Sergeant Danny Johnson sat behind the wheel of his unmarked car and had to fight to keep from breaking down. He was in the parking lot of Brown's Grocery, parked near the road and away from all the cars. The last twelve or so hours had taken their toll on him. He was sound asleep when his wife woke him up with the phone. Work was calling. He got to the high school a half hour later and found a dead body. Jayson Aaron. Danny knew him in a roundabout way, his mother took him to the same church that Danny's family went to. Danny hadn't thought of him as a person. That was the key to keeping sane in a job like this. Even though another young black man from Norman was dead, he had to treat it dispassionately. Danny and Echols worked the scene, talked to witnesses, even went to the hospital and talked to the boy closest to the shooting. 

Antwan Dixon hadn't had much to say, but who the hell could blame him? He'd watched his best friend die. By all eyewitness accounts, the boy saved Antwan's life by putting himself between Antwan and the shooter. Danny didn't want to bring it up with the boy. He could tell Antwan was playing the event over and over again in his mind. There was no insight to be gleaned by having him go over it again.

He and Echols were getting ready to try and compile what they knew about their suspect when Jean at the sheriff's department called Echols. The shooter turned himself in just a few hours after killing Jayson. Echols spent the rest of the night taking down the kid's statement while Danny tried to find Jayson's momma. He finally got in touch with her at eight this morning. She was out of town with her sisters in Charlotte. Danny had done so many death notifications over the years that he'd lost count, but Alicia Aaron followed the usual pattern of denial followed by complete mental breakdown. This was the second man she lost after Albert, Jayson's father and her husband, died of a heart attack six years ago. The boy was their only son and now she was completely alone.

That phone call nearly drove Danny over the edge because, as he heard Alicia's sobs, he pictured his own wife's breakdown if something ever happened to DJ. Not if, but more like when. If a good boy like Jayson could get gunned down, DJ didn't have a chance. Danny and Lesa both knew that, but they never talked about DJ anymore. It was like their only son just dropped off the face of the earth ever since that night he moved out of their house. He only lived three blocks away from their house, but Danny went out of his way to never run into the man who had his name.

Danny thought about finding DJ sprawled on the ground one night, bullets riddled in his body. The last thing he said to DJ when they last spoke was to get the fuck out of his house with that goddamn drug money. He bellowed that no son of his would help destroy this town and this community. He almost arrested him right there, but DJ ran out of the house and out of Danny's life that night.

Parked near the front of the grocery store was DJ's black Caprice. He worked here as a bagger, at least on paper. No way in hell a bag boy could afford that tricked out car, those name brand clothes, and that expensive furniture Danny saw movers moving into DJ's house. The Brown from Brown's Grocery came from DJ's real boss, the son of a bitch nobody ever seemed to want to talk about. Danny and Lesa always went out of town to do their grocery shopping, just on the off chance they ran into DJ inside. 

The shit with Jayson's shooting made Danny want to go inside, find his boy, and wrap him in a big hug. He wanted to say he was sorry for driving him away, sorry that he had pushed him into the arms of Billy Brown, and he just wanted him to be safe and happy. That's what he wanted to say. He knew he'd never do it. He wasn't that type of father. Hugging and declarations of love were not his style, no matter how bad he wanted it to be.

His phone vibrating snapped him out of his thoughts. He collected himself before answering.

"This is Johnson."

"Danny, it's Scott."

"What's up, Major?"

"Need you to come out to the lake, near Jenkins Mill. We got another dead body, Danny. It's a murder."

Danny said he was on the way and hung up. Two murders within twelve hours of each other wasn't exactly a record in Pickett County, but it was the most the town had seen since those violent days back in the 80's, when the man Danny's son looked up to killed so many people, the creeks and river seemed to flow red with blood.

He cast one last look back at DJ's car before he started up his unmarked and pulled out the parking lot.