Chapter 4

Wednesday morning, Curtis drove to the courthouse in his work clothes and stood at the front desk of the sheriff’s office, which opened directly off the lobby.

The deputy at the desk was young, maybe twenty-six, with a name tag that read K. RENNER. He had been at Aaron’s funeral. Curtis remembered him standing in the back row with his hat in his hands.

“I want to file a complaint,” Curtis said.

“Against who, sir?”

“Whoever signed this.” He laid the citation on the counter.

Renner read it. His jaw worked. “Mr. Mabry, complaints get filed against an officer. Name and badge. We serve notice on the officer.”

“Then serve notice.”

“The badge is retired.” Renner said it carefully, like he’d practiced it. “There’s no officer to serve. There’s no form for this. I’m not trying to be smart with you - there is literally no form.”

He wrote Curtis’s name on a slip of paper and dropped it into an interoffice envelope, and Curtis saw him do it.

Then a door opened, and Sheriff Duane Ashby came out with a paper coffee cup in his hand.

“Curtis Mabry,” he said, and shook his hand with both of his. “How long has it been? You buried my mother. I still think about that.”

He walked Curtis into his office and shut the door. On the wall: a photograph of Ashby and Aaron at a county fair, both of them squinting into the sun.

“Let me make this go away,” Ashby said. “One phone call. The ticket’s voided, the record’s clean, and you go back to work.”

“I don’t want it to go away. I want to know who wrote it.”

“A clerk typed it wrong.”

“Somebody used my son’s name.”

Ashby set the cup down. “Curtis. I’ll need to keep that citation.”

“No, sir.”

For half a second, the sheriff’s face was a different face. Then the warmth came back, and he nodded like a man agreeing with a reasonable point.

“Then I’d be careful who you show it to,” he said. “And Curtis - Friday, four-thirty. We’re adding names to the memorial board. I’d like Aaron’s badge on the display table. Would you bring it?”

Curtis said he would.

Crossing the lobby, he passed a folding table with a dark cloth already spread over it, and a printed program card lying face up. He picked it up and read it.

OFFICER OF THE YEAR: DEPUTY T. CORLEY - RECORD ENFORCEMENT.

Below that, the memorial additions. Three names. The second one was Aaron’s.

He put the card in his pocket beside the letter and walked out into the cold.