“See? You did it. Now you’re done.”

She put on her duty hat.

“Now I have to do one little sheriff thing and I’ll be right back. Just sit tight, bud.”

She locked him in, then looked back from the floodlit phalanx of red-and-white campaign signs staked in the yard and smiled reassuringly at her son’s face, bunched in the window. She felt weary and tight as she raised her hand to knock. Any sheriff does a thousand difficult things—telling a mother that her son has died. Just another tough moment, Heidi.

Becky Rilke-Rickreiner answered the door in zebra tights and stood wide and mute behind her screen door.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you. I need to speak with—”

“Barry!” she screeched and disappeared. “You won’t believe this! Nine-thirty, you won’t believe who’s at the door!”

“Two things,” she began when BARRY HER slapped into view holding a beer and wearing wet red swimming trunks, blinding her with his pale, soft, nearly nude body, a grub who would be sheriff. “One, I need to make you aware of a possible threat to your safety and recommend that, until you hear otherwise, you open this door only to friends and family and use caution when going out.”

The grub rolled his eyes.

“Two, I need to know where you were between ten A.M. and two P.M. today.”

“What kinda shit is this?”

“This? This is what a sheriff does. Take notes if you want.”

“Threat from who?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rickreiner, but that information is part of an ongoing investigation. Use caution is all I can tell you. You went to law enforcement school, I’m told, so you know how it is. Stay home if possible. You’re at risk if you don’t. I need an answer: where you were between the hours of ten and two?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Am I wrong? You didn’t go to school?”

“You’re making something up against me, is that it?”

“All you have to do is tell me where you were.”

“Get a lawyer!” screeched Becky from somewhere. “Tell the bitch you got a lawyer and get her ass off the property!”

He winced. The sheriff said, “It’d be way cheaper just to tell me where you were. You weren’t doing anything you shouldn’t be doing, I’m sure. Anyway, a sheriff’s life is pretty much an open book. Everybody knows your business, all the time. Accountability, right? You’d be practicing for later.”

The glint had drained from his eyes. “I was here,” he said to the doorframe.

“Someone to verify that?”

“Her,” he said.

“Thank you. Mrs. Rickreiner?”

“He was here!”

“Thank you.”

Back in the van, she told Taylor, “And now Mommy’s all done too. Let’s go home.”