Free Beholden by Pat Warren

under their intensity.
    Bob took a drink before answering. “Three months is a long time, Luke. I thought you might be itching to get back in harness
     by now.” Actually he’d thought no such thing, but it was a start.
    This time Luke did smile, his teeth very white against the leathery look of his face. “Sure you did.” He drank again, then
     crossed his arms over the chairback and waited. “I asked for six months off, remember?”
    “I remember.” Luke wasn’t a man to beat around the bush with, Bob knew. He hated dancing around a subject himself. He leaned
     forward, elbows on his knees, the beer bottle dangling in his hands. “There’s this new case. A special one.”
    Right on cue, Luke thought, his mind already searching for feasible reasons to decline. “They’re all special, Bob.” A dedicated
     chief deputy, Jones had a strong affinity with the silent victims, as he called the people forced into the protection program.
     Most had few choices as their very lives were uprooted and forever changed over a chance sighting or fateful happening.
    “This one really is. A young woman who witnessed a brutal shooting, almost getting killed herself in an arranged accident,
     her face scarred by flying glass, perhaps permanently.” Bob shook his head. “Poor kid.”
    Luke glanced at the twilight sky above the redrock mountain in the near distance, a brilliant sunset just beginning. What
     the hell. He’d been about to quit for the day anyhow. He drained his beer and stood. “Why don’t I throw a couple of steaks
     on the grill while you tell me about this poor, special kid.”
    Bob crossed his legs. “If you really want to hear.”
    Luke’s lips twitched. “Oh, yeah. I’m dying to hear your story.”
    ***
    The minute the sun dropped out of sight, the air turned much cooler. Luke served the steaks and a big salad at the kitchen
     table with a second beer, listening to Bob as he ate.
    “Before we moved her out of the hospital last week, we brought in a steno and took down her statement, which she’s signed.”
    “You think that’s enough to arrest this Sergeant McCarthy?” Luke asked, mildly interested despite his desire to stay uninvolved.
    “Along with what I’ve got in the car it is.” It took Bob only a few minutes to get the manila envelope from his front seat,
     then sit back down across from Luke. “I asked Terry Ryan to look at some pictures to see if she could recognize either of
     the other two men she saw that night. She picked out one, but we didn’t have a photo of the other man.”
    “Well, at least you’ve got two IDs.”
    “Oh, I’ve got all three. The detective I was telling you about, Andy Russell, reminded me that Terry’s an artist with the
Phoenix Gazette
. Her hands had been cut, but they’re healing pretty well. She did a sketch for us of the third man.” Bob pulled the drawing
     from the envelope and handed it to Luke. “She’s quite good. Artists apparently make note of more visual details than most
     of us. Look at these.”
    “I’ll be damned. Ozzie Swain, complete with toothpick in his mouth and pockmarks on his face. Mob muscle. He works for the
     Russo brothers.”
    “That’s right.” Bob removed the photo of Sam Russo Terry had identified. “According to Terry, the man she sketched did the
     shooting while Sam and Mac stood by and watched There was a fourth person who never got out of the car, but she only caught
     a glimpse of him from the knees down in the backseat.”
    Involuntarily, Luke’s hand reached to touch a six-inch scar on his right side, a souvenir of his own encounter with Sam’s
     brother, Nick, some years ago. Both Russos were vicious SOBs.
    Jones noticed Luke’s reaction and thought he knew what he was remembering. “Are you thinking that maybe the guy in the car
     was Nick Russo?”
    “I doubt it. He’s more of a participant than a spectator. If Nick had been there, he’d have been holding the gun.”
    “You’re probably