The sheriff’s pulse rose beneath her sticky skin. The van’s AC roared and dripped beneath the hood. The heat had peaked at a brutal 106 degrees. The temperature had since dropped a bit as the sun lowered, but the humidity had risen a dozen percent, and from now through dawn were the hours when the elderly had breathing problems. She looked at Belle, seventy-four years old. The heat wave had forced her into loose cutoff jeans shorts and a baggy white bikini top, both from a time when apparently she had the goods to fill them. She had tied up her long gray hair into an angry-looking knot. Her fringed leather cigarette purse hung like shredded meat about her hollow waist. A pair of old blue flip-flops exposed her hammertoes. Her red face gleamed with sweat.

“Mom—”

“First of all, he would not change into his swimsuit. Then this kid started talking to him and he pushed the kid into the water. I said, ‘Taylor, no pushing.’ He took a lap around the pool and did it again. Then the kid’s mom called him a blankety-blank-blank little monster.”

“What kid’s mom?”

While Belle rolled her eyes, the sheriff felt the blankety-blanks like gunshots, her anger rising. What kind of mother calls someone else’s kid names?

“Which mom?”

“Oh, just take a guess,” Taylor’s grandmother said. “Becky Rilke-Rickreiner, that’s who. Big as a house. Sitting on the edge dangling her fat feet in the water. She screeches bloody murder at your son, and I’m thinking, good, now the bitch feels better, your son learned his lesson, and it’s over.”

“Mom—”

“But, no,” Belle rasped. Sweat dripped off her nose. She almost had to bite the weighty air to get enough inside her lungs. “Your son waits awhile. He bides his time. Pulls his hat down. And keeps walking circles around the pool in his little cowboy jacket.”

The sheriff glanced at her watch and felt her stomach twist. She was needed as a mother now. But nearly the whole day had slid by and she had so much left to do. A dead man’s name to be discovered, his family to be notified. Another man in critical care who needed questioning. A suspect at large, Patience Goodgolly, who needed to be found. On top of this, she needed to get together with Denise and Rhino on a better strategy for deploying deputies to visit the vulnerable, many of whom didn’t know to ask for help. And she still hadn’t made her daily visit to the high school gym, open as a public cooling center, to thank the on-site volunteers and the drivers who brought people in. She still hadn’t managed to get herself a pregnancy test. And Harley’s all-star game hadn’t ended yet. A hundred miles away, he would be home by nine at the earliest.