Her deputy seemed rooted, doubting. But she had just felt the arrival of a hunch about Golly, springing from a memory of his rant. Those who face the darkness are meant to shine the light. You will be saved by fire.

She had to get this right. Don’t force anything. Take your time. As much as her mother’s instinct said otherwise, the cop in her had begun to sense that Golly didn’t want to hurt Taylor. Where was the gain in that for him? Taylor would get hurt only if she rushed Golly, forced him off his plan. He was the hero here, the show. Taylor was the man’s bait, not his purpose.

She forced her fear into the background and said to Schwem more quietly, “We’re going to humor him. He wants gasoline, get him gasoline. He also wants attention. We’re going to give it to him.”

She pointed toward the old-timers outside the café.

“One of those guys has chain saw gas in his truck. Get going.”

Now her deputy moved. She watched Golly smile.

“A couple gallons would be good,” he called after Schwem.

“And now,” he appealed cheerfully to the swelling crowd on the far sidewalk, “who’s going to do the YouTube?”

CHAPTER 45

To a boy who runs slower and reads slower than his twin brother, who writes crookeder and spells worse that his twin brother, whose smaller 4-H rabbit has one squinty eye and only half a tail…

To a boy whose sister will soon be a far better brother than he could ever hope to be…

To a boy like this comes a special sense about the thin margins of survival. And so he sits on the floor exactly in the spot where the man told him to sit, and he stays there even on broken glass, not moving—though the man has let go of his collar and set the hammer down on Mr. Fanta’s desk—though the man has become busy calling someone on the telephone and drinking liquor from a bottle out of Mr. Fanta’s drawer.

“Oh, no, don’t bother calling the cops. The cops are already here. Show starts in thirty minutes.”