One time they called in that there were these high school girls skinny-dipping up to Red Hawk Pond. And that’s a thirty mile drive. I couldn’t get there fast enough to let them talk me out of arresting them. Sixty miles round trip. That’s the sort of thing Karl thought was just hilarious.

I smiled, felt a little better. Sure that was it. The guys messing with me. Probably had Luke Jordan bagged up in the stationhouse right now, Billy and Karl laughing their asses off while I’m looking every which way for the body. Haze the new guy. No problem. Yeah, I was sure that was it. Jokers.

I stamped out the cigarette and went inside.

Billy looked up from his desk when I walked in, nodded at me. “Toby.”

I flicked him a two-finger salute. I’d play it casual if that’s how he wanted it. I tossed the empty cigarette pack in the trashcan.

Billy was scribbling at some papers, frowning. He didn’t like paperwork. Who did?

I looked around the stationhouse. Not much to it. A couple of holding cells, a desk, gun cabinet, room in back. A ceiling fan turned so slow it was almost going backwards.

“You got any cigarettes?”

Billy shook his head without looking up. “You smoke too much.”

I went into the back room. We each had a locker back there, mine at the end next to Amanda’s. There was also a small safe and a filing cabinet. A door that led out back to the alley.

I opened my locker. My spare khaki deputy shirt hung on a hanger. I searched the pockets hoping for a pack of smokes but no luck. Damn. And the only place open was the Texaco up by the Interstate. Maybe I wanted smokes that bad, maybe not.

I heard something in the alley and opened the back door. This yellow dog I’d seen around was there again. Some kind of mix, Labrador hound mutt looking thing. Big. He’d knocked over this old metal trash can we kept back there and was pawing through everything.

“Git! Go on.” I made a go-away motion.

The dog growled at me, and I backed into the station and shut the door. I went back to Billy at the desk.

“That dog’s in the alley again.”

“Yeah, I brought something for that.” Billy opened the desk drawer and brought out this bright green gun, plastic. Shaped like some Buck Rogers laser ray gun.

“You want me to disintegrate him?” I asked.

“It’s a squirt gun filled with ammonia,” Billy said. “Trick I learned from a mailman. Stings the skin, especially around their nose and eyes. That’ll send him packing.”

“Okay.” I took the squirt gun back out to the alley.

When I opened the door, the dog backed up a few steps, growled again, but mostly he just seemed scared. I kicked most of the trash back into the can with my foot, put the can back upright and stuck the lid on again. The dog wasn’t growling at me any more. Just looking at me. He looked sad and hungry. I couldn’t bring myself to zap him with the ammonia.

I opened the can, fished around until I found part of a hamburger, not too old. I put the lid back on the can, and set the green squirt gun on top. Then I squatted, held out the burger.

It took a few seconds, but he came forward and took the food. He let me scratch him behind the ears. Tail wagging. He appeared thin but not unhealthy. Probably make a good hunting dog for somebody. I watched him trot away down the alley.

I went back inside.

“You squirt him?” Billy asked.

“Sure.” I sat on the edge of the desk.

Billy jerked upright. “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be standing over Luke Jordan?”

I smirked. “Like you don’t know nothing about it.”

He stood, leaned forward on the desk. “I’m not kidding, Toby. Who’s out there with Jordan?”

Shit. Billy was serious. I had to rethink this. If he and Karl weren’t messing with me than I really had just lost a fucking dead body. God damn, why does this shit happen to me?

“Look …” I tried to figure some way to say it that didn’t sound like a colossal fuck up. “I just went to the bathroom for, like two minutes—”

“Cut to the chase,” Billy said.

“I don’t know where the body is.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t even gone two minutes.”

“Oh, Christ, Toby!”

“I thought maybe you and Karl were fucking with

me.”

He rubbed his eyes and groaned.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” I reached for the radio. “Let me call the chief. I’ll tell him.”

“No,” Billy said quickly. “Just give me a second.”

He scratched his head, thinking. You could almost hear those rusty gears grinding.

“Look, maybe …” More chin scratching. “I think maybe I heard the chief say something to Karl about bagging the body. Not sure. Look, I’ll check into it, okay?”

“I’d feel better if you called and asked him,” I said. “I don’t want to worry about it all night.”

“I’ll call him in a bit.”

“It’ll only take a minute or so and—”

“Go home, Toby.”

I threw up my hands as I pushed off his desk and shuffled for the door. I could take a hint.

Outside I paused, stood in the shadow just to the side of the window. Billy was on the radio right after I left. Probably wanted to badmouth me to the chief when I couldn’t hear. Shit. Well, fuck, I did lose a damn body. If they fired me, I’d have it coming. I’d screwed up big and didn’t relish going home to tell Doris. Maybe I’d wait. Maybe things would be better in the morning, or at least I could figure some way to tell her that didn’t make me look so stupid.

I jerked my head away from the stationhouse window when I heard the tires squeal. At the end of Main, I saw the nineteen-eighty-something Trans Am zig-zagging down the street. I recognized the car. I waited until they were close, stepped out of the shadows and held up a hand.

The Trans Am stood on its nose a bit stopping. I went over, leaned into the driver’s side. Two teenage pukes. I’d seen them around but still couldn’t come up with names. High school studs fucking around after dark. And on a school night. Was it my civic duty to hassle a couple of more or less harmless kids? Damn right.

“Out late, ain’t you?”

The one in the passenger seat offered, “So what?”

The driver elbowed him. “Shut up, man.”

Passenger Seat leaned down, got a peek at the star on my t-shirt. “Sorry.” But he didn’t seem too sorry. They’re never really sorry.

“Should you be home?”

The driver shrugged, like some kind of half-assed apology. “We were going to the Texaco for Cokes.”

“You got any cigarettes?”

They both patted their pockets, not sure which would be better, having cigarettes or not.

Little towns put out kids like this on an assembly line. Jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. One of them wore an Oklahoma State Cowboys cap, the orange so faded it looked like some vomit color. The driver had fuzz on his upper lip, probably told everyone it was a moustache. They played football and grab-ass until they graduated high school. Some would stick around and have dumb Okie babies, and others would go off to the big world and get the shit knocked out of them. I felt sorry for them, but I knew what they were thinking. They were looking at me and thinking when they got gone from this town, they’d stay gone.

I felt sorry for myself too because I hadn’t.

The driver forked over a half-empty pack of Marlboro Lights. I took one, put it in my mouth. I thought about keeping the pack but gave it back. I didn’t want to be that kind of cop.

“You best get on home. The chief catches you out late squealing tires, he won’t be so nice about it.”

That sobered them a little. The chief liked things nice and quiet and everybody knew it.

“We’re sorry,” said the driver. It sounded almost sincere this time.

“Don’t be sorry. Just get on home.”

“Okay.”

They drove away.

I lit the Marlboro, smoked it. Stood there. Shit.

I walked back down to Luke Jordan’s pickup truck, locked it, closed the doors. I looked around again as if the body might have crawled back on its own. I still couldn’t believe it. I climbed in the Chevy Nova and started driving south on State Road Six toward the Interstate.