It was a healthy drive, nearly two thousand miles, to meet this Carol Bridges. Durwood would hear her out on Hogan Consolidated. If he didn't like what she said, he'd tip his hat and drive back.

He and Sue-Ann started before sunup. The Vanagon wheezed over the mountains on country switchbacks and hummed along interstates. Into the afternoon, Sue started wincing. That bare metal floor. Next time he got gas, Durwood bought her a doormat.

They reached Chickasaw the next morning. Fields of wheat and corn. Grain elevators. Dry, dusty homesteads. Factories burping smoke. Billboard here and there for a dentist, some fella wanting to be sheriff.

Downtown Chickasaw was a grid, oh, eight blocks square. Durwood saw the turf field mentioned in the letter and smiled.

He saw a fancy hotel that looked out of place. Coffee shop with an artsy sign. Inside, they had those vintage lightbulbs with the squiggly filaments. Durwood knew that rural or not, these towns had all types. You got your vegan yoga instructors living next to redneck truckers. Sometimes married to each other.

City Hall was a stone structure, two stories. Municipal jail in the basement.

Durwood parked and stepped from the Vanagon, bones creaking.

A woman working reception cooed at Sue, who rolled onto her back. The big ham. Durwood stated their business, then was led past a metal detector and to the mayor.

Carol Bridges stood from her desk with a humble smile. "Mr. Oak Jones, thank you for traveling all this way for our town."

"You're welcome. Call me Durwood, please."

She said she would and handed him a business card with her personal phone number circled. Durwood placed the card in his bluejeans pocket. The mayor gestured to an armchair whose upholstery had worn thin. Durwood sat and removed his hat.

"Generally, my dog goes everywhere," he explained. "She can sit outside if need be."

"Don't be silly." The mayor reached into a drawer, took out a biscuit. "I'd have brought my German Shepherd if I'd known."

She didn't just toss Sue the biscuit, as some do. She stood with her shoulders back and commanded the dog to sit first.

Sue sat.

Carol Bridges bent and offered the treat, palm up, knees pinched together. Sue gobbled it.

Durwood said, "We saw the factories on the way in. How many employees?"

"Forty-four hundred on the floors themselves," she said. "Plus another eight thousand in various support roles."

"And it's all going away? Vamoose?"

Carol Bridges crossed one leg over the opposite knee. "That's the way the winds are blowing."

She expanded upon her initial letter. For the better part of a century, Hogan Consolidated had produced high-quality parts for various household products. Pot handles. Stepladder hinges. Five or six years back, Wall Street began taking an interest in the company. They believed Hogan was underleveraged and growing too slowly.

Durwood stopped her. "What does underleveraged mean?"

"As I understand it"—the mayor fluffed her dark red hair, dubious—"it means you aren't taking enough risks. Your balance sheet is too conservative."

"Too conservative?"

"Right. You're not expanding into new markets. You're not inventing new products."

Durwood rolled her words around his head. "Suppose you're good at what you do, and that's it."

Carol Bridges pivoted toward her window, which overlooked a pair of smokestacks. "Not good enough for Wall Street."

Thoughts of finance or economics usually provoked headaches in Durwood, but he made himself consider the particulars of the case now.

"But Hogan's a family-owned company," he said. "Can't they tell Wall Street to go to hell? Pardon my French."

"They were family-owned up until 1972, when they sold out."

Durwood pulled back in his chair, thinking of her letter.

She seemed to read his thoughts. "They're a family-run company. The CEO's always been a Hogan, but the equity is publicly traded."

Durwood's forehead began to hurt. "I read your letter different."

"I apologize if I was unclear. I didn't mean to bring you out on false pretenses."

They looked at one another. The woman's face was flushed and tilted just a hair. Eyes wide. She looked sorry.

On the wall behind her hung the Iraq Campaign Medal, alongside the striped combat action ribbon.

"It's fine," Durwood said. "I understand they're facing lawsuits."

She seemed eager for a subject change. "Correct. A class-action suit has been filed by customers claiming injury as a result of faulty Hogan parts."

"What happened?"

"A woman in New Jersey's toaster exploded. They've got two people in California saying a bad Hogan hinge caused 'em to fall. One broke her wrist."

"Her wrist."

Carol Bridges nodded.

"Falling off a stepladder?"

She nodded again.

"What're the Hogans doing?" Durwood asked. "They got a strategy to stomp out this nonsense?"

"No idea. I hear one person down at the cafe say they're going bankrupt." The mayor flung out an arm. "I hear another say they're selling out to some private equity firm—these outfits that buy distressed companies for peanuts and part 'em out, auction off the assets and fire all the workers."

Durwood leaned over his bluejeans. "You mentioned the CEO in your letter. Eats sushi."

The woman smiled at the reference. "Jay Hogan, yes. He's only twenty-eight, and I don't think he likes living in Chickasaw much. He went to college at Dartmouth."

"Whereabouts is that?"

"Dartmouth?"

Durwood nodded. He'd once met an arms supplier in Dortmund, Germany. Gearing up to stop the simultaneous bombings of a dozen soccer stadiums—a mission with Quaid Rafferty.

He'd never heard of Dartmouth.

Carol Bridges said, "New Hampshire."

"He don't like the town," Durwood said, "why didn't he stay east? Work a city job?"

She crossed her legs again. "I doubt he could get one. Around here, he was a screw-up. They picked him up for drunk driving a half-dozen times. Back then, I was a prosecutor. We winched him out of the same gully four different times in his dad's Hummer."

"Why'd they pick him for CEO?"

"He's an only child. When the father had his stroke, Jay was next in line. Only pitcher left in the bullpen."

Durwood took a long breath. His chest rose and fell. "Now the fate of the whole town rests on his shoulders. Fella couldn't keep a vehicle out of a gully."

Carol Bridges nodded.

Durwood felt comfortable talking to this woman. As comfortable as he'd felt since Maybelle, his wife and soulmate, had passed in Tikrit. Carol Bridges didn't embellish. She didn't say one thing but mean another—excusing that "family-run" misunderstanding, which might well have been Durwood's fault.

But comfort didn't make a case.

"I sympathize, Ms. Bridges," Durwood said. "I do. But I'm a simple man. Sort of business I'm trained for is combat. Apprehension of suspects. Retribution that can't be undertaken within the confines of law. This situation calls for expertise I don't have."

He'd given bad news, but Carol Bridges smiled. "I have to disagree."

"You need somebody who knows corporate law, how to get around—"

"You're not a simple man. There's a lot up there"—her live eyes twitched up—"that doesn't get translated into words."

Durwood held her eyes a moment, then cut his own down to Sue-Ann. The dog looked confused.

He said, "America is changing. For better or worse. Town like Chickasaw doesn't get the better end of it, I understand. There's injustice in that, sure. But it's not the sort I can stop."

"Of course. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that."

"Good. Be no point in it."

Carol Bridges leaned back and put both hands into her dark red hair. There was a funny thing happening with her mouth. Was she chewing gum? No, that wasn't it. Getting a hunk of food out between her teeth with her tongue?

Durwood didn't think so.

She was smirking.

"The city of Chickasaw, Texas, is not asking you for the 1970s back," she said. "What we're asking is this: talk to Jay Hogan. Get a straight answer out of him. I can't, I've tried. We need somebody who can cut through the bull and find out the truth."

"The truth," Durwood repeated.

"Yes. If the jobs are going away, if I need to retrain my citizenry to..." She searched her desktop for a suitable example. Pencils. Stapler. Manila folders. "Heck, answer customer-service calls? I will. But we want to know."

Sue-Ann snored, resettling against Durwood's boot.

Durwood said, "Talk to Jay Hogan."

The mayor clasped her hands over her chest. "Yes, that's all. Tell us where we stand."

He thought about the crop fields he and Sue had seen from the bus. The dusty homesteads. Dentist on the billboard. Fella who wanted to be sheriff.

He thought about the factories, still putting out smoke.

For now.

"We did drive a couple thousand miles," he said. "I suppose we can have a word with Mr. Hogan."

Carol Bridges pressed his calloused hands in her smooth ones. She gave him the address of Hogan Consolidated from memory.

—

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