Chapter 4

Inside, the office was warm and smelled like burnt coffee. Nadine Ferris sat at dispatch with her headset around her neck and half a sandwich on a napkin.

"Nadine," Emmett said. "Call the state. Inspector license four-one, eleven-eight-seven. Ask them if it's live."

She looked past him at the sheriff, who stood in the doorway with his arms folded.

"Do it," Mabry said.

Emmett went back out into the lot. Unit 12 sat where Reedy had parked it. Reedy stood beside it with his arms crossed. Pruitt had already pulled the keys and locked the door.

Then Pruitt turned and looked at Emmett's truck.

"Plate lamp's out," he said. "That's a defect. County policy - it's not legal to leave it on the road."

"You're towing my truck because I asked a question."

"I'm towing it because it's unsafe."

He made the call himself. Twenty minutes later Duane Keel's wrecker rolled in with its deck down and its beacons off, and Duane hooked the old Ford by the front wheels and winched it up the ramp while Emmett stood in the gravel and watched the only ride he had climb away from him. His knee ached. The cold had gotten into it.

Pruitt walked up beside him.

"Here's where it ends," he said, friendly now. "Department pays for the lamp, full service on the truck. The deputy gets a written reprimand and a transfer to court security. You sign a statement that the stop was a misunderstanding. You go home, you eat supper, and in the morning nobody remembers any of it."

"He put his hands on me in front of the road."

"He's twenty-six and he's got a mouth. He's been here eight months." Pruitt shrugged. "You're seventy-six. You don't need a fight, Mr. Sorrell. You need to get home."

Behind them Beck said something to Voss, and Voss said something back, and neither of them looked over.

Emmett took the pocket log out of his jacket. His hands shook when he opened it - they'd been shaking for a year now, worse in the cold - and he held it flat with the other hand so it wouldn't show. The last page had his license number on it and the date he mailed the book back, in his own cramped printing, and under that, nothing.

Mabry came out of the office with his coat on.

"Emmett, I'll do this by the book. But right now all I've got is a sticker and a bad attitude, and I can't take a man's badge on that."

"You can look in his glovebox."

"I intend to. At shift change, with witnesses." Mabry rubbed his eyes. "I'm not going to make this easy on you, and I'm not going to make it easy on him."

Duane Keel came around the wrecker winding the last chain and stopped.

"Sheriff," he said. "You want to know how many of those he sold?"

Mabry turned.

Duane wiped his hands on his jeans and took his phone out of his pocket.