. I thought, hell, I hope nobody stole it — we’ve had a bunch of car thefts up here lately. Turned out it wasn’t, I just forgot where I parked. But I remember saying to Lisa Lee, ‘You know, stealing cars is about the worst we get here in Andover. Makes me feel like I’m just playing at my job. Like I’m not a real cop. Sometimes I wouldn’t mind a little more action.’ ”

Jude laughed softly. Martin didn’t. He seemed to be counting his own heartbeats.

“Boy, mis-take!” Runyer concluded. “Never ever ask for something you might get. I’d make that a rule of life.”

He looked at Jude’s hand. She wore a gold ring with a blue stone in it. “That’s pretty.” He reached up to touch it. Then he realized his finger was bloody and he pulled back. “S’the color of Lisa Lee’s eyes. What kind of stone is it?”

“Topaz.”

“Thought they were yellow.”

“They come in blue, too.”

The glitchy pain spread a little farther. He gasped. “Oh... oh...”

Martin looked at him now, wide-eyed. “Please,” he called. “This man...”

Gare looked up from the cabinet he was ransacking.

“He’s hurt bad.”

“Of course he’s hurt bad. I put a .38 slug through his belly.” He grinned. “So, Marty, tell me... who’re you expecting?”

Martin and Jude looked at each other.

Gare bent from the waist and caressed Martin’s face with the muzzle of his gun. “Who... are you... expecting?”

“Nobody.”

“Somebody named Cara, maybe?”

“How—?” Jude began then stopped herself. Gare held up a birthday present. A card said, Love, Cara.

Martin couldn’t think of anything fast enough. “She’s—”

“She’s our daughter,” Jude said.

“She coming to this party?” Earl asked, jumping playfully over the back of a tartan plaid couch and landing on the cushion.

“No,” Martin blurted. “She isn’t.”

“What’s she look like?” Earl asked.

“Just forget her,” Martin whined. “Look, what do you want? You want money? I can get you money. Whatever you want, I’ll get it for you. I’m well off...”

“Yeah? What do you do, Marty?”

“I have a wholesale business. It makes a lot of money. I can get you—”

“What, write me a check? Let you all take a little drive into town and hit the ATM while Earl and I wait here?”

Edgy,Jude said, “How ’bout if I get you men something to eat?”

“Now, why’d you wanna do a nice Samaritan thing like that?” He was examining the knicknacks on the mantelpiece — a collection of ceramic birds. A spread-wing eagle caught his eye, and he rubbed the detail of the feathers with a finger.

“Because if you’re feeling fat and sassy you might be more inclined to let us go.” She tried to laugh. The sound fell flat.

Gare shrugged. “I could use some food. Earl, go with her.”

Runyer, thinking: The two of them alone in the kitchen. She could talk to Earl, tell him Runyer would testify that the killing was accidental. Tell him to give up Gare before he ended up dead himself or socked away in prison for two lifetimes.

He rolled over so that he was looking into her face. Gare couldn’t see him.

“Jude,” he whispered. “Listen...”

Her eyes flicked down.

“You’ve got to talk to him. To Earl. Tell him that I’ll—”

Gare’s hand clamped down hard on Runyer’s shoulder and jerked him over onto his back. The pain jabbed him like a dentist’s drill.

“What’re you saying, Sheriff?”

Sweat dripping into his eyes, Runyer stared at the smooth, round face inches from his.

“You asking her to bring you back a nice little knife or something?” He turned to Jude and set one of her gold earrings swinging with the muzzle of Runyer’s own service pistol. “What was he asking you?”

Horrified, Martin opened his mouth but whatever he was going to say was choked off by the sight of a pistol against his wife’s head.

“Because,” Gare continued, “that’d be breaking rule number two. And we know what happens then.” He swung the gun toward Runyer’s belly, caressed the bloody front of his uniform.

“I wanted some water is all. Just some water.”

“I’ll decide what you get and when you get it.” Standing up, Gare said to Earl: “Go on. Just be sure and frisk her when you come back.” His slick face cracked another of its horrid grins. “Take your time, if you want.”

“No!” Martin snapped. “You son of a bitch!”

“What’d you say?” Gare spun around, slipped the gun into his belt. Doing that — putting it away, not pointing it — sickened Runyer. It meant violence, not a threat, was coming. “What?” he whispered.

“Don’t you dare touch her.” At last there was some steel in Martin’s voice.

But all this did was notch up Gare’s anger.

Circling again, slow, he stared Martin down like a scolded dog.

“Just let me make them some food,” she pleaded. “What would you boys like? I’m a good cook. Tell them I’m a good cook, Martin. Tell them.”

Gare jerked Martin to his feet. “Now say it... What don’t you want me to do?”

“Hurt her.”

“Thought you said ‘touch her.’ ”

“I... that’s what I mean.”

“But she might like getting touched.” He looked Jude over, her slim figure under the fuzzy white sweater, the close-fitting slacks. “You’re an old man, Martin. Bet nothing works quite like it used to, right? I’ll bet you’ve been neglecting her. And she’s just coming into her prime. That’s what you hear on the talk shows.”

“No, just... leave her alone.”

“Say please.”

“Please.”

“You say it, but you don’t mean it. Maybe if you were on your knees. Get on your knees. Go ahead. Do it.”

“Gare,” Earl said uneasily.

Martin swallowed and looked from his wife to Runyer. “You go to hell,” he shrieked. And lunged for the robber, grabbing him by the collar.

“Whoa, here,” Gare said, laughing. He slugged Martin hard in the belly and sent him careening into the wall. He reached out to catch himself, but with his hands tied, he could grip only the drapes. They didn’t hold and he fell hard to the floor, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He curled up like a hedgehog as Gare started beating him.

“No!” Jude cried. “His heart... please, don’t!”

But Gare lost interest after a half dozen blows. He stood up, flexed his hand. “Now, go make some food like I asked. I want a burger. Or something hot.”

She started toward her husband.

“Don’t worry about him. I said food.”

When Earl came over to take Jude to the kitchen Runyer caught his eye. The young man returned the look, curious for a moment, then lifted Jude to her feet and led her to the kitchen.

Gare glanced at the sheriff but ignored him. He was just a mote — an expression of Runyer’s father-in-law, meaning somebody floating around in the background, inconsequential. No, it was Martin who fascinated him. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and enjoyed watching the man go wide-eyed. Then he chuckled and cut the rope, retying his hands behind his back. “Just so you don’t do anything stupid again.” Surveying the knots, he said, “So, you’re fifty, huh? How ’bout the witch in there?”

“The same. We’re the same age.”

“That’s about how old my mother is. My dad, too, he’s still alive. I don’t remember his birthday. That’s funny, isn’t it? You’d think I’d remember. You remind me of him sort of. He was kind of a wuss, too. No balls.”

“Look, son, please... I’ve gotta get to the John. I mean really.”

“Grandson’s more like it,” Gare said, grabbing Martin by the hair again, examining the evasive eyes. “Well, grandpa, you really gotta go?”

“I do, yes. See, I’m hyperglycemic borderline diabetic. And—”

“Yadda, yadda, yadda. You wanna piss, just say you wanna piss. Don’t explain so damn much. Geez.”

Gare dragged him to the bathroom and humiliated Martin further by leaving the door open and staring at the poor man while he did his business.

When they returned he pushed Martin down onto the floor beside Runyer. He smelled the air, the cooking beef. “How’s that food coming?” Gare shouted.

“Almost ready,” Jude called. The thought of eating nauseated Runyer.

Gare sat down in front of Martin, cross-legged, studied him again, like a bug in a bottle. Finally he mused, “You think a person can live too long?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think there comes a point you’re not alive anymore? You’re not really living. Just getting by. You might as well just pack it in. Haven’t you ever felt that?”

“No.”

“You really want to live?” Gare asked, as if he was truly surprised.

“Of course I do,” the man answered earnestly. “You think ’cause you’re younger and stronger the world’s yours. My family and I have a right to live, too.”

“But live what kind of life?” Gare shot back. “Look at us — a month ago Earl and I did a job near Poughkeepsie and getting away we were driving down the Taconic at a hundred fifteen miles an hour. See, that was being totally alive. You ever done that? ’Course not. You’re just a goddamn salesman—”

“I’m not a salesman. I own a big—”

Gare wrinkled his face up. “You ever do anything crazy? Skydive? Ski?”

“No, but—”

“No, but,” he mocked. “How ’bout when you were young? You do anything ballsy then?”

“I guess.” He looked at the kitchen as if Jude would testify on his behalf. “I had a souped-up car. I—”

“But then,” Gare continued, “you got old, right? You got scared.”

“I had a family to support!” Martin snapped back. “I had my business. Employees to take care of. I couldn’t afford to screw around like you.”

“Pitiful,” Gare whispered, shaking his head. “Pitiful.”

Runyer lay on his side, bloody, a bullet deep in his body. But it seemed to him that Martin was wounded a lot deeper — by this cold taunting.

“You don’t understand,” Martin blurted.

“Oh, yeah, I do. I understand perfectly.”

Jude and Earl brought the burgers in and she put the dishes on the table. Even across the room Runyer could see her shaking hands.

“Soup’s on,” she said with fake cheer.

Gare stared at Martin for a moment longer, then went to the table and sat down.

Runyer caught Jude’s eye and glanced at Earl, then pantomimed drinking a glass of water. Jude seemed to understand and turned toward the kitchen.

“Where you going, grandma?” Gare snapped.

“To get some water for the sheriff.”

“Earl, you do it.”

“But—”

“Do it!”

Thank you, Runyer thought. Yes!

Earl fetched the water. As he bent down to set it on the floor, his pistol pointed at Runyer’s head, the sheriff whispered quickly, “Let’s work out something, Earl. You give him up, and I’ll testify for you at trial. About the shooting. That it was an accident. You got my word.”

Earl froze, looked at him for a moment. He just about dropped the glass when Gare called, “Earl!”

The young man swiveled around.

“S’ getting cold,” Gare said. “Come on and eat.”

Earl stared at Runyer for a moment, set the glass down, and returned to the table without a word.

Gare put his napkin in his lap carefully, then picked up his utensils with precise gestures. Runyer was surprised at his behavior until he realized he’d seen this before — Gare had learned his manners in reform school.

He and Earl began conversing in whispers.

“Your daughter?” Runyer asked the couple. “She is coming here tonight, isn’t she?”

Martin’s eyes met Jude’s. She nodded. And Runyer now understood why Martin was so upset.

“She drove up from Boston this afternoon. She went shopping and was going to meet us tonight for a little party. Stay the weekend.”

“When’s she due?”

An elaborately carved clock — with a weird grinning face, like the old man in the moon — showed the time. 7:10.

“Ten minutes ago.”

The pain stretched luxuriously through Hal Runyer and dripped into his bowels. He gasped and thought of Lisa Lee’s aunt, dying of cancer. When they’d talked about the woman — friends, family, and doctors — nobody ever talked about the cancer itself, or about her coming death. They’d talked about pain.

He gasped and closed his eyes. Then risked a look at his belly. The blood had spread in a huge slick. He knew he didn’t have much time left. Runyer looked over at the table and once again caught Earl’s eye. The man looked away fast, continued to poke at his burger. He nodded as Gare said something to him and went right on nodding.

“What’re they talking about?” Martin asked in his nervous lilt.

“Whether or not to kill us,” Runyer answered.

Martin lowered his head to his wife’s and they huddled, an armless embrace.

Runyer floated away somewhere momentarily — because of the drugs, or the pain, or the despair — and he gazed at the couple as if he were looking down at them from above, saw them with startling clarity. And if maybe they were a little too L. L. Bean for Runyer’s taste, if they were spooked as deer at the moment, if they didn’t have the inclination, or backbone, to approach life the way Gare thought was important, still they were good people — and brave in their own way. Martin was somebody who’d provided for his family and for the people who worked for him. Jude had raised a child and nursed patients. Which is what real courage was, Runyer reckoned. Not driving fast or sticking up banks. So where their captors felt contempt for these folks, Runyer couldn’t. He felt only an overwhelming desire to save them, to salvage what he could of their lives.

The sheriff had pinned his hopes on Earl but it was obvious that wasn’t going to work out. So he now eased close to Jude. “Listen. I’ve been thinking. Your daughter’s due here any minute, right?”

Martin nodded.

“Your legs’re free. What if you two were to go through that window there? Run down the driveway and hide in the pine trees for her? When she shows up, you all hightail it outa here. You’ll probably get a little cut and bruised but that’ll be the worst of it.”

“How?” Jude asked. “They’d come after us.”

“I’ll hold ’em off. With that scattergun on the mantel.”

“It’s not loaded,” Martin whispered. “I checked when we got here.”

Runyer’d figured. Vermont wasn’t NRA territory but people knew guns and nobody’d ever mount a loaded double-barrel within a child’s reach.

“But they don’t know that.”

“Don’t!” Martin rasped. “Let’s just do what they want.”

Jude added, “If you don’t shoot them outright they’ll figure out the gun’s empty.”

“Don’t think they’d want to take that kind of chance with a ten-gauge goose gun. Besides, they’d figure with me being a cop it’d make sense to give ’em a chance to surrender. ‘Put your hands up.’ That kind of thing.”

Then Jude was smiling kindly. “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “I appreciate it, Sheriff. But... how old’re you?”

“Thirty.” It had been his birthday, too — just last week. He didn’t mention this.

“And you’re a married man and probably’ve got kids.”

“This’s my job,” he continued. “I get paid—”

“You don’t get paid to sacrifice your life for a couple of stodgy old tourists like us. That’s what you’d be doing. And you know it.”

“I’m thinking of your daughter, too,” he said. “’Sides, if there’s any way I’m surviving this it’s if somebody brings some help. Soon.”

Martin said, “You’re wrong, Sheriff. I don’t think they really want to hurt us. Let’s just wait.”

“We can’t!” Runyer whispered urgently. “Gare’s going to kill us.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because of blame. Weren’t you listening to him? He’s got this talent for pitching blame like horseshoes. Everything that happens is somebody else’s fault. That lets him do whatever he wants. Murder included.”

Martin looked at the window Runyer wanted them to leap through. He gazed at it the way a man accustomed to losing foot races looks at a cinder track.

The sheriff said to Jude, “I think it’s the only way. I want you to knock that lamp over there. I’ll make a run for the shotgun and you two go through the window. It can’t be more’n four feet to the ground.”

Martin whispered urgently, “But if it doesn’t work they’ll kill us all, Cara, too. If we promise we won’t tell anybody, if we swear it, they’ll probably let us go. I have a feeling.”

Jude was Runyer’s only hope and he kept his eyes in hers. Finally, she said, “I’ll do whatever my husband wants.”

Martin asked, “You really think we can make it?”

“That depends,” Runyer answered. “How bad do you want to make it?”

For an instant Runyer could see Martin was right on the borderline. His eyes grew sharp as he judged the angles, the distance to the window But then he shook his head slightly.

And so there was nothing to do but go ahead by himself and hope that Jude would rally her husband to make the plunge to safety.

He waited until Gare and Earl were looking at their food, then gripped Martin’s shoulder and pulled himself to his feet. “I’m going,” he whispered. “Get the hell out that window!”

Ignoring the electric pain that stabbed through him, Runyer moved as quietly as he could toward the gun over the mantel.

Martin’s voice seared the hell out of him. “No, don’t!” He lurched forward and slammed into the sheriff, who tumbled over on his side in a jolt of agony.

The captors leapt up from the table.

“He was going for the shotgun,” Martin cried. “It wasn’t us! We told him not to!”

“Martin,” Jude spat out in disgust.

“It was his idea...” Martin wailed. “We didn’t do anything.”

And for a moment Runyer found himself agreeing with Gare: the man was truly pitiful.

You’ve got to be most cautious of the ones leaning hard to be on your side...

Earl dragged them both back into the corner and delivered a kick to Runyer’s belly that no amount of morphine would dull. He gasped and rolled up tight.

“Look what you did,” Jude cried to her husband.

He just killed us all, the sheriff thought. That’s what he did.

“I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

“Good man, Marty.” Gare pulled the scattergun off the wall and broke it open. “Wouldn’ta done you a lotta good. Stupid of you. Stupid. Tie their feet, Earl.”

As the young man cinched their ankles, Gare walked toward the huddling trio and snapped the gun closed. That damn grin of his blossomed again and he drew back the butt of the gun like a baseball bat. Runyer lowered his head, waiting for the crushing blow.

A loud rap sounded on the door and they heard, “Mom, Dad? Hey, some welcome! What’s with the porch lights?”

A tall, attractive woman, mid-twenties, wearing an expensive shearling coat, stepped inside.

“Cara!” Jude cried. “Run!”

But Earl put his hand on her back and shoved her toward them. She barked a panicked scream and flung her arms around her father, buried her head in his chest, sobbing. The girl glanced at Runyer’s bloody wound and began to cry harder. “What’s going on?”

Her mother edged closer and they pressed together.

Gare stepped outside. He returned a moment later. “Nobody else around. She’s alone.”

“Who are you?” Cara asked.

Gare said nothing. But his eyes told Runyer the whole story: What’s coming’s our fault. We screwed up their getaway from the bank and a man got killed. Martin reminded Gare of his father and that, too, set off his anger like a fast-burning fuse. He’s innocent; we’ve caused this grief, and that gives him the okay to kill us all.

And damn if he probably isn’t going to blame us for him feeling guilty after he does.

“Earl,” Gare said. “Come on over here. Stand by me.”

“We gonna take her car?”

“No, we’re going to take their Lincoln. But there’s something we have to do first.”

“What?”

“You know.”

Earl wiped his hand on his jeans, looked from his buddy back to the people on the floor. He seemed to sense what was coming and glanced at Gare uneasily.

What was he thinking about? What Runyer had told him?

Would he stand up to Gare at the last minute?

“You can do it, Earl,” Gare whispered.

Runyer stared into the young man’s black eyes. Thinking: Remember what I said, Earl, remember it, remember, remember, remember... It’s the only way you can save yourself.

“Go on,” Gare said.

“I can’t,” Earl muttered.

His friend’s low voice growled, “Listen, Earl, the job tonight went just like we’d planned, right? Piece of cake. And we were heading home, no harm for anybody. It wasn’t our fault this happened. We didn’t want to come here, did we?”

“No.”

“They know our names,” Gare continued. “They know what we look like.”

“Don’t do it, Earl,” Runyer said. “Don’t ruin your life.”

“Oh, listen to him,” Gare spat out. “He’s the one tried to shoot us. Marty, too — he went for that scattergun. Remember? When we walked in? And don’t think that old lady wouldn’t shoot us down, too, she had the chance.”

“Earl!” Runyer called.

The young man’s eyes swayed from his friend to Runyer and back again. The gun lowered.

Come on, Runyer thought, come on... Remember.

“And know what else he did?” Earl said suddenly, an icy glint in his eyes. “That sheriff there? He said if I turned you in, he’d go easy on me.”

“He did that?” Gare, sounding shocked, frowned.

“Whispered it to me when I brought him the water.”

“He thought you were a snitch, huh?” Gare said. “That’s what he thinks of you — that you’d turn on your buddy.”

Earl turned to the sheriff. “You son of a bitch. You thought I’d snitch?”

“Earl, don’t—”

“You’re first. I do him first, Gare?”

“That’s fine by me.”

Martin and Jude were silent. Runyer lowered his head.

“No,” Cara whispered. “God, no.”

Runyer fixed his wife and son in his mind and dropped his head to his chest. Earl stepped closer. Ten feet away. He couldn’t miss.

Lisa Lee...

Hal Runyer knew he wasn’t going to the heaven he promised Petey was “up there,” somewhere beyond where the boy’s fragile planes flew. No, he was going to black sleep. His breath hissed in and out and he squinted as the tears came.

Picturing his wife, his son, losing himself in the sad euphoria of the final daydream...

Then he heard something odd. Like the punch of unexpected thunder. A voice. Martin’s, but different. Matter of fact. Calm. It said one word. “Down.”

The women dropped to the floor. Cara hit the pine floorboards and hooked Runyer’s collar, yanking him prone, too. Martin’s hands — somehow free — swung around from behind his back, holding a huge pistol. His feet were still tied so he stood tall as he began firing, not even trying to duck. He fired the first shot at Gare but the boy’s instincts were honed and he dove to the floor behind a couch in a half-second.

Earl was crouching, staring at his friend.

Martin said to the terrified young man, “Drop it.”

But Earl went wide-eyed and lifted the gun, pulling the trigger madly. The slug missed by a yard and before he could fire again Martin squeezed off another round and a tiny dot appeared in the center of Earl’s chest. He stumbled backward with a choked “Gare, oh, look, look.” Then collapsed on his side.

With the knife she was holding, Cara sliced through the rope binding Martin’s feet and he dropped down behind a table. Runyer realized this was how she’d cut the ropes tying his arms — reaching around his back to hug him. She now cut Jude’s hands free, too, pulled a second pistol from her waistband, and passed it to the older woman.

Fast as snakes, Gare popped up behind the couch and fired. Three, four times. But they were panicked shots and all of them missed. Gare emptied Runyer’s pistol and snagged Earl’s from his bloody, twitching hand. While Gare peppered the wall with bullets Martin took his time and squeezed off rounds carefully, forcing the captor back into the corner behind a cedar chest.

“Go right,” Martin called. Jude rolled toward the kitchen, an elegant maneuver, and made her way around Gare’s flank.

“Think you’re hot shit?” Gare screamed, scared as a baby.

Martin ignored him, jumped over the low table, and ducked as the spray of bullets from Gare’s gun slapped the walls. He rolled behind the large armoire.

“Position,” he called to Jude.

“You son of a bitch,” Gare snarled. “You’re dead! You’re both dead.”

“Position,” Jude called.

Martin sized up the room and said, “All right, son. It’s over.”

“Like hell.” Three more shots. A window broke, raining glass onto Cara and Runyer.

“Shoot?” Jude asked.

“Wait.” Then he called, “We’ve got you in a cross-fire, Gare. And we have more ammo than you do. You can’t win. But you can save your life. If you want to.”

They heard hard breathing. Gare coughed once and spat.

“Shit. I’m bleeding. My shoulder!”

“You don’t want us to come get you, son.”

Slowly Gare stood.

“Gun down,” Jude barked. “Now. I won’t tell you a second time.”

The pistol hit the couch. Cara snagged it before it bounced twice and had it unloaded in an instant. She pulled some plastic hogties from her shearling coat pocket and handed them to Martin, who bound Gare’s hands.

“How did...”

“Just lie down there.” Martin and Cara helped him down on his belly. They tied his ankles.

“You’re going to kill me,” he blubbered. “Just do it! Get it over with! I dissed you, I said all those things. And now you’re going to kill me.”

Runyer was gazing at the gun in Martin’s hand. It was a big pistol, a Colt Python with an eight-inch barrel. With a telescopic sight mounted on the top vents.

Martin went through Gare’s pockets, pulled out a box cutter, some papers, a wad of bills. He tossed them on a table. Then he nodded at Jude, and together the couple dragged him into the bedroom. They rested him facedown on the floor, where he cried and moaned.

They returned to the living room and sat down in front of the sheriff. Martin pulled on gloves and began wiping the big Colt.

“You were good,” Runyer said to him. “Really good.” Deciding that it was a lot harder for a brave man to act like a coward than the other way around. Since they so rarely need to.

“Had to get their guard down,” Martin said, meticulous as he removed the fingerprints.

“Had me fooled, too,” Runyer admitted.

“Wished we could’ve kept you fooled, too. But... well, didn’t work out that way.”

“No. I guess not. She’s not your daughter, is she? Cara?”

“Nope,” Martin answered, distracted by his task. “She’s our partner. Backup mostly.”

“How?” Runyer asked her. “How’d you know?”

“Oh, we have codes,” Jude said as if it was obvious.

Martin continued, “When we meet at a safehouse after a job, if there’s anyone in the place who shouldn’t be there, we leave a sign. Tonight if both the bathroom and kitchen lights were on at the time Cara’d know something was wrong. She was supposed to pretend she was our daughter. Buy us some time and maybe get a weapon to us. I staged that fight to pull the shade down so she could look in and get an idea about what was going on.”

Taking a breath a little deeper than he should’ve, Runyer gasped at the pain.

Cara said, “I got here ten minutes ago. I saw those two. I could’ve taken them out then but I didn’t know if there was anybody upstairs or in the basement.”

“But you’re a nurse,” Runyer said to Jude. Trying to disprove these facts encircling him.

“I just know some first aid. Helpful in this line of work.”

“But your birthday...?” Runyer began, looking at Martin.

“Oh,” he answered, “that’s true. It’s today. And I am fifty.”

“You picked a funny way to celebrate.”

The man shrugged. “Big cash delivery at a low-security bank. Didn’t have much choice. We go where the work is.”

The friendliest-seeming folk often aren’t...

Jude looked over Martin with a cryptic gaze, then said to Cara, “Let’s get the car packed up.”

The women vanished.

... and you’ve got to be most cautious of the ones leaning hard to be on your side.

When they were alone Martin said, “What you were going to do... with the ten-gauge... appreciate it. But it wouldn’t’ve worked. They’d’ve killed us on the spot.”

Runyer nodded at Earl’s body. “Stealing the Lexus... that’s what they meant by the job tonight. Not the bank.”

“I guess so.” Martin turned toward the sheriff, who was gazing at the pistol in his hand. Man, it looked big. Bigger than any weapon Runyer’d ever seen. “So,” he said.

“So,” Runyer echoed. “Say, one thing I noticed.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve been pretty free telling me who you are and what you did and all. Just wondering, d’l just jump outa a frying pan?”

“That depends,” said Martin.

Jack Applebee, president of Minuteman Savings, had wanted to give the hero a nice watch, bestowed at an official ceremony. Juice and cake and Ritz crackers. Paper streamers. Folks in Andover just love their official get-togethers.

But Runyer wasn’t in the mood. Besides, Sheriff’s Department regulations won’t let officers accept rewards. So Applebee settled for a handshake at Runyer’s hospital bedside, surrounded by Lisa Lee, Pete, a half dozen friends and family, and a Pequot County Democrat reporter.

The banker talked about gratitude and courage, and also managed to work in a few words about the new Minuteman branch at Elm and Seventeenth and, naturally, the grand opening home-equity loan special. The old guy was in a great mood, and why not? Of the $687,000 stolen, nearly half was recovered. More than he’d ever expected to see again. Gare and Earl’s partner made off with the rest of it. The federal agents and Vermont troopers couldn’t figure out how he slipped through the roadblocks — they were plentiful and well manned. But clearly the robbers were pros and would’ve had escape routes worked out ahead of time.

Defendant Garrett Allen Penbothe adamantly denied that they’d even stuck up the bank in the first place, and so he wasn’t about to offer any information about the elusive third partner. He and Earl, he claimed, had bused up to Andover that afternoon to steal a car, which they’d done a half dozen other times over the past month. And he came up with a version of the robbery so far-fetched that even the Democrat, which’ll print anything shy of alien visitations, decided not to include it in their articles about the trial.

The prosecution witnesses — a businessman and his family whose rental cabin Gare and Earl tried to hide in — confirmed Runyer’s story about the shootout and offered generous words about the sheriff’s courage, and marksmanship, in a tense situation.

Gare’s defense lawyer tried to argue that the young man was the real victim of these events. “My client and his friend just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

But prosecutor Harv Witlock latched on to the phrase for his own and used it liberally during his summation, saying excuse me but wasn’t it Sheriff Runyer and the murdered passerby who’d had the bad luck here? A question that took the jury all of thirty-two minutes to answer. Gare is presently a long-term guest at a piney resort near the Canadian border known as the Tohana Men’s Colony.

Hal Runyer elected to take sick leave for the first time in his decade of wearing the sheriff’s badge. And after that fortnight he took another batch of time: vacation, which he’d also earned plenty of. Not that he had much choice about going back to work. Mentally, he was a mess. He couldn’t sleep for more than an hour without waking in a torrid sweat. And he was plenty skittish when he was awake, too. Noises especially would send him bouncing off the walls. His wound took forever to heal and he could barely move on damp days.

So he spent his time puttering around the house, learning to cook, helping Lisa Lee with her realtor paperwork, shaving wing struts with a razor knife and painting fuselages. Petey had the classiest RC model plane in the county that fall.

A month after the robbery Runyer woke up early one frosty Tuesday and called the mayor at home. He quit the force. No explanations given or asked for. And when he hung up the phone he felt great. That night he took his family out to dinner and while they ate Houlihan’s prime rib special he told them the news. He tried to gauge his wife’s reaction and didn’t have a clue.

It was a week later that a small package, no return address, was delivered to the house. Runyer started to open it, then noticed it was addressed only to Lisa Lee and he passed it over to her. She opened it with mixed suspicion and anticipation and gave a brief gasp. The black velvet box held a gold ring set with a big blue topaz. No name of a store, nothing other than a card that said, “For Lisa Lee.”

Runyer was a generous man but his gifts leaned more toward the practical or, at best, decorative. A luxury like this was quite a jolt for her. She threw her lengthy arms around his neck. “But we can’t afford it, honey.”

Gazing at the anonymous note, piecing things together, he said, “No, it’s okay. It’s a thank-you present.”

“From who?”

“Those people in the cabin.”

“The ones you saved after the bank robbery? The couple and their daughter?”

“The wife... she had one of these rings and I told her it reminded me of your eyes. I guess she remembered that.”

“It must’ve cost a fortune,” Lisa Lee said, dazzled by the stone.

“He runs some kind of business. Bet he got it wholesale.”

“We’ll have to send them a nice note.”

“I’ll take care of that,” he said. If he sounded evasive, she didn’t seem to notice.

Life’s a funny thing, Runyer found himself thinking as he stood in that hot kitchen with his wife in his arms. Sometimes every soul in the world but you seems to know what’s what and is more than happy to tell you so. And most of the time you go along with them. But if you live long enough — maybe thirty years, maybe fifty — you get to the point when you’re just not willing to hand off certain choices anymore. The important ones anyway. You do what you think’s best and go on about your business.

“Which finger should I wear it on?” Lisa Lee asked.

“Well, let’s see where it looks right.” Runyer took his wife’s hand and gratefully endured the hug despite the loving pain she inflicted on his torn belly.

The next day Hal Runyer climbed the stairs to the Sheriff’s Department office, moving a little slower than he had before the shooting.

“Well, look who it is,” Hazel said, eyeing his starched khakis. “You didn’t call. We heard you were quitting.”

“Naw, just a mix-up. I straightened it out with the mayor last night.”

He snagged the report log from the desk in her cubicle and asked, “What’s going on ’round town?”

“Not too much. Pretty quiet morning.”

Runyer lifted aside a stack of files from his chair and sat at his desk. He started to read.