Sarah said to Wintone on the phone. There was an irritated concern to her voice. The sheriff felt no surprise, only an unreasonable anger at himself for being unable to prevent what he suspected had happened. “Who and how bad?” he asked. “Man named Flynn. It’s more painful than serious; the bullet passed through his arm.” “I’ll be there directly, Sarah.” Wintone tucked in his tan uniform shirt and walked from his office. The afternoon taunted with the possibility of rain. Lead-colored, bloated clouds hung in the sky above a hot, humid stillness. The thick air was charged as if presaging a thunderstorm, but it had been that way most of the morning and no rain had fallen. As he walked, Wintone looked at sun-parched brown grass, at fine zigzag cracks in the earth like cracks in brittle china, and at the implacable gray-mottled sky. Maybe it would never rain again, only hint at it. In Doc Amis’s waiting room sat three men wearing dusty outdoors clothing, guardedly anxious expressions on sunburned faces—probably friends of the wounded Flynn.
