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beg.
    “She’ll hear it at the station anyhow.” Jimmy sounded more irritated than concerned. “Come on, Terry. Let her go.”
    Terry released his hold.
    “Jesus!” Maggie rubbed her knee. She was panting. A shiver ran through her body.
    “Stop making a scene.” Delia picked a stray piece of lint off Maggie’s bathrobe. “What happened, Jimmy?”
    He shrugged. “Don went down. I got off three shots. The shooter ran. I started to chase him, but I couldn’t leave Don.” As an afterthought, he added, “I didn’t get a good look at him. Colored. Average height. Average build.”
    Maggie kept rubbing her knee as she listened. The tendon was pulsing with every heartbeat.
    “Cal Vick’s gonna have me sit down with a sketch artist.” Jimmy shrugged. “Not sure what good it’ll do. The alley was dark. It happened fast.”
    Delia said, “You’re lucky he didn’t try to shoot you, too.”
    “ ’Course he did,” Jimmy quipped, an edge to his tone. “His gun jammed. He tried to shoot me, but nothing happened. Lucky Lawson, right?” That was the name they’d given him in high school. “That’s me. Lucky guy.”
    Terry obviously didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He told Jimmy, “Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll see you at the station.” He made to leave.
    Maggie panicked. “You have to give me a ride.”
    “Why’s that?”
    He knew why. Maggie’s car had been in the shop for a week. “I can’t be late for roll call.”
    “Then you’d better hurry.” Terry tapped his folded newspaper against her mouth. “But you keep that slit under your nose closed, you hear?”
    Maggie grabbed the plates from the table and limped into the kitchen. Jimmy’s utility belt was on the counter. His gun was in the holster.
    Maggie easily heard the conversation in the dining room. Terry was making lewd comments about some new female recruits at the academy. Maggie put the plates in the sink. She ran some water so they wouldn’t glue together before Lilly could wash them.
    And then she limped over to Jimmy’s belt.
    Carefully, she unsnapped the leather safety strap and slid the revolver from the holster. She checked the cylinder. Fully loaded. No empty casings. Maggie kept the muzzle pointed down as she sniffed along the firing pin, the top strap, and the cylinder end of the barrel.
    No smell of burnt copper and sulfur, just the usual tinge of oil and steel.
    Maggie slid the gun back into the holster, snapped the strap closed. She grabbed the railing on the stairs to help propel herself up. She could hear Terry and Jimmy talking baseball, wondering how the Braves were going to do without Hank Aaron. The two men had always had an easy rapport. They could talk about anything—at least so long as none of it mattered.
    Like the fact that whatever had happened in that alley this morning, Jimmy Lawson hadn’t fired his gun.

2
    Kate Murphy sat on her bed at the Barbizon Hotel and listened to the news. Congress had effectively defunded the war. Nixon was finally gone. President Ford had offered amnesty to draft dodgers. Charges had been dropped against the Ohio State National Guardsmen. William Calley was free after serving less than four years for his part in the My Lai massacre.
    Kate couldn’t bring herself to care. She was out of outrage. All that mattered was that the war was over. Men had finally returned home. POWs were being released. It was never going to happen again. No more boys dying in jungles. No more grieving families back home.
    She looked at the framed photograph by the radio. Patrick’s smile offered an eerie contrast to the haggard look in his eyes. A starburst of sunlight caught the edge of his dog tags. His rifle was slung over his shoulders, helmet tilted at a jaunty angle. His shirt was off. He had new muscles she had never touched. A scar on his face that she had never kissed. The picture was black-and-white, but in the letter that had accompaniedit, he’d told Kate that his