Nineteen days earlier, on October 2, 2002, Martin Hale stood beside a folding table at Daniel's old high school, answering questions about county law enforcement careers. The evening program had brought students and parents into a hallway lined with college pennants. He had agreed to help months before, when the date meant only an obligation to remember. Now a student wanted to know whether every detective began in patrol. Martin moved a stack of brochures aside so the boy could set down his notebook. At the far end of the hall, a custodian was waiting to fold the unused tables.
The notice reached him during the evening: a man had been killed in a grocery store parking lot in Wheaton. There was no suspect description in the message that Martin could use. He read it with the student's notebook still open between them. The boy stopped writing. Martin said he needed to make a call, then asked the school organizer whether another volunteer could cover the table. She looked toward the families still waiting and asked if he would be back. He could not tell her. Instead of leaving her to explain an empty station, he gathered the remaining brochures and handed them to her.
From his car he called the liaison desk. The watch commander confirmed the killing and told him to remain reachable; there might be coordination work later that night. Martin asked whether he should report immediately. Not yet, the commander said. That left him with an evening neither free nor fully assigned. He could have gone back inside, but the organizer had already taken over, and he did not want to start another conversation he might have to abandon. He called once more to give her his apologies, then sat with his keys in his hand. Daniel would be finishing a grocery shift later. Martin knew the two stores were not the same place. He also knew which parking lot he would pass on the way toward the district building.
He drove toward the district building instead of home, and on the way he detoured past the grocery store on Randolph Road where Daniel worked closing shifts three nights a week. He told himself it wasn't about the shooting specifically — Wheaton and this store weren't the same place — but he parked anyway, in the far end of the lot where he could see the entrance, and waited.
Daniel came out a few minutes after nine, locking the front doors behind him and walking the register drawer back to the night-deposit slot the way he always did, unhurried, a young man finishing an ordinary shift. He spotted his father's car and crossed the lot with his eyebrows already raised.
"Everything okay?" Daniel asked, leaning on the window frame.
"There was a shooting in Wheaton tonight," Martin said. "I was in the area. Thought I'd swing by, make sure you got out okay."
Daniel considered that with the mild skepticism of someone who knew his father's habits. "You were in the area at a high school a half hour from here."
"I was in the area after that."
"Dad." Daniel straightened up, not unkindly. "I close up, I walk to my car, I drive home. I've done it a hundred times. You don't have to start parking outside."
Martin didn't answer that directly. He watched his son walk to his own car, start it, and pull out into the ordinary traffic of a Wednesday night. He followed as far as the turn toward home, then stopped at a light while Daniel's taillights disappeared ahead. The district building lay in the other direction. Martin checked the pager beside him. No new message. For a moment he considered going home too, changing out of the jacket he had worn at the school, and waiting for instructions there. When the light changed, he turned toward the district building. He could at least find out whether he was needed before settling in for the night.
At the desk, he gave his name and asked whether the commander still wanted him available. The answer was yes, with no further assignment yet. Martin found a chair where he would not be in anyone's way. He thought of Daniel's objection and decided he would not make a habit of waiting outside the store. One killing did not tell him what would happen tomorrow, and his son had finished a shift without needing him. He took out the career-program schedule, folded it smaller, and put it away. For now, he expected another ordinary day after a bad evening.