The Closer He Gets. Janice Kay Johnson

been an adjustment for him, the instincts were still there. He made constant, automatic judgments.

      The man coming out of a garage? Homeowner. The cluster of tattooed young guys clustered around a car with its hood raised? Currently harmless, although the way they all turned as a unit to watch as he passed had him keeping an eye on them in the rearview mirror for another block. Car that swerved and corrected course? A momentarily distracted driver.

      He’d been on the job for not quite three weeks. The population of this rural county wasn’t large but the square mileage was. Logging trucks still traveled an east-west highway that followed the river deep into the forested foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. Only one big lumber mill remained in operation, however, which meant logging as an industry was in decline.

      The dairy farms he remembered from when he was a kid had mostly disappeared. In fact, the east county communities all had an air of desperation. For Rent, For Sale and Going Out of Business signs were common, boarded-up shop windows even more so. It was beautiful country, but tourism hadn’t taken hold. Didn’t help that the couple motels he’d spotted were pretty run-down, in keeping with the general atmosphere.

      So far, he’d been assigned to patrol the river valley part of the county. Today’s route combined new developments, older housing sprawls just outside the city limits of the county seat and farms.

      It had been an incredibly mild winter. With it now the first week of April, daffodils were showing hints of bloom and tulips would follow, weeks earlier than usual. He’d seen the fresh green spikes of corn in fields. Peas weren’t the big crop they’d been when he was a kid, but were still grown, and strawberries, too.

      He’d already discovered that the older neighborhood he’d just turned into was heavily Hispanic. New immigrants and probably some undocumented aliens provided cheap labor for agriculture. He’d been instructed to leave Customs issues to ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and stick to local law enforcement, which was fine by him.

      Whatever his assignment, Zach varied his route every day, trying to learn every byroad. Despite flashes of familiarity, most of it was new to him. What kid paid attention when he was slumped in the backseat of a car?

      The stretch of county closer to the freeway had changed the most. Real estate in Seattle and its suburbs was priced beyond a lot of people’s means these days, which meant if they wanted to own a home, they bought farther out and resigned themselves to a two-hour-plus round-trip commute to work. Most of the residents of the newer, more upscale developments eating up what had been farmland were commuters. Midday, he could drive up and down the winding streets of any of those developments and hardly see a soul.

      In contrast, this neighborhood was what he thought of as in-between: the houses modest but still decently cared for. At least some were owned rather than rented, at a guess. No traffic and the last human he’d seen had been a couple of blocks ago: an old man peering suspiciously from his front porch.

      A rack of lights atop a car down the block on a cross street caught his eye. Surprised, Zach made the turn. What was another sheriff’s department car doing here? By necessity, patrols didn’t have a lot of overlap and he hadn’t heard any calls from dispatch that would have sent another deputy out here. Currently empty, the police car was parked on the gravel verge—no sidewalks in this neighborhood. Guy might live here, it occurred to Zach. He’d taken his own lunch break not half an hour ago.

      He was still half a block away when he spotted two men arguing. They stood toe-to-toe on a concrete walk leading to the front porch of a small house. Whatever was happening was intense. The one with his back to the street wore the same olive-green uniform as Zach’s. Then... What the hell? The deputy pushed the other guy, pulled his arm back and punched.

      Oh, shit, Zach thought. No. The cop was using his baton, not his fist. Hammering with it. Blood sprayed.

      Zach slammed to a stop and leaped out, now able to hear the snarls, the cries for help.

      A good thirty feet away, he broke into a hard run. A woman was tearing across the lawn toward the men from the house beyond, too. She was screaming.

      Showing no awareness of anyone else, the deputy threw his baton away and began using his fists instead. “I warned you! Stay away from her. But—” smack “—did you listen?”

      “¡Socorro! ¡Socorro!” The Hispanic man stumbled back.

      Zach caught a glimpse of his face, already battered to a pulp before another fist caught him dead-on and his lights went out.

      Time seemed to have slowed. Zach saw what was coming and knew he was too late to stop it. The Hispanic guy toppled back. His head struck the edge of the concrete step. The sound was terrible. A pumpkin being smashed.

      One step too late, Zach grabbed the deputy’s shoulder and yanked him back. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.

      The guy staggered, righted himself and lurched around in a fighter’s stance. Face crimson with rage, he started to swing at Zach before recognition dawned in his eyes and he stopped himself.

      “He went for my gun.” He gasped for air. “He went for my gun, goddamn it! I had to defend myself.”

      Hayes, that was his name. Andrew Hayes. Big, beefy guy starting to go soft. Ugly sense of humor. Zach knew him only from the locker room.

      “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Keening, the woman had dropped to her knees beside the victim, who wasn’t moving. “Is he dead? I think he might be dead.”

      Hayes looked past Zach and said sharply, “Ma’am, you need to back away. This is police business. Return to your house.”

      She lifted her head to sizzle him with green-gold eyes. “Antonio is harmless. You killed him.”

      “Ma’am, you need to listen—”

      Zach gave him a hard push. “Back off and shut up. Do you hear me?”

      That earned him some invectives.

      Ignoring him, Zach turned his attention to the victim when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hayes lean over to pick up his baton. Swearing, Zach slapped a hand onto the deputy’s chest. “Do I have to cuff you?” he asked, voice hard. “You will keep back. Don’t move. Don’t touch. Do you hear me?”

      “What the hell? We’re on the same side. The asshole grabbed for my weapon! I did what I had to.”

      “This is now a crime scene. Don’t touch anything. Wait.”

      Zach called for backup and an ambulance. When he saw Hayes take a step toward his vehicle anyway, he snapped, “Do not move!”

      Then, finally, he crouched beside the fallen man and gently touched his throat.

      Oh, damn. The lady with the green-gold eyes was right. Antonio was dead. Zach couldn’t even figure out how to administer first aid, the guy’s head was such a sickening sight.

      The woman and he looked at each other across the body. Momentarily stunned, Zach stared for a few beats too long. Her right hand was bloody, he saw when he could finally wrench his gaze from her face. She’d touched the victim when she’d first fallen to her knees beside him.

      Zach lifted his own hand to see that, yeah, his own fingertips were bloody, too.

      At the sound of an approaching siren, he said gently, “There’s nothing you can do. The medics will be here any minute.”

      She looked down then back up. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

      “I’m afraid so.”

      “Why?” she whispered.

      “I have no idea.” An ambulance rocketed to a stop in the driveway only a few feet away. Zach stood, circled to her side of the body and held out his hand. “Let’s back off and let them do their job.”

      An unmarked police SUV blocked Zach’s car in. Having cut off the siren, the undersheriff himself, a whipcord-thin guy with buzz-cut gray