“Subtracting the eight hours I spent tearing my house apart?” He looked IAD in the eye. “I guess it took me half a day to decide how to end my career.”

“Do you feel the need for sarcasm, Officer?”

“Not at all,” Worth said. “Son.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Gina look down at the table. Roger Sheppard looked toward a wall.

The guy was only a handful of years his junior. It was an easy point to score. There wasn’t a cop in the room, brass or otherwise, who’d come up with a good taste for Internal Affairs. Especially the young guys who came indoors early. It felt a little cheap, using that; Worth knew what it felt like to be looked down on by fellow cops, and this kid was just doing his job. But he needed all the points he could get.

Before Granger asked his next question, the door opened again. Vargas poked his head back into the room. “Captain?”

Torres looked past Worth’s shoulder. Then she pushed back from the table. “You all keep going. I’ll be back.”

Over his shoulder, Worth caught an accidental glance from Vargas. Something was happening.

A moment later, Captain Torres reappeared. More silent communication among the command branch in the room. The Deputies Chief and Worth’s lieutenant all stood and followed her.

Detective Granger watched them go.

He looked around the table, decided the action was obviously elsewhere at the moment, and followed them.

IAD almost beat him to the door.

Nothing else happened for a few seconds.

Finally, over at the far end of the table, Sergeant Williams sighed. He stood slowly, stretched his back, and went to see what was going on.

On his way to the door, he put a hand on Worth’s shoulder. “Hey there, Matty.”

“Hey, Sarge. Long time no see.”

Sergeant Williams wore dark blue warm-ups and clean white cross-trainers. Worth hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, but Williams still had a chest like a barrel and looked like he could punch through bricks. The sergeant should have made a command post years ago, but Worth knew it was nothing political. Levon Williams hadn’t been passed over or shut out. Levon Williams was happy doing exactly what he did. That was all.

“How’s your pops?” he said.

“Dad’s okay.” Worth shrugged. “About the same.”

The doctors had assumed for years that the cirrhosis would get him before the Alzheimer’s, but the stubborn son of a bitch continued to buck the odds. He patrolled the halls of Elmwood Manor in his wheelchair, terrorizing the nurses, mixed up as a bag of nuts. Half the time, he thought the nurses were Mom, and that Matthew was Kelly, and that his roommate wanted him dead.

“You get by to see him?”

Worth nodded. “Usually once a week. At least once every couple.”

“Good boy.”

Williams gave Worth’s shoulder a squeeze.

Then he left the room with everybody else. That left Worth and his union rep sitting there alone, looking across the table at each other.

“You could have called,” his union rep said.

“Dad.”

John blinked. “What was that, hon?”

“I asked if you wanted more toast.” Liz frowned, wiped her hands, and came over. “You’re on cloud nine this morning. Are you feeling okay?”

“I feel fine,” he said. “Just reading.”

She checked his forehead anyway.

You’d think he’d had a damned heart transplant, the way she mother-henned. Hell, you’d think he was eighty years old. John sat there and let her treat him like a convalescent anyway. It was easier than arguing.

She looked over his shoulder at the newspaper he’d spread out. “What’s so engrossing?”

He hadn’t been reading so much as staring at a photo. “Just this thing. Tell it to you when I’m done.”

“So did you want more toast?”

“Not for me.” John hadn’t eaten this well this many days in a row since Jean had divorced him fifteen years ago.

Too many more days and he’d start getting used to it. He watched Liz go around the table, picking up the girls’ empty cereal bowls. She poured all the leftover milk together, stacked the bowls three high, and piled the spoons on top. Off toward the dishwasher without missing a step.

Above his head, he could hear the morning ministampede. Didn’t seem to matter what time anybody got up, there was always the last mad rush to get ready for school.

First couple days here, he’d been nervous as a cat. It was like staying in a guest room at the zoo. If that wasn’t enough, Liz counted all his pills and wouldn’t let him drink more than one beer a day. Made him keep the goddamned walker by the bed.

But John was starting to feel a rhythm to the chaos by now. He’d even gotten to enjoy it a bit.

Liz’s husband, Bill, worked as a lineman for the power company; since the storm, he’d been pulling fourteen-hour days, leaving the house by 5 A.M., coming home to a plate of supper wrapped up in the fridge. But he always had enough energy left to help the girls with homework or spend some time horsing around.

John had always liked his son-in-law well enough; these past couple days, his affection had deepened a good bit. Part of him knew he’d think better of himself if he’d been more like Bill when he’d been Bill’s age.

Liz took the girls to school in the morning and worked part time at the city clerk’s. Since John had been there, she’d been to a school board meeting, gone to choir practice at the church, passed out Halloween candy for four and a half hours, and clipped about nine hundred coupons out of the Wednesday supplement.

The girls were thirteen, eleven, and eight now. The same tornado hit the bathroom twice a day.

And John had slept better the past couple nights than he had in the past ten weeks. The fact was, even sitting here now, his damned ruined leg didn’t seem to hurt quite so bad.

He could still use more than one lousy beer a day. But overall, John was starting to feel as though a hazy curtain had parted. A screen between him and the real world he hadn’t even noticed.

Maybe that sucker-punching shitbag had done him a favor. Maybe he’d gotten a bit off track, crutching around home all alone. Maybe sitting around feeling sorry for himself was part of the reason he’d been hurting so goddamned bad all this time.

The stampede descended and moved toward the kitchen. In the girls came, one by one: Natalie, the oldest, Emma, the middle, and Zoe, the baby of the bunch.

“See ya, Gramps.”

“Bye, Grampa.”

“Bye, Grampa.”

Three kisses, three hugs, single file.

“I’ll be back this afternoon,” Liz said, passing out lunch cards and herding everybody toward the coat room. “Call if you need anything, okay?”

John waved. “Drive careful, hon. You girls learn something.”

“’kay.”

“‘kay.”

“Yeah, right.”

Pretty soon they were on their way.

After the garage door came down and the sound of the minivan disappeared down the street, silence settled down over everything.

Monday morning, he’d been so relieved he could hardly stand it. Tuesday, the peace and quiet had still been just fine with John. Today, he already found himself looking forward to the end of the schoolday.

Hell. John felt lonely in the house by himself.

He hauled himself up and cruised around the table to the counter by the sink. He topped off his coffee, put the full mug on the table, and slid it back around to his chair a couple steps at a time.

When he finally got settled, he went back to the section he’d spread out in front of him. Liz and Bill took the Omaha paper as well as the Plattsmouth Journal; John stuck to the World-Herald with his coffee, just like he did at home.

He liked checking the Crime Watch column on the City page. They’d been running it for the past couple years, ever since the new chief took over. They’d give information about suspects in this case or that, print phone numbers for the tip lines, that sort of thing.