Now she did look at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve decided not to run for re-election.”
She favored him with a thin stiletto of a smile that her own mother might not have recognized. “Going to quit before Johnny Q. Public can fire you?”
“If you want to put it that way,” he said.
“I do,” Jeannie said. “Go on out back, Mr. Prosecutor For Now, and feel free to suggest a partnership. But you should be ready to duck.”
2
Ralph was sitting in a lawn chair with a beer in his hand and a Styrofoam cooler beside him. He glanced around when the kitchen’s screen door slammed, saw Samuels, and then returned his attention to a hackberry tree just beyond the back fence.
“Yonder’s a nuthatch,” he said, pointing. “Haven’t seen one of those in a dog’s age.”
There was no second chair, so Samuels lowered himself to the bench of the long picnic table. He had sat here several times before, under happier circumstances. He looked at the tree. “I don’t see it.”
“There he goes,” Ralph said, as a small bird took wing.
“I think that’s a sparrow.”
“Time to get your eyes checked.” Ralph reached into the cooler and handed Samuels a Shiner.
“Jeannie says you’re thinking about retiring.”
Ralph shrugged.
“If it’s the psych eval you’re worried about, you’ll pass with flying colors. You did what you had to do.”
“It’s not that. It’s not even the cameraman. You know about him? When the bullet hit his camera—the first one I fired—the pieces went everywhere. Including one into his eye.”
Samuels did know this, but kept quiet and sipped his beer, although he loathed Shiner.
“He’s probably going to lose it,” Ralph said. “The doctors at Dean McGee up in Okie City are trying to save it, but yeah, he’s probably going to lose it. You think a cameraman with one eye can still work? Probably, maybe, or no way?”
“Ralph, someone slammed into you as you fired. And listen, if the guy hadn’t had the camera up to his face, he’d probably be dead now. That’s the upside.”
“Yeah, and fuck a bunch of upside. I called his wife to apologize. She said, ‘We’re going to sue the Flint City PD for ten million dollars, and once we win that one, we’ll start on you.’ Then she hung up.”
“That will never fly. Peterson had a gun, and you were in performance of your duty.”
“As that camera-jockey was in performance of his.”
“Not the same. He had a choice.”
“No, Bill.” Ralph swung around in his chair. “He had a job. And that was a nuthatch, goddammit.”
“Ralph, you need to listen to me now. Maitland killed Frank Peterson. Peterson’s brother killed Maitland. Most people see that as frontier justice, and why not? This state was the frontier not that long ago.”
“Terry said he didn’t do it. That was his dying declaration.”
Samuels got to his feet and began to pace. “What else was he going to say with his wife kneeling right there beside him and crying her eyes out? Was he going to say, ‘Oh yes, right, I buggered the kid, and I bit him—not necessarily in that order—and then I ejaculated on him for good measure’？”
“There’s a wealth of evidence to support what Terry said at the end.”
Samuels stalked back to Ralph and stood looking down at him. “It was his fucking DNA in the semen sample, and DNA trumps everything. Terry killed him. I don’t know how he set up the rest, but he did.”
“Did you come here to convince me or yourself?”
“I don’t need any convincing. I only came to tell you that we now know who originally stole that white Econoline van.”
“At this point does it make any difference?” Ralph asked, but Samuels at last detected a gleam of interest in the man’s eyes.
“If you’re asking if it casts any light on this mess, no. But it’s fascinating. Do you want to hear or not?”
“Sure.”
“It was stolen by a twelve-year-old boy.”
“Twelve? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope, and he was on the road for months. Made it all the way to El Paso before a cop bagged him in a Walmart parking lot, sleeping in a stolen Buick. He stole four vehicles in all, but the van was the first. He drove it as far as Ohio before he ditched it and switched to another one. Left the ignition key in it, just the way we thought.” He said this with some pride, and Ralph supposed he had a right; it was nice that at least one of their theories going in had proved correct.