Its leaning shack had been torn down and rebuilt as a shiny new store that was painted a very questionable teal blue. At least the sign hadn’t been touched.
“Right, Dog King it is,” Eve said, and turned into the newly paved driveway. It was still an order- at- the- window kind of place, so that hadn’t changed, and she got a bag of mini- dogs and burgers and fries, sodas all around, and tossed the results at Shane and Claire to sort out as she piloted the beast of a car. Sharp turns were a thing the hearse wasn’t great at doing, but she managed not to scrape any of the oh- so- new paint on the building, or the fence.
Claire was past noticing after that, because the hot dog she grabbed was melting in her mouth with deliciousness that totally erased the not- so- great chili spaghetti experiment. Two mini- dogs for Claire later, and two burgers that Shane practically inhaled, Eve was parking the car in front of the (not surprisingly) newly refur-bished Morganville City Hall, where Chief Moses had her office.
They sat in the parking lot and munched through the rest of the food, watching the foot traffic come and go.
“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Eve asked finally, as she crum- pled up the last of the wrappers and three- pointed it into the bag that Shane held up for a basket.
“Morganville has never looked this good,” he said. “It’s like that old movie about the robot wives or the pod people or some- thing. Seriously, look at the grass. It’s actually green. And even.”
“No, moron, I mean the pins. Lots of pins on cops.” Eve pointed to an imaginary collar. “Daylight Foundation pins. If it gets any more popular, they’ll put it on the freaking flag.”
“Great,” Shane said. “Everybody got pinned. We live in a giant evil frat house now.”
The massive Gothic front of the building looked old, but it had been rebuilt fairly recently; the aging of the stone was done with sandblasting. Still, it looked broody and impressive, looming over them as they walked up to the big, heavy doors. Two cops lingering by the entrance gave the three of them cool, blank looks that were, well, pretty normal, actually. The police in town had never been friendly, especially toward Shane and Eve. One shrugged, though, and opened the door for them as they approached.
Both, Claire noticed, wore pins.
Inside, it was business as usual in Morganville— clerks bus- tling around, phones ringing, people standing in line for permits or tickets or whatever. But there was a difference, somehow; it was intangible, but there. Claire couldn’t quite put her finger on how it felt wrong, or at least strange, but it had something to do with the overly friendly smiles, the happy tones of their voices.
“Someone’s been spiking the Cheery Kool- Aid,” Eve said.
“Think you mean cherry, slick.”
“I meant che ry, dumbass. Try to keep up,” Eve said, and gave Shane a shove on his shoulder. “Enough sightseeing. This is your show. Get it on the road.”
He trudged up the steps leading to the second floor, went down the hall, and opened the door that led to Hannah Moses’s office.
Not the office she had once, briefly, occupied as mayor; this one had a harassed- looking female cop sitting behind a desk working a multi- button phone. She shot them an irritated glance as the three of them stepped in. She hit the hold button and said, “Chief Mo- ses isn’t seeing anyone today. She’s in meetings.”
“Can you tell her it’s Shane Collins?”
“I don’t care who you are. She’s busy. ”
Shane leaned both hands on the officer’s desk. “Tell her it’s about my dog bite. I think I might be rabid.”
There was something in his face that convinced the woman.
She frowned, stared him down for a few seconds, then hit another button on her phone and said, “Yes, I need you in the office, please.
Thank you.”
“Excellent,” Shane said. “We’ll be right over here.” He walked to a small line of guest chairs. Claire took one, with Eve beside her, while Shane flipped through an assortment of ragged magazines . . .
and then the door opened.
It wasn’t Chief Moses. It was, instead, the biggest, most muscle- bound policeman Claire had ever seen. Broader and taller than Shane.
His gaze fixed immediately on the officer behind the desk.
“You got some kind of trouble here?” he asked. She merely pointed over her shoulder at Shane and kept talking to whatever constitu- ent was on the phone at the moment.
“Crap,” Eve said. “Um . . . guys?”
It was too late. The officer was lumbering over, and Shane was standing up, fast, dropping his magazine to the floor. “I think there’s some misunderstanding,” he said. “Because I didn’t ask for Officer Friendly. I asked for—”
That was as far as he got before the cop grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and pressed him flat against the wall, rattling the bland artwork hanging there. “Shut up,” he said, and reached for handcuffs.