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It had been a strange time in his life, full of extreme peaks and valleys The first couple of years he’d worn the badge were definitely the valleys because he’d also been a drinker, and that had resulted in some bad scenes He was drunk on the job a couple of ti speed trap shift where he’d whiled the hours aith a bottle of Knob Creek and a stack of blues tapes A guy in a Crossfire had co down A-32 at ninety and Crow had peeled out after hihts and heard the sirens and didn’tover onto the shoulder, but Croas half in the bag and ed his own speed and had rear-​ended the speeder to the tune of a grand’s worth of bodywork on the Crossfire and eight hundred on the cruiser

Croould have been fired for that, but Terry had intervened Gus was purple with suppressed rage when he told Crow that he was only getting teeks off without pay During that week Terry had sat Cron and leveled an ultimatum at him: dry out or lose him as a friend

Crow’s first response was to spend the rest of the night getting totally wasted; and then after waking up in his own backyard, naked except for socks, and covered in vomit and bird shit, he’d decided that rock botto hands he poured all his booze down the drain and spent the rest of those teeks developing an addiction to coffee, chain-​s about life to anyone ould listen, which was a ss, sometimes as often as three times a day When he returned to the job after his suspension, he was ten pounds lighter, looked ten years older, had yellow skin, red eyes, a case of the shakes, and had been sober for twelve days

Then his life slipped into low gear and cli up a little speed as it went higher Over the next year he picked up two citations for good conduct, nevermoney away for the store he someday wanted to buy In January of his second year of sobriety he started teaching jujitsu twice a week at the YMCA in Crestville, bought Missy and rehabilitated her, strengthened his friendship with Terry Wolfe and the rest of the world--except, perhaps, for Gus, Jiht months before he quit the force he had a run-​in with a handful of the Pine Barons, the local bike club that had gradually become a pain in the ass to everyone That situation was one Crow regretted--not for his actions, which even he felt arranted, if not as heroic as the presshad been vulgar and gaudy and badly misinterpreted by everyone

The situation wasn’t really that much, as Cro it He and a couple of other units--a total of three officers in three cars--were sent to roust six of the Barons frorarounds Aside fro, a few of theh School, seducing a few and turning the a few others in ways that would have shocked construction workers There were several coirl in question refused to talk about, apparently too terrified and ashaes The fact that the biker had walked away froed the townies and fueled the cockiness of the bikers

The two other officers had arrived first and, despite being told to wait for backup, had gone into the diner, a move that spoke far h the door, one cop--Jim Polk--had mouthed off to the bikers and tried to bully the his balls, his face as red and pinched as a dried to the tar kicked out of hi

Crow yelled to the counter quarterbacked it he realized that he should have drawn his gun and ordered everyone down Though he didn’t careon his prelaw degree at Pinelands Crow jumped in and, as the counterman later described to the reporters, "black-​belted the whole sorry bunch of them" Three of the bikers landed in the hospital, two more were treated and released to police custody, and the sixth just ran and hid in the bathroom until the other units came and arrested him

The newspapers had a field day with the story, and every single article e all the purple prose superlatives in the dictionary to contrast him with the "monstrous bikers" whose "formidable" size and "animal ferocity" were a "deadly threat" to the safety of all in Pine Deep The level of journalish school paper Theyout of the fact that Crow had a black belt in jujitsu and kept using the term "chop-​socky," which irritated Crow to no end The only moderately mature piece was printed in the Black Marsh Sentinel, which included a sidebar on jujitsu (which was spelled wrong) and segued into a short history of biker violence in Pennsylvania

That incident becaends, and it was around that ti about Chief Crow as if his election was a foregone conclusion Gus Bernhardt, who had not been able to do a single visible thing about the Barons during those few times the bikers had previously been in toas beaten up by the press over and over again for his weak record Even Croho didn’t like Gus, thought that was a little unfair Except for the biker thing, there wasn’t enough crime in Pine Deep to allow anyone to establish a reputation Gus used that saht as a platform and took credit for the low crime as an example of how he protected "his" town Crow hadn’t even decided to run against hin speeches

A fewto the point where he would absolutely have to make a decision whether to run or not, Crow found a bank that liked the idea of an upscale craft store and illing to front thea chief in a tohere the usual breed of cri a happy store owner selling, as Val so kindly put it, rubber dog poop It took him about forty seconds to make his decision He handed Gus his notice--and tried not to take offense at the chief’s beaun in oilcloth, and became a business down the highith a pistol in uys on the loose?

"I’ll be damned if I know," he said aloud The pistol felt like an anvil in his belt and he ay too aware of it He drove fiveto pretend it wasn’t there Then, as he sailed past Millie and Gus’s big garlic farm, he said, "Oh…kiss un He bent, thuht As soon as he slammed the little door shut he felt worlds better He fished around on the passenger seat until he found the CD he wanted, slid it into the player, cranked the volu down Highway 41 as Missy tore through the night

The twisted length of A-32 was busy with tourist cars heading into town, but was ean its hysterical chirping, a sound he thought sounded like R2D2 being rogered by Jied it out of his pants pocket and saw that it was just a text e, which was just two digits: 69 Crow smiled One of Val’s saucy little jokes Perhaps an incentive He saved the e and stuffed the phone into his shirt pocket He’d call Val as soon as he finished at the hayride, which was ten minutes from now if Coop was in the office, maybe half an hour if he had to take an ATV into the park to find hi the kids out of there and shutting the whole thing down

He conjured an ie of Val in his mind, and for drea road Her lithe body draped in shadows, glistening with passionate sweat, goodunder a smooth, tawny hide as she lay back on the blanket in the scarecrow clearing Crow dru wheel as he recalled every delicious inch of her Maybe she’d want to go for another nice late-​night stroll through the cornfields, even though there was noon the steering wheel, Crow barreled down A-32 out of town, soaring up hills and swooping down the other sides, taking the curves and bends sometimes on four wheels, soile as a circus acrobat

In a fewOld Mill Road to the hayride, and after that he could backtrack and head over to Val’s Thatvery loudly with theversion of "I Ain’t Superstitious" He was yowling out the lyrics in a powerful and rather unpleasant tenor when he nearly ran over the kid on the bicycle

4

Even with the ribin place, Mike’s side still hurt like hell It wasn’t too bad when the road was flat, but notblack ribbon of A-32 clih ht Mike had always enjoyed the undulating curves of the road, loving the burn in his ht he hated every inch of it Pedaling in low gear helped a little to ease the pain, but sheer exhaustion wasat hiress slowed to a crawl Ti it would take hi past him; when he tried to cli At his best guess he wouldn’t get hole" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">