first time he saw her. She was about to follow CJ down the steps when she hesitated.
“Does he want me to bring the gun?” she asked CJ.
“I . . . I don’t know.” He turned to Officer Hinkle. “Should she bring the gun?” he called.
“Please,” Hinkle called back.
Dorothy ducked back inside and came out with the Winchester. In the sunlight it was obvious what a beautiful gun it had once been. Even now, with the significant water damage, it retained much of its beauty. He could understand why his father wanted it back. If it were CJ’s, and if Janet had it, he would have stolen it when he absconded with his dog.
Officer Hinkle put his hand on his holstered weapon as the pair approached, but he didn’t draw it. When CJ and Dorothy were close enough, she extended the gun butt first and he took it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Dorothy answered. Then, spotting Edward behind the Tahoe, she said, “Sorry, Edward.”
“Ms. Dotson, are you aware that city ordinances prohibit the discharge of a firearm within city limits?” Matt Hinkle asked.
“That has a familiar ring to it,” she conceded.
Her response pulled a smile from CJ, for there was something of the highbred woman in it—a woman who could gather up the tattered threads of her dignity to craft one appropriate bon mot.
Officer Hinkle caught his smile, and it might have been that which made him respond to Dorothy’s comment without wearing overbearing authority as a vest.
“Ms. Dotson, your neighbors are concerned—and rightfully so—about the danger posed by someone shooting a gun in the middle of a neighborhood.” He paused to see if his words were having the desired effect. Apparently he couldn’t get an accurate gauge because his next words took the form of an exasperated question. “What would have happened if there were children around when you shot at—” he stopped, looked first at CJ, then at Edward, who had stepped out from behind the Tahoe, before looking back at Dorothy—“at nothing in particular?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Dorothy said, lowering her eyes to some point just above Hinkle’s belt. “It won’t happen again, Officer. I promise.”
That seemed to satisfy him, but there was still protocol. “Ms. Dotson, I’m going to write you a ticket.”
“I suppose that’s only fair.”
Officer Hinkle pulled a ticket pad from his pocket and proceeded to write down the necessary information.
It was as Hinkle was preparing to tear off the ticket and hand it to his mother that CJ saw his father eyeing the gun. Later, when CJ was relaying the events of the day to Thoreau while administering a thorough ear scratching, he would recount this as the moment when everything went horribly wrong.
Before Hinkle could hand over the ticket, George said, “Officer, that’s my gun. If you look, you’ll see my name engraved on the butt plate. Mind if I just take it? Unless you have to hold it for evidence or something . . .”
Officer Matt Hinkle’s first mistake was, after a moment spent studying the engraving, agreeing with CJ’s father. His next was taking his eyes off of Dorothy as he extended the gun to her ex-husband.
By the time it was all over, the lights of two additional squad cars lit the neighborhood, Officer Hinkle was nursing a black eye the likes of which Sugar Ray might have administered, George had been felled by a brutal kick to the kneecap, and three officers had been required to wrestle a kicking and screaming Ms. Dotson into the back of a squad car.
As CJ watched the car holding his mother drive away up the street, the only sound beyond that of the rumbling engine was Uncle Edward, who said, “In Korea, we would have called your mom ‘unpredictable explosive ordnance.’ Which is why I’m standing over here.” With that, Edward removed a flask of something from his coat pocket, raised it in salute toward the receding squad car, and tipped it up.
CJ’s only response was to turn his back on the scene and walk to where Artie waited beside his idling truck.
Chapter 24
In spite of his having grown up in Adelia, CJ had never been in the courthouse before today. He’d never even had a speeding ticket—at least not one that required adjudication within the city limits. It surprised him how large it seemed once one was inside. From the outside, standing on the street and viewing the building, it didn’t look as if it could contain the area of the courtroom, not to