Child of Fire by Harry Connolly Page B

trees are gone. Charlie Three is bringing us into the next century.”
    “I don’t much like it.”
    “Well, you’re pretty much the only one.”
    The old man laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. Most of the people in this town won’t even talk to me anymore. Criticizing Charlie Three around here is like badmouthing the pope in Vatican City, even though he ain’t a patch on what came before.”
    “Don’t talk to me about Senior and Junior,” Sara said. “You know how hard they made things for Stan and his own father.”
    “I … I’m sorry, Sara.” Bill swirled his drink around in his glass. “You know how much I liked Stan.”
    She patted his hand. “I know, Bill. You slow down on that stuff, okay?”
    Bill lifted his glass and then set it down without drinking. “It’s not that the older generations didn’t have their quirks. Remember that Scottish thing? But it’s this latest one that’s … he gave up on the trees and started making toys. And he gave up the reins.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “When you have a stagecoach,” he said enthusiastically, as though he’d spent a good bit of time thinking about this analogy, “when you have a stagecoach, you hold on to the reins, right? You have to control things. But what happens if you drop the reins, huh?”
    “You stop moving,” I offered.
    “No. The coach tips over and everything spills out. It’sruined. Broken. The horses charge off in different directions, fight each other, eat each other. They tear each other apart, that’s what happens. Someone has to have control.”
    Sara suppressed a smile. “Bill, I don’t think horses eat other horses.”
    My beer glass was empty, and so was my water glass. I ordered refills and asked for a menu. Sara told me that they didn’t serve food anymore. She was all alone. I was disappointed, but she offered to dial a local pizza joint. I ordered a medium pepperoni.
    I turned to Bill. “I hope you like pepperoni. On me.”
    “Well!” he said, shuffling back to his stool beside me. “That’s fine. Just fine.”
    “You’re welcome to have a slice, too,” I said to Sara.
    “I’ll pass. I don’t eat cheese.” She lifted a tray of dirty glasses and carried them into the back.
    “She’s a good woman,” Bill told me, keeping his voice low. “There’s lots of fellas in town who’d like to get next to her. Especially since she got herself this bar.”
    I tried to picture myself standing behind the bar pulling beers, or frying burgers in the back. It was a nice idea, but it wasn’t going to happen. “Is that so?”
    “Her husband was a good man, too. Older than her. He hired her to wait tables and then a year later gave her a ring and a half-ownership in the bar.”
    “What happened to him?” I asked.
    “Nothing she did,” Bill said quickly. “He was killed by dogs.”
    “Did you say
dogs
?”
    “A pack of dogs. And he ain’t the only one. In the last six years or so, eight or ten local folks have been torn apart that way. Very mysterious.”
    “I don’t get it. A pack of dogs? Are there feral dogs in the woods? Or does someone keep them?”
    “There’s no way to hide a pack of dogs in a small town like this one. Emmett Dubois tried to trap the dogs severaltimes, but he never caught nothing. Me, I think they’ve had their vocal cords cut. That’s why nobody ever heard them barking.”
    I remembered the wolf that had stood out in the middle of the street. “Are the cops in this town really all brothers?”
    “Sure,” Bill said. “And it was their own daddy who hired them for the job. It might seem strange to an out-of-towner, but being a cop is a family business in Hammer Bay. And it was never a problem while one of the Hammers was giving the orders.”
    “Does that mean it’s a problem now?”
    “Heh. Well …” Bill rubbed his face. I guessed he would rephrase that if he could.
    “Let me put it another way: Are they good cops? Honest?”
    Bill lowered his voice.