Free All the Beautiful Sinners by Stephen Graham Jones

sunglasses off one ear at a time, not wanting to mess anything up here.
    There in the hand shape, where the longhair’s hand had been, were four fingerprints and a thumb, dried into the paint.
    Jim Doe smiled.
    The basketball-playing family was gone when he turned around, their car not receding down any of the roads in any of the directions. Jim Doe looked up—because this was Kansas, where people get lifted into the sky—but they weren’t there either.
    He backed inside, to the store, bought two cups of coffee, a disposable camera, and a newspaper, then shot the whole roll on the handprint—close, far, every angle, some lit with his Maglite, some not, one with a quarter by it, for size, another with the newspaper, for the date—then packed it into a padded envelope, addressed it to Sheriff Debs, Garden City. The clerk knew the zip. Then Jim Doe showed him the flyer of the longhair. The clerk looked from it up to Jim Doe, then back again, like this was a joke, and Jim Doe looked away.
    As he was walking out, though, suddenly aware that the emergency brake in his truck wasn’t even set, the door unlocked, so that anybody could pop it into gear, the clerk called after him.
    “This about the gas run?”
    Jim Doe closed his eyes, didn’t turn around. “Yes,” he said.
    “I never saw him,” the clerk said. “Did they tell you I did?”
    Jim Doe turned around now.
    “When did you not see him?” he asked.
    “When he made the gas run,” the clerk said. He was all of sixteen.
    “Yesterday?” Jim Doe said.
    “Last night,” the clerk said. “Comes out of our check, you know? Ever since Arthur.”
    “Arthur?” Jim Doe said.
    The clerk smiled. “Arthur,” he said. “He was selling premium to his cousins at regular price. Real philanthropist.”
    Jim Doe looked above the clerk to the security camera.
    “But you’ve got tape,” he said.
    The clerk nodded. “Damn straight,” he said. “I saved its ass, too.”
    Jim Doe took the tape to the supply room with the manager’s television on the desk. His truck was still running, idling high with the nightstick, the plate glass at the front of the store pulsing with the exhaust. After the clerk left, he moved a stray brick over to the doorjamb of the supply closet, so it wouldn’t close. So nobody could close it on him. And then he watched.
    It was black-and-white and grainy and distant, but still, there he was, the longhair, keeping his new LeMans between him and the camera. You could tell it was new to him because he couldn’t find where to put the gas at first, had to walk around the car twice. While he pumped, you could see his hair, whipping above the ragged top of the car. His face just dark, determined.
    Jim Doe ejected the tape.
    “Show this to Sheriff Debs,” he said.
    “Is he coming here?” the clerk asked, but Jim Doe just nodded.
    “They all should be,” he said, and left the clerk standing there with the paperwork his manager would want filled out.
    Standing by his truck again, his car beside him, was the tall Indian man. Like he’d been there all along. His tall son was dribbling a basketball beside the store, passing it to himself off the wall. The rain was almost on them now, already sweeping the trash into the air.
    The man nodded down at Jim Doe’s right hand.
    “Gonna pay for that chocolate?” he asked.
    Jim Doe looked down at his hand and there it was, a candy bar. One he couldn’t explain. He offered it to the man but the man held his hands up, palms out. They were both red.
    The last thing Agnes had said to him on the phone was come home .
    It was too late now, though. He was too far gone.
    He got into his truck, moved the newspaper out of his seat, dislodged the nightstick and pulled into Lydia three hours after sunset, one hour ahead of the rain. It already smelled like it, though. There were people stationed in the driveways of each house, watching it approach. Jim Doe slowed, like he was recognizing them, their stance, and