Bender stared at his hands and seemed to be gritting his teeth. Enough silence passed that she went back to skimming Jim Golly’s letters. The man wanted to be heard but not caught. His more recent letters, probably once he started killing people and using them for fertilizer, were salted with misdirection in case someone came looking. They ship my grain to China… He grew no grain. The great river I see from my bluff used to be wild and clear, not dammed up and muddy… His sod home was on low ground thirty miles from the Mississippi.

After a few quiet minutes, Bender recovered to complete his report. A volunteer group was heading out to retrieve Fanta’s body. Vigdis Torkelson had begun making memorial arrangements and she figured the event would fill Farmstead’s baseball stadium if they could get a permit. Until the sheriff was stronger, Bender would be directing the interrogations of Patience and Jon Golly, and organizing a forensic search of Golly’s compound. At last he dropped a sour little Benderism: “I guess we’ll find out just how hard the top job really is.”

She smiled at him.

“Well, when you find out, Dick, let me know, OK?”

Yesterday’s remarkable display of team spirit aside, Lyndsey Luck wasn’t feeling well enough yet to work a duty shift, but after Bender was gone she stopped by in jeans and her DEATH ROE SURVIVOR T-shirt. She brought a flower arrangement that she must have driven sixty miles round trip to acquire. The sheriff and her young deputy had their first real conversation.

“What I wonder,” Deputy Luck said as they concluded, with the sheriff’s family waiting in the corridor, “is, like, I’m starting out, and things just seem so complicated, and every week stuff seems to get even more complicated, and I’m starting to wonder when I’ll ever stop feeling like a rookie. You know?”

The sheriff thought for a moment.

“I do know. Yes. So, when you become sure that things are truly far more complicated than they ever seemed when you started… that’s when you’ll know you’re not a rookie anymore.”

Just then Dylan burst into the room ahead of Taylor, shouting, “Mommy! All the stupid signs are gone!”

“All the stupid signs are gone,” Taylor added.

Harley confirmed.

“Every last one. You are now officially unopposed. It’s a couple months early, but congratulations on your reelection.”