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  Then, he heard someone drop the telephone down into its cradle, loud like a mic drop.

  There was silence for nearly a minute, and then Widow heard shuffling, breathing, and pacing. It all sounded a little like someone’s nerves, like someone trying to figure out what to do next.

  Widow heard Rousey talking to himself; at least, that was what it sounded like. The strange thing was that he was whispering. It was loud enough to carry down the hall but whispered like someone’s parents fighting in the other room, trying to keep the volume down but doing a poor job of it because they were so heated.

  The whispering turned into more than whispering, more than quiet arguing. The level rose, but Widow still couldn’t make out the words.

  He was wrong about Rousey talking to himself. He knew that because another voice, a female, came to the forefront of the whispering.

  Rousey wasn’t alone. A woman was there with him. They were arguing like a married couple. But they still tried to keep the volume down. They must not have wanted Widow to hear what they were saying.

  After a couple of minutes, Widow heard footsteps. Two people came around the corner and down the hall from the office.

  One was Rousey. He brought a young female with him.

  The girl was about twenty-one or twenty-two or twenty-three years old and not a day older. She had short blonde hair, like a boy’s haircut. It was fresh as if it had been cut earlier in the day.

  She had a welt under one of her eyes like a punch to the face would cause—not a hard, heavy fist to the face, but more like a hard slap or backhand. Widow knew the mark well. He had seen plenty of domestic dispute violence. Often a backhand was used. Backhands hurt and stung and got the job done, usually leaving minimal damage behind.

  The girl clung close to Rousey, not touching him or holding onto him, more like when someone hugs a wall in an apartment building because one of the neighbors is walking a big dog down the corridor.

  She stared at Widow and stayed close behind Rousey like she was seeing a rabid animal in a cage.

  The girl wore blue jeans and a short black leather jacket and a low-cut top underneath that displayed everything but the kitchen sink. She was rail thin and had pale skin, which multiplied the mark on her face to look like it required medical attention.

  She kept playing with her hair. She pinched the tips in her fingers and fiddled with it, nonstop, until she stopped and moved to rub her forearms.

  She got some nerves, Widow thought.

  He stared back at her. Her face looked familiar like he had seen her before and recently, but the face he had seen wasn’t so disheveled.

  She was an attractive young woman; only she looked like she had been trying to destroy her natural good looks by living the hard life.

  Widow took one look at her, and he could see that she was a party girl type. She probably drank a lot, probably smoked a lot, and she definitely did drugs. He knew it. He had seen it before. The Navy was like any other branch of the military. There was a lot of downtime and a lot of waiting around and a lot of boredom.

  Boredom leads to daydreaming, leads to reckless drinking, smoking, and eventually drugs. Normally, it was weed, not so harmful. Most sailors with a habit of smoking weed, were discrete about it. They did it on their shore leave, recreationally, in foreign countries, and they left it there.

  Sometimes, they let things get out of hand, and they got busted. Sometimes, they got into some heavy bad habits and situations. And sometimes, they faced a nasty court marshal and stiff sentences, and there was always dishonorable discharge.

  Widow had seen guys fall down the drug hole and he had seen the women they partied with. Usually, sailors fell into the trap by falling for local girls, not always the case, but it was so much the norm that it was almost cliché.

  The girl standing in front of him, fiddling with her hair, scratching her forearm, and hiding behind Rousey; had that look, like one of the party girls from overseas.

  She wasn’t quite a junkie, but Junkie Town was somewhere on the road she was living her life on. No question.

  Her eyes were glazed. The skin on her arms was red in places, places with exposed veins. Her demeanor was a little fidgety, a little fretful, even a little frightened like a church mouse.

  Her teeth showed early signs of a meth user, not the junkyard that can be found in a meth-head’s mouth, but the early signs were there.

  That’s when Widow realized that Rousey’s suspicions of him being high on meth weren’t completely without merit. They were in South Dakota, near the Black Hills. People here were probably bored, probably looking for an escape, especially in the long, snowstorm-filled winters.

  Meth was likely a big problem out here, a problem that Rousey had to face every day.

  Sometimes, living the nomadic life, Widow had become oblivious to the problems of others. There are so many battles to be fought in the homeland. He had fought his battles overseas for years. Now, he lived his life in peacetime.

  The SEALs have many mottos and no official mottos.

  One motto he remembered was in Latin.

  Si vis pacem, para bellum.

  It means: If you want peace, prepare for war.

  Widow stared at the girl, stared at her problems. They were right there for anyone to see.

  Her makeup was messed up. It ran everywhere as if she had been crying.

  The mascara was black and big and obvious.

  Rousey escorted her up the cell bars. He walked like he was taking her up a wedding aisle. She looked like he was taking her to be sacrificed to the monster.

  They stopped a good ten feet out in front of Widow’s cell. Rousey stepped to the side and reached out, pointed at Widow.

  “Recognize him?”

  The girl leaned out from behind him and stared at Widow. She looked him up and down and side to side.

  After a long moment, she reset back to hiding half behind Rousey. She whispered something that Widow couldn’t hear.

  Rousey slipped a retractable baton out of his belt. Then he whipped it in a fast flick of his wrist, and it extended all the way out to full length. He showed Widow the business end like a clear threat.

  Rousey clanked the baton against the bars and barked an order at Widow.

  “Stand up.”

  Widow got the feeling that the whole act with the baton was a show for the girl. He doubted it was meant to intimidate him. Rousey didn’t seem that stupid.

  Widow could have stayed where he was. What was Rousey going to do? But he didn’t want to rock the boat any more than he already had. He wanted to get out as soon as possible. Pissing off the one cop he’d met so far wasn’t going to do him any favors.

  So, Widow stood up.

  “Approach the bars.”

  Widow stayed quiet, but he did as he was instructed and he approached the bars, slowly.

  Rousey stepped up closer to the bars and shifted to his left, exposing the girl.

  She trembled a bit. She kept her eyes down, stared either at the bars or Widow’s legs. He couldn’t tell which.

  Rousey said, “Go on. Get a good look at him.”

  The girl shuffled back a little farther from where she was.

  At the bars, Rousey kept the baton in view.

  The girl stepped up and forward and stopped within six feet of Widow.

  She looked up at him, a quick glance. She moved closer to Rousey and leaned up to him.

  She whispered something to him.

  Rousey said, “Extend your arms. Give us a look at your tattoos.”

  Widow’s brow furrowed unintentionally. He could feel them.

  What the hell was this?

  Widow did as he was told. He rolled up both sleeves of the borrowed thermal, one after the other. They were already half up anyway. He managed to get them to the elbows with ease and then rolled them over. They were tight on his biceps. Tight enough for him to feel like he was getting his blood pressure checked.

  Widow stepped to the bars and stuc
k his arms out toward them through the bars on the door. The whole thing made him uncomfortable, vulnerable. He felt weak. The fear of Rousey smashing his arms with that baton weighed heavily in the back of his brain.

  Rousey looked at the girl and asked, “So?”

  She was quiet.

  “Have you seen him before? This the guy?”

  The girl looked Widow over again.

  “You can get closer. He can’t do anything.”

  The girl looked at Rousey, reluctantly, and stepped forward, inched closer to the bars, closer to Widow’s hands, until she was as close as she was going to get.

  “Can I see the bottom of the tattoos?” she whispered.

  Rousey said, “Tell him.”

  “Twist your arms up. Show me the other side of the tattoos.”

  The tattoos on Widow’s arms were American flags infused with Navy SEAL tridents. Not much to try and figure out.

  But he did as she asked. She stared at his arms more, at the sleeve tattoos again. Slowly, her eyes panned up his arms, over his biceps, up to his shoulders, where she paused and stared over his chest. Finally, she moved up his neck and then to his face.

  Widow felt like he was on auction like cattle or like a slave in ancient Rome. The girl was a buyer, here to pick out a slave to carry her around in a lectica, the ancient Roman box consisting of a golden throne, curtains, and long pipes resembling the ones on a casket for the slaves to lift like pallbearers and carry one rich prick from one place to another.

  Widow pictured this for a moment, pictured that when he turned old, she would promote him to be the guy who fans her with a giant leaf until arthritis in his knuckles and hands kicks in. Once he could no longer work, she would just have him put to death—no big deal to her.

  “Recognize him? Is it him?” Rousey asked again.

  Suddenly, Widow knew what Rousey was up to. And he knew who the girl was. He knew how he had recognized her face.

  She was the half-dead girl’s younger sister. Had to be.

  Rousey was trying to get her to say Widow was the guy in the car.

  Maybe she had known who her sister was hanging out with. One of the guys in the car might’ve been whoever she had been hanging out with. And whoever she had been hanging out with might’ve had sleeve tattoos. And was probably a big guy like Widow.

  She was there to identify him, like in a police lineup.

  The girl stayed quiet.

  Rousey said, “Is it him or not?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Silence.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  Silence.

  Rousey asked, “Yes, you’re sure it’s not him? Or yes, it is him?”

  The half-dead girl’s sister looked at Widow again. This time, she stared into his eyes. He could see fear in hers.

  She said, “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? It either is or isn’t. Which is it?”

  She stared at Widow again.

  “I think so.”

  Widow said, “Whoever you’re trying to get her to say I am, I’m not. I’ve never been here before.”

  “Quiet!” Rousey barked.

  “Take a good look. Be sure. Is it him or not?”

  The half-dead girl’s sister stared hard at Widow and then at his sleeve tattoos again.

  She said, “It’s him.”

  Chapter 12

  W IDOW DIDN’T KNOW what to say, so he said nothing. This girl had never seen him before. He knew that. She had no clue who he was. He had never been there before. Never to Reznor. Never met her sister.

  The two things he knew was that he wasn’t who she thought he was, and whoever they were trying to say he was must’ve had something to do with her sister. Maybe she had seen the attacker?

  Widow stayed on the cot the rest of the early morning hours.

  By nine a.m., the town of Reznor was in as full a swing as it was going to get. He could hear street sounds of daily life echoing into the stationhouse.

  Outside, daily commuters went to wherever it was that they worked. Pedestrians walked the sidewalks. The little town was as alive as it was going to get.

  The daily grind at its peak.

  Widow smelled another round of fresh coffee brewing from down the corridor. It was followed by more voices talking.

  Widow stood up off the cot and stretched.

  He walked over to the sink. They had taken his toothbrush, which he had bought a couple of days earlier in a gas station in Denver. It was new. He hated wasting a new toothbrush.

  Better get that back, he thought.

  The cell had no toothpaste anyway. Which was a downer because he felt his breath was hot and bad from the burger and coffee he had eaten and drunk hours before.

  Widow ran the water out of the metal sink and doused his face. Then he wet his hair, enough to dampen it. He slicked it back and stared into the crude mirror. He leaned in close, trying to see his teeth. He took one index finger, wet it, and ran it over the teeth. He did his best to brush them with the motion of a brush and the cold water from the faucet.

  He hoped it would do the trick. It was better than nothing.

  After that, he returned to the cot, stopped in the middle of the room, and stared at the bars.

  Thirty-five minutes and several muffled conversations later, three men came shuffling down the corridor. All three looked like local cops. Two were carrying mugs of coffee. And the third, Rousey, carried two cups, his wrist twitched slightly like he was nervous and Widow figured why.

  The front guy was over sixty years old. He was clean-shaven with wispy silver hair. He had a cowboy hat in hand, not on his head. He wore a winter coat and button-down shirt underneath. He was the sheriff, Widow presumed. He had to be, judging by the way he walked out in front and the way the other two men followed behind him like a military scouting party with a clear chain of command.

  The second man was another deputy, older than Rousey, but ten years younger than the sheriff. He wore no coat. He had a standard deputy uniform. Tan pants. Tan shirt. He had a badge tacked above his breast pocket, same as Rousey.

  Rousey trailed in the back of the other two, the lesser man on the totem pole.

  The man in the front carried something in his hand. He whipped it against the back of his other hand like a riding glove. It was Widow’s passport.

  As the three men barreled down the hall toward Widow, the front man whipped open the passport and held it up to his face like he had never looked at it before, which was a lie. It was a natural façade that cops and authority figures did all over the world. You get arrested for something, stuffed into an interrogation room, left for a while to stew in your own thoughts and doubts. The waiting causes you to hesitate and disbelieve yourself, especially if you know you are lying.

  Cops call it simmering.

  Widow had not been simmering because he had not lied. He had nothing to hide. In truth, they were wasting their own time more than his.

  For Widow, there was nowhere in particular to go and all the time in the world to get there. Not a problem.

  The man in front glanced at Widow’s passport and made a couple of steps ahead of the others and stopped.

  He reached into his coat pocket with the closed passport in hand and thumbed out a small pair of reading glasses, cheap, probably bought off the rack at a drugstore.

  He slipped the glasses on and stared at the passport.

  He said Widow’s name out loud in long stretches as if he was taking roll call for prisoners on death row or something, like an announcement.

  “Jack Widow,” he called out.

  The front man took another short step forward and then paced to the left and back to the right. He continued to read from the passport.

  “American. Born November 9, in Mississippi.”

  He held down the passport and stared over it at Widow.

  He said, “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Widow.”

  When Widow said nothi
ng, the front man flipped back through the passport as if he was trying to create the illusion that a cartoon was drawn on it and he was watching a hundred stick figure drawings move with each flip of the page.

  At the end of the flip, he lowered the passport again and stared at Widow.

  “Looks like you get around,” he said.

  Widow shrugged. Stayed quiet.

  “My name’s Charles Shostrom. I’m the sheriff for Lawrence county here in the Mount Rushmore state. You’ve been caught in a peculiar situation, Mr. Widow.”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  “Got anything to say for yourself?”

  “When can I get out?”

  The second deputy said, “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Shostrom said, “This’s Deputy Roberts, and that’s Rousey.”

  Widow nodded.

  “Rousey, hand me the coffee.”

  Rousey stepped up and held out one of the mugs he was holding. Shostrom folded Widow’s passport closed and dropped it into his cowboy hat, turned upside down like a drop bucket, then he twisted at the hips and took the spare coffee.

  Widow wasn’t sure if he was going to offer it to him, or if he was teasing him with it like they knew he was an addict already.

  Shostrom did the latter. He offered Widow nothing.

  Shostrom took a pull from the mug, a long slow pull as if he was over-enjoying it like it was too much for him.

  “Mr. Widow, you got a long story to tell?”

  “Depends on what story I’m tellin’.”

  “You got one for me about why you’re here?”

  “I’ve got the truth if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “The truth?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Shostrom shook his head and made a tsk-tsk noise.

  Widow stayed quiet.

  “Widow, I’d hoped you’d just make this easy on yourself.”

  Widow started to speak, but the sheriff raised his coffee mug and shushed him.

  Widow frowned and waited. What else could he do?

  Shostrom said, “Rousey?”

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  “Get the chair.”

  Rousey nodded and turned and walked back down the hall. Widow half expected the guy to salute Shostrom, like a seaman recruit jumping to salute a superior officer.