Gallows Hill at night. Floodlights and sidewalks wet from spitting sprinklers, everything clean and walkable, a small playground every mile. The cars in driveways are a mixture of BMWs and Subarus, Mercedeses and Hondas, a Lexus here, a Porsche there. Atlanta wonders what it must be like: to buy gourmet food and to have migrant housekeepers and to know what it means to pump the really expensive gas. Then she wonders what it’s like on the other end of the spectrum: to have no car to drive, no house to clean, no money for any food at all.

She’s trying to figure out where she falls in this spectrum and whether or not she feels envious that she doesn’t have all this or guilty because she’s still a white girl in America, when she sees Shane riding up on his dingy, rust-gobbled ten-speed, panting.

“The hill,” he says, gasping, leaning up against the light pole. That’s the other thing—all the homes and developments in Gallows Hill are lit by bright white streetlights. Where she’s at down in the valley—or, worse, on the other side on Grainger Hill with the trailer parks and dirty Amish—everything’s dead and dark, so when you hear a sound in the woods you don’t know if it’s a skunk or a rabbit. Or someone come to hurt you. Sometimes she hears screaming in the woods, a sound like a woman getting killed, but everyone assures her it’s just a fox’s cry.

“You okay?” she asks Shane.

“Yeah.” But it comes out as a breathy gyeaaaauuhh. He looks like he might throw up.

“You can throw up if you have to.”

“I’m not—” Cough, cough. “Not going to throw up. So what’s—” He gags a little, then spits. Hawwwwwk, ptoo. “What’s up?”

She’d called him, left a message with his mother. Told him to meet her up on Gallows Hill around nine thirty. She’s not sure if she’s surprised he came. It’s been a while. “I’m . . . doing something for someone.”

“Could you be a little more vague?”

“I’m trying to solve a murder.” Soon as the words are out of her mouth she knows she shouldn’t have said it like that, because his eyes light up and he thinks she’s talking about Chris. “Not Chris. A dog.”

The fire in his eyes dims. “A dog murder. Is that a thing?”

“I dunno. I guess. Remember Chomp-Chomp?”

Now the fire’s truly gone as Shane’s brow darkens—his eyes smoldering black briquettes. Of course he remembers Chomp-Chomp.

“Him?”