“You could say that. Teenie got it from her mom. At that time, Helen was drinking a lot, and not too particular about who she brought home. But Helen managed to change, finally quit drinking. When Teenie’s mom settled down, Teenie did, too.”

That wasn’t how Sybil had tried to make it appear, at our second meeting. I filed that fact for future reference.

“How do you get hired?” he asked.

I sucked hard on the straw, thinking over the abrupt change in subject. It was a good milk shake, but it had been a mistake to get a cold drink on a brisk day when I was barefoot. I shivered.

“Lots of word of mouth. That’s how I got hired here; Terry Vale heard something about me at a city government conference. Law enforcement people talk to each other, at conventions and by email. And there’ve been stories in a professional magazine or two.”

He nodded. “I guess you couldn’t advertise.”

“Sometimes, we do. Hard to get the wording right.”

“I can see that.” He smiled reluctantly. Then he reverted to just being intense. “You just . . . feel them?”

I nodded. “I see the last moments. Like a tiny clip of a video. Can you please turn on the heater?”

“Yes, we’ll ride.” A minute later, we’d left Sonic and were cruising what there was of Sarne.

“How big is the police force here?” I was trying to be polite. There was an undercurrent here, and the water in it was moving faster and faster.

“Full-time, besides me? The sheriff, two other deputies right now.”

“Stretched pretty thin.”

“Not during this season. Now, we’ve just got leaf people. Come to see the colors change. They’re pretty peaceable.” Hollis shook his head over people taking time off from life to look at a bunch of leaves. “Summer tourist season, we take on six part-time people. Traffic control and so on.”

Hollis Boxleitner’s income would be small. He was a youngish man, and he seemed both capable and intelligent. What was he doing, stuck in Sarne? Okay, not my business: but I was curious.

“I inherited my parents’ house here,” he said, as if he were answering my unspoken question. “They got killed when a logging truck hit their car.” He nodded in acknowledgment when I told him I was sorry. He didn’t want to talk about their deaths, and that was a good thing. “I like the hunting and the fishing, and the people. In the summer, I get some hours in helping my brother-in-law; he’s got a rafting business, rents ’em out to the tourists. I pretty much work around the clock for three months, but it helps me build up my bank account. What does your brother do, when he’s not helping you?”

“He’s always with me.”

Hollis looked as if he were politely swallowing scorn. “That’s all he does?”