Excerpt from The Marauders by Tom Cooper, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Afterward the men stood under the sodium lights, batting mosquitoes from their faces.

"Why didn't you just wear it?" Dixon asked Lindquist.

"You wear it in this heat," Lindquist said.

Twenty minutes later the sheriff arrived. Villanova. He picked up his khaki cowboy hat off the passenger seat, got out of the cruiser, sat the hat on top of his mastiff head.

The men stared, faces malefic in the red and blue bar-light.

Lindquist told Villanova about the poker game, about how his arm was missing when he returned to his truck. Villanova fished a small spiral notebook out of his shirt pocket and scribbled down the names of the men who'd left earlier. Lindquist insisted whoever took his arm had to be a stranger. A lowlife drifter so drug-addled and devoid of moral compass he'd steal a prosthetic arm from someone's truck.

"And you're sure you didn't leave it home," Villanova said.

Lindquist narrowed his eyes. "You leave your arms at home?"

You're thirty-thousand- dollar arm wanted to say. Without his wife's insurance from her job at the bank, Lindquist could have never afforded the prosthetic or the months of physical therapy after his accident. And even with Gwen's insurance, Lindquist had to pay fifteen grand out of pocket, money he put on a high-interest credit card he paid only the minimum on every month. A debt he'd take to his grave, but he couldn't exactly shrimp with a five-dollar hook arm from Kmart.

Villanova wrote something down. "You have the serial number?"

"The serial number?"

Villanova pinched the bridge of his nose. "The serial number for the arm, Lindquist."

Lindquist shook his head.

"Well, you can always call the doctor. Call wherever you got it. That might make sense."

The men scattered their separate ways, Dixon and Sully back into the bar, LaGarde and Prejean off to their trucks. Lindquist stood beside his truck door, jangling through a wad of keys. A full minute passed before he found the right one. Then for another half minute Lindquist jabbed the key around the lock, scraping metal. Finally he scrunched one eye closed and slipped the key inside.

Villanova watched from across the lot. "What you doing?" he asked.

"Driving home."

"Like hell. You're drunk."

Lindquist squinted at Villanova, head listing as if to music only he could hear. "Just a little," he said.

"It's late, Lindquist. Get in the car."

* * *

For a time the men were silent as Villanova drove along the trafficless two-way.

They passed a palmetto grove, a field of saw grass. A nighthawk winged across the moon, its silhouette like an emblem on a coin.

"Knock knock," Lindquist said.

"Still at it with your jokes, Lindquist."

"Knock knock."

"Loses an arm and tells knock-knock jokes."

"Anita."

"Anita who?"

"Anita big ol' pair of titties in front of me."

Villanova shook his head. The police radio popped and hissed with static.

"So you all were playing poker," Villanova said.

"Yeah."

"For money?"

"What you think?"

"That's illegal."

Villanova kept both hands tight on the wheel, both eyes on the road.

"Knock knock."

"It's late, Lindquist."

Villanova didn't need to ask him for directions because he knew the way. He'd driven Lindquist home from the bar a few times because he was too wrecked to drive himself.

"You worried about the oil?" Villanova asked.

Lindquist said he was. Everybody in Jeanette was. Hell, folks were in a shithouse panic.

"Could be better than they're saying," Villanova said. "But I got a feeling it might be worse."

Soon Villanova bumped onto a gravel driveway that cut through wild privet to a brick ranch house with a gray-shake roof and satellite dish. A birdbath, its basin filled with scummy water and leaves, stood in a dead flowerbed.

Excerpted from The Marauders by Tom Cooper. Copyright © 2015 by Tom Cooper. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.