By the evening of October 3, Martin could no longer treat the Wheaton killing as a single, local tragedy. Reports reaching him through his assignment described five further killings across Maryland and Washington, D.C. He had learned of them over the course of the day, each new report changing the meaning of the one before it. Now he stood beside a county map with a telephone receiver against his ear, waiting for a colleague to confirm where a routine coordination request should go. Someone behind him asked whether he was finished with the map. He shifted sideways without letting go of the receiver.
Montgomery County Police were leading the response. Federal partners would support it, while the arrangements around Martin were still developing. People made room for additional staff and carried telephones to desks that had held something else that morning. When the colleague finally returned, Martin read back the destination of the request. He had copied the room number correctly and the extension wrong. He corrected his own note before making the call, grateful for an error small enough to put right. The person who answered needed a moment to find a pen. Martin waited, looking at the other handsets lifting and settling around the room.
By the time the exchange was finished, the man waiting for the map had gone to fetch another copy. Martin moved out of the way and checked his remaining tasks. None would tell him what the next report might contain. A short break had opened before he was needed again, and he reached for his coat as though he meant to leave. Then he remembered Daniel's evening shift. The coat stayed on the chair. Martin went down the corridor for coffee, carrying a wish to keep his son indoors that already felt, to him, like a sensible instruction.
Ruth Mercer caught him near the coffee machine during the break, when the two of them had finally gotten ten minutes between shifts. "You look like you haven't slept since Wheaton," she said.
"I haven't, really." Martin rubbed his eyes. "Ruth, I'm thinking about telling Daniel to take some time off the register. Just until this settles."
Ruth studied him. "Settles how? Nobody in this building thinks it's settling anytime soon." She softened it only slightly. "And he's twenty-four. You can ask him. You can't tell him, not really, and you know that."
"I can ask hard," Martin said.
"You can ask hard and he can still say no, and then what — you've spent your asking on something that didn't move him, and he's annoyed at you besides." Ruth had two teenagers of her own and had clearly run this calculation before. "Pick what you actually need from him. Not everything."
Martin didn't take the advice gracefully. He called Daniel that evening anyway, after the shift had changed over and the annex had quieted into its overnight rhythm, and he didn't ask so much as instruct. "I want you to call in sick tomorrow. Just tomorrow. Let's see where this is by Friday."
There was a pause on the line that told Martin, before Daniel said anything, that this had been the wrong approach. 'You want me to lie to my manager,' Daniel said slowly, 'because of the shootings in Maryland and D.C., even though you haven't said there's a threat to this store.'
"It has to do with anyone standing in a parking lot right now, Daniel, that's the entire point —"
"Then it has to do with everybody, and everybody can't call in sick tomorrow. I can't either." Daniel's voice stayed even, which somehow made it land harder than if he'd raised it. "I'll be careful. I'll park near the doors. I'm not going to pretend I'm sick because you had a bad day at work."
"This isn't about my day," Martin said, aware even as he said it that it sounded exactly like a man talking about his day.
"I know you're scared," Daniel said. "I'm not saying don't be. I'm saying you don't get to hand the fear to me and call it a decision I made." He said he had to go, and he went, leaving Martin standing in the annex hallway with his phone warm against his ear and the distinct, unfamiliar sense that he had tried to give an order to someone who no longer took them from him — not out of disrespect, but because the order had never really been his to give.