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exactly what happened. The shape went down, and Gordy moved cautiously forward, M1 at the ready. He came to the spot where the shape had gone down and found no one. He headed south, flashlighting the ground, occasionally illuminating spots of blood. He found the hole cut in the fence, and found blood on the fence as well. He went back to where he had seen the person fall. There were two other MPs there now, standing over nothing but a box of nails spattered with blood.
    They spent most of the night searching for the source of the blood. It was, almost surely, a Mexican who had come across to steal supplies from the base. Nails. They found the blood trail and followed it through the hole in the fence. But they found no one. Whether he, the wounded man, had made it back to the river and up into Ciudad Juarez, or had moved east into El Paso, or had died somewhere they could not find, no one knew.
    Gordy has dreamed about it for years. There was a lot of blood. But it was reasonable to believe that the man had survived. Still, he didn’t know. He pulled a tour in Vietnam, again in the MPs, moving up the ranks. He never fired another shot at anyone, not as an MP, not as a cop back in the States. ­People ask occasionally if he ever killed anyone. He doesn’t know. He only knows that the dreams will start up again.
    He wants Ronny Forbert to have some certainty, some clarity. Ronny was involved in a death, but he did not cause the death. Once Ronny has that clearly embedded in his mind, he will be all right. It will also take a long time.
    S AMMY C OLVINGTON IS having breakfast. Mostly he’s swirling Cheerios through milk, mashing the occasional one with a spoon against the side of the bowl. It’s a strange thing. He’s hungry but he doesn’t want to eat. He takes a spoonful of cereal and puts it in his mouth. He chews a ­couple of times, then forces himself to swallow. He reaches for the sugar bowl and spoons more sugar into the cereal.
    â€œYou all right?” his father asks.
    He shrugs. “Guess so.”
    â€œHungover?”
    â€œNot really,” he lies.
    â€œYou thinking about what happened last night?”
    â€œYeah,” he lies again. Mostly he’s trying hard not to think about last night.
    â€œYou better think about it. You need to get your story straight. I talked to Martin Glendenning this morning. He’s concerned. He wants you to get your story straight. He needs you to tell our side.”
    What’s “our side,” he thinks. He saw a guy die last night. His friend. He saw his friend die. Where are the sides to that? For his father and Martin Glendenning, it’s all about sides. There are always two sides to any story. Where do they get this shit?
    He’s sick of his father, and he’s sick of Martin Glendenning. Half the kids at school think he’s a stuck-­up rich kid because his father is on the town council. The other half think he’s a complete asshole for the same reason. Fuck them both.
    But Sammy keeps running it through his head. It’s like a dream. He can’t shake it, but he can’t quite hold on to it, either. The more his father keeps at him to remember the details, exactly what happened, the less sure he becomes about it. He isn’t sure he saw exactly what happened. It was all very sudden and he was drunk. He remembers the lights, the way the headlights of the car suddenly lit the whole scene, Matt trying to scramble up, having trouble getting his feet under him, then the amazing sight of Matt flying through the air and the horrible thump at the end as he hit the Jeep.
    Had he seen the fight between Matt and Forbert? Some of it. He knows they were struggling. He remembers their arms tangling and untangling. But the car hid much of what went on. He saw Matt go out onto the highway, and he saw the lights suddenly appear over the hump in the road. He has lots of pictures in his head. One-­ or two-­second