The Victims’ Club

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“Sorry about that,” the sheriff said from the doorway.

Jon Avery lifted his shoulders in a partial shrug. “How bad could it be?”

“Um,” the sheriff grunted. The stocky, balding man’s light-brown uniform was always perfectly pressed. Avery never understood how the garment stayed this way. He was envious, to the extent that one could be on the topic of spray starch and an iron. Avery was slim — he had no rolls to wrinkle his shirts — but he always ended the day looking like a sack, no matter how much time he’d spent ironing his outfit that morning. Avery’s wife was happy to do it for him, but he was good with an iron: Avery’d been army. Like most soldiers, he’d wielded a Black and Decker steam iron far more frequently than an M16. The good news was that, though a deputy by payroll, he was a detective by assignment, entitling him to wear a suit, which helped to camouflage the flaws.

The reason for his boss’s apology: extra work. The sheriff’s office was small, as was the county it kept order in, and taking over fellow detective Sarah Bennet’s caseload would increase Avery’s chores by... How much exactly? He tried to figure it. Five detectives, take away one, how much more work do the others have to do? Twenty percent? He’d been helping Jon Jr. on his homework yesterday, with mixed results. Avery had been a history major and was much better with ancient Greece and Amerigo Vespucci than with sneaky math problems, which, in his opinion, a grade-schooler should not be bothered with. Much less his father.

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