"Lucia what?"
"Mercado."
Something touched the back of his mind and slid off it like a hand off a wet railing. Mercado was a common name in Fallon. There were two pages of Mercados in the phone book back when there were phone books.
"How old are you, Lucia Mercado?"
"Twelve."
"What school?"
"Garfield Middle." She turned another page. "Seventh grade. Room 214. My homeroom teacher is Mr. Abernathy-Cole. He's going to mark me absent, but he already knows I'm absent, because my mother called the attendance line at seven-thirty."
"Your mother called you out."
"She called me out for a family matter."
"Uh huh." Lloyd looked around the square as if the family might be hiding behind the oak. "And where's the family?"
"I'm the family that's here."
He laughed. He did not mean it kindly, and he heard that it was not kind, and he did not stop. There was a thing that happened to him sometimes in this job, had been happening more the last few years, where he could feel himself slide into a groove worn by other men, his father, his first sergeant, the old-timers at the Fourth who had called everyone under thirty sweetheart and everyone over thirty pal, and he would hear their words come out of his own mouth in their cadences and he would watch it happen from somewhere slightly behind and above himself, like a man watching a car roll down a hill.