Free Sleeping Policemen by Dale Bailey

and disheveled. He dragged a chair over from the next table and collapsed into it. Nick noticed he had on the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, the Hilfiger sweatshirt rumpled and stained; he smelled as if he hadn’t bothered to shower since the accident.
    â€œYou see this?” Tucker slapped a bright blue flier on top of the newspaper. “I found it posted in the Student Center.” He snatched the newspaper from under the flier and fell quiet, studying the article. His leg jittered under the table like a pinned insect.
    Finney picked up the blue sheet, examined it, and slid it across to Nick. He read it, aware of Sue looking over his shoulder, her breath moist on his neck. Printed across the top in cold black letters was the word REWARD. Just below was a blurry but recognizable photograph of Casey. She grinned brightly, like a child, warm and safe, centuries from the cold pain of the cinderblock room.
    Just below, in the same bold black letters:
    $100,000
    FOR INFORMATION CONCERNING THE WHEREABOUTS OF
CASEY NICOLE BARRETT
MISSING SINCE NOV. 12
    Listed beneath were a phone number and the name Alfred Reynolds Barrett. The name sounded distantly familiar.
    â€œA. R. Barrett,” Finney said. “He’s a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. The Senator’s mentioned him a couple times.” He paused. “The money would be pocket change.”
    Nick looked at the amount again. He closed his eyes as Sue took the flier. The inside of his head bloomed with a phosphorous green light. A hundred grand would take him through the rest of his youth. Everything about him felt suddenly weighted, as if flatirons had been strapped to his limbs.
    Once, when he was thirteen, he and Alex St. Johns, his best friend at the time, decided to swim out to one of the Gulf buoys, a channel maker about two miles out. They were both strong swimmers and they liked the ring of bravado in the plan. They started early one Saturday morning the middle of June, the day hot and bright, the Gulf calm. Less than a mile out—just when they hit the truly green waters of the Gulf—Alex turned back, telling Nick that he’d felt something thick and leathery brushing against his legs. When Nick refused to follow, Alex got angry, shouting that he was a stupid son of a bitch going nowhere.
    The desertion enraged Nick and he swam all the harder. They told him later that he must have veered off course and missed the buoy. Within a couple of hours his arms and legs screamed; he refused to surrender, convinced the buoy was just ahead. By noon, when a passing shrimper spotted him, his arms and legs were dead weights, dragging him under.
    The sun had stripped his shoulders and fever blisters had covered his lips, forming and bursting in the salt water, spreading into his nose and the corners of his eyes. He remembered nothing of the last hour. The captain of the shrimper told him later that he’d been babbling incoherently, something about creatures under the sea.
    He felt that way now, his limbs heavy, his mind water-logged, something dark and hungry circling just beneath him. He imagined opening his eyes in the briny Gulf—and discovering the fish-eaten faces of Finney and Tuck leering back at him, each clinging to one of his legs.
    Tucker slammed the newspaper down on the table. “What the hell are we going to do?” Panic laced his voice.
    Nick opened his eyes and took the flier back from Sue. He folded it carefully and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
    â€œWhat about the tape?” he said, looking at Finney.
    Finney glanced at the others and then back to Nick. “I say we destroy it. Cut our losses, kill our connections, lay low till this thing is gone.”
    â€œMe, too,” Tucker said, his voice a ragged whisper. “It’s a trail leading straight up our asses, man.”
    â€œSue?” They all looked at her. She nodded her head, a terse dip of her chin.
    â€œWho?” Nick