There was a column headed “WELDONVILLE OFFICERS WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES.” It was led by Joseph Roberts, the chief of police, and then, curiously, Mark Ballard, city manager, and then the sergeant and seven patrolmen killed in the battle of Main Street. The cops had been like members of her family. Willenz and Gutierrez, the two she’d driven to the fight; Diane Krantz and Kylee Fortin, the two women cops she had helped train; Dan Kazmerdjian, Dick Turner, Tom Bond. Then came a much longer list titled “CITIZENS OF WELDONVILLE.” Leah’s eyes ran down the columns, as though weighted by gravity. She knew the names so well that she wasn’t reading, just scanning for familiar people in a crowd.

She saw Katherine Long, Katy Long, and James Long, the family of that man from New York who had volunteered to go after the killers. She found Marjorie Clay’s parents, and Kristen Green’s father and her sister Stephanie, a McClellan who was Ray’s cousin that he’d barely known. Leah’s best school friend Kathy Harris was there, the other tall girl in her class. She saw the names of people she’d known who had been as old as in their eighties and ones younger than ten. There were some she had deeply admired and others she had arrested. She looked away.

She was at the top of the steps, and kept walking, relieved to get past the long list of names. She stepped into the building through the double glass doors and saw Fred Burmeyer, one of the cops who had survived the fight on Main.

“Hello, Chief,” he said.

Leah said, “The chief’s out there on the plaque.”

“Yep, and we miss him, but somebody’s got to do it, and we’re glad we had you to step in.”

“Thanks, Fred. How have you been?”

“Not too bad. We’re mostly writing tickets, keeping people friendly and the drunks out of the road.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s what the town hired us for. Be safe.”

She walked into the front entrance to the police station, past the counter where the general public was served, and into the office bay. Art Sprague, the top sergeant, sat at his desk outside the glass wall of her office. She unlocked the office door and said, “Morning, Art. Come on in.”

When he came in, she said, “You could have used the chief’s office while I was gone.”

Art shrugged. “Thanks, Leah. But moving into somebody else’s space while they’re gone is just an extra job. In fact it’s two. You have to move out again too. And now and then we’ll get a visit from a state cop or one of the feds from the prison. If they see you’re not in your office, you’re just out. If they see somebody else in your office, then you’re gone.”