The woman stepped off Fanta. He let light back into his eyes and saw a nude and bloated old man limp around the pickup wearing only orange water shoes, feeling his way as if mostly blind. A massive black dog stayed close, the handle on its leather harness just in touch with the man’s wriggling fingers.

“I was cooling off in the creek,” the man announced, each word a throttled puff through ragged lungs.

Fanta managed to half sit. The woman kicked him down.

“Be nice, Faithy.”

Fanta gaped in revulsion. The man was hairless, spotted all over like an old banana. A great red goiter hung below his ear. Like the whitetail buck, his torso was shagged with sacs of empty gray skin, mosquitoes riding him by the dozens. He released the sidewall of the pickup and thrust an eczematous hand into empty space above Fanta. He was offering to shake.

“Golly,” he said. “Some might call me the bad Golly. But you can just call me Jim. Or, as Faithy does, you can call me Papa.”

CHAPTER 17

In her Bad Axe Hospital ER room, Patience Goodgolly lay dully angry-eyed and pale, hooked to monitors and IV fluids.

“She’s stable. She’ll be just fine. Dr. Patel has more information, and she’ll be with you in just a few minutes.”

Sheriff Kick accepted a plastic bag that weighed hardly anything. She told the nurse, “Thank you.” Her hands trembled as she looked in the bag: the girl’s dress and bonnet, nothing else.

She felt spooked. Thanks to the Tri-County Press reporter from Cuba City who had traveled all the way to a residence in the Bad Axe for a story only to stumble upon Patience Goodgolly, the sheriff’s case had just shanked inward on itself. Apparently disconnected elements—Patience, a white truck, an unreported missing man—had overlapped in ways she could not yet understand.

Waiting for the doctor, she tried Leroy Fanta’s cell for a third time, but Fanta wasn’t answering. That worried her. A newsman always took calls from the sheriff, even a retired newsman. She left a message.

“Grape, I need to talk to you right away about this man ranting at you on the telephone. It seems he was ranting to other news outlets too. I think we need to find this guy.”