Deputy Travis Cole’s hand paused halfway to the microphone on his shoulder. For the first time since he had stepped out of his cruiser with the ticket book, the lazy amusement left his mouth. The road shimmered beyond him in the August heat, and a gust pressed the corn leaves together with a dry, whispering scrape.
Mom’s eyes stayed on his radio.
Cole pressed the button. “Dispatch, I said Shirley Hagen.”
There was a beat of static.
“Full name, Fourteen.”
His jaw moved once beneath the skin. “Shirley Hagen.”
“Middle initial.”
He looked at Mom then, not smiling anymore. His sunglasses hid his eyes, but the turn of his head was sharp enough that I could tell exactly where he was looking: at the seventy-one-year-old woman he had kept standing beside our car for forty minutes, as if maybe she had changed into someone else while he wasn’t paying attention.
