Four Live Rounds Read Online Free PDF Page A

father stormed
out.
    “Where’s your badge?”
    “I’m undercover right now. Come on, we don’t
have much time. You need to come with me.”
    “I’ll get in trouble.”
    “No, only way you’ll get in trouble is by not
obeying a police officer when he tells you to do something.”
Mitchell noticed the boy’s hands trembling. His were, too. “Come
on, son.”
    He put his hand on the boy’s small shoulder
and guided him out of the alcove toward his car, where he opened
the front passenger door and motioned for Joel to get in.
    Mitchell brushed the snow off the windows and
the windshield, and as he climbed in and started the engine, he saw
the door to 113 swing open in the rearview mirror.
     
    “You eaten yet?”
    “No.”
    Main Street empty and the newly-scraped
pavement already frosting again, the reflection of the high beams
blinding against the wall of pouring snow.
    “Are you hungry?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He turned right off Main, drove slow down a
snow-packed side street that sloped past little Victorians, inns,
and motels, Joel buckled into the passenger seat, the can of Sprite
still unopened between his legs, tears rolling down his cheeks.
     
    Mitchell unlocked the door and opened it.
    “Go on in, Joel.”
    The boy entered and Mitchell hit the light,
closing and locking the door after them, wondering if Joel could
reach the brass chain near the top.
    It wasn’t much of a room—single bed, table,
cabinet housing a refrigerator on one side, hangers on the other.
He’d lived out of it for the last month and it smelled like stale
pizza crust and cardboard and clothes soured with sweat.
    Mitchell closed the blinds.
    “You wanna watch TV?”
    The boy shrugged.
    Mitchell picked the remote control off the
bedside table and turned it on.
    “Come sit on the bed, Joel.”
    As the boy climbed onto the bed, Mitchell
started flipping.
    “You tell me to stop when you see something
you wanna watch.”
    Mitchell surfed through all thirty stations
twice and the boy said nothing.
    He settled on the Discovery Channel, set the
remote control down.
    “I want my Dad,” the boy said, trying not to
cry.
    “Calm down, Joel.”
    Mitchell sat on the bed and unlaced his
sneakers. His socks were damp and cold. He balled them up and
tossed them into the open bathroom, staring now at his pale feet,
toes shriveled with moisture.
    Joel had settled back into one of the
pillows, momentarily entranced by the television program where a
man caked in mud wrestled with a crocodile.
    Mitchell turned up the volume.
    “You like crocodiles?” he asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “You aren’t scared of them?”
    The boy shook his head. “I got a snake.”
    “Nuh uh.”
    The boy looked up. “Uh huh.”
    “What kind?”
    “It’s black and scaly and it lives in a glass
box.”
    “A terrarium?”
    “Yeah. Daddy catches mice for it.”
    “It eats them?”
    “Uh huh. Slinky’s belly gets real big.”
    Mitchell smiled. “I bet that’s something to
see.”
    They sat watching the Discovery Channel for
twenty minutes, Joel engrossed now, Mitchell with his head tilted
back against the headboard, eyes closed, a half grin where none had
been for twelve months.
     
    At 8:24 p.m., the cell vibrated against
Mitchell’s hip. He opened the case and pulled out the phone.
    “Hi, Lisa.”
    “Mitch.”
    “Listen, I want you to call me back in five
minutes and do exactly what I say.”
    “Okay.”
    Mitchell closed the phone and slid off the
bed.
    The boy looked up, still half-watching the
program on the world’s deadliest spiders.
    He said, “I’m hungry.”
    “I know, sport. I know. Give me just a minute
here and I’ll order a pizza.”
    Mitchell crossed the carpet, tracking through
dirty clothes he should’ve taken to the laundry a week ago.
    His suitcase lay open in the space between
the dresser and the baseboard heater. He knelt down, searching
through wrinkled oxfords and blue jeans, khakis that had long since
lost their creases.
    It was