Envy the Night by Michael Koryta

reaction, a group of rookie agents in Miami were working the streets and chasing bank records, and a few years and two ugly trials later DeCaster was in prison. No help needed from Frank Temple III, no lies to a grieving son, a
child,
required.
    It was the sort of thing that was hard to put out of your mind.
    Grady kept his eye on the kid, though, and found a measure of relief in each year that passed without incident. Frank was making his own place in the world, and it looked like a peaceful one.
    Had looked that way, at least, until the day after his arrest for public intoxication down in Indiana, when Jim Saul called Grady at home on a Friday night and asked if he’d heard about Devin Matteson.
    Grady took his feet down off the ottoman and set his beer aside and leaned forward, his grip tight on the phone.
    “Heard what about him, Jimmy?”
    “He’s in the hospital down in Miami, with three gunshot wounds. Looked like he was going to die when they brought him in, but he’s been making a furious recovery ever since. You know the kind of shape that prick was in. Ironman, right? He’s conscious again, and it’s almost a sure bet he’ll make it.”
    “They have the shooter?”
    “Nope. And if Matteson knows, he’s not saying. But somebody plugged him three in the back, and you know how he will want to handle that.”
    “Personally,” Grady said, and he felt cold. “What do you hear on suspects?”
    “Could be anybody. If they’ve got good leads, I’m not aware of them.”
    “Temple’s son was arrested in Indiana night before last. Public intoxication. When was Matteson shot?”
    “The day before that,” Saul said slowly. “And how do you know the Temple kid was arrested for a PI?”
    “Word travels,” Grady said.
    “Right,” Saul said. “Well, I thought you’d like to hear about it. And if I hear something new, you’ll be the first to know.”
    They hung up, and Grady dropped the phone onto the cushion beside him and stared at the wall.
    Devin Matteson shot in the back, Frank Temple III arrested for drinking in Indiana a day later. Celebration, maybe? A few champagne toasts to the dead?
    No. No, that couldn’t be it. The kid was doing fine, and Matteson had any number of enemies. The list probably grew by the day.
    Frank had wanted him, though. Frank had wanted Matteson
badly,
and by the end, when Grady was trying to make amends, he’d urged the boy to put that away. Told him that he’d
have
to ignore it if he wanted to stay away from his father’s sort of end. Frank had accepted it, too, at least verbally, but Grady remembered going back to the range with him a few weeks after the lies had started, remembered the look on Frank’s face and the perfect cluster of bulletsin the target. He’d known damn well the kid was seeing Devin Matteson down there.
    And whose fault was that, Grady? Whose fault?
    He picked up the beer again, drank what was left, and stood up to go after another one.
    “I should have asked about the wounds,” he said aloud, talking to his empty apartment. That would have settled it. Because if there’d been more than an inch or two between those bullet holes, then Frank Temple III hadn’t been pulling the trigger.
     
    Ezra Ballard ran an electric fillet knife down the perch’s side in a smooth, quick stroke. Turned the fish over and repeated the motion. Moved the filets to the side and then lobbed the fish head over the fence and into the dog kennel. Two of his hounds hit the fish carcass together. There was a soft growl, the sound of snapping teeth, and then the winner retreated with his prize.
    Last summer, an architect from Madison had given Ezra a nice lecture after watching him feed the leftover fish to his dogs. Fish in that condition wasn’t suitable for dogs. Could do serious harm. Ezra had tried to stay polite, listening to him. Finally Ezra asked him if he had any experience with bear hounds. No, not with bear hounds, the guy said. Plenty of experience with