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“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I think we both remember that night pretty clearly.”

“I don’t know what you saw over there,” she said. Unlike me, she appeared to be measuring her words carefully. “I wasn’t with you. I didn’t see it for myself.”

“But you think that I don’t—”

“I think that this isn’t about Roger,” she said. “And it’s not about the cameras. Or a box. Or the neighborhood patrol, or any of it.”

“No?” My voice had acquired a peevish tone that even I didn’t like. “Then what do you think this is about? I mean, tell me. Because I can’t—”

“I know you’re not happy here,” she said, and now I did recognize her expression. Sadness. “I know that you resent me a little bit for taking this job, even if you’ve done a good job hiding it.”

I think it was the look on her face, more than her words, that set me back on my heels. But the words still landed like a blind punch. When had Sara formulated this theory? I hadn’t seen it coming. I had no defense.

I said, “What?”

“I can’t even say that I blame you,” she said. “I certainly can’t blame you for being frustrated. Neither of us have been ourselves since we left home. Especially since the baby.”

“Sara.”

“You’ve been distant,” she said.
“I’ve
been distant. I’m not blaming either one of us.”

“Just stop a minute.”

She held up a hand, stopping
me
instead. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and Roger. You never gave me a straight answer about why you dropped out of the neighborhood watch, and for now that’s fine. I don’t know what he did to make you his enemy, and that’s fine for now too.” She took a
long sip of her wine. “I don’t know what you found over there.”

I tried to take her hand again. She moved beyond my reach. “Sara, please.”

“All I know,” she said, “is that we need help.”

I pulled my hand back and looked at her.

She looked at her wine.

“You’ve got finals,” she finally said. “I’ve got a million things. We’ve got the party to plan.” She took another sip, then placed her wineglass down on the table. “But once this godawful semester is finally over and done with, I want us to find a good marriage counselor.”

How had this conversation brought us here?

“Maybe sometime after that,” Sara said, “we can worry about Roger.”

I was out of words.

She was too.

We sat and looked at each other.

Later that night, I received an e-mail from Roger. I’d never given him my e-mail address, but there it was:

Paul,

RM

I sat upstairs at my computer for a long time, imagining Roger across the circle, sitting at his.

I finally bent over the keyboard and carefully drafted several good, subtle counterthreats regarding my soiled jacket, particularly with regard to its December 16 availability. I sat
awhile longer, trying to decide which reply I liked best. I finally scrapped them all and typed:

Roger,

Paul

Still later—long after Sara had double- checked all the doors and windows and collapsed into bed, after I was sure she’d fallen asleep—I went back upstairs and printed an Internet map. I went downstairs and found my old duffel bag under the stairs in the basement.

Then I went out to the garage, got in my car, and drove to a medical supply warehouse on the south side of town.

ACCORDING TO THE RECORDS I’d found in Roger’s files, Darius Calvin worked swing shift on the shipping and receiving dock at Missouri Valley Medical Shipping & Warehousing Incorporated.

From my spot across the service road, in the dark lot of an abandoned auto parts store, I could see the entire loading bay and most of the employee parking area.

I dug around in the glove box, found my penlight, and read a book while I waited. I’d just picked up the latest paperback in the series about the ass- kicking drifter; it seemed like just the inspiration I needed. I pretended it was a self- help book.

By the time the 5-2 shift at the warehouse ended, the hero in the novel was on his way to a gunfight at the countryside enclave of the underground militia group, who ran a giant meth
lab to generate funding for their various domestic terrorism projects. I cornered the page and started the car. Waited.

Darius Calvin eventually stepped out onto the well- lighted loading dock with a thermos in one hand, a canvas work coat in the other. I’d only seen him once before, and under duress at that. But even at a hundred yards, I recognized the man who’d attacked Sara in our bedroom.

He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. He seemed to look right at me for a moment, though I knew there was no way he could see me in the dark. Was there?

Then he nodded to some guys and headed in the other direction, toward a rusted Ford Tempo in the employee parking lot.

I followed him to a peeling, sagging little one- story house near the railroad tracks. It wasn’t a Safer Places neighborhood.

Darius Calvin didn’t have an alarm system from Sentinel One Incorporated. He didn’t have an alarm system from anybody. He didn’t even have curtains on his windows.

He was asleep on a moth- eaten couch, in front of an old
Barney Miller
repeat on the rabbit- eared television, when I kicked his foot. He jerked awake—still in his work clothes—to find some crazy white intruder standing over him with an aluminum softball bat.

“What the fuck?” he said.

“You don’t lock your front door?” It was actually exhilarating, in a dry- heave sort of way. Being there. Having the upper hand. I tried to talk like the hero from the novel I’d been reading. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”

Calvin rubbed his eyes, looked at me closely. Recognition seeped into his eyes. He said, “Aw, hell no.”

“So you do remember me? I wasn’t sure if you would.”

He started to sit up on the couch. At his first flinch, I drew the bat back, slugger style. My heart was pounding in my throat. I felt a little dizzy. The bat hadn’t been out of my
duffel bag since the Dixson English department softball team broke up.

I pulled myself together and said, “Fair warning. I was a better softball player than I am a golfer.”

Darius Calvin closed his eyes and sighed like a punctured tire.

HE TOLD ME EVERYTHING. About his run- in with a cop named Stockman. About his arrangement with Roger Mallory. About $1,000 in cash, which Roger apparently had paid him later as hush money.

Looking back, I could see all the ways our tender new roots in Clark Falls had been fertilized by this single harrowing experience: the night I’d found Darius Calvin in our bedroom, covering Sara’s mouth with his hand. But of all the things Darius Calvin told me that night, one thing stuck in the front of my mind:

I could tell they were beefin’.

“Beefing?” I’d put away my softball bat by then. “What does that mean? Beefing?”

“Like maybe they weren’t exactly on the same page,” he’d said. “The cop and what’s- his- name.”

“Roger?”

“That’s the dude from TV?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well.” Darius shrugged. “It was him runnin’ the show, not the cop. Matter of fact, that cop seemed nervous to be there, you ask me.”

“Beefing,” I’d said, and then asked him, “What were they saying to each other?”

“Man, I stayed outta that shit.”

The next morning, I spent a half hour on the Internet, then an hour in the microfiche room at the
Clark Falls Telegram.
In that time I’d pieced together an engagement notice and a wedding announcement for Roger Mallory and Clair Stockman. I found obituaries for Brandon and Clair Mallory. I found enough news coverage of the Brandon Mallory abduction to identify the overlaps between Darius Calvin’s story, Roger’s family photographs, and the Clark Falls Police Department. I was certain that the cop Darius had known only as “Stockman” was a patrol sergeant named Van Stockman. Brandon’s uncle, Clair’s brother. Roger’s best man.

Why had Van and Roger been “beefing” over Darius Calvin? My thoughts ran back to my father’s take on marriage. Those little cracks you couldn’t see until they opened up. Had cracks formed between Roger and his old partner?

Was there a way to slip into one? Pry it open a little?

All I knew was that I couldn’t take on Roger Mallory alone. I needed volunteers for the resistance, and it would be one hell of a coup if Van Stockman turned out to be my first recruit.

I canceled my classes for the day and drove to Stockman’s yellow brick duplex near Expedition Park. I parked beneath a hanging willow, walked up the stone path, and knocked on the door marked with Stockman’s address.

A middle- aged woman in a sweatshirt and jeans answered. “Can I help you?”

“Hi,” I said. “Mrs. Stockman?”

She dried her chapped hands on a dish towel and eyed me. “I’m Valerie Stockman. What can I do for you?”

“Actually, I’m here to see Van.” I’d planned my lie on the way over. A variation on a page from the Maya Lamb play-book. “I’m with the
Des Moines Register.
We’re doing a feature story on the Safer Places Organization?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. She smiled. “Of course.”

“I’m sorry to barge in like this. I should have called ahead.”

“No, not at all.”

“Is your husband at home?”

She looked confused.

“Mr. Stockman,” I said. “I know he works nights, thought it might be best to try him during the afternoon.”

“You’re talking about Van, right?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should call and schedule a—”

Valerie laughed and opened the door. “You really do need help with your story.”

“I do?”

“Van’s my brother,” she said. “He lives on the other side. Come on in.”

“Oh.” I pretended to look embarrassed, but honestly, I didn’t need to pretend very hard. Apparently I hadn’t done my homework so well after all. “Sorry again. I can go across.”

“Never mind, we connect in the middle. I’ll go on over and tell him you’re here.” She led me through the entry into a small living room, where an old man sat in a recliner, dressed in pajamas, watching a game show on the television. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“Oh, thanks, no. I’m fine.”

“Well, make yourself comfortable. I’ll get Van. Dad, this is…What was your name?”

I threw out the first name that popped into my head. “Ben Holland.”

“Ben Holland, Dad. He’s doing a story on Roger.”

The old man grimaced, never lifting his gaze from the television
screen. Valerie rolled her eyes, swiped a hand at him, and gave me an apologetic look.
He’s stubborn.
“I’ll be right back.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

She disappeared around a corner and down the adjoining hall. In her absence, awkward silence slowly enveloped the living room. The old man—Clair Mallory’s father, I presumed— appeared to be swimming in his pajamas. He had a clear tube taped under his nose. The tubing trailed across his afghan to an oxygen tank on the floor beside the chair. The table next to him was crowded with medicine bottles and used tissues.

On another table, I saw a portable nebulizer machine similar to the one I’d had as a kid, right up until I’d outgrown my asthma at the age of twelve. I saw a blue bulb syringe like I’d seen Trish Firth use on the twins’ noses when they had colds.

There were other items I couldn’t name. They all looked medical. The room had the sour, musty smell of age and illness.

“Afternoon, sir.” I nodded politely. “How are you?”

He coughed. It was a horrid, gurgling sound deep in his chest. It seemed to start slowly, gathering momentum until finally seizing him in a fit. By the end he’d nearly doubled over in the chair. As the afghan shifted, I saw blue veins and pale white ankles and what looked like a Foley bag propped on the leg rest of the recliner between his slippered feet. He spat into a tissue, looked at the result, scowled, and tossed the tissue onto the table with the others.

“Dying,” he said, without looking at me. “How the hell are you?”

I stood mute.

“Take a picture,” he said. “You can look at it later.”

I looked away quickly, embarrassed, moving my gaze around the room. Curio cabinet in the corner. Pendulum clock above the television. A replica of a familiar painting over the couch: Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, face turned up toward a beam from the heavens, disciples asleep in the background. My parents had a smaller version of the same portrait in their guest bedroom.

Somewhere in the house, I heard voices, followed by footfalls that sounded heavier coming back than Valerie Stockman’s had sounded going away.

In a moment, she reappeared in the living room. “Ben,” she said. “This is my brother, Van.”

A man filled the doorway behind her. He was built like a pile of sandbags, somewhere in his late forties, with a full mustache, razored salt- and- pepper hair, and dark, watchful eyes. Dressed in a nylon flight jacket, he looked very much like an off- duty cop, or possibly the defensive line coach for the university football program. Seeing him, I had the distinct feeling that I’d met him before, though I couldn’t think where or why.

“Sergeant Stockman,” I said, already anxious to dispense with this reporter ruse. I didn’t know how Maya Lamb managed to do this for a living. “I’m sorry to bother you. I was just in town doing a—”

“Sure, Val filled me in.” He smiled, crossing the floor in three strides and offering his hand. “No bother at all, Ben. Roger’s family, happy to help.”

“You look like you’re on your way somewhere.”

“Work,” he said. “But I got ten or fifteen I can spare. Nice little coffee shop down the street. Care to follow?”

“That sounds great,” I said.

He stepped over to the recliner, bent down, and kissed the old man on top of his head. “Take it easy, Pop.”

Without looking away from the television, the old man reached out with one tremor- stricken hand and patted his son on the wrist.

“And stop giving Val so much shit. Take your goddamned meds when she says. Hear?”