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“I stand corrected, Sheriff You’re absolutely right I think you must deal with more suicides than I do”

“We’ve had more than you’d think in a town this size,” he said, and he looked suddenly weary Tired didn’t cover it He hitched his duty belt up again, as if trying to move it back where it used to ride It looked like a habitual gesture that didn’t quite work any your hair back from your face after you cut it short

“The only people that die on my watch don’t die by suicide,” I said

“The first uniforht that was bad, but so by inches in a backwater town” Duke sounded wistful, or way too honest to be talking in front of a stranger

It was Neho asked, “You okay, Duke?”

It’s against the guy code to ask things like that, but so about suicide and hear such bitter defeat come out of someone’s mouth, you break the rules Most of us ear a uniforuy code of silence when one of our own is in pain We lose too many people that way, both male and female Twenty-two combat veterans die every day in the United States alone from suicide, and it isn’t just soldiers who have just come home from their tours of duty There is no statute of lihtmares and depression With nu to one another more

I was still glad that Newh to be that personal

Duke shook his head “I’ve known Ray for over thirty years I was here when his sister and her husband died and left Bobby an orphan Kid o, three back then, and Ray had never had tie, but he changed his li

fe so he could be a dad to that little boy That’s when he sold his company, because he couldn’t be a CEO and a dad He told ot the otten for the company, and he was out of it when the crash came, but he didn’t knohen he did it He loved that boy like he was his own, and now he’s dead, bad dead Last thing I saw that bad was a bear attack, and that was nearly ten years ago It was no way for Ray to die, and now Bobby’s going to die, too” He shook his head again His eyes were a little shiny as he got his hat and said, “I’ll take you out to the crime scene”

“I know the way, Duke,” Newentle

“I know you do, Win, but all the sa”

“I’d like to talk to Bobby before we go,” Newman said

I did not want to talk to the prisoner, because right noas abstract, not as real as Leduc, who had just let us see his pain I didn’t want Bobby Marchand to be real to et, because I was beginning to realize I e in toasn’t emotionally compromised I still believed that Neould do his duty in the end, but I was beginning to understand how ht cost hireed that it would costdown the barrel of a gun at the prisoner If I was going to have to kill soet away, then I’d want all the eht-up hunt after ato killchained-up fish in a jail cell, that would be a new one even for oing to have to shoot hih the door in the back wall, I followed hie than I’d have admitted out loud There was no win here for me, or for Newman Hell, there was no win for anyone

2

THERE WERE TWO cells, with a narrow hallway leading to a closed door at the end A deputy sat in a chair by the ith a shotgun across her lap She stood as we entered, the shotgun held loose in one hand, the barrel pointed safely at the concrete floor All the skin that showed around the uniforht be Mexican like my mother, or at least some flavor of Hispanic, but a second look showed that the nice dark skin tone didn’t come from south of the border but somewhere more east