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short bark of laughter came from the front of the building, and Jeffrey peered around the corner, to get a clear view of the parking lot. There was a small group of boys hanging out beside a beat-up old Camaro, passing a cigarette between them. The pay phone was to the side of the building, so Jeffrey was shadowed by the bright green-and-yellow canopy. He thought he caught a whiff of pot, but wasn't sure. The kids had the stance of boys up to no good. Jeffrey recognized this not just because he was a cop but because he had hung out with a similar group at that age.
    He was debating whether or not to approach them when Maria clicked onto the line.
    "Good evening, Grant County Police Department, thanks for holding. Can I help you?"
    "Maria, it's Jeffrey."
    "Oh, hey, Chief," she said. "Sorry to bother you. It was a false alarm down at one of the stores."
    "Which one?" he asked, remembering the earful he had just gotten from Betty Reynolds, who owned the five-and-dime downtown.
    "Cleaners," she said. "Old man Burgess accidentally set it off."
    Jeffrey wondered at Maria, who was well into her seventies, calling Bill Burgess an old man, but he let that slide. He asked, "Anything else?"
    "There was something at the diner Brad called in, but they didn't find anything."
    "What'd he call in?"
    "Just said he thought he saw something, is all. You know how Brad is, calls in his own shadow." She gave a small chuckle. Brad was somewhat of a mascot around the station house, a twenty-one-year-old man whose round face and wispy blond hair made him look more like a boy. It was a joke among the senior squad to steal Brad's hat and hide it around various landmarks in town. Jeffrey had seen it resting on top of the statue of General Lee in front of the high school just last week.
    Jeffrey thought of Sara. "Frank is in charge tonight. Don't page me unless someone's dead."
    "Two birds with one stone," Maria chuckled again. "The coroner and the chief in one call."
    He tried to remind himself that he had moved from Birmingham to Grant because he wanted to be in a small town where everyone knew their neighbor. Everyone knowing his own personal business was one of the few tradeoffs. Jeffrey was about to say something innocuous to Maria, but stopped when he heard a loud shriek from the parking lot.
    He leaned around the corner to take a look just as a girl's voice yelled, "Fuck you, you fucking bastard."
    Maria said, "Chief?"
    "Hold on," he whispered, feeling his gut clench at the anger in the girl's voice. He knew from experience that a ticked-off young girl was the worst thing to have to deal with in a parking lot on a Saturday night. Boys he could handle, it was all a pissing contest and, for the most part, any young man wanted to be stopped from getting into an actual fight. Young girls tended to take a lot to get riled up and a hell of a lot more to get calmed back down. An angry teenage girl was something to fear, especially when she had a gun in her hand.
    "I'm going to kill you, you fucking bastard," she yelled at one of the boys. His friends quickly peeled off into a semicircle, and the young man stood alone, the gun pointed at his chest. The girl was no more than four feet away from her target, and as Jeffrey watched, she took a step closer, narrowing the gap.
    "Shit," Jeffrey hissed, then, remembering he had the phone in his hand, he ordered, "Get Frank and Matt over to Skatie's right now."
    "They're over in Madison."
    " Lena and Brad, then," he said. "Silent approach. There's a girl with a gun in the front parking lot."
    Jeffrey slipped the phone back into its cradle, feeling his body tense. His throat was tight, and his carotid artery felt like a pulsating snake inside his throat. A thousand things went through his mind in the course of a few seconds, but he pushed these thoughts away as he took off his suit jacket and slid his paddle holster behind his back. Jeffrey held his arms out to the side as he walked into the parking lot. The young