“Thanks.” As his window climbed its track, he shook his head and allowed that giggle to escape. “Would you believe that?”
Susan saw none of the humor. “Just get us home, okay, Bobby? Just get us home.”
Once the adrenaline high subsided, leaving only the monotony of a long drive in a quiet car, reality began to sink its hooks.
Jesus, he’d killed a man.
You can’t murder another human being and just walk away. Life doesn’t work like that. You do something wrong, and you step forward to take ownership of your crime. Throw yourself on the mercy of the court.
But he was a cop.
Why couldn’t he have been anyone else in the world but a cop? Bobby didn’t buy for a second that the guy was the kid’s father, but maybe he was on the feather edge of solving a kidnapping case. Or, maybe, like the Martins, he was minding his own business in the woods when he saw this kid in his filthy, torn pajamas, and like any other public servant, he stepped forward to do the right thing.
But I didn’t know that, Judge, Bobby imagined himself saying in a future courtroom. He scared me so badly that I rushed him, and then when he pulled his gun, what choice did I have but to wrestle it away and shoot him?
His stomach tumbled at the very thought of it. They’d never believe him; not in a million years.
But they didn’t see his eyes. They didn’t hear the boy’s reaction to the sound of his voice. Even with all of his doubts and all of his questions, Bobby couldn’t escape the notion that the cop wasn’t there to help anyone. He was there to hurt people; specifically, the little boy. And if he did that, then he’d have to do something about Bobby and Susan, too, wouldn’t he? Of course he would.
It was self-defense, dammit. Bobby had nothing to hide. Why the hell was he acting like he did?
If he’d been anybody but a cop…
Yeah, if only.
If he stepped forward, people were going to want to know why his first instinct had been to run. He could explain it as panic, he supposed. How was he to know that the stranger didn’t have an accomplice out there in the woods with him? Somebody named Samuel?
Well, tell me, Mr. Martin, if there were an accomplice, wouldn’t he have, well, helped a little? Maybe stepped in sometime between the start of the fight and your killing his friend?
These people wouldn’t understand that thoughts get all jammed up in your head when you’re fighting for your life. Not everything was going to make sense in the calm afterglow of hindsight. Things that seemed perfectly logical were going to sound ludicrous. Surely they would all understand that. They’d have to understand it, because it was the truth.
Innocent people don’t run, Mr. Martin.
And that’s the truth, too. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you the same thing. The truth is a powerful weapon, they say. It will set you free.
So long as the evidence bears out your story.
And so long as your victim is not a cop.
Holy God Almighty, what was he going to do?
Bobby had been tracking neither the mileage nor the time, but his gut told him that he was still a good hour, hour and a half, away from home, and the gas gauge had dipped below the one-quarter mark. The lighted Amoco sign consequently caught his attention more readily than it might otherwise have. He slowed the Explorer smoothly, slapped the turn signal, and slid behind the row of pumps closest to the road.
Sensing the change in direction, Susan mumbled something he couldn’t understand and then set her head back down on the headrest. An instant later, her jaw dropped, and she was back asleep.
“Must be nice,” he grumbled as he carefully and quietly opened his door. The way he felt now, he doubted that he’d ever get a restful night of sleep again. He walked with one foot on the curb as he slid between the truck and the pump, reaching for his wallet as he went. He had his credit card in his hand, ready to insert it into the gas pump when the sensibly paranoid