And finally, Al Poplar called to say he had a gun and was going to kill himself. He’d made the same call half a dozen times since Thanksgiving, and every time I’d gone over there, I’d discovered that the gun was empty. I stopped by again just after midnight and spent almost an hour talking him out of his holiday depression before he handed me the Smith & Wesson.

This time, the gun was cocked and fully loaded.

It reminded me of what my partner, Darrell, always said was the most important lesson of police work: you never know.

By two in the morning, most of the people in Black Wolf County were finally asleep, which meant I had my overnight lull. I drove back to the town of Random and parked on the empty street. All the Christmas lights were on, making the town look like a Hollywood movie set in the 1930s. Beyond the two blocks of old brick buildings that made up the town center, the national forest loomed at the outskirts, as dark as it must have been for Jonah inside the whale. I got out of my cruiser and crossed Main Street, and mine were the only tracks in the fresh bed of snow.

Random. This was my hometown. I’d lived here my whole life.

Do you wonder why it’s called that? A lot of people do. I think they expect there must have been a Jedediah Random who built the first church here. Or maybe there was some Indian, French, German, or Swedish word that got mangled into Random over the years. The real answer is, we don’t know. No one can explain why we’re here or why we’re called what we are. Historians say the word Random started showing up on maps a couple of centuries ago, but they don’t know who first made a settlement here. We have no river and no pioneer crossroads to explain our reason for being. The copper mine keeps the town going, but Random was here long before the mine.

I like to think the name explains itself. Random. I’m convinced there was a settler with a sense of humor who is still laughing at us as we try to puzzle it out. He knew life was simply random. It’s random where you’re born. It’s random who you meet along the way.

It’s random what you encounter when you’re walking in the woods.