Chapter Thirty-Six

SHERIFF CLAY SPEARS leaned back in the seat of his cruiser, put his big arm on the windowsill and scanned the park. On the play equipment in front of his vehicle, Joe was hanging upside down, his knees curled around the monkey bars, the cruiser’s second radio dangling from his fingertips a few feet off the ground. Clay watched the kid raise the radio to his mouth as a woman with a dog appeared on the little path that trailed into the woods.

The radio on Clay’s shoulder crackled to life.

“Big Bear, this is Detective Joe. I’m gonna make a, um… a possible crime report, over.”

“OK,” Clay said and smiled. Beside him, in the passenger seat, April chuckled. “Go ahead, Detective. What’s the scoop? Over.”

“I’m seeing a lady with a dog,” the kid said, his head turning as he followed the woman on the path past the play equipment. “She looks kind of suspicious. I think probably she stole that dog. Probably she has lots of stolen dogs at her house.”

Clay and April considered the report. Clay thought April’s eyes looked happy behind her brown-lensed sunglasses. It made his stomach flip to think about those eyes, what they might convey as they turned on him in the coming days. Weeks. Months. Would he be looking into those eyes in years to come? The dreams were easier to conjure now that there was someone filling the empty space of the woman in them. A person with a name and a voice.

“Sure are a lot of suspicious characters around today,” Clay mused over the radio to the boy. “Could be that a gang has moved into town, over.”

“A crime gang?”

“Yeah.”

“We better get more surveillance.” Joe’s tone was contemplative. “From all angles.”

The pair in the car watched as the boy clambered across the equipment and took the slide to the ground, setting up again on his belly near the logs lining the edge of the play area.

“Listen,” Clay said to April as they waited for more reports from the boy. “I’m really sorry about Vinny.”

“Don’t worry about it.” April laughed uneasily.

“He’s old-fashioned,” Clay sighed. “Bullheaded. I mean, I see what he’s getting at. Joe’s pretty. But all little kids are pretty. Vinny’s probably caught on to the idea that you’re not being wholly truthful about something, the way I did, and he figures you’re lying about Joe being a boy. But he’s not going to question you about it anymore. Nobody is. I’ll make sure of it.”

April nodded, staring at her hands in her lap.

“It’s…” She struggled, her lip trembling. “It’s embarrassing, all of this. I mean, who lets it get that bad? So bad that you have to run away like a goddamn fugitive? There are women’s shelters. There are… phone numbers you can call.” She shook her head. “It just came out of the blue, you know?”

Clay nodded.

“He only started hitting me six months ago or so,” April said. “And then, uh. Then he changed the numbers on the bank accounts. Locked up all the money. I couldn’t leave the house without him wanting to know where I was going. Then one night, he just snapped.”

Clay tried to quiet the anger but it rushed up inside him, fast and boiling.

“What’s this prick’s name?” Clay’s jaw had become so tight he had to talk through his teeth. He turned the computer screen mounted between them toward himself. “Last name Leeler, right?”

April slammed a hand on top of the screen. “Wait—what? What are you doing?”

“This is the MDT,” Clay said as he started tapping at buttons on the screen. “Mobile digital terminal. I can access criminal records for out-of-state suspects on here. I want to know if your husband has any outstanding warrants.”

“No, Clay, I—”

“I know you want to move slow with this,” Clay said. “Go at your own speed. Figure out how you want to divorce this guy and get custody of Joe and start your new life. And hell, I don’t mean to be pushy. But April, we have to make sure you’re not in danger. And guys like this? They usually have records. They usually have outstanding warrants.” He tapped at the screen again, opened the search database. “If we can get him picked up, we can at least rest easy that he’s not out there somewhere looking for—”

She was kissing him. It happened that fast. Her hand was around the back of his head and her lips were on his, and before he could even process what was happening, he was holding her cheeks and kissing her back, hard. And when they were done, he leaned his forehead against hers and felt a joy and excitement that was new and foreign and frightening, like it might get out of control and make him whoop and scream and punch the air like an idiot.

The two of them looked out the windshield and saw Joe standing there, watching them with an expression as disgusted as it was surprised. The boy held up the radio.

“Gross, guys,” came his voice through the speaker.

The mounted radio in the dash blipped. Clay looked down at it.

“Sheriff, you about? It’s Gidley here.”

Clay grabbed the speaker, his whole face feeling like it was on fire as April sank back into her seat, smiling, daydreaming.

“Go ahead, Bob,” Clay said.

“We got something weird down here at the marina,” Gidley said. “South end, behind the sheds. Might be a sunken car.”

Clay threw April an apologetic look, flipped his shoulder radio over to the police channel, and turned the car radio off. He got out of the car and shut the door. Half the time, sunken cars meant suicides, and his officers weren’t polite about death on official channels. All efforts Clay had made to get them to use proper codes on closed channels around town had failed.

“OK.” Clay’s head was still spinning. He sucked in the cold air outside the car. “OK.”

He looked into the car and saw April had turned the MDT screen toward herself, was tapping at the screen fast. His mind was spinning so quickly as Gidley talked, Clay noted the activity but didn’t log it, couldn’t interpret the warning bells going off in his head.

“We also got Rich and Warren out on the highway looking for a car crash, maybe,” Gidley continued. “Might be a couple of shots fired. Not sure what’s happening there. I know you’ve already clocked off, but—”

“I’ll be right in,” Clay said. “Over.”

He slipped back into the car. April turned the MDT screen back toward him. He told himself he’d talk to her about that later, call her out on using his police resources covertly, hoping he wouldn’t notice. He was here to help her. She had to understand that. But there was no time for all of that now. Clay smiled at mother and son, picturing himself saying what he was about to say next to the two of them every day as he left the house.

“Sorry, you two,” he said. “Duty calls.”