Then the tall grass shivers and parts. The dog has found him, so close he can smell its black breath. Faith follows with her red knife.

“Didn’t!” His words burst. “Monday!”

He points. Bones!

She kicks dirt over the decomposing arm. With her knife, she steers Sammy Lamb of God back to his buckets. When he has climbed the ladder and stands numbly trembling on the roof, she takes the ladder away.

CHAPTER 29

Sheriff Kick had driven past Leroy Fanta’s house in Town of Hefty—his car was not there—and then called him once more, unsuccessfully. Coming into town from that direction, she had made an appearance at the cooling center in the high school gym to thank the volunteers. From there, being just two blocks away, she had taken a domestic disturbance call—a newly separated young couple, fighting over custody of an in-window air conditioner. Next, she called the hospital: Deputy Luck was stable. Finally at the Bad Axe County Public Service Building, she had changed into a clean uniform, brushed her teeth, challenged her unhappy stomach with a few swallows of Mountain Dew, and checked with Denise on the BOLO for Patience Goodgolly.

“A clean whiff,” Denise said. “Nothing. She’s staying off the roads, I guess. Or hiding in the woods somewhere. So you’re headed back to the hospital? Talk to her dad? Or uncle? Whichever?”

For a moment the sheriff’s throat burned too much to speak. Outside the dispatch window, the flags hung limply. The shrubbery drooped. Heat waves wriggled on the highway. The slant of shadows made the sheriff squint at the time on Denise’s computer screen: it was already nearing four o’clock.

“Yes.”

“OK, then, so you asked me to run the records on Jon and Jim Golly. Jon is clean as a whistle. Jim was discharged from the Army for unsuitability—that’s usually behavior—and went on to be a five-time repeat drunk driver. He beat up some guy on a beach, and some other guy outside a nightclub, got three months in Palm Beach County Jail for the second one. He did five years’ probation for possession of a Schedule II drug. I did some digging. You wanna guess what drug?”

Once again, leaning over his hospital bed, the sheriff turned Jon Golly’s head by his Gabriel Goodgolly beard.

“We have a deal,” she told him.

His blue eyes came open and looked zoomy. Probably his pain meds were taking him on a trip. She gave the beard a sharp upward yank to let him feel the violence brewing in her heart. I don’t know exactly why yet, but I would love to rip your head off.