Chapter 3

The deputy was tall and square-jawed, with short dark hair and a dress shirt pressed under his uniform coat. He reached past Curtis’s shoulder and plucked the citation off the counter like it belonged to him.

“Deputy Corley,” Verna Talley said. “That’s an open record.”

“It’s a piece of paper, Verna.” He held the citation up and read it out loud to the line of strangers.

“Blue four-door sedan. Five-fifty in the morning. Failure to stop.” He turned it toward the six people waiting. “Anybody here see Mr. Mabry in a blue sedan at five-fifty this morning?”

Two people laughed. One looked at the floor. A man in a seed cap checked his watch.

Curtis kept his voice level. “That badge number was my son’s.”

Corley’s smile stayed exactly where it was. “Wrong number, old man.” He leaned in, close enough that only Curtis and the clerk could hear. “Pay it, or lose the truck and the job that goes with it. Ten days.”

Then he straightened up and handed the citation back, and Curtis noticed three things in the space of a breath.

Corley had said clerical error before he ever looked at the badge field.

Corley had not asked what he meant about his son.

And Corley’s hand, when he passed the paper back, had tightened on it hard enough to crease the corner.

“Deputy,” Verna said, “the number on this citation is flagged not assigned in the system.”

“Then it’s a records problem.” Corley was already walking. “Records can fix it.”

The line shuffled forward. Curtis stood there until the man in the seed cap said, “Sir?” and he stepped aside.

He was almost to the doors when a knuckle rapped the window behind him. Verna Talley pointed at a chair against the wall. He sat. At ten past five she came out with her coat on and her purse over her shoulder, and walked him to the glass doors like she was leaving anyway.

“Friday,” she said, low. “Four-thirty, the lobby. Awards ceremony. I work the front table.”

“Miss Talley -”

“Bring the letter.” She pushed the door open with her shoulder. Cold air came in off the square. “And Mr. Mabry? Forty-seven in one quarter. Nobody files forty-seven citations in a quarter. Somebody in this building is getting an award for that.”