Free Indefensible by Lee Goodman

waiting to see what will happen next, the rumbling of tires on gravel bursts into the clearing. Flora parks behind the cruisers, and there, beside her on the front seat, fit as a fiddle, sits Lizzy.
    â€œHi, Daddy,” she says, her braces owning the smile like bullfrogs own a pond. In thinking about her the past few hours—my Lizzy, who, for all I knew, had already been whacked by whoever did Zander Phippin—I’d forgotten the braces. The oversight feels tragic. I turn away from her to get everything straightened out in my head.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Daddy?”
    â€œNothing,” I answer, my voice sounding like it comes through a cylinder. My cell phone is ringing, but I ignore it.
    â€œOh God,” Flora shrieks. She has spotted Lloyd peering out the back window of the state cruiser like a common criminal. He’s urgently trying to get out, but the door doesn’t open from the inside. Flora runs and opens it for him, then spins and catches me in a look of unmitigated contempt. “What did you do?” she hisses.
    I start a babbling explanation, but I’m immediately drowned out by Lizzy, who shrieks, too, but hers is just a wordless scream, as sheruns to the kid in handcuffs and attaches herself to one of his arms and cups his cheek in her palm.
    â€œSeamus, oh my God!” Lizzy spins and looks like her mom, giving me the same betrayed expression. “Daddy, what have you done ?”
    â€œNot me,” I protest.
    Flora helps Lloyd out of the police car.
    Lizzy lays her head on the Sammel kid’s shoulder. Stubby snaps into action: “Stay away from the suspect,” he says, grabbing Lizzy by the arm and tugging. Lizzy responds by holding tighter to the boy, managing to get her arms around him and locking her grip. Stubby tries to peel her off. “Away from the suspect,” he repeats.
    â€œDon’t touch my daughter,” I tell him, surfacing from the dopey befuddlement of the whole scene. This young goon is manhandling Lizzy, who predictably clings to the wasted boy. The cop doesn’t let go.
    â€œDon’t touch my daughter,” I order again, smarting from Lizzy’s and Flora’s assumptions that I somehow had both Lloyd and this boy arrested. I grab Stubby to pull him away from Lizzy. Someone stumbles, and the three of them—Lizzy, the Sammel boy, and Stubby—go down in a heap with the boy on the bottom and Stubby squirming around on top of Lizzy. I kneel beside the pile of them, and the crook of my arm finds its target like a heat-seeking missile. I roll, taking Stubby’s head and neck with me. The rest of him follows.
    Then silence. The screaming stops (most of it, I realize, was Flora’s). Lizzy crawls away. I’m sitting in the gravel; Stubby sits between my legs, leaning back against me with my arm circling his throat. He makes gurgly noises, but we sit there together a few seconds longer until I am again aware of shouting, and now Trooper Voight stands nearby with his legs apart and a hand fluttering over the handle of the handgun at his side. “Release the officer,” he commands.
    I do, but I try to make it look like my own idea. Stubby chokes, coughs, rubs his throat. “You okay?” I ask him.
    Flora’s hands are pressed to her mouth. In the background, slightly out of the picture, I’m aware of  Tina, whose eyes are locked on Voight. Tina’s right hand is lifting a standard-issue Glock fromthe depths of her shoulder bag. Before it’s really in view, everything settles. I’m helping Stubby to his feet, Lizzy is kneeling by the Sammel boy, and the trooper has lost interest in me and is also looking at the boy. Tina drops the gun back in her bag.
    My cell rings again though it doesn’t strike me as the best time to answer. We’re all on our feet except the sick boy, who lies in the gravel wheezing. “Daddy, he’s hurt,” Lizzy says. We crowd