1 The little girl knew things. Her mother said it was because she was a good listener. Not just to the words that adults said, but to the words "in between the words." The girl noticed small facial contours that telegraphed an adult''s lie. She tracked changes in the music and cadence of a voice, like when someone left the room and those remaining decided that enough time had passed and it was safe to talk about that person. But mostly-she''d just always known more than girls her own age. At her old public school, the teachers had moved her ahead one grade. Then another.
The school recommended a third, but her mother said it was unnatural for an eight-year-old to be in junior high, especially with how petite she was. And so the girl had easily noticed the car that had been following them. A Toyota truck. White, with one headlight out. Her father had changed lanes twice in the last ten minutes, and still the white truck remained behind them. Hanging back by ten or twelve car lengths. The girl sat in the back of her family''s Hyundai, playing Minecraft on her iPad. She had calculated that she would need one thousand planks of wood to build the house she wanted in the video game.
And she knew that each oak log produced four planks, so she set out to cut down two hundred and fifty pieces of oak. A simple task, all thumbs and fingers. That was when the truck began accelerating. Eight car lengths back. Six car lengths. Four. The driver made a strange move then, speeding up, yet leaving the road and driving onto the shoulder. And it didn''t make sense to the girl.
Until the front left corner of the Toyota swerved in and made contact with the back right corner of her family''s car. Her world spun. She saw the dark shortleaf trees of the Georgia forest at the roadside. A glimpse of the Tullumy River, far down the incline. And the metal of an oncoming guardrail. Her mother screamed. The girl was thrown against her window. And then there was one last image.
The face of the man in the Toyota. Focused and steady. Not at all panicked. Staring right at her. And then her family''s car lurched off the road. 2 My finger tapped the trigger on my Glock 42, and four rounds of .380 flew through the air. Pop, pop, pop, pop.
All before I could let out my first breath. It was a Tuesday morning in May, and my partner, Remy Morgan, and I were in the Georgia Safe, a gun range three miles east of Mason Falls. I took off my brown sport coat and hung it over the divider wall between me and Remy. Placed my gun atop the small weapons ledge, pointing down-range. Through the open air, I could smell scrambled eggs and chicken-fried steak, floating over from the gun range''s office. The owner, a retired patrolman named Cooz, had never met a gravy dish he didn''t like. He had the figure to prove it. "So, Rem," I said.
"You never told me about your date." Remy was dressed in one of her go-to outfits: tan pants and an ironed white blouse that contrasted with her dark brown skin. She wore bookish glasses, which I''ve always thought was a ploy to play down her good looks. "Saturday?" She shrugged. "We went to Forest Oaks." I glanced at my partner. Mounted a new target in my lane and hit the button to send it away. "He took you to a cemetery?" Remy hung her target in the next lane over.
"We saw Blade Runner, P.T. They show old movies there. It''s a thing." There were a lot of things that were things now, but I didn''t know a thing about them. Maybe that was me, not wanting to get used to what passed for my new life. My life since my wife and son were gone. I loaded a magazine into my Glock.
"We don''t go to the morgue enough times a year? You gotta visit gravesites for date night?" Remy rolled her eyes. My partner was twenty-six, more than ten years younger than me. "Don''t be an old man, P.T." She put cans on her ears, and slammed the six-bullet magazine into her weapon. "Plus, old people usually aren''t good shots," she hollered. "The eyes start to go." I grinned.
"We betting on this? ''Cause as far as I can remember, your partner''s still the best shot in the department." My cell buzzed in my pocket, and I took it out. Typed a quick response to the message and put the phone away. "Loser buys dinner," Remy mouthed. "Best out of twenty? Four rounds of five?" I got into a fighting stance and aimed my Glock 42 at the target. My partner can be a little chesty sometimes. The kinda person who can start an argument in an empty house. Then again, that''s what I like most about her.
I tapped-one, two, three, four, five. Hit the return and faced Remy, not even looking as the paper target came back. "I like steak places, you know," I said. "Expensive steak places." The paper target stopped, and I lifted a corner of the printed silhouette. "Five out of five, rook." Remy wasn''t a rookie detective anymore. Which was why I said it.
She placed her right foot toward the back of her lane and extended her right arm straight. Her left arm supported it with a bent elbow. This was a different shooting stance than mine. It was called the Weaver and was taught to cadets in the last decade. Remy threw her hair out of the way, over her left shoulder. My partner had the sculpted cheekbones, dark skin, and wavy curls of a fashion model. She exhaled and took aim, letting out five quick blasts. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
She hit the return button with her open palm, and the target drifted toward us. "Tofurkey," she said. The corners of the paper fluttered in the air-conditioning inside the range. "Tofurkey?" I mouthed. Five out of five shots were in the center of Remy''s target. Two were inside a white area called the "inner ten." The center of the center. Remy inspected her own results.
First round in the books, and we were even. "There''s a really good vegan place off 85," she hollered at me. "When I beat your ass, we''ll drive down there. Great tofurkey." My phone buzzed again, and I glanced at the screen. Scanning the two texts sent to me in the last few minutes. My partner wasn''t even vegan. She was just busting my balls.
"Rain check." I held up my phone, showing Remy a text from the chief. We packed up and hurried outside. And I squeezed my six-foot-two frame into Remy''s red ''77 Alfa Romeo Spider. My name is P. T. Marsh, and Mason Falls, Georgia, is my town. Lately we top out at a little under 130,000 souls.
It''s that interesting size-small enough for families to feel like they''ve escaped the sprawling urban buzz that is Atlanta, but large enough to keep a four-detective homicide squad overworked and underpaid. "What does it say?" Remy motioned at my cell. "To drop the rookie off. Despite her shooting skills, grab a more experienced detective." Remy shot me the bird with her free hand, and I glanced down at my cell. "Chief Pernacek has a friend," I said. Remy smiled. "It''s good he''s making friends.
" Jeff Pernacek had become chief of police back when I was a rookie, but had retired about a decade ago. With our recent chief having left office, Mayor Stems had called Pernacek back in as the interim boss. "Is his friend dead?" my partner asked. While Remy''s point was that we worked homicide, it was also true that Pernacek had reentered the department with a specific opinion: that we''d become sloppy in his absence. We needed orders, and a lot of ''em. When I saw his first text, asking if we could drop by a citizen''s house to do a welfare check, I''d typed back a short note. "Did you tell him we were getting weapon certs renewed?" "I did," I said. Staring at my text exchange with the chief.
"What''d he say back?" I showed Remy the chief''s response, which was three words: Order equals structure. Which meant: Do what the hell I say-even if you think I''m sending you on some boondoggle errand. Remy put her foot to the floor, and out the window a forest thick with loblolly pines flew by. In the foreground, weedy green kudzu climbed out of the Georgia mist, covering the pine trees like an old sock. While she drove, I rang up the chief, who told me that a close friend hadn''t shown for a monthly bridge game. "Before you make some smartass remark, P.T.," Pernacek said, "it''s worth noting that the mayor and I have played bridge with Ennis Fultz for ten years.
Same restaurant. Second Tuesday of every month." "And he''s never missed one?" "Not without calling," Pernac.