Hannah went off to fetch her sister another glass of Chateau Screw Top. If Andrea wanted to get a little smashed, that was fine with Hannah. She just hoped that when Bill arrived, Andrea wouldn’t need to be slung over his shoulder like a gunnysack and carried down the stairs.

The night wasn’t peaceful, not by a long shot, and when Hannah’s alarm went off at six the next morning, she felt as if she’d just closed her eyes. Her dreams had been peppered with bullet holes, blood, and stiff, cold legs sticking out like boards behind couches, chairs, and bookcases. There had even been a cow in her dreams—a huge, homicidal Guernsey that had chased her over fences and past bubbling vats of cream.

Hannah groaned and sat up in bed. Duty called. She had to bake the Black and Whites for the sheriff department’s open house.

As she padded into the kitchen, stepping carefully to avoid Moishe’s morning rubs against her ankles, she wondered about the new hotshot detective from the Minneapolis Police Department. Would he approve of the way that Bill was handling the double-homicide case? Sheriff Grant had obviously been impressed with the new man. According to Bill, he’d set up an interview the day that his application had come in the mail.

“Here’s your breakfast, Moishe.” Hannah dumped dry crunchies into Moishe’s bowl and gave him fresh water. Then she stumbled toward the coffeemaker and poured her first cup. She must be a caffeine addict. She really couldn’t function without a wake-up cup, or three, in the morning. She just hoped the FDA and the president’s drug czar didn’t ever turn her into a criminal by classifying coffee as a drug.

Some days it was easier to operate on automatic pilot. Hannah didn’t want to wake up to the point where she recognized how tired she really was. She slugged down only one cup of the steaming brew, enough so that she wouldn’t fall asleep and drown in the shower, and then she went back to her bedroom to get ready for work. When she had showered and dressed, she came out to empty the rest of the coffee into the large-sized car caddy that Bill had given her for Christmas. She refilled Moishe’s food bowl, grabbed her jacket and keys, and stepped out into the predawn freeze.

The blast of cold air that greeted Hannah caused her eyes to snap open all the way. Her breath came out in white puffs and she shivered her way down the outside stairway to the garage. It was time to break out her full winter gear.

The garage was deserted, the cars lined up in even rows against the painted cinderblock walls. Hannah hurried to her Suburban and jumped inside, cranking the motor over twice before it started. Time to plug in her truck, too.

The heater kicked in about the time she turned onto Old Lake Road. Hannah reached over and turned the levers on both vents to direct the warm air to her side of the vehicle. As she zipped down the dark road, she flipped on the radio, and the impossibly cheery voices of Jake and Kelly, the crazy duo that hosted KCOW’s “News At O’Dark-Thirty Show,” assaulted her ears. She switched to WEZY’s mellow strains and thought about the peculiar call letters of Minnesota radio stations. If the transmitter was east of the Mississippi River, the call letters started with a W. If it was west of the Mississippi, the call letters started with a K. The same was true for television stations. It was all controlled by the FCC. Hannah wondered what the bureaucrats would do if a station built a bridge over the Mississippi and mounted their transmitter in the middle.