Highway patrolmen and street cops, who both make unpredictable stops, mostly need protection from concealed handguns. Their vests have to be comfortable enough to encourage the wearing of them for a full shift; that meant light vests made from soft, bullet-resistant materials.

Virgil didn’t make traffic stops in the rural countryside, where he usually worked. When he was confronted with a weapon, which had happened a few times, it was a rifle or a shotgun as often as it was a pistol. An ordinary urban cop’s vest, made to stop handgun rounds, wouldn’t stop a bullet from a rifle heavier than a little .22.

He got to think about all of that as he took his vest out of the truck and felt its weight in his hands.

—

At 9:30, Virgil called Jenkins and Shrake on the radio, and asked, “Anything?”

Shrake said, “Nothing. Darker than a pig’s asshole out here. Why doesn’t this place have streetlights?”

“Can’t afford them,” Virgil said. “I’m coming out.”

He pulled on the vest, slapped the Velcro tabs to keep it in place, and stretched a T-shirt over it. He wished, for a second, that he had a helmet, even though he knew it would be a dead giveaway. He tucked his Glock into the small of his back, picked up his radio, turned on the yellow bug light outside, and stepped out on the concrete-block stoop. Nothing happened.

He walked to the Tahoe, opened the door, fumbled around in the back, shut the door and locked it, walked back to the house and on inside. He could feel the pinch between his shoulder blades.

“Nothing moving here,” Shrake said.

“I didn’t see anything,” Jenkins said. “But, man, you are some target in that doorway, with the lights behind you and all. You look like a silhouette on a rifle range.”

Nothing happened at 9:45, and nothing happened at 10 o’clock.

“Starting to skizz out,” Virgil said on the radio when he was back inside after the 10 o’clock walk. Each time he took the walk, his feeling of vulnerability increased. He was totally dependent on Jenkins or Shrake spotting the shooter coming in, and Wheatfield, without streetlights and with residents who tended to turn in early, was a very dark place.

“It is stupid,” Shrake said. “We’ve all been telling you that all day.”

“We’ll quit at eleven,” Virgil said.

—

And they would have, if he hadn’t been shot at 10:15.

Virgil turned on the bug light and stepped out on the porch. A second later, he was hit with a hard thump—there was no sound whatsoever—and he looked down and saw an arrow sticking out of his chest.

He tumbled back inside, and shouted into the radio, “He shot me with an arrow. I’m shot with an arrow. He’s out there . . . He’s right here . . .”

Trap.