Page 96 of Nightwatching

She was sure. Sure, sure, sure.

“Oh!” She exclaimed seeing the little screen propped on the nightstand. “The baby monitor! My daughter sleepwalks, so we use it as an alert, so we can—I can—intercept her. Not sure if it records but worth—”

“It was shut off,” the sergeant interrupted her.

“But I never shut it off?”

“It was off. At the camera end, little switch turned to ‘off.’ ” The sergeant mimed flipping a switch.

Then she remembered she’d found it shut off that way before, after her husband died. That her daughter had insisted she hadn’t touched it. That she’d thought maybe her husband had done it before he fell.

“I—I checked and it was on just a few weeks ago. The man must have switched it off? Though—maybe my daughter did?”

“Mmm.” The sergeant scribbled something in his notebook.

In her husband’s closet, they hovered nearby as she struggledwith the safe’s combination. Finally the boyish policeman took the paper with the instructions and the combination on it from her, had it open in seconds as she fidgeted, embarrassed over her own ineptitude. Nothing was missing. The gun sat snug in a nylon holster next to her husband’s wedding band and the three golden eagle coins her father had insisted she take after her last visit to Utah, “For when everything falls apart.”

She’d accepted them to appease him, but after the last year, she had to admit to herself that though her father was paranoid, he might have a point. Life, society itself, felt more tenuous than she would have ever believed a year ago.

The sergeant slid the gun out of its holster. “Smith & Wesson M&P 2.0,” he noted, verifying the magazine was empty. The matte blackness of the thing, the metal sounds of the magazine sliding and clicking against the body, made her nervous.

“Oh, well, my husband had it forever. From before we moved? It was a hobby, he—”

“Ammo stored separately?” the sergeant interrupted.

“Yeah, up there.” She pointed to the top closet shelf, and the sergeant pulled down the box, inspected it, and returned it to its place.

“Box is full.” He tucked the gun back into the holster. “You a licensed owner?”

“My husband was.”

The sergeant nodded, unsurprised. “Have you filled out the online form? You’ve got to notify the state when you inherit a firearm.”

“I didn’t realize. I’m not really into guns,” she said.

He squinted in a way that made her feel the need to justify herself.

“It’s just, with the kids in the house, statistically it’s actually less safe—”

The sergeant waved her off. “Right. You can surrender it, if you’d rather. But the state offers classes. This model’s easy. And it isn’t cheap, so, up to you.”

As much as the sight of the gun made her squirm, as often as her husband had said, “It’s just a tool. Any tool can be used in an unsafe way,” as often as she’d disgustedly responded, “The purpose of most tools isn’t to kill someone, though,” she recalled her longing for any weapon in the hidden place. She shook her head at her own train of thought.

As if having it did you any good. As if you would’ve magically become a sharpshooter if you’d managed to get to it that night.

“Can’t hit the broadside of a barn,” her grandmother’s voice muttered in memory, watching her father try to teach her how to shoot at age eleven. Like nearly everyone she’d grown up around in Utah, her father owned not just one gun, but many. She chewed her lip, recalling her dad coming around a corner, rifle aimed at her, thinking she was an intruder during one of her overnight trips down the hall to the bathroom. She’d refused to go anywhere near a gun since, and it had bothered her that she couldn’t persuade her husband to get rid of his handgun.

Maybe until the Corner’s caught, you keep it. Safely. It’s a machine. You can deal with machines.

“I’ll—I’ll hold on to it for now,” she told the sergeant.

He gave her a quick, unreadable nod, and locked the gun back in the safe.

They marched downstairs.

In the playroom, her daughter’s Lego creations were in pieces, fragments scattered through the room.

The officers scanned the uniform mess, asked, “Are you sure the intruder broke these things? How can you tell?”

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