He would have given all he had to go back, even five days, to that other age before Chief Janson had come driving up to the farm in Banner Hill’s one and only police car.

2

Hook and Arnie were in the implement shed tuning the new four-wheel-drive John Deere when Chief Janson drove up and parked. Though a personal call by the chief was a rare occurrence, Hook did not sense that something might be wrong, not even when he saw how the man got out of the car, so laboriously, carrying his badged cap and looking everywhere except at Hook and Arnie in the building. Janson was a caricature of the small-town cop, a crude pot-bellied extrovert who wore his holstered thirty-eight special like a loincloth and divided his time almost equally between polishing the squad car and drinking free beer at Harry’s Tap and Billiards. As such, he was an easy target for the town’s many humorists, including Uncle Arnie, who at the moment was busily forgetting to hand Hook a Phillips screwdriver as Janson moved hesitantly toward them around his car.

“Well, what do you know?” Arnie mused. “J. Edgar way out here in the sticks. What you been up to, David?”

Hook did not answer. He was wondering why the chief had stopped near the fence and was not coming on into the building.

“Look at him,” Arnie said. “That gun ever goes off he’s gonna be shorter by a full inch.”

Hook barely heard him. The chief looked stricken, ill. Hook got up and walked out to meet him.

“Morning, Chief,” he said.

But Janson did not respond. He just stood there leaning against the fence, still not looking directly at Hook.

“What’s wrong?” Hook asked. “What’s happened?”

The chief’s eyes flickered at him and then slid away. “There’s been a accident, Dave.”

Hook had the feeling he was standing in front of a firing squad and though there was no sound yet, no report, the bullets were already on the way.

“Who? Where?”

The chief swallowed, shook his head. “In California. Santa Barbara.”

“Chris?”

Janson nodded.

“Go on.”

“He had a fall, Dave.”

“And—”

“They called just a while ago.”

Hook waited for a moment, but the chief did not go on. Somehow Hook got the words out. “Is he alive?”

Eyes streaming, Janson shook his head. “I am so sorry, Dave. Jesus, I am so sorry.”

So the volley was in Hook now, exploding in his body, gutting him.

“A fall?” he said. It sounded so silly.

“And the bastards—” the chief got out. “They said he done it hisself, Dave. They said it was suicide.”

The word was a reprieve. It was a command calling back the bullets, canceling his execution. Suicide. Then it could not be Chris. They had made a mistake.

The chief was crying openly. “I told this sergeant he was full of shit, Dave. I told him they just didn’t know Chris. Chris wouldn’t ever do that. Never in a million years, I told him.”