But Ask Yourself: With oxy in plentiful supply, and more firearms than people in the Bad Axe, would you drink Killex?

Stand by for the fairy tale.

CHAPTER 13

It felt as if Harley’s mother had kicked her in the heart, the guts, and the womb, all at once, and she couldn’t breathe.

“I’m OK,” she lied to Denise.

The cold indoor air had given her goose bumps. Across her desk, Denise showed her the mug shot of a twenty-seven-year-old man named Daniel Allen Greevey, one of the CrimeNet preliminary fingerprint matches, who closely resembled the dead man they had found in the ditch.

“Yes, that looks like him,” she agreed. “Go ahead. I’m fine.”

Denise wasn’t buying her lie, but she continued reading the profile she had put together.

“U.S. Navy veteran, last known address two years ago in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he did six months for assaulting a woman on a sidewalk. Since then—”

The sheriff forced a shaky exhale and Denise stopped.

“Heidi, how do you know when a woman is having a bad day?”

“I’m overheated. I’m fine.”

“She has a tampon behind her ear, and she can’t find her cigarette.”

“Thanks, Denise. I just need to cool off.”

To avoid her dispatcher’s disbelieving eyes, the sheriff stared out the window—seventeen days overdue—and saw that since this morning two signs had appeared in the soybean field: BARRY HER and the new one: WHY ARE YOU KICKING YOURSELF?

No, she agreed with Oppo, drinking Killex is the last way I would choose to end my life.

She glanced at Blackbox on her phone to see if Oppo had replied. Yes. She was eager to read the message, but turned her phone face down on the desk.

“OK, I’m with you,” she told her dispatcher. “Daniel Greevey. Assaulted a woman in Massachusetts. Since then?”

“Since then, he’s shown up on charge sheets all over the country: vagrancy, panhandling, public intoxication, public urination…”

For sure homeless, as she and Dr. Kleekamp had thought. She tried to focus on Greevey’s mug shot. He appeared both ancient and young, tough and vulnerable. His nose had just been broken, perhaps in the arrest. His eyes burned with intense and angry bewilderment. What on earth was he doing in the Bad Axe, falling out of Gabriel Goodgolly’s buggy?

“In March of this year,” Denise resumed from her notes, “Daniel Greevey underwent a psychological assessment at a VA hospital in Fresno, California, results inconclusive. As of this June, he was cited for trespassing in St. Paul, Minnesota. After that, he turned up at Our Lady of the River, a Catholic mission in La Crosse.”

Her dispatcher raised her eyes to the sheriff’s.

“So. Yeah. An hour ago, Heidi, we got another call from Paul McCartney.”