Eyeing all the tattoos already visible on his arms and torso—lots of birds and crosses and Chinese script—Clark said, “Why not just a Bison or something?”

“I already got two of them.”

She looked him up and down, arched an eyebrow. “Where?”

Browder undid his belt buckle.

“Oh God.” Clark held up a hand, laughed. “I don’t want to see this.”

“Too late,” the deputy said, and when Clark peeked between her fingers she saw Browder’s bare ass, where two green Bentley Bison charged toward one another from either cheek. Two scrolls floated above them, ornate and frilled like the garland of some ludicrous ceremony, reading 2008 and 2012.

Clark couldn’t hold back a guffaw. “Put it away! Put it away!”

“I’m taking your mind off the situation,” Browder said over his shoulder. With a touch of disappointment he added, “You don’t like it?”

She laughed harder. “Not in my kitchen I don’t.”

Browder tugged his pants back up. He blushed. “It was my graduation gift to myself.”

“Money well spent.”

The radio on Browder’s shoulder sputtered. It was Jones, calling in a report of illegal fireworks being shot off FM 217. Browder copied him. Clark finished her second glass of rum in one long gulp. Her phone buzzed.

Browder thanked her for the drink before remembering he’d brought it himself. He hesitated at her open door.

“That was inappropriate,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not filing a complaint.”

“I just feel so useless out here sometimes. Like I can’t do nothing to stop the shit people keep doing to each other.”

Clark squeezed the young deputy’s shoulder. “You’re keeping the peace.”

“Just don’t go easy on them. Whoever did this fucking thing. Don’t let them get away like they always do.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She watched him until his taillights flared and disappeared down her road.

When Clark closed the door again she heard the old windows of the house rattle in their frames. She checked the latches, carried the empty glasses to the sink. Browder was right. People sure seemed to get away with a lot around here.

the best years

She thought about missing case notes. She thought about dreams.

Only the best years of my life

She stared out at the night, half expecting some black shape to detach itself from the horizon and come shambling across the Flats toward her house.

But nothing moved, of course. She was totally, hopelessly alone.

For the second time that day, Clark thought of her mother. Margo Clark, née Delbardo, remained the strangest woman Starsha had ever met in her life, even after three years in law enforcement. Margo had lived in Pettis County from the day she was born but never did she seem at home here. She had once—somehow—been a cheerleader as a girl but, as an adult, had grown into something of a hippy, or perhaps just a watered-down Texas mystic (though she’d have no doubt resented the description, much as she resented everything). She was prone to wearing beaded garnet shawls and turquoise headscarves and talking, whenever she was overcome by her drunk husband’s antics, about a spirit that had visited her in high school and revealed to her the exact date of her death.