Free FrostLine by Justin Scott Page B

McMansions, not to mention Mr. Butler reneging on my land deal, and when school let out I could afford riding camp for little Alison. In my innocence, I even thought that I had defused the cat debate.
    The couple of times I bumped into Dicky Butler, he was in town running errands for his father. He looked healthy: a ruddy tan suggested he was helping on the farm; only the deerskin gloves flapping from his pocket reminded me that he was marking time. He kept mostly to himself and didn’t go looking for trouble. But trouble found him.
    Some high school dropouts jumped him in the only alley in town—a short-cut between the General Store and the Town Hall theater parking lot—hoping to gain a name for themselves, losing teeth instead.
    Trooper Moody bullied the victims into pressing charges. Tim Hall defended Dicky at a pre-trial hearing over in Plainfield, the county seat. Ollie had prepared his case diligently. Too diligently.
    Tim, prepped by Ira Roth, asked Ollie to clarify the dates the incidents occurred. Then, professing astonishment that Dicky had assaulted all four men on the same day, he asked for the precise time of the incidents. The judge finished it for him, remarking acidly that a reasonable jury might conclude that the one man attacked by four had a right to defend himself. Then His Honor wondered aloud whether Dicky’s false arrest suit against Trooper Moody might have influenced this investigation.
    Fourth of July, a biker from Derby named J.J. Topkis sucker-punched Dicky in the White Birch Tavern. Wide Greg, proprietor, reported that Dicky was a real gentleman about it, paid cash for the window through which he threw the biker, who figured prominently in outstanding warrants and did not wait around to press charges. (By the time Trooper Moody commenced his investigation, witnesses had called it an early night and Wide Greg was too busy sawing plywood to volunteer much information.)
    But Ollie went after Dicky anyway.
    I was driving mournfully home, late one night on the Morrisville Road, from dinner at the country house of Rita Long, a young widow who breezed in occasionally from New York or Hong Kong to thump my heartstrings like a heavy metal bass player. She was leaving in the morning for an indeterminate length of time and while the Fraser Morris gift basket of pâté de fois gras on the seat beside me was typically generous, it offered little consolation. Suddenly I saw Ollie’s flashers strobing the night red and blue. I slowed down for a look. The cruiser’s roof and search lights had pinned an elderly Ford pickup truck that looked like Dicky’s father’s.
    Ollie levered his six foot five inches out of his cruiser, one hand near his gun, and in the other a long five-cell halogen Mag light that he had been known to confuse with a nightstick. Distracted by all his candlepower, or gripped by rage, he didn’t notice my lights coming up behind him. In one swift fluid move he yanked open the pickup truck door, pulled Dicky out by the shirt, and threw him to the road. A wine bottle fell out after him and shattered on the pavement.
    Dicky was drunk. Trooper Moody let him climb halfway to his knees before he kicked him. He lined up another kick. I blinked my high beams, about as stupid a move as interrupting a wolf in the middle of dinner.
    Ollie motioned angrily to keep driving.
    I stopped the car, turned on the dome light to signal I wasn’t a threat, put both hands in plain sight on the steering wheel, and closed one eye before he could blind me with the Mag.
    â€œMove it,” he shouted.
    I turned off the ignition.
    He strode nearer and recognized the Olds. “Get the hell out of here, Ben.”
    â€œThe man’s drunk. He can’t defend himself.”
    â€œMove it!”
    â€œI’m a witness.”
    â€œSay what?”
    â€œYou’re beating up an unarmed citizen. I’m a witness.”
    â€œI’m telling you once more, get the