4. Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream

It’s a bad dream. Danny’s had a few before, everyone has a nightmare from time to time, but this is the worst one ever. Nothing bad is happening at first, but that doesn’t help; the sense of impending doom is so strong it’s an actual taste in his mouth, like sucking on a clump of pennies.

He’s walking along the shoulder of a dirt road that’s been packed and oiled to keep the dust down. It’s night. A quarter moon has just risen. To Danny it looks like a sideways grin. Or a sneer. He passes a sign reading COUNTY ROAD F, only theO and the Y have been spraypainted over, and UCK has been crammed in to the right of the F, so the sign now reads CUNT ROAD FUCK. There are a couple of bullet holes for good measure.

There’s corn on both sides of the road, not as high as an elephant’s eye but maybe four feet, suggesting it’s early summer. County Road F runs dead straight up a mild rise (in Kansas most rises are mild). At the top is a black bulk of a building that fills Danny with unreasoning horror. Some tin thing is goingtinka-tinka-tinka. He wants to stop, wants nothing to do with that square black bulk, but his legs carry him on. There’s no stopping them. He’s not in control. A breeze gives the corn a bonelike rattle. It’s chilly on his cheeks and forehead and he realizes he’s sweating. Sweating in a dream!

When he gets to the top of the rise (calling it “a crest” would just be stupid), there’s enough light to see the sign on the cinderblock building reads HILLTOP TEXACO. In front are two cracked concrete islands where gasoline pumps once stood. Thetinka-tinka-tinka sound is coming from rusty signs on a pole out front. One reads REG $1.99, one reads MID $2.19, and the one on the bottom reads HI-TEST $2.49.

Nothing here to worry about, Danny thinks, nothing here to be afraid of. And he’s not worried. He’s not afraid. Terrified is what he is.

Tinka-tinka-tinka go the signs advertising long-gone gas prices. The big office window is broken, ditto the glass in the door, but Danny can see weeds growing up around the shards reflecting the moonlight and knows that it’s been awhile since they were broken. The vandals—bored country kids, most likely—have had their fun and moved on.

Danny moves on, too. Around the side of the abandoned station. Doesn’t want to; has to. He’s not in control. Now he hears something else: scratching and panting.

I don’t want to see this, he thinks. If spoken aloud, the thought would have come out as a moan.

He goes around the side, kicking a couple of empty motor oil cans (Havoline, the Texaco brand) out of his way. There’s a rusty metal trash barrel, overturned and spilling more cans and Coors bottles and whatever paper trash hasn’t blown away. Behind the station there’s a mangy mongrel dog digging at the oil-stained earth. It hears Danny and looks around, its eyes silver circles in the moonlight. It wrinkles back its snout and gives a growl that can mean only one thing:mine, mine.

“That’s not for you,” Danny says, thinkingI wish it wasn’t for me, either, but I think it is.

The dog lowers its haunches as if to spring, but Danny’s not afraid (not of the mutt, anyway). He’s a town man these days, but he grew up in rural Colorado where there were dogs everywhere and he knows an empty threat when he faces one. He bends and picks up an empty oil can, the dream so real, sodetailed, he can feel the scrim of leftover grease down the side. He doesn’t even have to throw it; raising it is enough. The dog turns tail and leaves at a limping run—either something wrong with one of its back legs or a split pad on one of its paws.

Danny’s feet carry him forward. He sees that the dog has scratched a hand and part of a forearm out of the ground. Two of the fingers have been stripped to the bone. The fleshy part of the palm is also gone, now in the dog’s belly. Around the wrist—inedible, and thus of no use to a hungry dog—is a charm bracelet.

Danny draws in a breath and opens his mouth and

screams himself awake sitting bolt upright in bed, a thing he’s never done before. Thank God he lives alone so there’s no one to hear it. At first he doesn’t even know where he is—that derelict gas station seems like the reality, the morning light coming in through the curtains the dream. He’s even rubbing his hand on the Royals tee-shirt he went to bed still wearing, to wipe off the oil that was on the side of the Havoline can he picked up. There’s gooseflesh from one end of his body to the other. His balls are drawn up, tight as walnuts. Then he registers his bedroom, and realizes none of that was real, no matter how real it seemed.

He strips off the tee-shirt, drops his boxers, and heads into the trailer’s tiny bathroom to shave and shower off the dream. The good thing about the bad ones, he thinks as he lathers his face, is that they never last long. Dreams are like cotton candy: they just melt away.

Only this one doesn’t melt. It retains its clarity in the shower, and while he dresses in a clean set of Dickies and attaches his keyring to his belt loop, and while he drives to the high school in his old Toyota pickup, which still runs good even though it’s going to turn back to all zeroes again pretty soon. Maybe by this fall.

The student and faculty parking lots of Wilder High are almost completely empty because school let out some weeks earlier. Danny goes around back and parks in the usual place, at the end of the school bus line. There’s no sign saying it’s reserved for the head custodian, but everyone knows it’s his.

This is his favorite time of year, when you can do work and it stays done… at least for awhile. A waxed hallway floor will still shine a week from now, even two weeks. You can scrape the gum off the floors in the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms (the girls are the worst offenders when it comes to gum, he doesn’t know why) and not have to do it again until August. Freshly washed windows don’t pick up adolescent fingerprints. As far as Danny’s concerned, summer vacation is a beautiful thing.

There are summer classes at Hinkle High one county over, where there are three full-time janitors. They can have it, as far as Danny’s concerned. He has a couple of summer employment kids. The good one, Jesse Jackson, is just punching in when Danny enters the supply room. There’s no sign of the other one—who, in Danny’s opinion, isn’t worth a hill of beans.

Hill, he thinks. Hilltop Texaco.

“Where’s Pat?”

Jesse shrugs. He’s a Black kid, tall and slim, moves well. Built for baseball and basketball, not football. “Dunno. His car’s not here yet. Maybe he decided to start the weekend a day early.”

That would be a bad idea, Danny thinks, but guesses Pat Grady’s the kind of boy who might have all sorts of bad ideas.

“We’re going to wax the rooms in the new wing. Start with Room 12. Move all the desks to one side. Stack em up two by two. Then go to 10 and repeat. I’ll follow along with the buffer. If Pat decides to show up, have him help you.”

“Yes, Mr. Coughlin.”

“No mister needed, kiddo. I’m just Danny. Think you can remember that?”

Jesse grins. “Yes, sir.”

“No sir, either. Off you go. Unless you want a coffee first to get you cranking.”

“Had one at the Total coming in.”

“Good for you. I need to check something in the library and then I’ll get going, too.”

“Want me to get the buffer out?”

Danny grins. He could get to like this kid. “Are you bucking for a raise?”

Jesse laughs. “Not likely.”

“Good. Here in Wilder County it’s RR, Republicans rule, and they keep a tight grip on the purse strings. Sure, get the buffer and roll it on down to 12. Keep meaning to ask if you’re by any chance named after the other Jesse Jackson. The famous one.”

“Yes, sir. I mean Danny.”

“You’ll get there, kid. I have faith in you.”

Danny takes his Thermos of coffee down to the library—another benefit of summer vacation.

He turns on one of the computers and uses the librarian’s code to unlock it. The passcode the kids use blocks anything resembling porn, also access to social media. With Mrs. Golden’s you can go anywhere, not that Danny is planning on visiting Pornhub. He opens Firefox and types in Hilltop Texaco. His finger hovers over the enter button, then he adds County Road F for good measure. The dream is just as clear now as it was when he woke up, it’s bugging him (actually scaring him just a little, even with morning sunlight streaming in through the windows), and finding nothing will, he hopes, put paid to it.

He pushes the button, and a second later he’s looking at a gray cinderblock building. In this photo it’s new instead of old and the Texaco sign is spandy clean. The glass in the office window and door is intact. The gas pumps sparkle. The prices on the signs say it’s $1.09 for regular and $1.21 for mid-grade. There was apparently no hi-test to be had at Hilltop Texaco when the picture was taken, which must have been a long time ago. The car at the pumps is a boat of a Buick and the road out front is two-lane blacktop instead of oiled dirt. Danny thinks the Buick must have rolled off the line in Detroit around 1980.

County Road F is in the town of Gunnel. Danny has never heard of it, but that’s not surprising; Kansas is big and there must be hundreds of tiny towns he’s never heard of. For all he knows, Gunnel might be across the state line in Nebraska. The hours of operation are 6 AM to 10 PM. Pretty standard for a gas-em-up out in the country. Below the hours, in red, is one word: CLOSED.

Danny looks at this dream-made-real with a dismay so deep it’s almost fear. Hell, maybe it is fear. All he wanted was to make sure Hilltop Texaco (and the hand sticking out of the ground, don’t forget the hand) was just some bullshit his sleeping mind created, and now look at this. Just look at it.

Well, I’ve been by it at some time or other, he reasons. That’s it, gotta be. Didn’t I read somewhere that the brain never forgets anything, just stores the old trivia away on the back shelves?

He searches for more info about the Hilltop Texaco and finds none. Only Hilltop Bakery (in Des Moines), Hilltop Subaru (in Danvers, Massachusetts), and forty-eleven other Hilltops, including a petting zoo in New Hampshire. In each of these, a line has been drawn through Texaco County Road F, showing that part of his search parameter hasn’t been met. Why would there be more info, anyway? It’s just a gas station somewhere out in the williwags—what his dad used to call East Overshoe. A Texaco franchise that went broke, maybe back in the nineties.

Above his main selection are a few other options: NEWS, VIDEOS, SHOPPING… and IMAGES. He clicks on images and sits back in his chair, more dismayed than ever by what comes up. There are plenty of photos showing various Hilltops, including four of the Texaco. The first is a duplicate of the one on the main page, but in another the gas station stands deserted: pumps gone, windows busted, trash scattered around. This is the one he visited in his dream, the very one. There can be no doubt about it. The only question is whether or not there’s a body buried in the oil-soaked earth behind it.

“I’ll be dipped in shit.”

It’s all Danny can think of to say. He’s a thirty-six-year-old man, high school graduate but no college diploma, divorced, no kids, steady worker, Royals fan, Chiefs fan, keeps out of the bars after a spell of bad drinking that led—partially, at least—to his split with Marjorie. He drives an old pickem-up, works his hours, collects his pay, enjoys the occasional binge-out on Netflix, visits his brother Stevie every now and then, doesn’t follow the news, has no politics, has no interest in psychic phenomena. He’s never seen a ghost, finds movies about demons and curses a waste of time, and wouldn’t hesitate to stroll through a graveyard after dark if it provided a shortcut to where he’s going. He doesn’t attend church, doesn’t think about God, doesn’t think about the afterlife, takes this life as it comes, has never questioned reality.

He’s questioning it this morning. Plenty.

The blat of a car with a bad muffler (or none at all) startles him out of a state that’s close to hypnosis. He looks up from the screen and sees an old Mustang pulling into the student parking lot. Pat Grady, his other summer helper, has finally decided to grace the Wilder High custodial staff with his presence. Danny looks at his watch and sees it’s quarter to eight.

Keep your temper, he thinks, getting up. This is good Advice to Self, because his temper has gotten him in trouble before. It’s why he spent a night in jail and why he quit the drinking. As for the marriage, that would have ended anyway… although it might have limped along for another year or two.

He goes to the door at the end of the new wing. Jesse has indeed brought down the buffer, and is busy moving and stacking desks in Room 12. Danny tips him a wave and Jesse tips him one right back.

Pat is ambling toward the door—no worries, no problem—in jeans, a cut-off tee, and a Wilder Wildcats hat turned around backward. Danny is there to greet him. He’s got a firm grip on his temper, but the boy’s who-gives-a-fuck attitude bugs him. And those motorcycle boots he’s wearing are apt to leave scuff marks.

“Hey, Dan, what up?”

“You’re late,” Danny says, “that’s what’s up. Punch-in’s seven-thirty. It’s now pushing eight o’clock.”

“Sorry ’bout that.” Pat gives him a my bad shrug and glides past him, jeans riding low on his hips.

“This is the third time.”

Pat turns back. His lazy little smile is gone. “Overslept, forgot to set my phone alarm, what can I say?”

“Here’s what I say. Punch in late again and you’re all done. Got it?”

“Are you shitting me? For being twenty minutes late?”

“Last Wednesday it was half an hour. And no, I shit you not. Punch in and help Jesse move desks in the new wing.”

“The teacher’s pet,” Pat says, rolling his eyes.

Danny doesn’t reply, knowing anything he says at this point will be the wrong thing. His summer work kids are being paid by the school department. Danny doesn’t want to say or do something that will allow Pat Grady (or his folks) to go to the superintendent with a grievance about how he was hassled on the job. So he’s not going to call Pat a lazy little twerp. Probably he doesn’t have to. Pat sees it on his face and turns toward the supply room to punch in, hitching at his jeans with one hand. Danny doesn’t know if Pat is holding the other hand to his chest with the middle finger stuck out, but wouldn’t be surprised.

That kid will be gone by July, Danny thinks. And I’ve got other things to worry about. Don’t I?

Jesse is standing in the doorway of Room 12. Danny gives him a shrug. Jesse gives a cautious grin and goes back to moving desks. Danny plugs in the buffer. When Pat comes back from punching in—at that same lazy amble—Danny tells him to get busy moving desks in Room 10. He thinks if Pat says a single wiseass thing, he’ll fire him on the spot. But Pat keeps his mouth shut.

Maybe not entirely stupid, after all.

Danny keeps his phone in the glovebox of his Tundra so he won’t be tempted to look at it during working hours (he’s seen both Pat and Jesse doing exactly that—Jesse only once, Pat several times). When they knock off for lunch, he goes out to his truck long enough to look up the town of Gunnel. It’s in Dart County, ninety miles north. Not over the Nebraska line, but butting up against it. He could swear he’s never been in Dart County his whole life, not even as far north as Republic County, but he must have been at some point. He tosses his phone back in the glovebox and heads to where Jesse is eating his lunch—phone in hand—at one of the picnic tables in the shade of the gymnasium.

“Forgot to lock your truck. No beep.”

Danny grins. “Anyone who steals from it, good luck and welcome to what they get. Plus the truck itself has eaten her share of road. Got almost two hundred thousand miles on the clock.”

“Bet you love it, though. My dad loves his old Ford quarter-ton.”

“I sort of do. Seen Pat?”

Jesse shrugs. “Prob’ly eating in his car. He loves that old Mustie. I think he should take better care of it, but that’s just me. We gonna finish the new wing?”

“Gonna give it a try,” Danny says. “If we don’t, there’s always Monday.”

That night he calls his ex, a thing he does from time to time. He even went down to Wichita for her birthday in April, brought her a scarf—blue, to match her eyes—and stayed for cake and ice cream with her new guy. He and Margie get along a lot better since they split. Sometimes Danny thinks that’s a shame. Sometimes he thinks it’s just the way it should be.

They talk a little bit, this and that, people they know, her mother’s glaucoma and how Danny’s brother is doing at his job (fabulous), and then he asks if they ever drove north, maybe over into Nebraska, maybe to Franklin or Beaver City. Didn’t they have lunch one time in Beaver City?

She laughs—not quite her old mean laugh, the one that used to drive him crazy, but close. “I never would have gone to Nebraska with you, Danno. Ain’t Kansas borin enough?”

“You’re sure?”

“Posi-lute,” Margie says, then tells him she thinks Hal—her new guy—is going to pop the question pretty soon. Would he come to the wedding?

Danny says he would. She asks if he’s taking care of himself, meaning is he still off the booze. Danny says he is, tells her to look both ways before crossing the street (an old joke between them), and hangs up.

Never would have gone to Nebraska with you, Danno, she said.

Danny has been to Lincoln a couple of times and Omaha once, but those towns are east of Wilder, and Gunnel is dead north. Yet he must have been there and just forgot it. Maybe back in his drinking days? Except he never drove when he was out-and-out shitfaced, afraid of losing his license or maybe hurting somebody.

I was there. Must have been, back when that county road was still tarvy instead of packed dirt.

He stays up later than usual and tosses around quite a bit before finally dropping off, afraid the dream will come back. It doesn’t, but the next morning it’s as clear as ever: deserted gas station, half-moon, stray dog, hand, charm bracelet.

Unlike many men of his age and station, Danny doesn’t drink (not now, anyway), doesn’t smoke, doesn’t chew. He likes pro sports and might put five bucks down on the Super Bowl just to make it interesting, but otherwise he doesn’t gamble—not even two-buck scratch tickets on payday. Nor does he chase after women. There’s a lady in his trailer park he visits from time to time, Becky’s what used to be called a grass widow, but that’s more of a casual friendship than what the afternoon talk shows call “a relationship.” Sometimes he stays over at Becky’s place. Sometimes he brings her a bag of groceries or babysits her daughter if Beck has errands to run or an early evening hair appointment. There’s plenty of get-along between them, but love ain’t in it.

On Saturday morning he packs his dinnerbucket with a couple of sandwiches and a piece of the cake Becky brought over after he wired up the tailpipe of her old Honda Civic. He fills his Thermos with black coffee and heads north. He thinks he’ll feel like eating if he takes a look behind that deserted gas station and finds nothing. If he sees what he saw in his dream, probably not.

The GPS on his phone gets him to Gunnel by ten-thirty. The day is all Kansas, hot and bright and clear and not very interesting. The town is nothing but a grocery store, a farm supply store, a café, and a rusty water tower with GUNNEL on the side. Ten minutes after leaving it, he comes to County Road F and turns onto it. It’s tar, not packed dirt. Nevertheless his stomach is tight and his heart is beating hard enough so he can feel it in his neck and his temples.

Corn closes in on both sides. Feed corn, not eating corn. As in his dream, it’s not yet as high as an elephant’s eye, but it looks good for late June and will be six feet by the time August rolls around.

The road is tarvy and that’s different from the goddam dream, he thinks, but only two miles along the tar quits and then it’s packed dirt. A mile after that he stops dead in the road (which is no problem since there’s no traffic). Just ahead on his right is a county road sign, which has been defaced with spraypaint so it reads CUNT ROAD FUCK. There’s no way he saw that in his dream, but he did. The road is rising now. When he goes another quarter of a mile, maybe even less, he will see the squat shape of the abandoned gas station.

Turn around, he thinks. You don’t want to go there and nobody’s making you, so just turn around and go home.

Except he can’t. His curiosity is too strong. Also, there’s the dog. If it’s there it will eventually disinter the body, visiting further violation on a girl or woman who has already suffered the ultimate violation of being murdered. Letting that happen would haunt him worse—and longer—than the dream itself.

Does he know for a fact that the hand belongs to a female? Yes, because of the charm bracelet. Does he know for a fact that she was murdered? Why else would someone have buried her behind a deserted gas station somewhere north of hoot and south of holler?

He drives on. The gas station is there. The rusty tin signs out front read $1.99 for regular, $2.19 for mid-grade, and $2.49 for high octane, just as they did in his dream. There’s a light breeze here at the top of the rise, and the signs go tinka-tinka-tinka against the steel pole on which they are mounted.

Danny pulls onto the cracked and weed-sprouting tarmac, careful to stay clear of the busted glass. His tires aren’t new, and the spare is so bald it’s showing cord in a couple of places. The last thing he wants—the last thing in the world—is to be stranded out here.

He gets out of his truck, slams the door, and jumps at the sound it makes. Stupid, but he can’t help it. He’s pretty well scared to death. Somewhere in the distance, a tractor is blatting. It might as well be on another planet, as far as Danny’s concerned. He can’t remember ever feeling this utterly alone.

Walking around the station is like re-entering his dream; his legs seem to be moving on their own, with no directions from the control room. He kicks aside a deserted oil can. Havoline, of course. He wants to pause at the corner of the cinderblock building long enough to visualize seeing nothing, nothing at all, but his legs carry him around without a pause. They are relentless. The rusty trash barrel is there, overturned and spilling its crap. The dog is there, too. It’s standing at the edge of the corn, looking at him.

Damn mutt was waiting for me, Danny thinks. It knew I was coming.

This should be a stupid idea, but it’s not. Standing here, miles from the nearest human being (living human being, that is), he knows it’s not. He dreamed of the dog, and the dog dreamed of him. Simple.

“Fuck off!” Danny yells, and claps his hands. The dog gives him a baleful look and limps away into the corn.

Danny turns to his left and sees the hand, or what’s left of it. And more. The stray has been busy. It has exhumed part of a forearm. Bone glimmers through the flesh, and there are bugs, but there’s enough left for him to see that the person buried here is white, and there’s a tattoo above the charm bracelet. It looks like either rope or a circlet of barbed wire. He could tell which if he went closer, but he has no urge to go closer. What he wants is to get the hell out of here.

But if he leaves, the dog will come back. Danny can’t see it, but he knows it’s close. Watching. Waiting to be left alone with its early lunch.

He goes back to his truck, gets his phone out of the glove compartment, and just looks at it. If he uses it, he’s going to look guilty as shit. But that goddam dog!

An idea comes to him. The trash barrel is on its side. He tips it all the way over, sliding out a pile of crap (but no rats, thank God). Under the rust it’s solid steel, has to go thirty, thirty-five pounds. He clasps it against his midsection, sweat rolling down his cheeks, and walks it to the hand and forearm. He lowers it and steps back, brushing rust off his shirt. Will that be enough, or will the dog be able to tip it over? Hard to say.

Danny goes around to the front of the station and pries up two good-sized chunks of the crumbling concrete. He takes them around back and stacks them on top of the overturned barrel. Good enough? He thinks so. For awhile, anyway. If the dog decides to batter at the barrel to get what’s beneath, one of those chunks is apt to fall off and bonk it on the head.

Good so far. Now what?

By the time he gets to his truck, his head is a little clearer and he has an idea of how he should go. He starts the engine and backs around to head south, once more being careful not to roll over any of the broken glass. A farm truck goes by headed north. It’s hauling a small open trailer filled with lumber. The driver, gimme cap yanked down to the tops of his ears, stares grimly ahead, taking no notice of Danny. Which is good. When the farm truck is over the rise, Danny pulls out and heads back the way he came.

On the outskirts of Thompson he stops in at a Dollar General and asks if they sell prepaid cell phones—what are called burners in some of the TV programs he watches. He’s never bought such an item, and thinks the clerk will probably direct him elsewhere, maybe to the Walmart in Belleville, but the clerk points him to aisle five. There are lots of them, but the Tracfone seems to be the cheapest, there’s no activation fee, and it comes with instructions.

Danny takes his wallet out of his hip pocket, ready to pay with his Visa, and then asks himself if he was born dumb or just grew that way. He puts it back and takes his folding money out of his left front pocket instead. He pays with that.

The clerk is a young guy with acne and a scruffy soul patch. He gives Danny a grin and asks him if he’s going to kick some dickens on Tinder. He calls Danny “bro.”

Danny has no idea what he’s talking about, so just tells the clerk he doesn’t need a bag.

The young guy says no more, only rings Danny up and gives him his receipt. Outside the door, Danny drops the receipt in a handy trashcan. He wants no record of this transaction. All he wants is to report the body. The rest is up to people who investigate things for a living. The sooner he can get this business behind him, the better. The idea of letting it go entirely never crosses his mind. Sooner or later that dog—maybe with others—will tip the barrel over to get at the meat beneath. He can’t let that happen. Someone’s wife or daughter is buried behind that abandoned station.

Two miles down the road he parks in a little rest area. There are two picnic tables and a Porta-John. That’s the whole deal. Danny pulls in, opens the blister pack the Tracfone came in, and scans the instructions. They are simple enough, and the phone comes with a fifty per cent charge. Three minutes later it’s live and ready to go. Danny considers writing down what he wants to say and decides there’s no need. He’s going to keep this brief so nobody can trace the call.

His first thought was the Belleville PD, but that’s in a different county, and he knows the emergency number for the Kansas Highway Patrol—it’s posted in the Wilder High School office and in the halls of both the old and the new wing. In schools all across the state, Danny supposes. Nobody says it’s in case of an active shooter because no one has to.

He touches *47. It rings just a single time.

“Kansas Highway Patrol. Do you have an emergency?”

“I want to report a buried body. I think it must be a murder victim.”

“What is your name, sir?”

He almost gives it. Stupid. “The body’s located behind an abandoned Texaco station in the town of Gunnel.”

“Sir, may I please have your name?”

“You go up County Road F. You’ll come to a rise. The gas station is at the top.”

“Sir—”

“Just listen. The body is behind the station, all right? A dog was chewing on the hand of whoever’s buried there. It’s a woman or maybe a girl. I covered her hand with a trash barrel, but the dog’ll get that off pretty soon.”

“Sir, I need your name and the location you’re calling fr—”

“Gunnel. County Road F, about three miles in from the highway. Behind the Texaco station. Get her out of there. Please. Someone’ll be missing her.”

He ends the call. His heart is triphammering in his chest. His face is wet with sweat and his shirt is damp with it. He feels like he’s just run a marathon, and the burner phone feels radioactive in his hand. He takes it to the trash barrel between the picnic tables, dumps it in, thinks better of it, fishes it out, wipes it all over on his shirt, and tosses it in again. He’s five miles down the road before recalling—also from some TV show or other—that he maybe should have taken out the SIM card. Whatever that is. But he’s not going back now. He doesn’t think the police can trace calls made from burner phones anyway, but he’s not going to risk going back to the scene of the crime.

What crime? Youreported a crime, for God’s sake!

Nevertheless, all he wants is to go home and sit in front of the television and forget this ever happened. He thinks about eating the lunch he packed, but has no appetite.

Now that his drinking days are over, Danny doesn’t sleep in even on the weekends. Sunday morning he’s up at six-thirty, eats a bowl of cereal, and turns on the KSNB Morning Report at seven. The big story is a nine-car pileup on I-70 west of Wilson. Nothing about a body being discovered behind an abandoned gas station. He’s about to turn the TV off when the Sunday morning anchor, who probably needs to show ID to get a beer in a bar, says, “This just in. We have a report that a body has been discovered buried behind an empty building in the small town of Gunnel, not far from the Nebraska state line. Police have closed off a county road just north of town and the site is under investigation. We’ll update this story on our website and on the evening news.”

Danny goes to the station’s website several times as the morning progresses, also the website of KAAS out of Salina. At quarter of noon the KAAS website adds a forty-second clip of police cars blocking the entrance to County Road F. There’s one other addition to the story he saw on the morning newscast: the body is said to be that of a woman. Which isn’t news to Danny.

He goes across the trailer park to see Becky. He gets a nice hug from her daughter, a nine-year-old cutie named Darla Jean. Becky asks if he wants to go out and get a bag of burgers at Snack Shack. “You can take my car,” she says.

“I want to go, too!” Darla Jean says.

“All right,” Becky says, “but you go and change your shirt first. That one’s all smutty.”

“She doesn’t need to change,” Danny says. “I’ll just drive through.”

They get the burgers, plus fries and limeades, and eat in the shade behind Becky’s trailer. It’s nice there. Becky has a jacaranda tree that she has to water all the time. Because, she says, “This kind of flora don’t belong in Kansas.” She asks if there’s something on his mind, because she twice has to repeat things she’s told him. “Either that or you’re going senile.”

“Just thinking about what I’ve got on for next week,” he says.

“You sure you’re not thinking about Margie?”

“Talked to her yesterday,” Danny says. “She thinks her boyfriend’s gonna pop the question.”

“Are you still carrying a torch for her? Is that it?”

Danny laughs. “Not likely.”

“Danny!” Darla Jean shouts. “Watch me do a double somersault!”

So he does.

That night KSNB has a reporter on the scene. She looks unsure of herself—definitely weekend help. She’s standing in front of the police cars blocking County Road F from the turnout.

“Following an anonymous tip, KHP troopers were called to a deserted gas station in the town of Gunnel late yesterday afternoon. They discovered the body of an unidentified female buried behind the station, which…” She consults her notes and brushes hair out of her eyes. “… which closed in 2012 when Route 119 was widened to four lanes. If the woman has been identified, KHP isn’t saying. Certainly her identity won’t be released to the press pending notification of next-of-kin. Police are not saying if she was murdered, either, but given this isolated location…” She shrugs, as if to say what else? “Back to you, Pete.”

She’ll be identified soon enough, Danny thinks. The important thing is he hasn’t been ID’d. He is just “an anonymous tipster.”

My good deed for the year, he thinks. And who says no good deed goes unpunished?

But then, just to be safe, he knocks on wood.

Pat Grady shows up on time for work every day of the following week. Danny dares to hope Pat’s learned his lesson, but he’ll never be the worker Jesse Jackson is. As the oldtimers used to say, that young man knows how to squat and lean.

Meanwhile, information about Danny’s dream girl begins to accrete. Although not named, she’s reported to be twenty-four and a resident of Oklahoma City. According to a friend, this unnamed girl had had enough of both her parents and community college and intended to hitchhike out to Los Angeles and go to hairdressing school, maybe get work as an extra in the movies or TV shows. She made it as far as Kansas. The body had been there for awhile—KHP detectives weren’t saying how long, but long enough to be “badly decomposed.”

Dog might have had something to do with that, Danny thinks.

She had been “repeatedly stabbed,” according to a police source. Also sexually assaulted, which was a semi-polite way of saying raped.

It was the end of the Thursday night story on the local news that made Danny uncomfortable. The stand-up reporter was older than the weekend woman, male, obviously part of the A Team. He was standing in front of the gas station, where the tarmac was blocked with yellow police tape. “Kansas Bureau of Investigation detectives are actively seeking the man who phoned in the original tip giving the location of the body. If anyone knows his identity, detectives hope they will come forward. Or if anyone recognizes his voice. Listen.”

The screen showed the sort of silhouette some people used to hide their faces on social media. Then Danny heard his own voice. It was awesomely clear, hardly distorted at all: The body’s located behind an abandoned Texaco station in the town of Gunnel… County Road F, about three miles in from the highway. Behind the Texaco station. Get her out of there. Please. Someone’ll be missing her.

He was starting to wish he’d left well enough alone. Except when he thought of that chewed hand and forearm sticking out of the ground, he knew there was nothing well enough about it. He snapped off the television and spoke to the empty trailer. “What I really wish is I’d never had that fucking dream.” He paused, then added: “And I hope I never have another one.”

On Friday afternoon Danny is using a longneck mop to clean the tops of the hanging fluorescents in the main office when a dark blue sedan pulls into the faculty parking lot. A woman in a white shirt and blue slacks gets out from behind the wheel. She hangs a satchel-sized purse over one shoulder. A man in a black sportcoat and saggy-ass dad jeans gets out from the passenger side. Danny takes one look at them as they walk toward the high school’s front doors and thinks, I’m caught.

He leans the mop in the corner and goes to meet them. The only thing that surprises him about this arrival is his lack of surprise. It’s as if he was expecting it.

He can hear faint rock music playing through the speakers in the gym. Jesse and Pat are down there, cleaning up the crap that always appears when the bleachers are rolled back and collapsed against the walls. The plan is to revarnish the hardwood next week, a job that always gives Danny a headache. Now he wonders if he’ll even be here next week. Telling himself that’s ridiculous, telling himself that he’s done nothing wrong, doesn’t help much. The catchphrase from some old sitcom comes to him: You got some ’splainin to do.

The woman opens the outside door and holds it for the man. Danny leaves the office and walks down the front hall. The newcomers are in the lobby, standing by the trophy case with the blue and gold WILDCAT PRIDE banner above it. The woman looks to be in her thirties, dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. She’s got a pistol on the left side of her belt, the butt turned outward. On the right side is a badge. It’s blue and yellow with the letters KBI in the middle. She’s good-looking in a severe way, but it’s the man who draws Danny’s attention, although he can’t initially say why. Later it will occur to him that you instinctively recognize a nemesis when one appears in your life. He’ll try to dismiss the idea as bullshit, but he’s clear on what went through his mind, even as he approached them: Watch out for this guy.

The male half of the team is older than the woman, but how much is a question. Danny is usually good at guessing ages within a few years one way or the other, but he can’t get a handle on this guy. He could be forty-five. He could be pushing retirement. He could be sick, or just tired. A peninsula of coarse, wavy hair in which red and gray are equally mixed comes down almost to the top line on his forehead. It’s combed back into what looks to Danny like a jumbo widow’s peak. His skull gleams creamy unblemished white on either side of it. His eyes are dark and deepset with bags beneath. The black sportcoat is fading at the elbows, like it’s been dry-cleaned dozens of times. He also has a KBI badge on his belt, but isn’t carrying a gun. If he were, Danny thinks the weight of it might pull those dad jeans right down to his ankles, exposing a pair of billowy old-fella boxers. He has no belly in front, no hips on the sides, and if he turned around, Danny thinks those jeans would sag on a no-ass that is the particular property of so many skinny-built white men from the Midwest. All he’s lacking is a Skoal pouch pushing out his lower lip.

The cop steps forward, holding out his hand. “Daniel Coughlin? I’m Inspector Franklin Jalbert, Kansas Bureau of Investigation. This is my partner, Inspector Ella Davis.”

Jalbert’s hand is hard and his grip is hot, almost as if he’s running a fever. Danny gives it a token shake and lets go. The woman doesn’t offer her hand, just gives him an assessing stare. It’s as if she can already see him doing that sad dance known as the perp walk, but this doesn’t bother Danny the way Jalbert’s gaze does. There’s something dusty about it, as if he’s seen versions of Danny a thousand times before.

“Do you know why we’re here?” Ella Davis asks.

Danny recognizes the sort of question—like asking a guy if he’s still beating his wife—to which there’s no right answer. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Before either of them can reply, the door at the end of the old wing screeks open and booms shut. It’s Jesse. “We finished sweeping where the bleachers were, Danny. You should have seen all the—” He sees the man in the fading black sportcoat and the woman in the blue pants and stops.

“Jesse, why don’t you—”

The door screeks and booms again before Danny can finish. This time it’s Pat, jeans low-riding, hat turned around backward, totally down widdit. He stands just behind Jesse, looking at Danny’s company with his head cocked to one side. He sees the woman’s gun, he clocks the badges, and a slight smile starts to form.

Danny tries again. “Why don’t you two get an early start on the weekend? I’ll punch you out at four.”

“For reals?” Pat asks.

Jesse asks if he’s sure. Pat gives him a don’t fuck this up thump on the shoulder. He’s still smiling, and not because the weekend’s starting an hour early. He likes the idea that his boss might be in trouble with the po-po.

“I’m sure. If you left any of your stuff in the supply room, pick it up on your way out.”

They leave. Jesse throws a quick look over his shoulder, and Danny is touched by the concern he sees in it. When the door booms shut, he turns back to Jalbert and Davis and repeats his question. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Davis skirts that. “We just have a few questions for you, Mr. Coughlin. Why don’t you take a little ride with us? The Manitou PD has kindly set aside their break room for us. We can be there in twenty.”

Danny shakes his head. “I promised those young men I’d punch them out at four. Let’s talk in the library.”

Ella Davis shoots a quick look at Jalbert, who shrugs and gives a smile that momentarily exposes teeth that are white—so no Skoal, Danny thinks—but so small they’re no more than pegs. He grinds them, Danny thinks. That’s what does that.

“I think the library sounds just about fine,” Jalbert says.

“It’s this way.”

Danny sets off down the hall, but not leading them; Jalbert is on his left side, Davis on his right. When they’re seated at one of the library tables, Davis asks if Danny minds having their little talk recorded. Danny says he doesn’t mind. She dips into her purse, brings out her phone, and sets it on the table in front of Danny.

“Just so you know,” she says, “you don’t have to talk to us. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”

Jalbert flips two fingers up from the table and she stops at once. “I don’t think we have to give Mr. Coughlin… say, can I call you Danny?”

Danny shrugs. “Either way.”

“I don’t think we have to give him the Miranda as of now. He’s heard it before, haven’t you, Danny?”

“I have.” He wants to add the charge was dismissed, Margie agreed, by then I’d quit drinking and hassling her. But he thinks Jalbert already knows that. He thinks these two may have known who made that tip call for awhile. Long enough to dig into his past, long enough to know about Margie taking out a restraining order on him.

They are waiting for him to say more. When Danny doesn’t, Davis rummages in her almost-a-satchel and brings out her electronic tablet. She shows him a photograph. It’s of a Tracfone in a plastic bag, which has been tagged with the date it was discovered and the name of the officer—G.S. Laing, KBI Forensics—who found it.

“Did you buy this phone at a Dollar General store on the Byfield Road in the town of Thompson?” Davis asks.

There is no point in lying. This pair will have shown the Dollar General clerk his mug shot from when he was arrested for violating the restraining order. He sighs. “Yes. I guess I should have taken out that card thing from the back.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered,” Jalbert says. He’s not looking at Danny. He’s looking out the window at Jesse and at Pat, who is laughing his ass off. He gives Jesse a whack on the shoulder and heads for his car.

“The officer who took your call had the phone’s number on her screen, and the cell tower it pinged on.”

“Ah. I didn’t think it through, did I?”

“No, Danny, you really didn’t.” Davis gives him an earnest look, not smiling but letting him know she could smile, if he gives her more. “Almost like you wanted to be found out. Is that what you wanted?”

Danny considers the question and decides it’s idiotic. “Nope. Just didn’t think it through.”

“But you admit you made the call, right? The one about the location of Yvonne Wicker? That was her name. The dead woman.”

“Yes.”

He’s in for it now and knows it. He doesn’t believe they can arrest him for the murder, the idea is absurd, the worst thing he ever did in his life was to stand outside his soon-to-be ex-wife’s house and yell at her until she called Wichita PD. The first two times they just made him leave. The third time—this was after she’d taken out the restraining order—they arrested him and he spent a night in County.

They are waiting for him to go on. Danny crosses his arms and says nothing. He’ll have to do some ’splainin, no doubt about it, but dreads it.

“So you were at the Texaco in Gunnel?” Jalbert asks.

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

Twice, Danny thinks. Once when I was asleep and once when I was awake.

“Once.”

“Did you put a trash barrel over that poor girl’s remains to protect it from animal depredation?” Jalbert’s voice is low and gentle, inviting confidences.

Danny doesn’t know the word depredation, but the context is clear. “Yes. There was a dog. Do you know what happened to it?”

“It was destroyed,” Ella Davis says. “The responding officers couldn’t discourage it, and they didn’t want to wait for Animal Control from Belleville, so—”

Jalbert puts a hand on her arm, a gentle hand, and she stills at once, even coloring a little. You don’t give information to a suspect, Danny thinks. He knows that even if she doesn’t. And he thinks again, watch out for this guy.

Davis swipes her tablet, presumably to another photo. “Do you own a white 2010 Toyota Tundra pickup truck?”

“It’s a 2011. I park around back by the school buses.” Where they haven’t seen it, but they know the make and model. And he knows what the picture will show even before she shows it to him. It’s his truck, in the lot of the Dollar General where he bought the phone. The license plate is clear.

“Security camera?”

“Yes. I have others with you in them. Want to see?”

Danny shakes his head.

“Okay, but here’s one that might interest you.” This time it’s a high-rez black-and-white photo of tire tracks on the cracked tarmac of the Texaco. “When we compare these to the tires on your truck, will they match?”

“I guess they will.” He never thought he might’ve left tracks, but should have. Because beyond the tarvy, County Road F is dirt. It occurs to him that you can be damn careless about covering your tracks—literally—if you haven’t committed a crime.

Davis nods. “Also, a farmer named Delroy Ferguson saw a white truck parked in front of that gas station. Same day you made that call from Thompson. He called the Highway Patrol, said he thought it might be someone scavenging. Or a dope meet.”

Danny sighs. He could have sworn that farmer never took his eyes off the road as he hauled his trailer of barnboards north along the otherwise deserted county road. He thinks again, I’m caught.

“It was my truck, I was there, I bought the phone, I made the call. So why don’t we cut through the bullshit? Ask me why I was there. I’ll tell you.” He thinks about adding you won’t believe it, but wouldn’t that be stating the obvious?

He thinks Davis is going to ask just that, but the man in the black coat cuts in. “Funny thing about that phone. It was wiped clean of fingerprints.”

“Yes, I did that. Although from what you’re telling me, you would have found it anyway.”

“Yup, yup. On the other hand, you paid cash for it,” Jalbert says, as if just passing the time. “That was smart. Without the security camera video, we might have taken quite awhile to find you. Might not have found you at all.”

“I didn’t think it through. I told you that.” The library is cool, but he’s starting to sweat. Color is rising in his cheeks. He feels like a fool. No good deed goes unpunished is exactly right.

Jalbert watches Pat Grady pull out, engine blatting and bad-valve oil shooting from the tailpipe. Then he trains his somehow dusty gaze on Danny. “You wanted to be caught, am I right?”

“No,” Danny says, although in his heart he wonders. Jalbert’s gaze is powerful. I know what I know, it says. I’ve been doing this a long time, Sunny Jim, and I know what I know. “I just didn’t want to explain how I knew that woman was there. I didn’t think anyone would believe me. If I had it to do over again, I would have written an anonymous letter.”

He pauses, looking down at his hands and biting his lip. Then he looks up again and says the truth.

“No. I’d do it the same. Because of the dog. It got at her. It would have gotten at her some more. And maybe other dogs would have come, once it had the hand and arm out of the ground. They would have scented the…”

He stops. Jalbert helps him. “The body. Poor Miss Yvonne’s body.”

“I didn’t want that to happen.” He is still getting used to her name. Yvonne. Pretty name.

Ella Davis is looking at him like he has a disease, but Jalbert’s somehow dusty eyes never change. He says, “So tell us. You knew it was there how?”

So then Danny tells them about the dream. About the sign defaced to read CUNT ROAD FUCK, the moon, the tinka-tinka-tinka of the price signs tapping on their pole. He tells them about how his legs carried him forward of their own accord. He tells them about the hand, the charm bracelet, the dog. He tells them everything, but he can’t convey the clarity of the dream, how it felt like reality.

“I thought it would just fade away like most dreams do after you wake up. But it didn’t. So finally I went out there because I wanted to see for myself that it was just some crazy movie in my own head. Only… she was there. The dog was there. So I made the call.”

They are silent, looking at him. Considering him. Ella Davis doesn’t say Do you really expect us to swallow that? She doesn’t have to. Her face says it for her.

The silence spins out. Danny knows he’s supposed to break it, supposed to try and convince them by giving more details. He’s supposed to stumble over his words, start to babble. He keeps silent. It’s an effort.

Jalbert smiles. It’s startling, because it’s a good one. Warm. Except for the eyes. They stay the same. Like a man uttering a great truth, he says, “You’re a psychic! Like Miss Cleo!”

Davis rolls her eyes.

Danny shakes his head. “I’m not.”

“Yes! Yes, you are! By God! Three! I bet you have helped the police in other investigations, like that Nancy Weber or Peter Hurkos. You might even know what people are thinking!” He taps one sunken temple, where a snarl of little blue veins pulse.

Danny smiles and points at Ella Davis. “I don’t know Nancy Weber or Peter Hurkos from a hole in the ground, but I know what she’s thinking. That I’m full of shit.”

Davis smiles back without humor. “Got that right.”

Danny turns to Jalbert. “I haven’t ever helped the police. Before this, I mean.”

“No?”

“I never had a dream like that before, either.”

“No psychic flashes at all? Maybe telling a friend there’s stuff on the cellar stairs so watch out or someone’s going to take a header?”

“No.”

“For gosh sakes don’t leave the house on the 12th of May? Twelve?”

“No.”

“The missing ring is on top of the bathroom medicine cabinet?”

“No.”

“Just this one time!” Jalbert is trying to sound amazed. His eyes aren’t amazed. They crawl back and forth across Danny’s face. They almost have weight. “One!”

“Yes.”

Jalbert shakes his head—more amazement—and looks to his partner. “What are we going to do with this guy?”

“How about arresting him for the murder of Yvonne Wicker, does that sound like a plan?”

“Oh, come on! I told you guys where the body was. If I killed her, why would I do that?”

“Publicity?” She almost spits the word. “How about that? Arsonists do it all the time. Set the fire, report the fire, fight the fire, get their pictures in the paper.”

Jalbert suddenly leans forward and grasps Danny’s hand. His touch is unpleasant—so dry and so hot. Danny tries to pull away, but Jalbert’s grip is strong. “Do you swear?” he asks in a confidential whisper. “Do you swear, swear, swear—three times, one and two more—that you didn’t kill Miss Yvonne Wicker?”

“Yes!” Danny yanks his hand back. He was embarrassed and scared to start with; now he’s freaked out. It crosses his mind that Franklin Jalbert might be mental. It’s probably an act, but what if it’s not? “I dreamed where her body was, and that’s all!”

“Tell you what,” Ella Davis says, “I’ve heard some terrible alibis in my time, but this one takes the prize. It’s way better than the dog ate my homework.”

Jalbert, meanwhile, is shaking his head and looking sorrowful… but the eyes don’t change. They keep crawling over Danny’s face. Back and forth they go. “Ella, I think we need to clear this man.”

“But he knew where the body was!”

They’re working off a script, Danny thinks. Damned if they’re not.

Jalbert continues to shake his head. “No… no… we need to clear him. We need to clear this one-time-only psychic janitor.”

“I’m a custodian!” Danny says, and immediately feels foolish.

“I’m sorry, this one-time-only psychic custodian. We can do that because the man who raped Miss Yvonne didn’t wear a prophylactic, and that left a goldmine of DNA. Would you mind giving us a swab, Danny? So we can eliminate you from our investigation? No strain, no pain, just a Q-tip inside your cheek. Does that sound all right?”

Danny doesn’t realize how ramrod straight he’s been sitting until he settles in his seat. “Yes! Do it!”

Davis immediately dips into her bag again. She’s a good Girl Scout who comes prepared. She brings out a packet of swabs. Danny is looking at Jalbert, and what he sees—maybe—is the briefest flicker of disappointment. Danny’s not positive, but he thinks Jalbert was bluffing, that the rapist-killer actually did wear a rubber.

“Open wide, Mr. Psychic Custodian,” Davis says.

Danny opens wide and Davis swabs the inside of his cheek. She looks approvingly at the Q-tip before popping it into the container. “Cells tell,” she says. “They always do.”

“Carrier’s here,” Jalbert says.

Danny looks out the window and sees a flatbed pulling into the parking lot. Ella Davis is looking at Jalbert. He gives her a nod and she delves into her bag again. She comes out with two thin bundles of paper held together with paper clips. “Search warrants. One for your truck and one for your home at…” She consults one of them. “919 Oak Drive. Would you care to read them over?”

Danny shakes his head. What else should he have expected?

Jalbert says, “Go out and tell them his pickup’s around back. Video them putting the truck on the flatbed so our custodian can’t claim later that we planted anything.”

She takes her phone and stands up but looks doubtful. Jalbert gives her a smile, showing those tiny pegs that serve him as teeth, and flaps a hand at the door. “We’ll be fine, won’t we, Danny?”

“If you say so.”

“Keys?” she asks.

“Under the seat.” He flicks the keyring hanging on his belt loop. “I’ve got enough keys for this place, I don’t need to add more. Truck’s not locked.” And for once he has his phone with him.

She nods and goes out. When the door closes, Jalbert says, “That flatbed is going to take your pickup to Great Bend, where it will be gone over from bumper to tailpipe. Will we find anything belonging to Miss Yvonne?”

“Not unless you plant it.”

“One of her hairs? One single blond hair?”

“Not unless—”

“Not unless we plant it, yes. Danny, we’ll be taking a ride after all, but not to the Manitou PD. To your place. Just out of curiosity, are there any oaks in Oak Grove Trailer Park? Four or five? Maybe only three?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. There will be some cops and a forensic unit there. Is your housekey on the ring with the keys to your truck?”

“Yes, but the door is unlocked.”

Jalbert raises eyebrows that are the same red mixed with gray as his jumbo widow’s peak. “Aren’t you the trusting soul?”

“I lock up at night. In the daytime…” Danny shrugs. “I’ve got nothing worth stealing.”

“Travel light, do you? Not just psychic but an acolyte of Thoreau!”

Danny doesn’t know who that is any more than he knows what Tinder is. He guesses Jalbert knows that. His eyes crawl and crawl. Danny realizes why he felt the man’s gaze was dusty. His eyes have no shine, no sparkle, just a certain avidity. He’s like room tone, he thinks. Odd idea, but it’s right somehow. He wonders if Jalbert dreams.

“I’ve got a question for you, Danny, one I’ve already asked and you’ve answered, but this time I’ll give you your rights first. You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to speak to me—you don’t have to, but if you do—anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to have an attorney present. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.” He pauses. The small white pegs make an appearance. “I’m sure that has a familiar ring.”

“It does.” What Danny’s thinking is that when he and Jalbert arrive at his trailer, there will be cops there already. Those residents not at work will see and pass it on—police were searching Danny Coughlin’s trailer. By dark the news will be all over Oak Grove.

“You understand your rights?”

“I do. But you’re not recording. She took her phone.”

“Doesn’t matter. This is just between us.” Jalbert stands and leans forward, his fingers tented on the library table, his eyes searching Danny’s face. “So, one more time. Did you kill Yvonne Wicker?”

“No.”

For the first time Jalbert’s smile looks real. In a low, almost caressing voice, he says, “I think you did. I know you did. Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Danny looks at his watch. “What I want is to clock out those two kids. And myself.”

It’s what Danny expected at Oak Grove. Two police cars and a white forensics van are parked in front of his trailer. Half a dozen of his neighbors are standing around watching. Ella Davis is there, along with four uniformed cops and two forensics guys who are wearing white pullover suits, gloves, and booties. Danny assumes she caught a ride to the trailer park with the flatbed hauling his truck, so the neighbors will have seen that, too. Nice. At least Becky’s not here, which is a relief. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays she has a part-time job at Freddy’s Washateria. Darla Jean colors or reads a book while Becky empties washers and driers and makes change and folds clothes.

But she’ll find out, Danny thinks. Someone will be eager to tell her. Probably that motormouth Cynthia Babson.

Although his trailer is unlocked, they’ve waited for Jalbert. Davis walks over to the car. When Danny gets out of the front seat instead of the back, she frowns at Jalbert, who only shrugs.

She says, “Are we going to find any weapons in there, Mr. Coughlin?”

So no more Danny, and she’s speaking loud enough for the lookie-loos to hear. Does she want them to understand Danny Coughlin is a suspect of something serious? Of course she does.

“.38 semi-auto in the bedside table. Colt Commander.” He wants to add he has a perfect right to a home defense weapon, he’s never been convicted of a felony, but keeps his mouth shut. He can see Bill Dumfries standing by his trailer, beefy arms crossed over his chest, face neutral. Danny decides he wants to talk to Bill when he gets a chance.

“Loaded?”

“Yes.”

“Are we going to find any drugs, syringes, or other drug paraphernalia?”

“Just aspirin.”

She nods to the forensics guys. They go inside, carrying their cases. A cop with a videocam follows behind. He’s wearing booties and nitrile gloves, but no all-over suit.

“Can I go in?” Danny asks.

Davis shakes her head.

“Let him stand in the doorway and watch,” Jalbert says. “No harm in that.”

Davis gives Jalbert another frown, but Danny is pretty sure they have done this dance before. Not good-cop bad-cop, but aggressive-cop neutral-cop. Only he doubts if Jalbert is neutral. Davis either.

Danny goes up the steps. They’re concrete block, even after three years he keeps thinking his Oak Grove trailer is temporary, but there are flowers on either side. He gave Becky money to buy the seeds. He and Darla Jean planted them.

He stands in the doorway and watches the forensics guys go through his private space, opening drawers and cupboards. They look in the fridge, his oven, the countertop microwave. It’s infuriating. He keeps thinking, This is what you get for trying to help, this is what you get.

From behind him, soft, Jalbert says, “They’ll give you receipts for what they take for testing.”

Danny jumps a little. He never heard Jalbert coming. He’s a quiet son of a bitch.

In the end, all they take are his gun and a butcher knife. One of the forensics guys bags them and the other forensics guy photographs them—video isn’t enough, apparently. Danny has three steak knives, but they don’t take those. He surmises that their serrated blades don’t match the wounds they found on Yvonne Wicker’s body.

Danny goes down the steps. Davis and Jalbert have their heads together. She’s murmuring something to Jalbert, who listens without taking his eyes off Danny. Jalbert nods, murmurs something in return, and then they walk back to Danny. Curious eyes are watching them. Police visits aren’t uncommon in the trailer park, but this is the first time Danny has been visited by them.

Ella Davis says in a casual tone, as if just passing the time of day: “Have you killed others, Danny? And it just got to be too much for you? Was it guilt instead of publicity? Was the Wicker girl the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

Looking her dead in the eye, Danny says, “I haven’t killed anybody.”

Davis smiles. “You need to come on down to the Manitou cop shop tomorrow. We have more questions. How does ten o’clock sound?”

Just the way I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, Danny thinks. “What if I refuse?”

She makes her eyes round. “Well, that would be your choice. For now, anyway. But if you didn’t do anything but report the body, I’d think you would want to get this cleared up.”

“Done and dusted,” Jalbert says, and brushes his hands together to demonstrate. “Ten o’clock, okay?”

“In case you didn’t notice, your guys took my truck.”

“We’ll send a car for you,” Jalbert says.

“Maybe I should rent one from Budget and send you guys the bill.”

“Good luck getting someone to okay paying that,” Jalbert says. “Bureaucracy.” The pegs of his teeth wink, then disappear. “But you can try.”

Davis says, “Stay close tonight. You can leave town but don’t leave the county.” She smiles. “We’ll be watching.”

“I have no doubt.” Danny hesitates a moment, then says, “If this is how you guys act when someone does you a solid, I’d hate to see how you act when someone does you dirt.”

“We know—”

Danny has had enough. “You know nothing, Inspector Davis. Now get out. Both of you.”

She’s unperturbed, just unzips the side pocket of her satchel purse and hands him a card. “This is my cell. It will get me day or night. Give me a call if you decide against a further interview tomorrow morning. But I don’t advise it.”

She and Jalbert get into the dark blue sedan. They drive toward the trailer park entrance, past the sign reading SLOW WE LOVE OUR CHILDREN.

Danny walks over to Bill Dumfries. “What in the hell was that about?” Bill asks.

“Long story short, I found the body of a murdered girl in a little town north of here. Gunnel. Tried to call it in anonymously. They found out. Now they think I did it.”

“Jesus,” Bill says, and shakes his head. “Cops!”

It sounds good, and maybe the doubt Danny thinks he sees in Bill’s eyes is his imagination. Danny doesn’t care. Bill retired from Dumfries Contracting three years ago, and if anyone in Oak Grove knows of a lawyer in the area, it’s Bill. He asks, Bill checks his phone, and Danny has a name and number even before the dark blue sedan turns onto the highway. He types the info into his contacts.

“I’m surprised they didn’t take my phone, too,” Danny says. “If I’d left it in the glove compartment of my truck like I usually do, they’d have it.”

Bill says he’s pretty sure they would have needed a separate warrant for that, then says: “They might ask you to turn it over tomorrow. If you’ve got something on it you don’t want them to see, I’d trash it.”

“I don’t,” Danny says, a little too loudly. People are still looking at him and his trailer door has been left open. He feels violated and tells himself that’s stupid, but the feeling doesn’t go away. Because it’s not stupid.

“Billy!” It’s Mrs. Dumfries, standing in the door of their trailer, a doublewide that’s the fanciest one in the park. “Come in here, your dinner’s getting cold!”

Bill doesn’t look back, but he gives Danny a quick thumbs-up. Which is better than nothing, Danny supposes.

In the trailer with the door shut, Danny has a sudden fit of the shakes and has to sit down. It’s the first one since his drinking days, when he used to get the shakes on mornings-after until he got his first cup of coffee into him. Also some aspirin. And of course he had them when he woke up in that Wichita jail cell, and there was no coffee or aspirin to banish them. That was when he decided he had to quit the booze or he was going to get into even more serious trouble. So he quit, and look at the mess he’s in now. No good deed, et cetera.

He doesn’t bother making coffee, but there’s a sixpack of Pepsi in the fridge. He chugs one down, lets out a ringing belch, and the shakes start to subside. The lawyer’s name is Edgar Ball and he’s local. He doesn’t expect to get Ball—it’s past 5 PM on a Friday evening—but the recorded message gives him a number to call if it’s urgent. Danny calls it.

“Hello?”

“Is this Edgar Ball? The lawyer?”

“It is, and I’m just about to take my wife out to dinner at Happy Jack’s. Tell me why you’re calling and make it brief.”

“My name is Daniel Coughlin. I think the police believe I murdered a girl.” He rethinks that. “I know they believe it. I didn’t do it, I just told them where the body was. I’m supposed to go in for questioning tomorrow at the Manitou police station.”

“Manitou PD wants to—”

“Not them, KBI. They’re just going to use a room at the Manitou station to question me. They’re giving me tonight to stew, but I think they might arrest me in the morning. I need a lawyer. I got your name from Bill Dumfries.”

A woman calls something in the background. Ball says he’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Then, to Danny: “I’m a real estate lawyer, did Bill tell you that? I haven’t handled a criminal case since the first year I hung out my shingle, and back then it was mostly DUIs and petty larceny.”

“I don’t know any other—”

“What time is your interview?”

“They want me at ten.”

“At Manitou PD on Rampart Street.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ll represent you at the interview, I can do that much.”

“Thank y—”

“Then, if they don’t just drop this, I’ll recommend a lawyer who deals with criminal matters.”

Danny starts to say thank you again, and maybe ask Ball if he could give him a ride to the police station, but Ball has hung up.

It isn’t much, but it’s something. He calls Becky.

“Hey, Beck,” he says when she answers. “I’ve got a little problem here, and I wondered—”

“I know about your little problem,” Becky says, “and it doesn’t sound so little to me. I just got off the phone with Cynthia Babson.”

Of course you did, Danny thinks.

“She says the cops think you killed that girl they found up north.”

She stops there, waiting for him to say he didn’t do it, that it’s ridiculous, but he shouldn’t have to do that. She’s known him for three years, they have sex once a week, sometimes twice, he’s picked her daughter up from school, and he shouldn’t have to do that, end of story.

He says, “I’m supposed to talk to them tomorrow, these two investigators from KBI, and I wondered if I could borrow your car. They took my truck to Great Bend and I’m not sure when I’ll get it back.”

There’s a long pause, then Becky says, “I was going to take DJ to the High Banks Hall of Fame tomorrow. You know she loves those funny cars.”

Danny knows the place, although he’s never been there. He also knows Darla Jean has never expressed the slightest interest in seeing a bunch of midget racing cars, at least not to him. If it was a doll museum, that would be different.

“All right. No problem.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with that girl, did you, Danny?”

He sighs. “No, Beck. I knew where she was, is all.”

“How? How did you know that?”

“I had a dream.”

She kindles. “Like Letitia in Inside View?”

“Yes. Just like her. I have to go, Becky.”

“You take care of yourself, Danny.”

“You too, Beck.”

At least she believed me about the dream, he thinks. On the other hand, Becky seems to believe everything she reads in her favorite supermarket tabloid, including how the ghost of Queen Elizabeth is haunting Balmoral Castle and about the intelligent ant-people living deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Ella Davis takes her partner to his hotel in Lyons and parks under the canopy. Jalbert grabs his battered old briefcase—companion of twenty-plus years of investigations covering Kansas from side to side and top to bottom—and tells her he’ll be at the Manitou PD by nine tomorrow. No need to pick him up, he’ll drive his personal. They can go over their plan of attack one more time before Coughlin arrives at ten. Davis herself is going on to Great Bend, where she’s staying with her sister. There’s a big birthday party coming up. Ella’s daughter is turning eight.

“Do we have enough to arrest him, Frank?”

“Let’s see what forensics finds in his truck.”

“No doubt in your mind that he did it?”

“None. Drive safe, Ella.”

She heads out. Jalbert gives her a wave and then heads to his room, giving his Chevy Caprice a pat on the way by. Like his briefcase, the Caprice has been with him on many cases from Kansas City on one side of the state to Scott City on the other.

The two-room suite, far from fancy, is what’s known as “Kansas plain.” There’s a smell of disinfectant and a fainter smell of mold. The toilet has a tendency to chuckle after flushing unless you flap the handle a few times. The air conditioner has a slight rattle. He’s been in better places, but he’s been in far worse. Jalbert drops his briefcase on the bed and runs the combination lock. He takes out a file with WICKER written on the tab. He makes sure the curtains are pulled tight. He puts the chain on the door and turns the thumb lock. Then he undresses down to the skin, folding each item of clothing on top of the briefcase as he goes. He sits in the chair by the door.

“One.”

He moves to the chair by the tiny (almost useless) desk and sits down. “One plus two, add three: six.”

He goes to the bed and sits beside his briefcase and folded clothes. “One, two, three, four, five, and six make twenty-one.”

He goes into the bathroom and sits on the closed lid of the toilet. The plastic is cold on his skinny buttocks.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten make fifty-five.”

He goes back to the first chair, skinny penis swinging like a pendulum, and sits down. “Now add eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, makes a hundred and twenty.”

He makes another full round, which satisfies him. Sometimes he has to go to ten or twenty rounds before his mind tells him it’s enough. He allows himself a piss that he’s been holding a long time, then washes his hands while he counts to seventeen. He doesn’t know why seventeen is perfect for hand-washing, it just is. It works for teeth-brushing, too. Hair washing is a twenty-five count, has been since he was a teenager.

He pulls his suitcase from under the bed and puts on fresh clothes. Those he took off and folded go into the suitcase. The suitcase goes back under the bed. On his knees he says, “Lord, by Your will I serve the people of Kansas. Tomorrow if it’s Your will, I’ll arrest the man who killed poor Miss Yvonne.”

He takes the folder to the chair by the useless desk and opens the file. He looks at the pictures of Miss Yvonne, leafing through them five times (one to five added together make fifteen). She is terrible to look at; terrible, terrible. These pictures would break the stoniest heart. What he keeps coming back to is the charm bracelet—some of the charms missing, from the look of it—and the dirt in her hair. Poor Miss Yvonne! Twenty years old, raped and murdered! The pain she must have felt! The fear! Jalbert’s pastor claims that all earthly terrors and pains are wiped away in the joys of heaven. It’s a beautiful idea, but Jalbert isn’t so sure. Jalbert thinks that some traumas may transcend even death. A terrible thought, but it feels true to him.

He looks at the pathologist’s report, which is a problem. It states that Miss Yvonne was in the oil-soaked ground at least ten days, plus or minus, before her body was exhumed by the Highway Patrol, and there is no way of telling when she was actually murdered. Coughlin could have buried her behind the deserted gas station immediately, or he could have held onto the body for awhile, possibly because he couldn’t decide where to dispose of it, possibly for some psycho reason of his own. Without a more precise time of death, Coughlin really doesn’t have to have an alibi; he’s a moving target.

“On the other hand,” Jalbert says, “he wants to be caught. That’s why he came forward. He’s like a girl saying no-no with her mouth and yes-yes with her eyes.” Not that he could make such a comparison to anyone else—most of all Ella Davis. Not in this era of #BelievetheWoman.

I believe in Miss Yvonne, he thinks.

He’s unhappy that they don’t have more and thinks about doing the chairs again, but doesn’t. He walks down to the Snack Shack for a cheeseburger and a shake instead. He counts his steps and adds them. Not as good as doing the chairs, but quite soothing. He sits in his Kansas plain suite, which he will forget as soon as he leaves it, as he has forgotten so many other temporary accommodations. He eats his burger. He drinks his shake until the straw crackles in the bottom. He thinks about Coughlin saying he dreamed Miss Yvonne’s location. That’s the part of him that wants to confess. He’ll admit it and then he’s done.

Danny is watching something on Netflix without really seeing it when his phone rings. He looks at the screen, sees it’s Becky, and thinks she’s had time to change her mind about loaning him her car. Only that’s not it. She tells him they better cool it for awhile, keep their distance. Just until the cops clear him of the Wicker thing, as of course they will.

“But see, here’s the thing, Danny. Andy’s talking about going back to court and suing me… or whatever they call it… for custody of Darla Jean. And if his lawyer can say I’ve been spending time with someone under suspicion for… you know, that girl… he might be able to convince a judge.”

“Really, Beck? Didn’t you tell me he’s six months behind on his child support payments? I don’t think a judge would be very eager to turn DJ over to a deadbeat dad, do you?”

“I know, but… Danny, please try to understand… if he had Darla Jean, he wouldn’t have to pay child support. In fact… I don’t know exactly how these things work, but I might have to pay him.”

“When was the last time he even took DJ for the weekend?”

She has an answer for that, too, more weak bullshit, and he doesn’t know why he’s pressing the issue. It’s never been true love, just an arrangement between two single people who are living in a trailer park and edging into middle age. She doesn’t want to be involved? Fine. But he’ll miss Darla Jean, who helped him plant flowers to dress up his cement block steps a little. DJ is a sweetie, and—

An idea strikes him. It’s unpleasant, it’s plausible, it’s unpleasantly plausible.

“Are you afraid I might do something to DJ, Becky? Molest her, or something? Is that what this is about?”

“No, of course not!”

But he hears it in her voice, or thinks he does, and it comes to the same.

“Take care of yourself, Beck.”

“Danny—”

He ends the call, sits down, and looks at the TV, where some male doofus is telling some female doofus that it’s complicated.

“Ain’t it just?” Danny says, and zaps the show into oblivion. He sits and looks at the blank television screen and thinks, I will not pity myself. I just screwed up reporting what I found, and I won’t pity myself.

Then he thinks of Jalbert’s eyes, crawling over his face.

“Watch out for that one,” he says. For the first time in two years he finds himself wishing for a beer.

Jalbert lies in his bed, ramrod straight, listening to a prairie wind blowing outside, thinking about the next day’s interrogation. He doesn’t want to think about it, he needs his sleep so he can be fresh in the morning. Coughlin is the one who should lie sleepless tonight, tossing and turning.

But sometimes you can’t turn off the machine.

He swings his legs out of bed, grabs his phone, and calls George Gibson, who’s been heading the KBI forensics unit for the last seven years. Gibson flew in from Wichita as soon as the judge signed off on the search warrants, and was ready to start work as soon as Coughlin’s truck was delivered. Calling him is a mistake, Gibson will call himif he has something, but Jalbert can’t help himself. Sometimes—like now, for instance—he knows how junkies feel.

“George, it’s Frank. Have you got anything? Any sign at all that the girl was in his truck?”

“Nothing yet,” Gibson says, “but we’re still working.”

“I’m going to leave my phone on. Call me if you get something definitive. It doesn’t matter how late.”

“I will. Now may I go back to work?”

“Yes. Sorry. It’s just… we’re working for the girl, George. For Miss Yvonne. We’re her—”

“Advocates. Thanks for reminding me.”

“Sorry. Sorry. Go back to work.”

Jalbert ends the call and lies down. He begins counting and adding. One and two makes three, three more is six, four more is ten, five more is fifteen. By the time he gets to seventeen is a hundred and fifty-three, he has finally begun to relax. By the time he gets to twenty-eight is four hundred and six, he’s drifting into sleep.

At two o’clock his phone wakes him. It’s Gibson.

“Give me some good news, George.”

“I would if I could.” Gibson sounds beat. “The truck is clean. I’m going home while I can still keep my eyes open.”

Jalbert is sitting bolt upright in bed. “Nothing? Are you kidding?”

“I never kid after midnight.”

“Did you put it on the lift? Did you check the undercarriage?”

“Don’t tell your granny how to suck eggs, Frank.”

Gibson sounds on the verge of losing his temper. Jalbert should stop. He can’t stop.

“He washed it, didn’t he? Son of a bitch washed it and probably had it detailed.”

“Not lately, he didn’t. There’s still plenty of dirt on it from his trip out to Gunnel. No traces of bleach in the cab or the truck bed, either.”

Jalbert expected more. He expected something. He really did.

Gibson says, “Finding fingerprints, hair, an item of her clothing… that would’ve been ideal, the gold standard, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t have her. He either did an ace cleaning job inside or—”

“Or she was never in the truck at all.” Jalbert is hatching a headache and getting back to sleep is probably going to be out of the question. “He could have used some other vehicle to transport her. He’s got a girlfriend in that trailer park. Maybe he used her car. If he doesn’t confess, we may have to—”

“There’s a third possibility,” Gibson says.

“What?” Jalbert snaps.

“He could be innocent.”

Jalbert is amazed to silence for a few seconds. Then he laughs.

When Jalbert arrives at the Manitou police station the next morning—fresh pair of dad jeans, fresh shirt, same lucky black coat—he sees Ella Davis waiting for him on the front step, smoking a cigarette. When she sees him coming, she drops it and steps on the butt. She thinks of telling him he looks tired, rejects the idea, and instead asks him what he knows about Coughlin’s truck.

“Clean,” Jalbert says, and sets his briefcase down between his sensible black shoes. “Which means we’ve got a little more work to do.”

“It could also mean Yvonne Wicker wasn’t his first. Have you thought of that?”

Of course he has. Serials often botch their first one, but if they’re not caught they learn from their mistakes. He could tell Davis there was no bleach residue in the truck, meaning Coughlin didn’t use it to clean up blood, other fluid, or touch DNA, but the idea doesn’t cross his mind because it doesn’t matter. Coughlin did her. The dream story was either a half-assed effort to show off—like an arsonist showing up to help fight the fire he started, as Davis said—or because the guilt has gotten too much for him and he wants to confess. Jalbert thinks the latter, and will be happy to help him in that regard.

“Miss Yvonne stayed at a shelter in Arkansas City on the night of May 31st,” Jalbert says. “Her signature is in their ledger. Next morning she buys coffee and a sausage biscuit at a Gas-n-Go near the intersection of I-35 and… help me.”

“State Road 166,” Davis says. “She’s on the security video. Big as life. Clerk saw her picture in the Oklahoman and called it in. Gold star for him.”

Jalbert nods. “June 1st, just past eight AM. Off she goes to hitch a ride on 35. And that’s the last time anyone saw Miss Yvonne until Coughlin drives out to Gunnel and reports the body. We together so far?”

Davis nods.

“So when we question Coughlin, we have to ask him where he was and what he was doing between the 1st of June and the 24th, when he made that call.”

“He’ll say he doesn’t remember. Which is reasonable. It’s only on TV that people remember where they were. If you asked me where I was on June 5th… or the 10th… I couldn’t tell you. Not for sure.”

“He punches a clock at the high school where he works, that takes care of some of the time.”

She starts to say something and he raises those two fingers to cut her off.

“I know what you’re thinking, a time-clock doesn’t know what you do after you punch in, but he’s got those two boys working for him. We’ll talk to them. See if he left them on their own for a few hours, or even a whole day.”

Davis takes a notebook out of her big bag and begins to scribble in it. Without looking up she says, “School was still in the first week of June. I checked the calendar online. Plenty of people will have seen him, if he was there.”

“We’re going to talk to everyone,” Jalbert says. “Just you and me, Ella. Find out as much as we can about where he was during those three weeks. Find out where the holes are. The inconsistencies. Are you up for that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s if he doesn’t confess this morning, which I have a feeling he might do.”

“Only one thing bothers me,” Davis says. “How he looked when you told him the perp left semen. What I saw on his face—and his body, that too—was relief. Gladness, almost. He couldn’t wait to give me a cheek swab.”

Jalbert raises his hands, palms out, as if to physically push the idea away. “Why would he worry about DNA? He knew it was a bluff because he put on a prophylactic before he raped her.”

She says nothing, but there’s a look on her face that makes him frown. “What?”

“It was relief,” she repeats. “Like he didn’t know about the rubber. Like he thought a DNA compare might really let him off the hook.”

Jalbert laughs. “Some of these bad boys are exceptional actors. Ted Bundy had a girlfriend. Dennis Rader fooled his own wife. For years.”

“I suppose, but he wasn’t very clever about the burner he used, was he?”

The frown reappears. “Come on, Ella, he wanted us to find him. Now are we going to get justice for Miss Yvonne this morning?”

She considers this. Jalbert has been an investigator with KBI for twenty years. She’s been an inspector for five. She trusts his instincts. Plus the story of the dream is such obvious bullshit.

“We are.”

He pats her on the shoulder. “That’s it, partner. You hold that thought.”

The last thing Danny wants is another cop car showing up at his trailer, so at nine-thirty he’s standing at the entrance to Oak Grove, hands in his pockets, waiting for his ride. He’s thinking about how badly he fucked up the anonymous call, succeeding in only making things look worse for himself. And he’s thinking about Jalbert. The woman doesn’t scare him. Jalbert does. Because Jalbert has made up his mind and all Danny has is a story about a dream that only a few people (such as Inside View readers like Becky) would believe.

Well, he does have one other thing going for him: he didn’t kill the girl.

As it turns out, he could have waited at his trailer, because the cop who picks him up is driving an unmarked. He’s wearing his uniform, but sitting behind the wheel with his hat on the seat and the top button of his shirt undone, he could be any John Q. Citizen.

He powers down the passenger window. “Are you Coughlin?”

“Yes. Can I sit up front with you?”

“Well, I don’t know,” the cop says. He’s young, surely no more than twenty-five. This is Kansas, but he gives off a laid-back surfer-dude vibe. “Are you going to launch an attack on me?”

Danny smiles. “I don’t launch attacks on anyone until at least mid-afternoon.”

“Okay, you can sit up front just like a big boy, but do me a favor and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Danny gets in. He clicks his seatbelt. The cop’s dashboard computer is off but his police radio mutters constantly, too low to hear.

“So,” the cop says. “Getting questioned by KBI in our little police station. What a thrill, right?”

“Not for me,” Danny says.

“Did you kill that girl? The one they found in Gunnel? Just between us, you know.”

“No.”

“Well, what else would you say?” the cop asks, and laughs. Danny surprises himself by laughing with him. “How’d you know she was there if you didn’t kill her?”

Danny sighs. It’s out there now; as Elvis used to say, it’s your baby, you have to rock it. “I saw it in a dream. Went out to see for myself, and she was there.”

He expects the cop to say that’s the most ridiculous story he’s ever heard, but he doesn’t. “Weird shit happens,” he says. “You know Red Bluff, about sixty miles west of here?”

“Heard of it, never been there.”

“An old lady went to the cops and said she’d had a vision of a little boy falling down an old well. This was six or eight years ago. And you know what? That kid was there. Still alive. Made national news. Tell those KBIers to google it. Red Bluff, kid down the well. They’ll find it. But.”

“But what?”

“Stick to your story if you didn’t do that girl in. Don’t go changing it, or they’ll hang you.”

“You sound like you’re no fan of the KBI.”

The cop shrugs. “They’re all right for the most part. Treat us like hicks, mostly, but ain’t that what we are, when you get right down to it? Six-man force, little speed trap outside of town, that’s us. Our OOD told those two they can have the break room to question you. We use it for interrogations when we have to, so it’s got a camera and a mike.”

He pulls up in front. The station door opens and Jalbert comes out. He stands on the top step in his black coat with the faded elbows, looking down.

“One other thing, Mr. Coughlin. We all know about Frank Jalbert. He don’t quit. Highway Patrol worships him, think he’s a fucking legend. And my guess is he don’t believe in dreams.”

“I know that much already,” Danny says.

Danny mounts the steps. Jalbert holds out his hand. Danny hesitates but shakes it. The hand is as dry and feverish as it was yesterday.

“Thank you for coming, Danny. Let’s go inside and straighten this thing out, what do you say? The officer in charge just put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

“Not just yet.”

Jalbert frowns.

“It’s only five to ten,” Danny says. “I’m expecting someone.”

“Oh?”

“A lawyer.”

Jalbert raises his eyebrows. “As a rule, folks who feel the need to lawyer up are guilty folks.”

“Or smart folks.”

To this Jalbert says nothing.

Edgar Ball shows up at ten on the dot. He’s riding a ginormous Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. The motor is so quiet that Danny can hear an easy-listening oldie—REO Speedwagon’s “Take It On the Run”—from the in-dash radio. Ball parks, kickstands his ride, and dismounts. Danny likes him immediately, partly for the huge bike, partly because he’s middle-aged, dressed in a golf shirt that makes no secret of his man-boobs, and big old khaki shorts that flap down to his knees. Never did a real estate lawyer look less like a real estate lawyer.

“I take it you are Daniel Coughlin,” he says, and sticks out a pudgy hand.

“I am,” Danny says, shaking with him. “Thank you for coming.”

Ball switches his attention to the man in the black coat. “I’m Eddie Ball, Counselor at Law. And you, sir, are—?”

“Inspector Franklin Jalbert, Kansas Bureau of Investigation.” He’s gazing across the mostly deserted Manitou Main Street, seeming not to see Ball’s outstretched hand. “Let’s go inside. We have questions for Danny.”

“You go inside,” Ball says, “and we’ll join you shortly. I’d like to have a private word with my client.”

Jalbert frowns. “We don’t have all day. I’d like to get this done, and I’m sure Danny would, too.”

“Of course, but this is a serious matter,” Ball says, still pleasant. “If it takes all day, that’s what it will take. I have a right to speak with my client before you question him. If you’re with KBI, you know this. Be grateful, Inspector, that I’m willing to do it out here on the police station steps instead of taking him to my office on the backseat of my sled.”

“Five minutes,” Jalbert says. Then, to Danny: “You’re making it worse for yourself, son.”

“Oh, please,” Ball says, pleasant as ever, “spare us the movie music.”

Jalbert shows the pegs of his teeth in a momentary grin. That’s how he looks like inside all the time, Danny thinks.

Once Jalbert’s gone, Ball says, “He’s quite the Tatar, isn’t he?”

Danny doesn’t know the word and wonders briefly if Ball called Jalbert a tater, as in Tater Tot. “Well, he’s something. Truth is, he scares me. Mostly because I didn’t kill that girl and he’s sure I did.”

Ball holds up his hand. “Whoa, no primary declarations. I called you my client, but you’re not, at least as yet. My fee for this morning is four hundred dollars. I should charge only two, because I’ve forgotten most of what I once knew about criminal law, but it’s Saturday morning and I’d really prefer to be on the golf course. Is the amount agreeable?”

“Fine, but I don’t have my checkb—”

“Do you have a dollar?”

“Yes.”

“Good enough for a retainer. Fork it over.” And when Danny has done so: “Now you’re my client. Tell me exactly what happened and why Inspector Jalbert has it in for you, as he clearly does. Add nothing extraneous and leave nothing out that’s going to come back to haunt you later.”

Danny tells him about the dream. He tells him about going to Gunnel and finding the Texaco station. He tells him about the dog. He tells him about the hand and the trash barrel. This is all crazy-time stuff, but the color doesn’t rise in his cheeks until he tells Ball how stupid he was about the anonymous tip.

“The way I look at it, that’s actually in your favor,” Ball says. “You didn’t know what you were doing. And wishing for anonymity, given how you came by your information, is completely understandable.”

“I should have studied it a little more,” Danny says. “I assumed, and you know what they say about—”

“Yes, yes, makes an ass out of u and me. An oldie but a goodie. Daniel, have you ever had a previous experience of a psychic nature?”

“No.”

“Think carefully. It certainly wouldn’t hurt if there were prior—”

“No. Just this.”

Ball sighs and rocks back and forth. He’s wearing motorcycle boots and knee-high compression socks with his XL shorts, which Danny finds amusing.

“All right,” he says. “It is what it is, another oldie but goodie.”

Ella Davis comes out. “Danny, if you don’t want to make the two-hour ride to Great Bend and answer our questions there, let’s get this show on the road.”

Ball smiles at her. “You are?”

“Inspector Davis, KBI, and I’m losing my patience. So is Frank.”

“Well, we certainly don’t want that, do we?” Ball says. “And since your valuable time is also my client’s valuable time, I’m sure Daniel will be happy to help you with your enquiries, so he can get back to his Saturday.”

There’s a rattling soft drink machine in the Manitou PD’s break room. There’s a counter with a coffee maker and a few pastries on it. The sign over the pastries says KICK A BUCK. On one wall is a plaque reading WE SERVE AND PROTECT. On another is a poster showing O.J. Simpson and Johnnie Cochran. The caption reads, IT DON’T MEAN SHIT IF THE GLOVE DOESN’T FIT. In the middle of the room there’s a table with two chairs on either side and a microphone in the middle. Between the drink machine and the pastry counter, a camera on a tripod blinks its red eye.

Jalbert spreads his hands at two of the chairs. Danny and his new lawyer take them. Ella Davis sits across from them and takes out a notebook. Jalbert stands, for the time being at least. He gives the date, the time, and the names of those present. Then he gives Danny the Miranda warning again, asking if he understands his rights.

“I do,” Danny says.

“Spoiler alert, Inspectors, I’m mostly a real estate lawyer,” Ball says. “I do land, I work with a number of local banks, I coordinate buyers and sellers, I write contracts, I write the occasional will. I’m no Perry Mason or Saul Goodman. Just here to make sure you are respectful and open-minded.”

“Who is Saul Goodman?” Jalbert asks. He sounds suspicious.

Ball sighs. “TV show. Fictional character. Forget it. Ask your questions.”

Jalbert says, “Speaking of respect, I want to tell you who deserved some—Yvonne Wicker. What she got instead was raped, stabbed repeatedly, and murdered.”

Ball frowns for the first time. “You are not prosecuting this case, sir. You are investigating it. Save the speeches and ask your questions so we can get out of here.”

Jalbert shows his pegs again in what he may assume is a smile. “Just so you understand, Mr. Ball. Understand and remember. We’re talking about the cold-blooded murder of a defenseless young woman.”

“Understood.” Ball doesn’t look cowed—at least Danny doesn’t think so—but the pleasant smile is gone.

Jalbert nods to his partner. Ella Davis says, “How are you this morning, Danny? Doing okay?”

Danny thinks, So it’s good cop and bad cop after all.

“Other than everyone in Oak Grove thinking I’m in police trouble, I’m doing all right. You?”

“I’m fine.”

“They’ll know what kind of trouble this is soon enough, won’t they?”

“Not from us,” she says. “We don’t talk about our cases until they’re made.”

But Becky will, Danny thinks. And once she tells Cynthia Babson, it’ll go viral.

“We’d like to have a peek at your phone,” Davis says. “Just a matter of routine. Would that be okay?” She’s giving him direct eye contact and a smile. “Just a look at your locations could eliminate you from our enquiries. Save time for us and trouble for you.”

“Bad idea,” Ball says to Danny. “I think they need a special search warrant for your phone, or they would have taken it already.”

Ignoring him, still wearing her best trust me smile, Davis says, “And you’d have to unlock it for us, of course. Apple is very touchy about the privacy issue.”

Jalbert has retreated to the pastry counter, content to let the good cop carry the ball, at least for now. As he pours himself some coffee he says, “It would go a long way toward establishing trust, Danny.”

Danny almost says You trust me about as far as you could throw this table, but keeps it to himself. He doesn’t need Ball—likeable, but clearly out of his depth—to tell him the less he says, the better. Hostile comments won’t help, no matter how much he’d like to make them. He can tell the truth; that won’t get him in trouble. Trying to explain the truth might.

Danny takes his phone out of his pocket and looks at it. 10:23 already. How the time flies when you’re having fun, he thinks, and puts it away again. “I’m going to wait on that until we see how this goes.”

“We don’t actually need a warrant,” Jalbert says. Now that he has his coffee, he’s retreated to the poster of O.J. and his lawyer.

“Pretty sure that’s bogus,” Ball says, “but I could phone a colleague to make sure. Want me to do that, Inspectors?”

“I’m sure Danny will make the right call,” Davis says. The flint-eyed woman who came to Wilder High with Jalbert is gone. This woman is younger and prettier, projecting an I’m-on-your-side vibe.

At least trying to, Danny thinks.

“There’s no event data recorder on your truck,” she says. “Do you know what that is?”

Danny nods. “Darn thing doesn’t even have a backup camera. When you put it in reverse you actually have to turn around and look out the back window.”

She nods. “So you’ll have to help us with your travels over the last few weeks, can you do that?”

“There’s not much. I did go to see my brother in Boulder the weekend after school let out. I flew.”

“That would be the weekend of—?”

Jalbert is looking at his phone. “June 3rd and 4th?”

“That sounds right. He works at the Table Mesa King Soopers.” He feels like saying more, he’s very proud of Stevie, but he leaves it at that.

Earnest, wide-eyed, still smiling, Ella Davis says, “Let’s try to be exact, Danny. This is important.”

Don’t you think I know that?he wants to say. You’re playing with my life here.

“I went on Friday afternoon. Flew United. Came back on Sunday, my flight to Great Bend left late and I didn’t get home until after midnight. So actually it was Monday morning by the time I was back in my own bed.”

“Thank you, we’ll check on that. Other trips?”

Danny thinks it over. “Drove up to Wichita to see my ex on a Sunday. That was before the dream.”

Jalbert snorts.

Ball, looking at his own phone, says, “Could it have been the 11th of June?”

Danny thinks. “Must have been. Otherwise, I’ve just been here. Back and forth to school, trips to the store, picked up DJ at school a couple of times—”

“DJ?” Davis asks.

“Darla Jean. She’s my friend Becky’s daughter. Good kid.” And he can’t resist adding: “Thanks to you guys, I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of her for awhile.”

Davis ignores this. “Just to be clear, you went to Wichita to visit your ex-wife, Marjorie Coughlin, on the 11th of June?”

“Eleven,” Jalbert says, then says it again, as if to be sure of it.

“Margie, yeah. But she’s gone back to her birth name. Gervais.” Said she got tired of cough-cough-Coughlin, he doesn’t add. Once you tell yourself not to spill your guts, it gets easier.

“Hey, you were arrested for stalking her, weren’t you?” Davis says, as if just passing the time.

Ball stirs, but Danny puts a hand on his arm before he can say anything. “No. I was arrested for violating the restraining order she took out. And disturbing the peace. The charges were dropped. By her.”

“Okay, good, and now you get along!” Davis says this warmly, as if it’s an accomplishment on the level of peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Danny shrugs. “Better than the last year we were married. We had lunch that day and I fixed her turn signals. Fuse blew. So yes, we get along.”

“Okay, this is good, this is good,” Davis says, still warm and wide-eyed. “Now can you explain how Yvonne Wicker’s fingerprints happened to be on the dashboard of your truck?”

Danny ponders the question and considers the fact that he’s in an interrogation room instead of a jail cell. He gives Davis a smile and says, “Your nose is growing.”

“You think you’re very smart, don’t you?” Jalbert says from in front of the poster.

Davis gives him a look. Jalbert shrugs and flicks his two fingers at her, meaning she should carry on. He says, apropos of nothing (at least that Danny can figure out), “One, three, six.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on and tell your tale.” Slight emphasis on tale.

Davis says, “You have a little bit of a temper problem, don’t you, Danny?”

“I used to drink. I stopped.”

“That isn’t a very responsive answer.” She says it reproachfully. “If we ask your ex—and we will—what will she say about your temper?”

“She’ll say I had what you just called it, a temper problem. Past tense.”

“Oh, all gone? Is that right?”

She waits. Danny says nothing.

“Did you ever knock her around?”

“No.” Then forces himself to add, because it’s the truth: “I grabbed her by the arm once. Left a bruise. That was just before she kicked me out.”

“Never by the neck?” She smiles and leans forward, inviting confidence. “Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

“No.”

“And you never raped her?”

“Hey, come on,” Ball says. “Respect, remember?”

“I have to ask,” Davis says. “The Wicker girl was raped.”

“I never raped my wife,” Danny says. Not for the first time he’s struck by a feeling of unreality and thinks, I helped you guys. If not for me, that girl would still be a stray dog’s snack bar.

“When’s the last time you went to Arkansas City?”

The change of direction feels like whiplash. “What? I’ve never been to Arkansas in my life.”

“Arkansas City, Kansas. Near the Oklahoma border.”

“Never been there.”

“No? Well, we can’t check the EDR in your truck, can we? Because they weren’t installed in Toyota Tundras for another year. But we could check on your phone, isn’t that right?”

Danny repeats, “Let’s see how this goes.”

“How about Hunnewell? That’s also in Kan—”

Danny shakes his head. “I’ve heard of it but never been there.”

“What about the Gas-n-Go where I-35 and SR 166 intersect? Ever been there?”

“I guess not to that particular one, but they’re all pretty much the same, aren’t they?”

“You guess? Come on, Danny. This is serious.”

“If that Gas-n-Go is in Hunnewell, I’ve never been there.”

She makes a note, then gives him a reproachful look. “If we could just check your phone—”

Danny’s had enough of this. He takes it out of his pocket and slides it across the table. Jalbert steps forward and pounces on it, as if afraid Danny will change his mind.

“The passcode is 7813. And I’ll have my IT guy check it when I get it back, just to make sure you haven’t added anything.” This is pure bluff. Danny doesn’t have an IT guy.

“We don’t roll that way,” Davis says.

“Uh-huh, and you don’t lie about fingerprints, either.” He pauses. “Or DNA from semen.”

For a moment Davis looks off her game. Then she leans forward again and gives him her you can tell me anything smile. “Let’s talk about your dream, okay?”

Danny says nothing.

“Do you have these fantasies often?”

Ball says, “Come on, now. It wasn’t a fantasy if the woman’s body actually turned out to be there.”

Another snort from Jalbert.

“Well, you have to admit it’s awfully convenient,” Davis says.

“Not for me,” Danny says. “Look where I am, woman.”

“Do you mind telling us about this… dream again, Danny?”

He tells them the dream. It’s easy because it hasn’t faded a bit, and although his trip out there was similar, there’s no cross-contamination between the dream and the reality. The dream is its own thing, as real as the KICK A BUCK sign above the pastries. As real as Jalbert’s peculiar wooly widow’s peak and avid yet lusterless eyes.

When he’s finished, Davis asks—for the official record, Danny assumes, since it’s been asked before—if he’s had previous psychic flashes. Danny says he has not.

Jalbert sits down next to his partner. He drops Danny’s phone in the pocket of his black coat. “Would you be willing to take a polygraph?”

“I guess so. I’d have to go to Great Bend for that, wouldn’t I? So it would have to be after I finish work. And I’d have to get my truck back, of course.”

“Right now cleaning windows and sweeping floors is the least of your worries,” Jalbert says.

“Are we done here?” Ball says. “I believe Mr. Coughlin has answered all your questions, and more politely than I would have done in his position. And he’ll need his phone back ASAP.”

“Just a few more,” Davis says. “We can check on your trip to Colorado and your trip to Wichita, Danny, but that leaves a lot of time between the first and the twenty-third. Doesn’t it?”

Danny says, “Look at the locations on my phone. When I’m not home, it’s usually in the glove compartment of my truck. The two boys I work with at the high school can tell you I was there every day from seven-thirty to four. That’s a good amount of the time you want to know about.”

Edgar Ball isn’t a criminal lawyer, but he’s not stupid. To Jalbert he says, “Oh my. You don’t know when she was killed, do you? Or even when she was grabbed.”

Jalbert gives him a stony look. Color creeps into Ella’s cheeks. She says, “That’s not relevant to what we’re discussing. We are trying to eliminate Danny as a suspect.”

“No, you’re not,” Ball says. “You’re trying to nail him, but you don’t have a whole lot, do you? Not without a time of death.”

Jalbert wanders back to the poster of O.J. and Johnnie Cochran. Davis asks for the names of the boys Danny works with.

“Pat Grady and Jesse Jackson. Like the political guy from the seventies.”

Davis scribbles in her notebook. “Maybe your girlfriend can help us to nail down some of the times when—”

“She’s my friend, not my girlfriend.” At least she was. “And stay away from DJ. She’s just a kid.”

Jalbert chuckles. “You’re in no position to give us orders.”

“Danny, listen to me,” Davis says.

He points at her. “You know what, I’m starting to hate the sound of my first name coming out of your mouth. We’re not friends, Ella.”

This time it’s Ball putting his hand on Danny’s arm.

Davis carries on as if Danny has said nothing. She’s looking at him earnestly, the smile gone. “You’re carrying a weight. I can almost see it. That’s why you’re telling this story about a dream.”

He says nothing.

“It’s awfully far-out, you have to admit that. I mean, look at it from our point of view. I don’t even think your lawyer believes it, not for a minute.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Ball says. “More things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of in your philosophy. Shakespeare.”

“Bullcrap,” Jalbert says from the poster. “Me.”

Danny just holds the woman’s gaze. Jalbert is a lost cause. Davis might not be, in spite of her hard shell.

“You feel remorse, I know you do. Putting that barrel over Yvonne’s hand and arm so the dog couldn’t get at her anymore, that was remorse.”

He says nothing, but if she really believes that, she might be a lost cause, too. It was compassion, not remorse. Compassion for a dead woman with a charm bracelet on her mutilated wrist. But Davis is on a roll, so let her roll.

“We can help you take that weight off. It will be easy once you start. And there’s a bonus. If you make a clean breast of it, we may be able to help you. Kansas has the death penalty, and—”

“Hasn’t been used in over forty years,” Ball says. “Hickock and Smith, the ones Truman Capote wrote the book about, they were the last.”

“They might use it for the Wicker girl,” Davis persists. Danny thinks it’s interesting that young woman has become girl. But of course that’s what the prosecutor would call her: the girl. The defenseless girl. “But if you own up to what you did, the death penalty would almost certainly be off the table. Make it easier for us and for yourself. Tell us what really happened.”

“I did,” Danny says. “I had a dream. I went out to prove to myself a dream was all it was, but the girl was there. I called it in. You don’t believe me. I understand that, but I’m telling the truth. Now let’s cut the crap. Are you going to arrest me?”

Silence. Davis continues looking at him for a moment with that same warm earnestness. Then her face changes, becomes not cold but blank. Professional. She sits back and looks at Jalbert.

“Not at this time,” Jalbert says. His dusty eyes say But soon, Danny. Soon.

Danny stands up. His legs are like the legs in his dream—as if he doesn’t own them and they might carry him anywhere. Ball stands up with him. They go to the door together. Danny thinks he must be a little unsteady on his feet, or too pale, because Ball still has his hand on his arm. All Danny wants is to get out of this room, but he turns back and looks at Davis.

“The man who killed that woman is still out there,” he says. “I’m talking to you, Inspector Davis, because it’s no good talking to him. He’s made his mind up. You talk a good game, but I’m not sure you’ve made up yours. Catch him, all right? Stop looking at me and look for the man who killed her. Before he does it again.”

He might see something on her face. He might not.

Ball tugs his arm. “Come on, Danny. Let’s go.”

When they’re gone, Jalbert turns off the camera and the recorder. “That was interesting.”

She nods.

He peers into her face. “Any doubts?”

“No.”

“Because a couple of times you looked like he might actually be convincing you.”

“No doubts. He knew where she was because he put her there. That’s the logic. The dream story is TV bullshit.”

Jalbert takes Danny’s phone from the pocket of his coat. He punches in the passcode, swipes through the various apps, then turns it off again. “We’ll get this to forensics ASAP and they’ll go through the whole schmear, not just his locations going back to June 1st. Emails, texts, photos, search history. Clone it, get it back to him tomorrow or Monday.”

“Given the way he turned it over to us, I don’t think we’ll find much,” Davis says. “I didn’t expect that.”

“He’s a confident son-of-a-buck, but he may have forgotten something. Just one single text could be enough.”

Davis remembers Jalbert saying that same thing, or close to it, about one single hair in the cab of Coughlin’s truck being enough. But they found nothing. She says, “We’ll just find the one trip out to Gunnel. You know that, right? His phone was back at his trailer when he killed her and when he buried her, both at the same time or separately. Count on it.”

Jalbert says, “Four.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud. We’ll get him, Ella. That confidence of his… the arrogance… will bring him down.”

“How serious were you about the polygraph?”

Jalbert gives a humorless laugh. “He’s either a sociopath or an outright psychopath. Did you feel that?”

She considers, then says, “Actually I’m not sure I did.”

“I am sure. Seen his kind before. And nine times out of ten they can beat the poly. Which would make it pointless.”

They leave the room and walk down the hall. The young cop who brought Coughlin in asks them how it went.

“Turning the screws,” Davis says. Jalbert likes that and gives her a pat on the arm.

When they’re outside, Davis digs her cigarettes out of her bag and offers them to Jalbert, who shakes his head but tells her to go ahead, the smoking lamp is lit. She flicks her Bic and takes a deep drag. “The lawyer was right. We don’t have much, do we?”

Jalbert looks out over Main Street where not much is happening—par for the course in Manitou. “We will, Ella. Count on it. All else aside, he really does want to confess. You almost had him. He was wavering.”

Davis doesn’t think he was wavering at all, but doesn’t say so. Jalbert has been doing this for a long time and she trusts his instincts over her own.

“Two things continue to bother me,” she says.

“What?”

“How relieved he looked when you told him you had DNA from the doer and how he smiled when I told him we had her fingerprints on the dashboard of his truck. He knew I was lying.”

Jalbert runs a hand through what remains of his red and gray hair. “He knew you were bluffing.”

“But the DNA thing, it was just so…”

“So what?”

“So immediate. Like he thought he was off the hook.”

He turns to her. “Think about the dream, Ella. Did you believe that for even a single second?”

She answers without hesitation. “No. He was lying. There was no dream.”

He nods. “Keep that centered in your thoughts, and you’ll be fine.”

Jalbert has a five-room bachelor ranchette in Lawrence, almost within shouting distance of the home office in Kansas City, but he won’t be going back there until Coughlin has been arrested, indicted, and bound over for trial. His boxy two-bedroom suite in Lyons is close to both Manitou and Great Bend. Well… in Kansas terms they’re close. It’s a big state, the thirteenth largest. Jalbert likes to keep track of such things.

He stands at the window on Saturday evening, watching dusk turn to dark and thinking about the interrogation of Coughlin that morning. Ella did a fine job, Jalbert couldn’t have done better himself, but it was unsatisfying just the same. He didn’t expect Coughlin to lawyer up; he expected him to confess.

Next time, he thinks. Just have to keep grinding.

He’s good at grinding, but tonight he has nothing to grind on. Nothing to do. He doesn’t watch TV and he’s run the chairs twice. He got a couple of Hot Pockets at the convenience store across the street and zapped them in the microwave. Three minutes, 180 seconds, 1 to 18 added inclusively with 9 left over. Jalbert doesn’t like leftover numbers, but sometimes you have to live with them. The Hot Pockets aren’t particularly tasty, and Jalbert has an expense account, but he never even considers ordering from room service. What would be the point? Food is just body gasoline.

He’s never been married, he has no friends (he likes Davis, but she is and always will be an associate), he has no pets. Once, as a child, he had a parakeet but it died. He has no vices unless masturbation counts, which he does once a week. The problem of Coughlin nags at him. He’s like a fly that keeps avoiding the rolled-up newspaper.

Jalbert decides to go to bed. He’ll be up at four, but that’s all right. He likes the early hours, and he may wake with more clarity on the Coughlin problem. He undresses slowly, counting to 11 each time he takes off an item of clothing. Two shoes, two socks, pants, underpants, shirt, undershirt. That makes 88. Not a good number; it’s one favored by neo-Fascists. He takes his suitcase out from under the bed, removes the gym shorts he sleeps in, and puts them on. That takes him up to 99. He sits in the desk chair to add one more, which takes him to a hundred. A good number, one you can depend on. He goes into the bathroom. There’s no scale. He’ll ask for one tomorrow. He brushes his teeth counting strokes down from 17. He urinates, washes his hands, and kneels at the foot of his bed. He asks God to help him get justice for poor Miss Yvonne. Then he lies in the dark with his hands clasped on his narrow chest, waiting for sleep.

We don’t have much, Ella said, and she was right. They know he did it, but the truck was clean, the trailer was clean, and he showed up with a lawyer. Not a very good one, but a lawyer is a lawyer. The phone may give them something, but given the way Coughlin handed it over…

“Not at first,” Jalbert says. “He took time to think about it, didn’t he? Making sure it was safe.”

Why the lawyer? Is it possible that Coughlin doesn’t want to confess until he’s had his fifteen minutes of fame as the psychic who dreamed where the body was buried? That he wants publicity?

“If that’s what he wants, I’ll see that he gets some,” Jalbert says, and not long after that sleep takes him.

For Danny, the week of the 4th of July is the week from hell.

Pat Grady doesn’t show up for work on Monday. Danny asks Jesse if Pat is sick.

“No clue,” Jesse says. “I work with him here, otherwise we don’t hang. Maybe he thought because the 4th is tomorrow, we had today off, too.”

This doesn’t surprise Danny. Jesse Jackson is a young man on his way to somewhere. Pat Grady is a young man on his way to nowhere. Except maybe to the Manitou bars, once he’s old enough to drink. There are quite a few. Danny visited all of them back in the day.

Pat strolls in around ten, starts some story about having to help his dad, and Danny tells him he’s fired.

Pat stares at him, shocked. “You can’t do that!”

Danny says, “I just did.”

Pat gives him an unbelieving look, cheeks flushing, the acne on his forehead flaring. Then he heads for the door. When he gets there, he whirls around and shouts, “Fuck you!”

“Back atcha,” Danny says.

Pat slams out. Danny turns and sees Jesse down by the doors to the gym, rolling a mop bucket. He pauses long enough to give Danny a thumbs-up, which makes Danny grin. Pat leaves the parking lot with the motor of his poor old abused Mustang screaming. He lays forty feet of rubber. That won’t do your tires any good, Danny thinks. But at least Pat Grady is one stone out of his shoe.

When he gets home that evening (Jesse gives him a ride), his truck is parked outside his trailer. There are smears of fingerprint powder all over the cab and a lingering smell like ether, probably from the stuff they use to look for bloodstains. The keys are in the cupholder and his phone is on the passenger seat.

On Tuesday—the Glorious Fourth—Danny sleeps in. While he’s eating a late breakfast he remembers he took his keys but his phone is still in the truck. He gets it, mostly to see if he’s gotten a text from Margie, something with fireworks, maybe. There’s no Happy Fourth from her, and no emails, but he’s got a voicemail from his lawyer, asking Danny to call. Danny has a good idea what that’s about. He wishes Ball a happy holiday. Ball wishes him one right back.

“You’re probably calling about your fee, but they didn’t bring my truck back until yesterday.” He’s wryly aware that he sounds quite a lot like Pat. “I’ll bring a check around to your office this afternoon.”

“That’s not why I called. You made the paper.”

Danny frowns. “What are you talking about? The Belleville paper?”

“Not the Telescope. Plains Truth.”

Danny pushes away his cereal bowl. “You mean that free handout? The one that’s full of coupons? I never bother with it.”

“The very one. Sarah, my assistant, called me about it so I picked one up with my morning doughnut. It’s strictly advertiser-supported so they can give it away free. Those ads must pay pretty well, because you can pick one up at every market, convenience store, feed store, and gas station across four counties. The content—such as it is—features local sports, right-wing editorials, and two or three pages of reader letters, mostly of the rant and rave variety. As far as news goes, they don’t care what they print. Which in the latest issue includes the dead woman’s name.”

“They printed it?”

“Yup, Yvonne Wicker of Oklahoma City. And listen to this: ‘Police received an anonymous tip which led them to the unfortunate young woman’s shallow grave behind an abandoned building in Gunnel, a small town near the Nebraska border. A reliable source tells Plains Truth that the tipster has been identified as Daniel M. Coughlin, currently employed as a janitor at Wilder High School. He is said to be aiding KBI detectives with their hunt for the killer.’?”

Danny is astounded. “Can they do that? Release my name when I haven’t been charged with anything?”

“It’s not accepted newspaper practice, but Plains Truth ain’t really a newspaper, just toilet reading. There’s more. It goes on to say ‘When asked how Mr. Coughlin knew the location of the body, our source was mum.’ It doesn’t tell readers to connect the dots, but it really doesn’t have to, does it?”

“Jalbert,” Danny says. The hand not holding his phone is curled into a fist.

“Let’s say I agree, either him or Davis—”

“Not her, him.”

“—but try proving it. Half a dozen cops in the Manitou station knew; they saw us come in. Plus the one who gave you a ride to the interrogation from your trailer park. Then there’s the people in your trailer park. They could have made a pretty good guess why the cops were there.”

Sure, and Becky knew. He even told her about the dream. But still…

“He doesn’t have enough to arrest me, so he does this.”

“Jumping to conclusions really won’t help—”

“Come on, man. Did you see him? Hear him?”

Ball sighs. “Danny, you need a lawyer who can advise you better than I can. A criminal lawyer.”

“I’ll stick with you for the time being. Maybe this will blow over.”

“It might, I suppose.” Only four words, but they are enough to tell Danny that Ball thinks that is unlikely. Maybe even absurd.

On Wednesday of the week from hell, Danny finds out he’s going to lose his job.

At noon he goes out to his truck, planning to grab his dinnerbucket and join Jesse at one of the picnic tables out back. He takes his phone out of the glove compartment, checks his emails, and immediately loses his appetite. He has three. One is from the Belleville Telescope and one is from Plains Truth, both asking for comment about his connection to the murder of Yvonne Wicker. The one from Plains Truth also asks him to confirm or deny “reports that you were led to Ms. Wicker’s burial site in a dream.”

He deletes both. The third is from the Wilder County Superintendent of Schools. It informs him that due to budget cuts, his position as head custodian at Wilder High School has been eliminated. He’s instructed to finish the week, but come Monday he’ll be out of a job.

“Due to the regrettable suddenness of this reorganization,” the email continues, “your salary will continue to be paid through the month of July and the first week of August.”

If he has questions, he should get in touch with the assistant superintendent and county schools comptroller, Susan Eggers. There’s a phone number and also a Zoom link.

Danny reads this boilerplate fuck-you over several times to make sure he understands. Then he tosses the phone back into the glove compartment and cuts through the gym to the picnic table.

“Want some chili?” Jesse asks. “My ma always gives me too much. I heated it up in the mike.”

“I’ll pass. I’ve got liverwurst and cheese.”

Jesse wrinkles his nose, as if at a bad smell.

“Also,” Danny continues, “I seem to have been fired.”

Jesse puts down his plastic spoon. “Say what?”

“You heard me. Friday is my last day.”

“Why?”He pauses, then says: “Is it about the girl?”

“You know about that, huh?”

“Everybody knows about it.”

Of course they do, Danny thinks. “Well, they’re not saying that, but they couldn’t, could they? Since I didn’t do anything but report a body. They’re saying budget cuts.”

He expects more questions from Jesse about the body and how he found it, but Jesse may be the only person in Wilder or Republic County who isn’t eager to know about his bad dream. Jesse has other concerns. And God bless him for it, Danny thinks.

“Oh, man! We’re supposed to put a coat of varnish on the gym floor! I can’t do that by myself, I don’t know how!”

“It’s not rocket science. We’ll do it tomorrow. The important thing is once you start, you have to keep going. And wear a bandanna or a Covid mask. We’ll open all the windows but it’s still going to stink.”

“They can’t leave me here alone!” Jesse almost bleats this. “I don’t have any keys! And I don’t want em! Jeez, Danny, I’m Black! Something happens—cleaning supplies disappear or stuff from the canteen—who’s gonna get blamed?”

“I hear you, and I’ll find out what the plan is,” Danny says. “I have a number to call. I’m going to take care of you if I can.”

“Can they do it? Can’t you, like, sue their asses?”

“I don’t think so,” Danny says. “Kansas is an at-will state. What that means is that my employer doesn’t need to provide just cause for my termination.”

“That’s so unfair!”

Danny smiles. “For which of us?”

“Both of us, man! I mean shit!”

Danny says, “Could I still have some of that chili?”

He doesn’t call Susan Eggers that afternoon, he Zooms her. He wants to look her in the face. But first he checks the Wilder County budget for last year and the current one. He finds what he expected.

Eggers is a middle-aged woman with a helmet of gray hair, round gold-rimmed glasses, and a narrow face. An accountant’s face, Danny thinks. She’s at her desk. Behind her is a framed, jumbo-sized version of the Little House on the Prairie book jacket, little girls in the back of a Conestoga wagon, both of them looking scared to death.

“Mr. Coughlin,” she says.

“That’s right. The man you just fired.”

Eggers folds her hands and looks directly into her computer’s camera lens. “Terminated, Mr. Coughlin. And although we didn’t have to, we even gave you a valid reason—”

“Budget cuts. Yes. But the county’s school budget isn’t smaller this year, it’s actually ten per cent larger. I checked to be sure.”

She gives him a tight little smile that says Oh ye of little knowledge. “Inflation has outpaced our budget.”

Danny says, “Why don’t we cut through this, Ms. Eggers? You didn’t terminate me, you fired me. And the reason wasn’t budgetary. It was because of rumors about a crime I didn’t commit and haven’t been charged with. Tell the goddam truth.”

Susan Eggers clearly isn’t used to being talked to this way. Her cheeks flush and a vertical line grooves her previously smooth forehead. “Do you really want to go there? All right. I have been given some rather unpleasant information about you, Mr. Coughlin. Aside from your current situation, you were arrested for violating a restraining order after stalking your ex-wife. You were jailed in Wichita, I understand.”

The jail part is true, but he was only in the cooler for a night and it was for being drunk and obstreperous. Saying this, however, won’t help his case… not that he has a case to make.

“You’ve been talking to a man named Jalbert, haven’t you? You or the superintendent? Inspector with KBI? Wears a black coat and baggy jeans?”

She doesn’t answer, but she blinks. That’s answer enough. “Mr. Coughlin, the school department has been more than generous with you, in my view. We are paying you through July for work—”

“And the first week of August, don’t forget that.”

“Yes, through July and the first week of August for work you won’t be doing.” She hesitates, clearly debating the wisdom of going forward, but he’s stung her. If he wants the goddam truth, he can have it. “Let us say, for the sake of discussion, that your current… situation… has played a part. Your name is in print, in connection with a terrible crime. What would you do if it came to your attention that a high school custodian in your district, a man who is around teenage girls every school day, was an accused wife abuser and is now being questioned by the police about a rape and murder?”

He could tell her that Margie never accused him of abuse, she just wanted him to stop yelling on her lawn at two in the morning—come on back, Margie, I’ll change. He could tell her that he has no idea who killed Yvonne Wicker. He could tell her that he’s morally sure the freebie rag got his name from Inspector Jalbert, because Jalbert knew they’d have no qualms about publishing it. None of that is going to make a dime’s worth of difference to this woman.

“Are we done, Mr. Coughlin? Because I have work to do.”

“Not quite, because you don’t seem to have thought about what’s going to happen at WHS once I’m gone. The whatdoyoucallit, ramifications. Who’s going to replace me? I have one summer hire, a kid named Jesse Jackson. He’s a good kid and an excellent worker, but he can’t do the job by himself. For one thing, he doesn’t know how. For another, he’s only seventeen. Too young to take on the responsibility. For a third, he’ll be back in class full-time come September.”

“He will be let go as well,” Eggers says. “When you lock up on Friday, the keys should be returned to the school principal, Mr. Coates. He lives right there in Manitou, I believe.”

“Does Jesse also get paid for July and the first week of August?” Danny knows the answer to this question, but he wants to hear her say it.

If he was hoping for embarrassment, he doesn’t get it. What he gets is an indulgent smile. “I’m afraid not.”

“He needs that money. He’s helping out at home.”

“I’m sure he’ll find another job.” Like they’re just lying around in Wilder County. She picks up a paper on her desk, studies it, puts it down. “I believe you had another boy, Patrick Grady. His parents have lodged a complaint. They called Mr. Coates and told him the boy quit because you threatened him.”

For a moment Danny is so amazed and infuriated he can’t even speak. Then he says, “Pat Grady was fired for chronic tardiness and sloppy work. He wasn’t threatened, he’s just a common garden-variety slacker. Jesse would tell you the same thing, if you were to ask him. Which I doubt you’ll do.”

“There’s hardly any need for that. It’s just one more part of a picture that’s less than handsome. A picture of your character, Mr. Coughlin. Be happy that we’re letting you go for budgetary reasons. It will look better on your resume when you seek further employment. And now, as I’m rather busy—”

“The school is just going to stand empty for the rest of the summer?” All else aside, Danny hates to think of that. WHS is a good old lady, and there’s so much wear and tear in the course of a school year. It’s July and he’s barely gotten started. “And what about in the fall?”

“Not your concern,” Eggers says. “Thank you for calling, Mr. Coughlin. I hope your current problems work out. Goodbye.”

“Wait just a damn—”

But there’s no point, because Susan Eggers is gone.

Early on Thursday evening of the week from hell, Danny is in the Manitou IGA, doing his weekly shopping. He likes to do this chore on Thursdays because for most working people the eagle screams on Friday and the market isn’t very busy. His own paycheck—one of his last five or six—will go into Citizens National via direct deposit the following day. He also has a little over three thousand put aside, combined savings and checking, which won’t stretch very far. He doesn’t pay hellimony to his ex, but he sends her fifty or sixty bucks every week or two. He owes her that just for the trouble he’s caused her. He won’t be able to do it much longer and he dreads the call to her he’ll have to make, explaining his situation. Although she probably knows already. Good news goes Pony Express, bad news takes a jet. And he no longer has to support Stevie. Danny’s younger brother is still living in the group home in Melody Heights, but he’s probably bringing home more than Danny’s weekly wage.

Maybe he’ll end up supporting me, Danny thinks. That would be a hoot.

He’s at the meat counter, trying to decide between a one- or two-pound package of ground chuck (it’s the cheapest) when a loud voice behind him says, “Daniel Coughlin? Need to ask you a few questions.”

It’s Jalbert. Of course it is. This evening he’s exchanged his baggy black coat for a blue windbreaker with KBI on the left breast. Although Danny can’t see the back of the windbreaker, he knows the same letters will be there, only bigger. Jalbert could have come up beside him and spoken in a normal tone, but he also could have chosen the parking lot. Other browsers along the meat counter are looking around, which is what Jalbert wants.

“I’ve already answered your questions.” Danny drops a package of meat into his cart—one pound instead of two, it’s time to start economizing. “If you want to ask more, I’ll want my lawyer present.”

“You have that right,” Jalbert says in that same loud voice. Danny thinks the man’s reddish wooly hair looks almost like an arrowhead, or the business end of a rusty spear. The deepset eyes stare at Danny the way they might stare at a new species of bug. “The right to an attorney. You’ll have to wait at the police station until he gets there, though.”

Same overloud voice. People have begun to congregate at the head and foot of the meat aisle, some pushing their carts, some just gawking. “Or we can do it here. Your choice.”

With everyone listening, Danny thinks. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

“Split the difference. Let’s step outside.”

Danny doesn’t give Jalbert a chance to object, just walks past him (restraining the urge to bump his shoulder on the way by) and heads for the door. It isn’t as if the inspector can restrain him; Danny outweighs him by fifty or sixty pounds, and Jalbert once again isn’t wearing a gun, just his badge clipped to his belt. Also his ID on a lanyard hung around his neck. Danny doesn’t look to see if Jalbert is following him.

The checkout women have stopped working their registers. Two of them he knows from the high school. He knows a lot of people from the high school, because he’s worked at WHS since leaving Wichita. As the OUT doors slide apart to let him emerge into the warm Kansas night, it occurs to him that nobody he passed in the aisles said hello to him, although he recognized several of them, including a couple of teachers.

Past the white light falling on the sidewalk from the front windows of the market, he turns to face Jalbert. “You’re hounding me.”

“I am pursuing my case. If anyone got hounded, it was poor Miss Yvonne. You hounded her to death. Didn’t you?”

Recalling some TV show, Danny responds, “Asked and answered.”

“We’ve been through your phone. There are a great many gaps in the location log. I’ll need you to explain each one. If you can.”

“No.”

Jalbert’s brows—as wooly and tangled as his receding flow of hair—fly up. An odd thought comes to Danny: He may be hounding me, but maybe I’m returning the favor. Those circles under his eyes are deeper and darker, I think.

“No? No? Don’t you want to be eliminated as a suspect, Danny?”

“You don’t want that. It’s the last thing you want.” He points at the bright yellow KBI on the breast of Jalbert’s windbreaker. “You might as well be wearing a billboard. Hey, have you lost weight?”

Jalbert does his best not to look surprised at this unexpected question, but Danny thinks he is. Wishful thinking? Maybe.

“I need you to fill in those blank spots, Danny. As many as possi—”

“No.”

“Then you’ll be seeing a lot of me. You know that, don’t you?”

“How about a polygraph? I’ve got my truck back, and I’ll be able to go just about any day next week, since you saw to it I lost my job.”

Jalbert shows the pegs that pass for his teeth. He must eat a lot of soft food, Danny thinks. “It’s interesting how people such as yourself—sociopaths—are able to blame all their misfortunes on others.”

“The polygraph, Inspector. What about the polygraph?”

Jalbert waves one hand in front of his face, as if shooing away a troublesome fly. “Sociopaths almost always beat the poly. It’s a proven fact.”

“Or it could be you’re afraid it would show I’m telling the truth.”

“Twenty-one,” Jalbert says.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you all right?” It gives Danny great pleasure to ask this question. That’s low, and it’s mean, but he’s just been embarrassed in front of his town. What used to be his town, anyway.

Jalbert says, “You killed her.”

“I did not.”

“Come on. Own up to it. Take the weight, Danny. You’ll feel better. It’s just you and me here. I’m not wearing a wire, and you can deny it later. Do it for me, and do it for yourself. Get it off your chest.”

“There’s nothing to confess. I had a dream. I went to where she was buried. I told the police. That’s all there is.”

Jalbert laughs. “You’re persistent, Danny. I’ll give you that. But I am, too.”

“Here’s an idea. If you think I did it, charge me. Arrest me.”

Jalbert says nothing.

“You can’t, can you? I bet you’ve talked to the county attorney up in Wilder City and he’s told you that you don’t have enough. No forensic evidence, no video evidence, no witnesses. You’ve got an old man who saw me at that Texaco, but it was the same day I reported the body, so he can’t help you. Basically, Inspector, you’re fucked.”

Which is funny, Danny reflects, because he is also fucked. Jalbert has seen to that.

Jalbert grins and points a finger at Danny. The grin reminds him of the quarter moon in his dream. “You did it. I know it, you know it, twenty-eight.”

Danny says, “I’m going in and finishing my shopping. You can follow me if you want. I can’t stop you and the damage is done. It was done when you leaked my name to that rag.”

Jalbert doesn’t deny it, and he doesn’t follow Danny back into the IGA. His job is finished. Everyone looks at Danny as he shops. Some actually swerve their carts out of the way when they see him coming.

He goes home to his trailer in Oak Grove. He puts away his groceries. He allowed himself a box of Nabisco Pinwheels—his favorite cookie—and intended to eat a couple while watching TV. Now he doesn’t want to watch TV, and he certainly doesn’t want any cookies. If he tried to eat one, he thinks he’d choke on it. He’s never felt so angry since being bullied by a bigger boy in middle school, and he’s certainly never felt so… so…

“So cornered,” he murmurs.

Will he sleep tonight? Not unless he can calm down. And he wants to calm down, wants to get hold of himself. Jalbert looks like he hasn’t been sleeping and he’d like Danny to join him in that. Get a little ragged, Danny, do something stupid. Like to take a swing at me? Think how good it would make you feel! Try it!

Is there something he can do to take some of the pressure off? There might be.

He gets out his wallet and thumbs through it. Each of the investigators has given him a card with their KBI numbers and extensions on the front and their cell numbers on the back. Just in case he gets tired of his unbelievable dream story and decides to tell them what really happened. He puts Jalbert’s card back in his wallet and calls Davis’s cell. She answers on the first ring, her hello almost drowned out by what’s going on near her, or possibly around her. It’s an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung by young voices.

“Hello, Inspector Davis. It’s Danny Coughlin.”

There’s a moment of silence from her end, as if she doesn’t know how to respond to this 7 PM call from her prime suspect. He thinks he has blindsided her as he was blindsided by Jalbert, which seems fair… at least in his current red-assed mood. The pause is long enough for Danny to hear happy birthday dear Laurie, happy birthday to you, and then Davis is back. “Give me a second.” Then, to the partygoers (Danny assumes it’s a party), “I have to take this.”

The singing fades as she carries her unexpected call to somewhere quieter. It’s time enough for him to consider verbs. Talked? No. Interviewed? No, that’s totally wrong. Questioned? Right… but also wrong. Then he has it.

“How can I help you, Danny?”

“Half an hour ago your partner ambushed me in the supermarket while I was doing my shopping.”

Another pause. Then, “We still have questions about your locations during those three weeks we’re concerned with. I did speak to your brother and confirmed you were there on the first weekend in June. Is he on the spectrum?”

Danny wants to ask if she upset Stevie—he’s easily upset when he’s out of his comfort zone—but he’s not going to let her swerve him away from what he wants to tell her.

“Instead of that black sport jacket of his he was wearing a windbreaker with KBI on the front and back. He didn’t have a bullhorn and didn’t need one, he was plenty loud. Not too many people shop on Thursday evening, but everyone who was there had a good listen. And a good look.”

“Danny, you sound a bit paranoid.”

“Nothing paranoid about thirty people watching while you get rousted. I got him to follow me outside when I realized what he was up to. And you know what? There were no questions. Once we were on the sidewalk it was the same refrain—confess, you did it, you’ll feel better.”

“You will,” she says earnestly. “You really will.”

“I called to ask you a couple of questions.”

“It’s not my job to answer your questions, Danny. It’s your job to answer mine.”

“But see, these aren’t about the case. At least not directly. They’re more of what I’d call a procedural nature. The first is this. Would you have come up to me in the IGA wearing your cop windbreaker and making sure everyone heard what you were asking?”

She doesn’t reply.

“Come on, it’s a simple question. Would you have embarrassed me in front of my neighbors?”

This time her reply is immediate, low, and furious. “You did a lot more than embarrass Yvonne Wicker. You raped her. You killed her!”

“What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty, Inspector Davis? I only found her. But we’ve already been around that mulberry bush and it has nothing to do with what I’m asking. Would you have done it the way Jalbert did, especially when he had absolutely nothing new to question me about?”

Danny can hear party people, very faint. The pause is quite long before she says, “Each investigator has his own techniques.”

“That’s your answer?”

She gives a short, exasperated laugh. “I’m not on the stand. You don’t get to cross-examine me. Since you have nothing substantive, I’m going to end this c—”

“Does the name Peter Andersson mean anything to you? That’s Andersson with two esses.”

“Why would it?”

“He’s a writer for a freebie newspaper called Plains Truth. They printed Ms. Wicker’s name. Is that usual procedure? Giving out the names of murder victims when their next of kin hasn’t been notified?”

“I… they were notified!” At last Ella Davis sounds flustered. “Last week!”

“But the Telescope didn’t have it. Or if they did, they didn’t print it. Plains Truth did. And what about my name? They printed that, too. Is giving out the names of people who haven’t been charged with a crime part of KBI procedure?”

More silence. Danny hears a faint pop. He thinks it might have been a birthday balloon.

“Your name was printed? You’re actually claiming that?”

“Pick up a copy and see for yourself. We know who leaked it, don’t we? And we know why. He has nothing concrete, only a story he refuses to believe. Can’t believe. Doesn’t have enough imagination to believe. The same is true of you, but at least you didn’t give my name to the only rag that would have run it. That’s why I called you.”

“Danny, I—” She stops there before she can maybe say apologize. Danny doesn’t know that was the word on the tip of her tongue, but he’s pretty sure.

She rewinds. “Your name could have been leaked to that paper by any number of people. Very likely by one of your neighbors at the trailer park. Your idea that Frank Jalbert is persecuting you is absurd.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Let me tell you what I know about Plains Truth,” Danny says. “I picked one up on my way home from work. It’s my second to last day. I’ve been let go. I have that to thank you for, too.”

She makes no reply.

“It’s mostly ads with a few local news stories thrown in… plus the crime stories, they love those. Anything from cow tipping to arson. It gets people to pick the damn thing up.”

“Danny, I really think this conversation has gone on long enough.”

He plows ahead. “There are no crusading reporters on the Plains Truth staff. They don’t do investigations. Andersson and a couple of others sit on their asses and let the news come to them. In this case, Wicker’s name and mine. Somebody picked up the phone and gave it to them.”

“If you’re going to ask me to find out who did that, you’re dreaming. Reporters protect their sources.”

Danny laughs. “Calling the guys who work for that rag reporters is like calling a remedial math kid Einstein. I think Peter Andersson will give you a name, if he got one. Just push him a little. The way you pushed me.”

Silence, but she hasn’t ended the call. He can still hear the party, very faint. Is Laurie her daughter? A niece?

“A name, not the name,” Danny says. “If Andersson even asked for one, Jalbert would have said he’s with the Manitou PD or the Highway Patrol and hung up. A reputable paper wouldn’t have published an anonymous tip without another source, but they did, and happy to do it. It was him, Inspector. I know it and I think you know it, too.”

“Goodbye, Danny. Don’t call me again. Unless you’d like to confess, that is.”

Shot in the dark time. “Has he been spouting random numbers? Not having to do with anything, just off the cuff?”

Nothing.

“Don’t want to talk about that? Okay. Wish the birthday girl—” he begins, but she’s gone.

He immediately calls Stevie in Boulder. His brother answers as he always does, sounding like a recorded voicemail message. “You have reached Steven Albert Coughlin.”

“Hi, Stevie, it’s—”

“I know, I know,” Stevie says, laughing. “Danny-Danny-bo-banny, banana-fanna-fo-fanny. How you doin, brother-man?”

That says everything Danny called to find out. Ella Davis didn’t tell Stevie that his big brother was under suspicion of murder. She was… careful? Maybe more. Maybe the word he’s looking for is diplomatic. Danny doesn’t want to like her, but he does a little bit, for that. Stevie has his special ability, and he’s developed—slowly—some social skills, but he’s emotionally fragile.

“I’m in good shape, Stevie. Did my friend Ella Davis call you?”

“Yes, the lady. She said she was a police inspector and you were helping them with a case. Are you helping them with a case, Danny-bo-banny?”

“Trying,” he says, then guides the conversation away. They talk about Nederland, where Stevie goes hiking on the weekends. They talk about a dance Stevie went to with his friend Janet and how they kissed three times after it was over, while they were walking home. Someone is playing music loud and Stevie shouts at them to turn it down, which he never could have done as a teenager; back then he would have simply struck himself in the side of the head until someone made him stop.

Danny says he has to go. His anger is mostly gone. Talking to Stevie does that. Stevie says okay, then says the usual: “Ask me one!”

Danny is ready. “Folgers Special Roast.”

Stevie laughs. It’s a beautiful, joyful sound. When he’s happy, he’s really happy. “Aisle 5, top shelf on the right as you go toward the meat counter, price twelve dollars and nine cents. It’s actually Classic Roast.” He lowers his voice confidentially. “Folgers Special Roast has been discontinued.”

“Good one, Stevie. I have to go.”

“Okay, Danny-bo-banny. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He’s glad it was Davis who talked to Stevie. The thought of Jalbert doing it—of coming anywhere near his brother—makes Danny feel cold to the bone.

Ella Davis puts her phone in the pocket of her slacks and goes back to the party. Her sister is doling out cake and ice cream to half a dozen little girls wearing party hats. Davis’s daughter, birthday girl and star of tonight’s show, keeps casting greedy eyes at the pile of presents on the sideboard. Laurie is eight today. The gifts will be opened soon and soon forgotten—except maybe for Adora, a doll that cost Davis forty hard-earned bucks. The little girls, fueled by sugar and primed to party hearty, will play games in the living room and their shrieks will fill her sister’s house. By eight o’clock they’ll be ready to fall asleep while the umpteenth showing of Frozen plays on the TV.

“Who was that?” her sister asks. “Was it your case?”

“Yes.” One dish of ice cream has already been spilled. Mitzi, Regina’s beagle, gets on that right away.

“It wasn’t him, was it?” Regina asks, whispering. “Coughlin?” Then: “Use your fork, Olivia!”

“No,” Davis lies.

“When are you going to arrest him?”

“I don’t kn—”

“Arrest WHO?” a little girl bugles. Her name is Mary or Megan, Ella can’t remember which. “Arrest WHO?”

“Nobody,” Regina says. “Mind your beeswax, Marin.”

“I don’t know, Reg. That’s above my pay grade.”

When the cake and ice cream have been served and the girls are eating, Davis excuses herself and goes out on the back porch for a cigarette. She’s troubled by the idea that Frank approached Coughlin in the market, deliberately marking him out, saying to the witnesses to the confrontation this is him, this is the guy who did it, get a good look.

She’s more troubled by the idea that Jalbert may have given Coughlin’s name to the only publication that would run it. She doesn’t want to believe he’d do that, and mostly she doesn’t, but there can be no doubt that Frank has homed in on Coughlin. He’s fixated.

Wrong word, she tells herself. The right one is dedicated.

She’s most troubled by Coughlin himself. He did seem relieved when Frank said they had DNA, and was happy to give a sample for comparison. He did know Davis was lying about the girl’s fingerprints on the dashboard of his truck. But that could have been because he wiped them. It could also have been because Wicker—poor Miss Yvonne to Jalbert—was never in the cab at all; he could have wrapped her dead body in a tarpaulin and put it in back. If he got rid of the tarp, it would also explain why they found no hair, prints, or DNA in the truck bed. But why wouldn’t he have buried her in the tarpaulin?

Or it could have been because Yvonne Wicker was never in the truck at all.

No. I don’t accept that.

Coughlin also offered to take a polygraph, almost begged to take one. Frank had shot that one down, and for good reasons, but—

Her sister comes out. “Laurie’s opening her presents,” she says, with the faintest etch of acid. “Do you care to join?”

What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty, Inspector Davis?

“Yes,” Ella says, putting out her cigarette. “Absolutely.”

Reggie takes her by the shoulders. “You look troubled, hon. Was it him?”

Davis sighs. “Yes.”

“Proclaiming his innocence?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll feel better once he’s locked up, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

Later, with the girls in their jammies and clustered on the living room floor, entranced as always when Elsa and Anna sing “For the First Time in Forever,” Ella asks Reggie if she’s ever had a psychic experience. Like a dream that came true.

“Not me, but my friend Ida dreamed Horst was going to have a heart attack, and two weeks later he did.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“So you believe such things are possible.”

Reggie considers this. “Well, I don’t think Ida is a liar, but I’d believe it more if she’d told me about that dream before Horst had his heart attack. And it’s not like he wasn’t asking for one, fat as he is. Look at your kiddo, Els! She loves that doll!”

Laurie is cradling auburn-haired Adora to her chest and Davis suddenly has her own vision: Danny Coughlin stabbing Yvonne Wicker again and again, then climbing on top of her in a cornfield and raping her even as she bled to death. They know it was a cornfield because there was cornsilk in her hair.

If he did that, he deserves everything Frank throws at him, she thinks. Then, standing in the doorway next to her sister, she realizes it’s the first time that deadly (and disloyal, that too) two-letter word has entered her thinking.

There’s something else, too, and she’s willing to admit—to herself, only to herself—that it was what really shook her. Has he been spouting random numbers? Not having to do with anything, just off the cuff? She’s heard Frank do that several times, more since they’ve been investigating the Wicker murder, and it probably means nothing, but he’s lost weight and he’s so fixated on Coughlin…

Don’t use that word! Notfixated, dedicated. He’s Wicker’s advocate, he wants to give her justice.

Only what if if is the right word?