As dusk approached that night, Shaw was driving down a deserted country road outside of Canton. The Avis was not a bad car. Customers always drive rentals with heavy feet, and the 15K on the odometer was really more like 30. But the shimmies and rattles and thuds were minor irritations.

Shaw knew it wasn’t the car’s fault when there came a loud pop and the Malibu veered to the right, onto, then over, the shoulder. It came to rest in boggy land, about two feet shy of an ash tree that would have turned the front end into a thing of the past. He’d been going sixty.

The rapping on the window was loud. The man had used the grip of a gun as a knocker, then turned the muzzle his way. The other hand gestured him out of the vehicle. Shaw lifted his right hand—no threat—and with his left unlocked and opened the door. He stepped out and looked over the man who had shot his tire out. It was Travis Lanford, the handsome varsity football player—the man who had also, Shaw now understood, murdered Daryl Williams on that cold, cold day in bleak January.

8.

“You have a gun. I saw it.”

“I do,” Shaw told him.

“Take it out and give it to me . . . No, I don’t trust you. You probably know karate or something.”

“I don’t.” Which was true, though of course Shaw had been a champion wrestler in college.

“I don’t care.” Travis looked up and down the road. It was deserted. “Take it out and throw it on the ground.”

He did as instructed. The gun landed in a clump of grass. Travis picked it up and pocketed it.

Shaw said, “You were following me. I knew there was someone. I thought it was one of Trimbeaux’s crew.”

“You’re just full of bad decisions, mister. I saw that reward. Twenty-six hundred? You risk everything for that?”

“How’re you going to explain the shot-out tire?” Shaw nodded at the front end.

He laughed. “Trimbeaux’s crew did that. Yeah, I followed you—and saw you following them. They got suspicious and came out here to have a talk with you. Shot your tire out.”

“And then shot me?”

Travis said nothing. He was sweaty and his mannerisms twitchy. Shaw understood that the NA was for show; he was still a tweaker.

“Why’d you kill Williams?”

“Shut up. I’m not here to talk. You are. I saw you take something out of that pizzeria. I want it. What is it? Evidence? A video or something?” When Shaw didn’t respond, he said, “And I want to know where those fucking notebooks are. All the stuff you were writing down that I told you. You talked to Mike and Carli too, and Erik. Right? I know you did.”