Lester sat on Mindy’s porch step and glanced at his watch. Two-forty A.M.

Lord, this night is crawling by.

He figured that a statie should be arriving any minute. He felt dog-tired and wanted to climb back into bed beside Bonnie. He wanted to press up against her, feel her warmth, and listen to her breathe. Hell, he’d even let the cats up on the bed at this point.

He flicked his cigarette into the snow and lit up another. He only had two more smokes left. Just one more thing to be miserable about. He wished he had grabbed another pack on his way out.

The tips of his fingers, his ears, and his nose were freezing out there, but he’d be goddamned if he was going to wait inside. Couldn’t bear to see that poor girl all twisted up and lying there.

When Sokowski’s old man pushed hard for Lester to take him on as his deputy, Lester didn’t like the notion much. But Sokowski’s old man, Pepper, God rest his soul, was a stand-up guy and a good friend. Hell, they had known each other since fifth grade and had been hunting and fishing buddies for three decades after that. He knew that Pepper wanted his only son to turn over a new leaf, and old Pepper thought that Lester, with his evenhanded nature, was the best person to rub off on his hell-raising son. Lester told Pepper that he would owe him big, and boy, had he hit the nail on the head with that one. Lester’s way was to earn respect, not force it down folks’ throats. But against his better judgment, he gave the boy the badge and that was that.

Then, after Pepper took his own life when Sokowski was still growing whiskers on his chin, he got even worse. Sokowski was two years out of high school and was one year wearing the deputy badge, and whammo—his old pappy couldn’t take the hand he was dealt no more and left his only child alone and responsible for the farm. Poor kid was barely a man, but he grew up quick. Turning bitter, angry, and even nastier.

When he had come back to Mindy’s trailer, Lester could tell that Sokowski had been into the drink again. He didn’t want the state trooper to see his deputy liquored up. That would be one more unwanted problem to add to the night’s growing list. Besides, Sokowski was better off keeping an eye on the Bedford boy. Carl had about as much sense as a jug of water and appeared to be barely holding it together. Lester made Sokowski promise to keep his mitts off Danny. A broken jaw and a few loose teeth were bad enough. Sokowski gave his word—for whatever that was worth.

Lester took a final drag on his cigarette and looked back into the pack, hoping by some miracle that he had miscounted. Nope. Still only two. He decided to hold off for a few more minutes before he lit up again.

A pair of headlights appeared down the road and headed his way. He sighed out loud, more than ready to pass this mess off to someone else. His knees popped and complained of the cold as he stood and watched the headlights approach. The vehicle was driving fast and erratic. Lester heard the engine chewing up the cold night air and could tell it had eight hardworking cylinders—he had a good ear for engines and guns. Could tell by the pop of a shotgun if it was a ten-gauge, a twelve-gauge, or a single-shot .410. Bonnie always gave him grief that he couldn’t hear her ask him to take out the trash but could hear a pickup truck a half mile away and know if it was a six- or eight-cylinder.

“Hell,” he whispered to himself. He blew on his fingers in a futile attempt to warm them and prepared for the worst.

The Lincoln Continental veered off the road and skidded to a stop on the icy driveway. The driver’s-side door swung open, and Johnny Knolls pulled his large mass out from behind the steering wheel. He appeared about as tall as he was wide and kind of wobbled as he walked. Johnny reached into the backseat, pulled out a rifle that Lester knew would be loaded, and clutched it in his thick hands.

Lester stepped off the porch. “Goddamn. What’re you doing out here, Johnny?”

Johnny strode up and got right in Lester’s face. His eyes were small black circles, and his nose was piglike—pink and round and turned up at the tip. He was breathing hard, beer and whiskey on his breath.

“Where the fuck she at?”

Lester stood his ground and tried to sound calm. “Now, hold on here a second, Johnny . . .”

“Either tell me where she’s at or get the hell out of my way, Lester. God as my witness, I will take you down.”

Lester nodded and kept his voice nice and even. “I don’t want you going in there, Johnny. It’s bad. Real bad.”

Johnny hung on those words. His eyes went past Lester and looked toward the front door. Tiny specks of spittle clung to the man’s beard, and his breath billowed out in rapid white plumes.

He put a beefy hand on Lester’s shoulder and shoved him aside like a bowling pin. Lester’s feet went out from under him, and he slipped on the icy walkway. Tried to break his fall but failed miserably. The side of his head smashed up against the edge of a cinder-block wall that ran along the sides of the driveway. He rolled onto his back, grabbed at his temple as blood seeped from an open wound and stained his fingers a crimson red.

Lester could only watch helplessly as Johnny marched past him and squeezed inside the trailer. He struggled to his feet, seeing white stars flash and dance in front of him. It got quiet for a second, and then a deafening scream erupted from deep within Johnny.

“JESUS! MY BABY! MY BABY! JESUS CHRIST!” The big man’s howls were replaced by a smashing sound, and then it went dark inside as a lamp was thrown against a wall. Johnny flipped over furniture, punched at walls, and screamed and cried at the same time. It was a disturbing sound that Lester wouldn’t be able to get out of his head for a long, long time. He held himself back from going inside after Johnny. It was already done. There was no taking it back now—the man had come face-to-face with a father’s worst nightmare.

After a minute of silence, Johnny filled the doorway—his head nearly touching the top of the frame. He gripped his rifle to his chest in both hands as if he were ready to storm a beach. Lester looked up at a man who had slipped over the edge.

“Who was it? Who did this to my baby, Lester?”

“We got him, Johnny. Don’t you—”

“I ain’t gonna tell you that right now, Johnny. Not right now. We got him, and the state police are on their way here as we speak.”

Johnny yanked back the rifle’s bolt handle and snapped off the safety. “I ain’t gonna ask you again, Lester. You tell me who did this to my baby.” Johnny shouldered the rifle and aimed the barrel at Lester point-blank.

Lester took a step back. He could count on one thumb the number of times he’d stared down the barrel of a rifle. Old Tom Dickerson suffered from Alzheimer’s and had gotten into the whiskey a couple of summers ago. Tom’s wife phoned up Lester because she was scared that old Tom was gonna blow his own head off. When Lester got out there, old Tom was standing in the garage with nothing on but a pair of dirty boxers, soiled with piss and shit. He’d scream one minute, cry the next, the whole time waving his gun around like a baton. Lester had finally managed to calm him down, but only after Tom’s rifle was pressed into Lester’s chest.

This time the man on the other side of the gun wasn’t suffering from Alzheimer’s and was being fueled by drunken fury instead.

“I’m gonna put a bullet into you, Sheriff.”

Neither man saw or heard the state trooper’s patrol car rumble down Tokach Road from the north. The vehicle pulled off the road behind a row of hedges and eased to a stop twenty yards from the trailer. The cruiser killed its lights, and a large man stepped out of the car.

“Don’t do anything stupid now, Johnny.” Lester raised both of his arms and held his hands high. “Shooting me isn’t gonna help matters none.”

“Goddamn you, Lester . . .”

Lester’s heart seized up as Johnny snapped back and a bullet ripped through his chest and exited between the shoulder blades. Johnny’s knees buckled, and his two hundred and fifty pounds of deadweight fell back into the trailer and thudded to the floor. His legs jerked a few times, a gargling sound slipped out of his lips, and then he became completely still. Johnny’s dirty work boots hung over the doorstep, and blood and tiny pieces of flesh were splattered against the trailer’s aluminum paneling, running down slow before freezing.

Lester’s head was still ringing from the gunshot when he turned and searched behind him. He reached for his gun out of reflex, but his hand stopped on the holster. A state trooper stood at the end of the driveway, crouched in a shooting stance, his pistol resting on the trunk of Johnny’s Lincoln. As the state trooper lowered his firearm, Lester felt his legs give out, and he couldn’t stop himself from falling to the frozen ground.

And the snow continued to fall. Falling heavier. No letup in sight.