Slut. Slut. Slut, they said.

Stop, I wanted to scream. Stop. It wasn’t her fault. But I couldn’t open my mouth, couldn’t say a word.

Slut. Slut. Slut.

Eight days later, her father found her in the toolshed.

She didn’t leave a note to tell us why. She didn’t need to.

Chapter Thirteen

For the rest of the week I avoid both Brent and Condor: Brent, because I’m not sure I actually do want to see him again, even though I said I would; Condor, because I want nothing more.

Even as a kid I was drawn to the animals that bit. I once tried to save a raccoon that had somehow made its way into our basement, and it nearly took off a pinkie—I still have the scar. But even then I cried not for the blood or the rabies shots that came afterward, but when my dad, hearing me shout, came running downstairs with a rifle and plugged the raccoon between the eyes.

I always want the things that hurt most.

Instead, I throw myself wholeheartedly into the case. What we really need are Optimal’s books. Everything always boils down to money: corners cut, pipes improperly cared for, testing fudged once the results start coming in wonky, and people paid to keep quiet about it. Because it gets incentives from the state to keep business in Indiana, Optimal’s quarterly reports are available to the public. But we need to go deeper. We need their General Ledger, checks received and dispatched.

Some people pay. Other people collect.

I do what I do best: paperwork, numbers, patterns and disruptions that might mean everything or nothing at all. Barrens Township has had the water tested every year—the results are filed according to the Indiana Access to Public Records Act—and that surprises me, given the fact that much of the infrastructure is seventy-five years old.

They’re trying too hard to seem clean.

—

Friday night, Indiana, dusk: the sky is blue and pink, and the rains earlier in the week have left the fields looking fresh. The crows silhouetted on the telephone wires are too numerous to count.

I’m only half a mile away from my rental behind the beauty salon when my cell phone rings: Indiana area code, a number I don’t recognize. I nearly silence it but at the last second decide to pick up.

“Yeah?”

“Is this Abigail Williams?” The voice is male and unfamiliar.

“Speaking,” I say, already pulling over, reaching for my notebook and a pen. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Sheriff Kahn. We’ve got your father down here at the station—”

My stomach drops.

“—Picked him up on Main Street. Seems he was confused, kept insisting there should be a honky-tonk there. He had your number written down in his wallet. I heard you were in town?”

I close my eyes and see, in the darkness behind my eyelids, the old Dusty Chap line-dancing hall. The loud country music, the smell of fries and beer, my mom tush-pushing to Wynonna or Travis Tritt beside me with her cowboy boots and her hair piled high on top of her head in a scrunchie. It was one of the most fun things I would do with my mother before she died. It went out of business years ago, when I was in middle school.