Russell Crawford had been coming in since Ray was alive. Back then he was a younger deputy with a loud laugh, a faster walk, and stories about arrests that made the men at the counter slap their knees. As he grew older and more established in the sheriff's office, the stories changed: less about arrests and more about how he had put someone in their place. He had become one of those local figures people accommodated before they noticed they were doing it.
Loretta kept a mental list of the times he had made her uncomfortable. There had been an argument with a Hispanic farmworker who could not understand why he had to show identification before buying a sandwich. Another time Crawford had followed a Black delivery driver into the parking lot and demanded to see the contents of the man's van, though the driver had done nothing except ask whether the diner had a restroom. Loretta had witnessed pieces of these incidents and heard about others from employees.
Once, she had tried to interrupt. Crawford had answered by asking whether she wanted the sheriff's office to stop checking on her place when drunks wandered through late at night. His tone was almost playful, but his eyes were not, and afterward she had told herself it was better not to antagonize a man whose department could make her life difficult. Over time that calculation became a habit, and habits were easy to mistake for common sense.
On the September morning Malcolm and Elijah entered, Loretta was balancing a stack of plates while her part-time waitress, Janelle Parker, tried to replace an empty sugar dispenser. Janelle was nineteen, home from community college for two days, and still new enough to the business that she considered every customer an individual rather than a familiar category. She greeted the brothers with a cheerful hello before Loretta reached the table.
"Morning, gentlemen," Loretta said, handing them menus. "Coffee?"
"Please," Malcolm answered. "And whatever the pancakes are in those pictures online, because my brother's been thinking about them for twenty miles."
Loretta gave a small smile. "That's the buttermilk stack. Ray's recipe. If you're real hungry, the country plate comes with eggs and bacon."
"Two of those," Elijah said. "And if he tells you he's watching his cholesterol, ignore him. He's lying."
The brothers laughed, and Loretta poured their coffee. She noticed that they spoke easily to her and had the ordinary tired look of men who had been on the road since early morning. Nothing about them raised a concern, and for that she would later be ashamed: she could remember realizing they were harmless and yet still waiting for them to prove it in ways she never demanded of other customers.
A middle-aged truck driver in a red cap sat three stools down from the register. His name was Frank Tiller, and he delivered refrigeration equipment between Virginia and the Carolinas. He looked briefly at the brothers, returned to his eggs, and thought no more about them until a deputy arrived. In the corner booth, Arthur and Eileen Finch shared the newspaper, passing sections across the table as they had done every Saturday for thirty-eight years even though this was Tuesday.