“It’s a shame what he did to you. I don’t blame you. He’s still alive, as I understand it?”

When the cop chimes in, it startles her, if only because he’d been sitting there quiet as a wart on a frog’s ass. He says, “Alive as any man can be after having his nuts shot off by some teen cooze.”

“He’s in jail,” Atlanta says through her teeth. “That’s where kid-touchers go. There, and then hell.” Not that she believes in hell, but for cases like this, she’s willing to plead for an exception.

Orly holds up his hands. Massive palms, like he could crush a coconut with just a clap. “I don’t blame you. I salute you. You took matters into your own hands. You and your gun. Somebody was giving you trouble and you handled it yourself. I admire that attitude and try to do the same. This man, this boyfriend of your mother’s, was . . . broken. Deviant. Probably in how he was raised, but maybe even at the genetic level. So many deviants are. It’s why I’m a bit surprised at the company you keep.”

And there it is.

“Don’t tie who you are to who I am,” she seethes, lifting herself forward in the chair, hands planted so hard on the armrests she thinks she might break them off. “Don’t tie my friends to him. I didn’t shoot him because he was gay, because he was a different color or had different parts than me. I shot him because he was a bad person who did bad things, and sometimes bad people need a taste of their own awfulness.”

Orly acts like he’s chewing on that, like it’s a piece of food that he freed from his teeth and now he’s trying to figure out what it is. Finally he nods and shrugs.

“Well. All right, then. It was nice to meet you, Miss Burns. By now your mother should be here.”

“My mother?”

“Indeed. I called all the parents to come collect their wayward children. I handle mine. They handle theirs. It’s the way the world works. Or should, at least.” He stands up. “That will conclude our business, then, Miss Burns.”

When she goes back into the main room of the gun club, sure enough, there stands Mama, fretting over the cuts on Chris’s face. Behind her, Chris’s father paces, the flats of his hands shoved under his armpits. When Bill Coyne sees Atlanta come out of that room, ushered by Orly Erickson and his cop crony, he hurries over, scowling.