A Push in the Rain

The fluorescent bulb in the Tucson station flickered twice before buzzing into a low hum.

Through the one-way mirror, Sheriff Lena Ortiz adjusted her belt and leaned against the observation shelf. Beside her, Cole Mercer stood with his arms crossed, watching the middle-aged man sitting at the metal table in the adjoining room.

The man was forty-eight years old, wearing a stained jacket and chewing on a thumbnail until the skin bled. His name was Miller, former driver for White Falcon Protective Services. Two hours earlier, state troopers had pulled him from a trailer outside Marana after an old dispatcher in Nevada gave up his name.

“The state prosecutor is sitting in the hall,” Ortiz said. “You don’t cross this door frame.”

Cole said nothing. He watched Miller’s hands tremble around a paper cup of cold water.

An investigator in a dark suit opened the interrogation door, tossing a manila folder onto the stainless-steel table. Miller flinched as if a shot had gone off.

“We have the dispatch logs from June fourteen,” the investigator said. “Your partner signed in Reno.”

Miller put his face into his calloused palms. A muffled sob rasped against the bare drywall.

“It was supposed to be a push,” Miller gasped into the microphone. “Just bump his panel.”

Cole’s fingers dug into his own forearms, the leather of his vest creaking in the narrow room.

“The storm hit hard,” Miller sobbed into his hands. “He went into the wash.”

“Did you drop down into the wash?” the investigator asked.

“No,” Miller wept. “We watched his brake lights go under. Vale told us to walk.”

In the observation room, Cole closed his eyes.

Six years of venom, six years of cursing Daniel’s ghost for walking away from the patch, dissolved into the cold hum of the air conditioner. There was no grand conspiracy, no legendary showdown. Just a trembling coward in a stained jacket who had watched a brother drown in six feet of muddy runoff to keep a paycheck.

Beside him, Boone pushed open the observation door, his heavy lighter clicking open and shut in a rapid rhythm.

“He’s thirty feet away, Cole,” Boone muttered. “Give me two minutes.”

Cole turned and placed his hand flat against Boone’s chest, holding the sergeant-at-arms back against the doorframe.

“No,” Cole said.

“He watched Dan drown,” Boone spat.

“And Daniel wrote the letter,” Cole said, his voice dropping below engine idle. “We don’t trade our lives for a bug.”

Boone stared at him, the lighter snapping shut. He looked through the glass at the weeping driver, then spat on the linoleum floor and stepped back.

Ortiz pulled a set of typed warrants from her leather folio and handed the top sheet to Cole.

“State troopers are staging in Phoenix,” Ortiz said. “Feds file at eight tomorrow.”

Cole took the paper, feeling the crisp bond between his gloved thumbs. He looked at the window one last time.

“Call Rachel,” Cole said. “Tell her Daniel’s coming home.”