The youngest officer on the MKPD had been shipped off for temporary detached duty almost a year ago, first with the Capital Area Drug Enforcement Association in Albany, then with the Special Investigation Division of the Syracuse PD, which saw more major crimes in two weeks than Millers Kill might see in a year.

“Kevin Flynn’s welcome home is going to be a bump up in pay grade, if I can ram it down the aldermen’s throats.” Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne shook his head. “What we really need is another officer on the force. That way, we wouldn’t be overscheduling everybody. I worry that we’re putting Eric back on the streets too soon. A few days ago he was eating MREs and holding down a guard post in Umm Qasr.”

Lyle raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed. The only place I could name in Iraq is Baghdad, and don’t ask me to find it on a map.”

“I was in that neck of the woods, remember? First Gulf War.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “God, doesn’t that feel like an age ago.”

“It was. I think Eric was finishing up high school. Kevin was probably still in diapers.”

“Hunh.” And Lieutenant Clare Fergusson had been twenty-three. “They probably already have our beds reserved up at the Infirmary.”

“Speak for yourself. I plan to be shot to death by the enraged father of a pair of twenty-year-old twins.”

Russ laughed. Lyle gave him a sideways look. “You hear from the reverend lately?”

Russ’s laugh died away. “A phone call five days ago. The 142nd is still on target to ship home in three weeks.” He tried to smile. “Of course, they were on target to leave last March, too. Until their tour got extended.”

“She should’a gone into the chaplain’s corps instead of air support. She’d have been home by now.” Lyle hooked his thumbs in his duty belt. “A year and a half’s a long time.”

“Oh, yeah.” The longest damn eighteen months of his life, and that included a tour in Vietnam, going cold turkey on cigarettes, and quitting booze. Sitting home night after night, watching the casualty counts mount on the news-hell, giving up drinking again would have been easier. Drinking and