“Come here, Rosy. Give her space.” His dog obediently turned and fell in line beside her owner. The man bent over, some joint of his cracking, and held his hand open in front of my nose. He smelled like he’d been in the sun all day even though it was morning. There was an additional mystery smell oozing from his pores. Maybe last night’s alcohol. His hair was due a cut, and his beard was patchy and starting to gray. He wore a Van Halen T-shirt with tiny holes at the collar and an apple-sized hole under the armpit.

His eyes were a beautiful light blue that reminded me of Desiree. This man had been a beautiful child. As a fifty-something, he was somewhere between repulsive and handsome. His eyes had that glassy dreaminess characteristic of alcoholics, the extremely religious, or the inexplicably kind.

I backed away from his hand and got to my feet, clutching my shoulder from the dull pain.

He let his hand fall to his side and smiled. “Scout’s honor, I saw you there. I wouldn’t have got you.”

“What a huge relief to know you wouldn’t have shot me on purpose.”

He laughed heartily as if I’d been joking. He said, “You moved into the Conrad house.”

“A week ago.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Chicago.”

“So close, yet feels a world away, am I right?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling my first moment of warm communion with this scary lumberjack.

“Cubs or Sox fan?”

“Fair weather,” I said. “It’s just a game, after all. Like mini golf.” My favorite defiant statement, as it wiggled under people’s skin and festered.

He laughed. “You might want to keep that opinion to yourself. People around here name their kids after their favorite Brewers and Packers athletes.”

An image of Ben Greer in his Brewers’ T-shirt came to mind. The killer had cut off her fingers.

The dog, her tail wagging, couldn’t resist the stink of a stranger any longer. She came at me, sniffing my shoe, my knee, my crotch.

I’d never appreciated the incessant friendliness of dogs. I pushed the dog’s nose away.

“Quit it, Rosy,” he said. “Not everyone thinks you’re as adorable as you do.” The dog circled back past the man to the dead deer. Blood dripped from the buck’s mouth onto the bright white gravel. “Being from the city, you probably think deer are pretty. Like spying a mermaid?”

I said nothing. I wasn’t going to admit he was dead-on.

“But they’re a real nuisance. Damage crops and vegetable gardens. Increase deer mice population, which spreads Lyme disease. A real bitch around here, Lyme disease. Gives you arthritis, depression, memory loss. You stay here long enough; you’ll hate those deer. It’s legal for us to shoot when they step on our property.”

He’d probably been sitting with his rifle for hours.