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Sonny nodded. “I think I was the only one to see anything. I’m sorry I didn’t get a better look at the guy.” He paused. “I could smell him, though.”

“Me too.”

“I called the police.”

“Why?” I demanded.

Sonny frowned for a moment. “Because I witnessed a crime and I’m a good citizen?”

I tried to squelch the growl in my throat, but I wasn’t ever good at that.

“What?” he asked.

“How long ago did you call?”

“Right after they took you back to wherever they performed the patch-up.”

“That was,” I glanced at the time on a big analog clock on the wall behind the counter, “probably about thirty minutes ago.”

“Sounds about right.”

“The police are located about one minute away, and there’s been no response yet.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, it was the right thing to do, and … well, I did just leave a voicemail message. No one answered.”

“I will text the sheriff, but I’ll track down a local officer too,” I acquiesced.

“I wouldn’t have thought to call the county sheriff.”

I nodded, not sharing the morning’s events with him just like I hadn’t with anyone else.

The local police were as close to useless as police officers could get. I didn’t blame them fully. Lazy has a way of begetting lazier, and at some point, you must not be able to pull yourself out of the stagnancy that came with being a Black Vulture police officer.

“I met the new police chief yesterday,” Sonny said.

“We have a new police chief? I mean, I didn’t even know we had someone with that title. I thought we just had a couple guys posing as officers.”

He nodded. “Well, he said he was new.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“Yes. He was very serious.”

“Name?”

“I couldn’t tell you. He came out to The Institute. Someone had knocked over a saguaro out front. They’re protected, aren’t they? Saguaro, I mean.”

“That’s kind of a myth. They’re no more special than any other cactus, but knocking one over on private property without approval would be against the law.” I paused, my eyes swinging toward the front door. No one who looked like a police chief was on his way in. “Maybe I’ll go introduce myself.”

In fact, considering the morning’s tour out to the desert and the sheriff’s command to keep him notified regarding Wilmot contacting me (this wasn’t that, but Wilmot was still in the mix), the sheriff did need to know about the man who’d accosted me. In an ideal world, the local police would be more pertinent to some guy knocking me over on the Black Vulture sidewalk. Would a new police chief be better than what we had previously?

Sonny nodded again. “Want some water? Something to eat?”

“No thanks.”

“Seriously, are you okay? Are you … shaken up?”

It was an interesting choice of words. My eyebrows furrowed. I probably should be more bothered, but I was used to a little tumult. Vandalism to the museum, cases I worked on. I spent a lot of time dealing with, if not bad things, things that might, indeed, bother many civilians.