Sheriff Kahn tells me that TJ cried in his office. He feels guilty, he tells me, for taking the saw.

When TJ found him this morning, the car was still running in the garage, coughing out its last vapor of gas.

Sheriff Kahn tells me that he would have felt no pain. It’s a peaceful way to die. He tells me it’s just like sleeping.

I wonder whether when he opened up to me in the car, he’d already decided.

For a moment, I can’t remember if I hugged him when I said good-bye.

But I know I didn’t.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I don’t sleep. I don’t eat much, either. But somehow a day slips by, and then two.

My father committed suicide two days ago now. Choked to death on his own car fumes. Maybe it was the confusion, maybe he was just too proud to be taken to the ground, or maybe his loss of faith was too dark to bear.

Sheriff Kahn is nice enough to give me those two days before returning to arrest me. Breaking and entering. Vandalism. Maybe he feels bad for me because he skips the handcuffs and just reads me a sworn statement made by the night manager at the U-Pack. Zombielike, I watch Kahn’s lips move as he explains what I did. That I failed to stop my car and present identification to the night manager. When he tried closing the gates, I steamrolled right on through them anyway. They don’t seem to know about Kaycee’s paintings, and how I hauled them off with me. Shitty security cameras, apparently.

The paintings are still stashed under my sofa and bed—I can almost smell them. I can’t bring myself to confess or return them. I’m even afraid to see them again—afraid that, like dead bodies, they’ll have started to rot.

“To be honest, what they’re after is a check. Frank Mitchell’s another story, though. He’s a wildcard. I know I don’t have to tell you that. He could press charges.”

Wildcard. The word makes me think of playing cards with Kaycee, sitting cross-legged on my porch. Whoever had won the last round got to pick a wild card, and Kaycee always picked the king of hearts. “Suicide King,” she called it, because of the knife drawn straight through his head.

“What were you doing out there, anyway?” Sheriff Kahn asks.

I’m too exhausted to lie. “Frank Mitchell got that unit right after Kaycee supposedly ran away.”

“Supposedly, huh?” Sheriff Kahn stands up, working his hat around and around in his hands. “I thought you wound up tracking her down.”

“Who told you that?” I say, feeling a spark of interest—the first spark in days, like a cigarette flaring in a dark lot.

“Your partner. Guy with the, ah, shirts. Said Kaycee gave you a call when she heard you were looking.” He pops his hat into place with one hand, like a cowboy in an old western movie.

“Joe’s not my partner anymore,” I say. “I’m suspended.”