A detective on the run, that would do the trick. A cop with nowhere else to go.

“I was trouble,” Ed continued. “Apparently, so much trouble that it was time to get rid of me.”

“Yeah, you seem like a real terror,” she said. “What, you run a red light in Casper or something? Now you’re on the lam?”

“I was a cop,” he said. He wondered if there was anything he could have said, at this moment, that would have made Vera Hatch more uncomfortable. The leather of the steering wheel croaked as she gripped it tighter. He thought her shoulders might rise all the way up to the roof of the car.

“Was,” he said, “I’m not anymore. I was detective Easton, back in Indianapolis.”

“And now?”

“Just Ed Easton again,” he said. “Don’t worry. I couldn’t get you in trouble if I tried.”

“See, that’s why we don’t like cops,” she said, shaking her head. “I bail you out of a nasty rollover, and you’re telling me that I won’t get in any trouble. It’s always like that. Before one of us even does something wrong, you’re telling us we’re not in trouble yet.”

“Us?” Ed said. “I only meant it as a joke, Vera, I…” It took him too long to see it. Her black hair, her darker skin, and the revelation that the music on her radio had not been in English, hadn’t even been a language he’d heard spoken aloud before. His bashed-in brain managed to remember the sign, blurry as if rain was washing chalk lettering away. Now Entering Bighorn Reservation.

“Sorry,” she said. “Don’t mean to unload on you. Your head’s half cut-open, it’s not really a good time to judge you on how you say things. It’s just a feeling I got, you know. Every time a cop shows up in the res who's not from here, means trouble’s coming for us.”

“I thought cops didn’t have any jurisdiction here,” he said.

“Sometimes,” she said. The swelling sea of a story underlay the quiet word, but he could tell she didn’t want to share any more. In fact, now that she thought he was a cop, even a former cop, she didn’t feel like talking at all. The front seat had turned into a courtroom. He wondered if she knew this position too well; a casual conversation with an officer would turn into evidence later on. If that was true, it would make more sense to never say anything. He’d chosen a bad lie, he thought. If he’d told her he was a killer, she might have actually liked him better.

“If it helps, I got fired,” he said.

“What for?”

He stumbled through the common reasons why cops are getting fired, evidence he could only gather from television. They had a hunch about a case that their inspector didn’t like, that was always a good one. But was it too trite? She might spot the lie if he was too obvious. He nearly – too nearly – thought he could say he was a corrupt cop, but he caught himself. She would toss him out of the truck and leave him to the coyotes if she thought he was dirty. That would be too risky for her.

“My captain was corrupt,” he said, reshaping the idea. “Taking kickbacks from organized crime to look the other way, you know? I figured it out, and he canned me.”

“In Indianapolis?” She asked. She didn’t believe him. He barely believed him.

“It’s a big enough city, like any other,” Ed said. “I get it. Big midwestern city, makes people roll their eyes. You say you’re busting gangs in Chicago, people think you’re some kind of Rambo. Do it in Indianapolis, everyone thinks you’re full of shit. Chicago’s in the Midwest too, you know.”

“And it’s a lot bigger,” she said.

“You ever been to Indianapolis?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah,” he said, “Well, it’s got some organized crime. Sit’s not New York or Boston, I’ll give you that. But it’s still got its issues.”

“So, you had a chance to bring it down,” she said. “And you ran away.”

“I wouldn’t say I ran away,” he said.

“What would you say, then?”

“I… I needed some time to figure out a plan,” he said. “And, well, there was a threat. Chief’s friends got my address, I mean, chief knew it, so it wasn’t hard to find us. Chief’s friends told me that if I didn’t skip town, my wife and daughter… Well, I skipped town.”

“Without your wife and daughter?”

“Uproot their lives,” he said. “It’s September. My daughter starts grade one next week. It’s not news, I know, but they really do grow up fast. She’s at a new school. But she’s a good kid, not like I was. I don’t remember wanting to go to school one day of my childhood, do you?”

Vera shook her head.

“Yeah, I hated it,” Ed said. “It was the worst. Had the whole summer to get used to being outside, then they locked you up for another six months. I just never got on board, not even in high school. And God, if it was a new school, forget it. I hated a new school. You had to go into a big puzzle of new people and figure out where you fit into it. I hated that. People always say you find yourself in school, right? Like, that’s part of growing up. I guess it wasn’t ever that way for me. I didn’t find myself, so much as I got told who I was. The school pushed me into a mold that was already there, whether I fit in it or not. Whether I wanted to be in that mold. I think I always just got pushed into it. But my daughter, she’s not like that. She gets so excited for it. She’s up at five waking Bex and I last week, a week before the start of the school year, asking if we can take her over to the school so she can start early. She’s so excited. And Becca, she’s in a new job. Attorney. She’s already got through all the stress of starting something new, you know, talked it through and got herself ready. Both of them. I couldn’t exactly rip them out of that. Just because I was uprooting my life didn’t mean I needed to go uprooting theirs.”

He stopped, watching the verge of the road blur, the tall prairie grass’s awns flickering like the ghosts of insects. That last part, he thought, had been the complete truth. He felt the growing knot in his throat, the first pang of true regret since he’d decided to leave. That’s what he’d left, too. A good wife with a good job, an eager daughter, a life that was worth having. And, of course, he wasn’t a cop at all. The only real lie Ed had told was that he’d had a good reason for leaving.

“And you think they’re just going to be ok?” Vera asked.

“I think they’ll be better than they would have been,” he said.

“Shit,” she said. “You must not have a very good opinion of yourself.”