“NEEDLE! NEEDLE! NEEDLE!”

Terry stared at them, one lock of his neatly combed hair coming loose and hanging down above his left eyebrow. (Ralph felt he could count every strand.) There was a look of pained bewilderment on his face. Seeing people he knows, Ralph thought. People whose kids he taught, people whose kids he coached, people he had to his house for end-of-season barbecues. All of them rooting for him to die.

One of the sawhorse barricades clattered into the street, the crossbar sliding away. People surged onto the sidewalk, a few of them reporters with mics and notebooks, the rest local citizens who looked ready to string Terry Maitland up from the nearest lamppost. Two of the cops on crowd control rushed over and pushed them back, none too gently. Another replaced the barricade, which left the crowd free to break through at another location. Ralph saw what looked like two dozen cell phones taking photos and video.

“Come on,” he said to Sablo. “Let’s get him the fuck inside before they clog the steps.”

They exited the car and hurried toward the courthouse steps, Sablo motioning Doolin and Gilstrap forward. Now Ralph could see Bill Samuels standing inside one of the courthouse doors, looking dumbfounded . . . but why? How could he have not expected this? How could Sheriff Doolin not have expected it? Nor was he himself blameless—why hadn’t he insisted they bring Terry around to the rear doors, where most of the courthouse staff entered?

“Get back, folks!” Ralph shouted. “This is the process, let the process work!”

Gilstrap and the sheriff started Terry toward the steps, one holding each arm. Ralph had time to register (again) Gilstrap’s horrible plaid coat, and to wonder if the man’s wife had picked it out. If so, she must secretly hate him. Now the prisoners in the short bus—who would wait there in the day’s strengthening heat, stewing in their own sweat until the star prisoner’s arraignment was disposed of—added their voices to the auditory melee, some chanting Needle, Needle, others just yipping like dogs or howling like coyotes, pistoning their fists against the mesh covering the open windows.

Ralph turned to the Escalade and raised his open palm to it in a Stop gesture, wanting Howie and Alec Pelley to keep Marcy where she was until Terry was inside and the crowd settled down. It did no good. The streetside back door opened and then she was out, dipping one shoulder and eluding Howie Gold’s grasping hand as easily as she had slipped away from Betsy Riggins in the county jail’s lobby. As she ran to catch up with her husband, Ralph noted her low heels and a shaving cut on one calf. Her hand must have trembled, he thought. When she called Terry’s name, the cameras swung toward her. There were five in all, their lenses like glazed eyes. Someone threw a book at her. Ralph couldn’t read the title, but he knew that green jacket. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee. His wife had read it for her book club. The cover came loose and one of the flaps fluttered. The book hit her shoulder and bounced off. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Marcy!” Ralph shouted, leaving his place by the steps. “Marcy, over here!”

She looked around, perhaps searching for him, perhaps not. She looked like a woman in a dream. Terry stopped, turning at the sound of his wife’s name, and resisted when Sheriff Doolin tried to continue pulling him toward the steps.

Howie reached Marcy before Ralph could. As he took her arm, a burly man in mechanic’s coveralls overturned one of the sawhorses and rushed her. “Did you cover up for him, you evil cunt? Did you?”

Howie was sixty, but still in good shape. And he wasn’t shy. As Ralph watched, he flexed his knees and drove a shoulder into the right side of the burly man’s midsection, knocking him aside.

“Let me help,” Ralph said.

“I can take care of her,” Howie said. His face was flushed all the way to his thinning hair. He had an arm around Marcy’s waist. “We don’t want your help. Just get him inside. Now! Jesus, man, what were you thinking? This is a circus!”

Ralph thought to say, It’s the sheriff’s circus, not mine, only it was at least partly his. And what about Samuels? Had he perhaps foreseen this? Even hoped for it, because of the wide news coverage it would surely garner?

He turned in time to see a man in a cowboy shirt duck around one of the crowd control cops, sprint across the sidewalk, and hock a mouthful of spit in Terry’s face. Before the guy could rush away, Ralph stuck out a foot and sent him sprawling in the street. Ralph could read the tag on his jeans: LEVI’S BOOT CUT. He could see the faded circle of a Skoal can on the right back pocket. He pointed at one of the crowd control cops. “Cuff that man and stick him in your cruiser.”

“Our c-cars are all around b-back,” the cop said. He was a county guy, and looked not much older than Ralph’s son.

“Then stick him on the short bus!”

“And leave these people to—”

Ralph lost the rest, because he was seeing something amazing. While Doolin and Gilstrap stared at the spectators, Terry was helping the man in the cowboy shirt to his feet. He said something to Cowboy Shirt that Ralph missed, even with his ears seemingly attuned to the whole universe. Cowboy Shirt nodded and started away, hunching one shoulder to blot a scrape on his cheek. Later, Ralph would remember this little moment in the larger play. He would consider it deeply on long nights when sleep wouldn’t come: Terry helping the guy get up with his cuffed hands even as the spit ran down his cheek. Like something out of the fucking Bible.

The spectators had become a crowd, and now the crowd teetered on the edge of mob-ism. Some of them had made it onto the twenty or so granite steps leading up to the courthouse doors in spite of the cops’ efforts to push them back. A couple of bailiffs—one male and portly, the other female and scrawny—came out and attempted to help clear them away. Some people went, but others surged into their places.

Now, God save the queen, Gilstrap and Doolin were arguing. Gilstrap wanted Terry back in the car until authority could be reasserted. Doolin wanted him inside immediately, and Ralph knew the sheriff was right.

“Come on,” he said to them. “Yune and I will take point.”

“Draw your guns,” Gilstrap panted. “That will make them clear the way.”

This, of course, was not only against protocol but insane, and both Doolin and Ralph knew it. The sheriff and the ADA began to move forward again, once more holding Terry’s arms. At least the sidewalk was clear at the base of the steps. Ralph could see flecks of mica gleaming in the cement. Those will leave afterimages once we’re inside, he thought. They’ll hang there in front of my eyes like a little constellation.

The blue bus began rocking on its springs as the gleeful inmates threw themselves from one side to the other, still chanting Needle, Needle along with the crowd outside. A car alarm began to blurt as two young men danced atop someone’s previously pristine Camaro, one on the hood and the other on the roof. Ralph saw the cameras filming the crowd, and knew exactly how the people of his town were going to look to the rest of the state when this footage aired on the six o’clock news: like hyenas. Everyone stood out in bright relief, and everyone was a grotesque. He saw the blond anchor from Channel 7 again knocked to her knees by the hypodermic sign, saw her pick herself up, saw a kind of unbelieving sneer twist her pretty face as she touched her head and looked at the drops of blood on her fingers. He saw a man with tattoos on his hands, a yellow kerchief on his head, and most of his features blanked out by what were probably old burn scars that surgeries hadn’t been able to correct. A grease fire, Ralph thought, maybe while he was drunk and trying to cook pork chops. He saw a man waving a cowboy hat as if this was the Cap City ro-day-o. He saw Howie leading Marcy toward the steps, their heads bent as if they were moving into a stiff wind, and saw a woman lean forward to give her the finger. He saw a man with a canvas newspaper sack over his shoulder and a watch cap crammed down on his head in spite of the heat of the day. He saw the portly bailiff shoved from behind and only saved from a nasty tumble when a broad-shouldered black woman grabbed him by the belt. He saw a teenage boy with his girlfriend perched on his shoulders. The girl was shaking her fists and laughing, one of her bra straps hanging down to her elbow. The strap was bright yellow. He saw a boy with a cleft lip wearing a tee-shirt with Frank Peterson’s smiling face on it. REMEMBER THE VICTIM, the shirt said. He saw waving signs. He saw open, shouting mouths, all white teeth and red satin lining. He heard someone blowing a bicycle horn: hooga-hooga-hooga. He looked at Sablo, who was now standing with his arms outstretched to hold people back, and read the SP detective’s expression: This is so fucked.

Doolin and Gilstrap finally made it to the foot of the steps with Terry between them. Howie and Marcy joined them. Howie shouted something at the assistant district attorney, something else at the sheriff. Ralph couldn’t tell what it was over the chanting, but it got them moving again. Marcy reached out to her husband. Doolin pushed her back. Now someone began shouting “Die, Maitland, die!” and the crowd picked up that chant as Terry and his escorts started up the steep flight of steps.

Ralph’s gaze was drawn back to the man with the canvas newspaper sack. READ THE FLINT CITY CALL was printed on the side in fading red letters, as if the bag had been left outside in the rain. The man who was wearing a knit watch cap on a summer morning when the temperature was already in the mid-eighties. The man who was now reaching into his bag. Ralph suddenly remembered his interview with Mrs. Stanhope, the old lady who had witnessed Frank Peterson getting into the white van with Terry. Are you sure it was Frank Peterson you saw? he had asked. Oh yes, she’d said, it was Frank. There are two Peterson boys, both redheads. And wasn’t that red hair Ralph saw sticking out from beneath the watch cap?

He used to deliver our newspaper, Mrs. Stanhope had said.

Watch Cap’s hand came out of the bag, and it wasn’t holding a newspaper.

Ralph drew in all his breath even as he drew his Glock. “Gun! GUN!”

The people around Ollie screamed and scattered. ADA Gilstrap had been holding one of Terry’s arms, but when he saw the old-fashioned long-barreled Colt, he let go, dropped into a toad-like crouch and backpedaled. The sheriff also let go of Terry, but to draw his own weapon . . . or attempt to. The safety strap was still fastened, and the gun stayed where it was.

Ralph didn’t have a clear shot. The blond anchor from Channel 7, still dazed from the blow to her head, was standing almost directly in front of Ollie Peterson. Blood trickled down her left cheek.

“Down, lady, down!” Sablo shouted. He was on one knee, holding his own Glock in his right hand and bracing with his left.

Terry took his wife by the forearms—the handcuff chain was just long enough—and pushed her away from him just as Ollie fired over the blond anchor’s shoulder. She shrieked and clapped a hand to her no doubt deafened ear. The bullet grooved the side of Terry’s head, making his hair fly up and sending a cascade of blood onto the shoulder of the suit Marcy had been at such pains to press.

“My brother wasn’t enough, you had to kill my mother, too!” Ollie shouted, and fired again, this time striking the Camaro across the street. The young men who had been dancing on it jumped for safety, shouting.

Sablo leaped up the steps, grabbed the blond reporter, pulled her down, and landed on top of her. “Ralph, Ralph, do it!” he shouted.

Now Ralph had a clear shot, but just as he fired, one of the fleeing spectators crashed into him. Instead of hitting Ollie, the bullet struck a shoulder-mounted TV camera, shattering it. The cameraman dropped it and staggered backward with his hands over his face. Blood streamed through his fingers.

“Bastard!” Ollie screamed. “Murderer!”

He fired a third time. Terry grunted and stepped back onto the sidewalk. He held his cuffed hands up to his chin, as if struck by a thought that needed serious pondering. Marcy scrambled to him and threw her arms around his waist. Doolin was still yanking at the strapped butt of his service automatic. Gilstrap was running down the street with the split tail of his awful plaid sportcoat flapping behind him. Ralph took careful aim and fired again. This time no one jostled him, and the boy’s forehead collapsed inward as if struck with a hammer. His eyes bulged from their sockets in an expression of cartoon surprise as the 9 mm slug exploded his brains. His knees unhinged. He fell on top of his newsboy’s bag, the revolver slipping from his fingers and clattering down two or three steps before coming to rest.

We can go up those steps now, Ralph thought, still in his shooter’s stance. No problem, all clear. Except Marcy’s shout—“Somebody help him! Oh God, somebody please help my man!”—told him that there was no longer any reason to climb them. Not today, perhaps not ever.

4

Ollie Peterson’s first bullet had only grooved the side of Terry Maitland’s head, a bloody injury but superficial, something that would have left Terry with a scar and a story to tell. The third one, however, had punched through the coat of his suit on the left side of his chest, and the shirt below was turning purple as the blood from the wound spread.

It would have hit the vest if he hadn’t refused it, Ralph thought.

Terry lay on the sidewalk. His eyes were open. His lips were moving. Howie tried to crouch next to him. Ralph swung an arm hard and shoved the lawyer away. Howie went over on his back. Marcy was clinging to her husband, babbling “It’s not bad, Ter, you’re okay, stay with us.” Ralph put the heel of his hand against the soft springiness of her breast and pushed her away, too. Terry Maitland was still conscious, but there wasn’t much time.

A shadow fell over him, one of those goddam cameramen from one of the goddam TV stations. Yune Sablo grabbed him around the waist and spun him away. The cameraman’s feet stuttered, then crossed, and he went down, holding his camera up to keep it from harm.

“Terry,” Ralph said. He could see drops of sweat from his forehead falling onto Terry’s face, where they mixed with the blood from the head wound. “Terry, you’re going to die. Do you understand me? He got you, and he got you good. You are going to die.”

“No!” Marcy shrieked. “No, he can’t! The girls need their daddy! He can’t!”

She was trying to get to him, and this time it was Alec Pelley—pale and grave—who held her back. Howie had gotten to his knees, but he did not attempt to interfere again, either.

“Where . . . get me?”

“Your chest, Terry. He got you in the heart, or just above it. You need to make a dying declaration, okay? You need to tell me you killed Frank Peterson. This is your chance to clear your conscience.”

Terry smiled, and a thin trickle of blood spilled from either side of his mouth. “But I didn’t,” he said. His voice was low, little more than a whisper, but perfectly audible. “I didn’t, so tell me, Ralph . . . how are you going to clear yours?”

His eyes closed, then struggled open again. For a moment or two there was something in them. Then there wasn’t. Ralph put his fingers in front of Terry’s mouth. Nothing.

He turned to look at Marcy Maitland. It was hard, because his head seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your husband has passed on.”

Sheriff Doolin said dolefully, “If he’d been wearing the vest . . .” He shook his head.

The new-minted widow looked unbelievingly at Doolin, but it was Ralph Anderson she sprang at, leaving Alec Pelley with nothing but a shredded piece of her blouse in his left hand. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t arrested him in public, these people never would have been here! You might as well have shot him yourself!”

Ralph let her rake her fingers down the left side of his face before grabbing her wrists. Letting her blood him, because maybe he had that coming . . . and maybe there was no maybe about it.

“Marcy,” he said. “It was Frank Peterson’s brother who did the shooting, and he would have been here no matter where we arrested Terry.”

Alec Pelley and Howie Gold helped Marcy to her feet, being careful not to step on the body of her husband as they did so. Howie said, “That might be true, Detective Anderson, but there wouldn’t have been a fuck-ton of other people all around him. He would have stood out like a sore thumb.”

Alec only looked at Ralph with a species of stony contempt. Ralph turned to Yunel, but Yune looked away and bent to help the sobbing blond anchor from Channel 7 to her feet.

“Well, you got your dying statement, at least,” Marcy said. She held out her palms to Ralph. They were red with her husband’s blood. “Didn’t you?” When he made no reply, she turned away from him and saw Bill Samuels. He had come out of the courthouse at last and was standing between the bailiffs at the top of the steps.

“He said he didn’t do it!” she screamed at him. “He said he was innocent! We all heard it, you son of a bitch! As my husband lay dying, HE SAID HE WAS INNOCENT!”

Samuels didn’t reply, only turned and went back inside.

Sirens. The Camaro car alarm. The excited babble of people who were returning now that the shooting was over. Wanting to see the body. Wanting to photograph it, and put it on their Facebook pages. Howie’s coat, which the lawyer had draped over Terry’s hands to conceal the cuffs from the press and the cameras, now lay in the street, streaked with dirt and splotched with blood. Ralph picked it up and used it to cover Terry’s face, eliciting a terrible howl of grief from his wife. Then he went to the courthouse steps, sat down, and lowered his head between his knees.