He pressed it. His thumb was shaking.
“I’m at the back of my Buick, Tom. On the shoulder. About a half mile east of the elevator.”
“How long?”
She looked at the deputy again. She gave him three full seconds to say it himself. I counted them. One. Two. Three.
He didn’t.
“A little while,” my mother said.
That was mercy. I didn’t understand it as mercy until much later. At the time I was furious with her for it. I wanted her to say forty minutes. I wanted her to say it loud, for the whole county to hear.
“Fourteen,” the sheriff said.
The deputy swallowed hard. “Fourteen.”
“How long has she been standing there?”
He looked down at the gravel. “About forty minutes, sir.”
The wind roared in the speaker. Nobody else said anything. Nobody on that whole channel.
“Put her in her car,” Sheriff Hanley said. “Turn her air on. You do not write one word. I’m six minutes out.”
