“But if one syllable of what you tell me turns out to be a lie, your immunity goes poof and I’ll use every scrap of truth to put you away. My dispatcher just told me about your brother’s military discharge and his criminal record in Florida. No lies and no half-truths, Mr. Golly, do you understand?”

He nodded that he did. For a moment her adrenaline flagged and she felt ill again: fluttering sensations below her ribs, the not-quite urge to gag, the sense that she was about to fall from a great height. She backed away, used her palm to rinse her mouth at the sink. Had she ingested poison clearing Lyndsey Luck’s airway? Was she feeling it?

“First of all, what’s gone on between you and the Rickreiners? You and Jim, and Ronald, Babette, and Barry?”

His mouth came open and his tongue moved, but nothing came out.

Catch your breath and ask a proper question, Heidi. One at a time.

“Did you know Ronald Rickreiner?”

He moved his head vaguely.

“Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Starting when? And how?”

“Me and… me and Jim… we hadda buy on credit…”

He puffed weakly from the lung not punctured by the gimlet.

“Hadda bad year, winter just about killed us, we hadda buy seed and diesel… and machine parts, chemicals, feed, firewood…”

She waited. His eyes seemed to sink inside his face.

“We fought about it. I thought God would save us. Jim said nature didn’t give a damn for God or no one. Jim won. Jim always wins. We took Rickreiner’s terms.”

“Which were?”

“Forty percent interest, lien on the property.”

“You couldn’t borrow from a bank?”

“We… we couldn’t deal with any banks. We left some things behind in Florida, put it that way. We took Rickreiner’s terms and two years on we still couldn’t pay and he came back and threatened us with the lien to take the only thing we had, which was the land. So, Jim…”

He stopped. Oppo’s message from 4:33 this morning echoed in the gap.

Throat slit, May 2003 (body in vehicle pulled from manure pond).

As for guessing Jim Golly’s Schedule II drug, the sheriff had figured it was cocaine. Denise too, at first. But no, he had been arrested with over two hundred doses of thirty-milligram Adderall, prescribed to other people, stolen and black-marketed. And the charge was just possession. No intent to deliver. He was eating it.

“So Jim did what?” the sheriff demanded of his twin. “What did he do about your debt to Ronald Rickreiner? One false word, Mr. Golly, and our deal goes away.”

“All Jim’s idea.”

“Sure.”