“Then they left and went up the street. And Chad was like, ‘We can’t let them get away with this shit,’ so we followed them. And I said, ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing with that throwing people through windows and shit.’ And the white guy said, ‘You must like going through windows.’ And I told him ‘Fuck you’ in a polite voice and he threw me through the window.”

Beau clicked the recorder off.

“It’s good that he used his polite voice,” I said. “Otherwise no telling what would’ve happened.”

Beau grimaced. “They aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and booze didn’t improve their IQ any.”

“And what do the Big Scary Black Guys say?” I asked.

“They say that the kids were drunk and kept hitting on the girl who was with them. One of them wandered over, and threw some buffalo wings at them, and got thrown through the window. The girl took off and they decided to leave. The two geniuses followed them and got thrown through the front window of Chuck’s Hardware.”

“Tossing chicken at people constitutes an assault,” I said. “By their own admission, they threw the first punch.”

“In the instance of the situation at the Steel Horse, correct. However, your people are not being held for the incident at the Steel Horse; they are being held because during a verbal altercation in Gawker Alley, they took it upon themselves to put two people through Chuck’s window.”

He had me there. “With all due respect, that’s a continuation of the same incident.”

“I can see why you might think that, but it took Mike and Chad ten minutes to stagger their drunken way up Gawker. It’s two different incidents and you know it.”

Argh. “I beg to differ.”

“I respect your right to differ, but that doesn’t change reality. I cannot have people thrown through windows willy-nilly in my county.”

We stared at each other. The level of politeness had risen to dangerous levels.

“We would be delighted to pay restitution to Chuck’s Hardware and to restore his window,” I said. “We are happy to set it right. Would he be willing to drop charges?”

“He’s a reasonable man,” Beau said. “It will cost you.”

I shrugged. “Boys will be boys, Sheriff. You know how it is, they have fun and we pay the bills.”

“You also have Jeff Cooper to deal with,” Beau said. “Mike’s dad. He’s in my front lobby fuming and making an ass of himself. He wants assault charges to be brought up.”

I pulled a small plastic case from my pocket and showed him the disk inside it.

“What’s this?”

“Surveillance footage.”

“The Steel Horse has surveillance cameras?” Beau came to life like a hungry wolf sighting a juicy, crippled rabbit.