Dead Weight by Steven F. Havill

Sutherland had to content himself with the bottom rung on the duty ladder.
    Tom Mears, a veteran who preferred the midnight-to-eight shift so that he had time to race his beloved stock cars on summer weekends, was the only deputy on the road at the moment. Undersheriff Torrez and one or two others who were supposed to be off-duty were still over at the Sissons’, probing and photographing, oblivious to whatever else might be going on elsewhere in the county.
    Mears and Sutherland had the place to themselves, and I trusted that Mears could keep the rookie out of trouble.
    Whether the sound of my boots on the polished tile floor woke him up or it was just coincidence, Sutherland’s right hand drifted down from his chin and picked up the pencil on the table. He jotted a note in the margin of the book, replaced the pencil, and glanced at the digital clock in front of him.
    “Fascinating stuff, eh?” I said, and Sutherland started, cranking his head around so fast I thought I heard a vertebra crack. “Sorry about that.” I stepped closer and looked at the log. Since the Sisson emergency, things had drifted to tomblike peace and quiet.
    Thirty-one minutes before, Deputy Mears had radioed in that the side door of the tiny Catholic church in Regal was open, not an unusual state of affairs, and that he was going to check it. Three minutes later, logged at 02:47, Mears had radioed ten-eight, the numerical mumbo-jumbo that meant he was back in service.
    “No sleep-overs this time,” I said, and Sutherland looked puzzled.
    “Sir?”
    “Sleep-overs. The church in Regal is never locked. I don’t think there’s even a lockable chasp on the door. It’s a favorite place for Mexican nationals to spend the night.”
    “That’s why the three minutes, then,” Sutherland said.
    “That’s why. And that’s why you need to be on your toes, even when you’re bored to death and you’ve committed that book to memory and you’re counting the ticks on the clock. Where’s the nearest officer who can provide backup to Mears?”
    Sutherland frowned and I saw his back straighten and one hand move an inch or two in the direction of the transmit bar on the radio.
    “No matter who you find,” I said, “odds are that they aren’t going to be close to Regal. So Mears is on his own. If he walks into that church and there are about eight illegals snoozing on the pews and two of them happen to be armed with something more than an attitude, the night can get exciting. So when someone goes in to check a place like that, you give him three or four minutes, no more. If he isn’t on the air ten-eight by then, you remind him.”
    I leaned across and pushed the bar. “Three oh seven, PCS. Ten-thirty-nine.”
    Three seconds later, Tom Mears’s matter-of-fact voice responded, “Three oh seven is ten-eight.”
    “Ten-four. PCS two five one.”
    I straightened up. “You know his status now, and he knows you’re not asleep.” I grinned. “And that’s all the weird folks who spend the night listening to scanners need to know, too. That’s why you don’t spend your shift asking the deputies where they are. There’s only one of him and a big, empty county. He’s got little-enough edge as it is without someone being able to plot his course every minute.”
    “That’s what Ernie Wheeler said.”
    “Listen to him.” I nodded. “On a night like this, when you’ve got deputies and civilians both edgy after the mess over at the Sissons’, somebody needs to be paying attention to the little things. Don’t let yourself be distracted. Pay attention.” I grinned. “End of sermon.”
    “Yes, sir,” Sutherland said, nodding his head in appreciation. I wasn’t sure if he was glad to have such monumental erudition bestowed on him by the sheriff of Posadas County or glad that I had finally shut up.
    I checked my mailbox and retrieved a yellow WHILE YOU WERE OUT note. I recognized Ernie Wheeler’s angular printing—just the name Frank Dayan,