But he can't get used to the idea that two boys shot their classmates and neighbors. Nance, a Bono police officer for three years, remembers when he realized that the blow that shattered his town had marked him, too, maybe forever. In October he went hunting in Idaho. It makes you feel weird. You're proud that people know where you're from, but you hate why.
Nance takes words more seriously now.
After the shootings some said that Mitchell had bragged about gangs and violence, and people wondered whether they should have listened harder. The other day Nance investigated a child who told a girl that he would kill her if she called her big brother. Across the highway from City Hall, manager Bobbie Cline presides over the Coastal Mart, a service station, convenience store and plate-lunch joint where residents gather. Cline raised five children around Bono and has an eighth-grade granddaughter who was in the line of fire at Westside last year. We're just going on with our lives, and it's something that happened in the past.