I toss my bag on the kitchen table. It takes no time at all to get the leash on Grendel and bring him back out the door into the cold. He’s been holding his water for hours, so despite the cold weather, he’s only too happy to get outside and find relief. And I think then what I’ve thought many times—if Emily and Jake were still alive, they’d be helping with Grendel. We always talked about getting a dog but never did, and I wish we had while they were alive. I wish they’d been able to enjoy having him around as much as I do. Emily and her family always had dogs when she was growing up, and she volunteered at the animal shelter here in Gatewood. Several times she dragged me along with her, and we always talked about adopting a dog someday. We just never did.

Grendel doesn’t acknowledge Bowman at all. Once he’s seen a person up close and spent a little time with them, he doesn’t feel the need to bark at them. And once someone’s been in the house a few times, he never barks at them again. Bowman could have been a snowman or a bush for all Grendel cares.

He hikes his leg and sends out a healthy stream that looks like it might peel a few layers of bark off the small tree he’s aiming for. When that’s finished, he sniffs around. I’m about to hurry him up since Bowman is waiting when the detective clears her throat.

“You walk him around the neighborhood here?”

“Sure.”

Bowman keeps watching me, the sky turning red behind her. She looks like she expects me to say more.

“We go for a longer walk in the morning and then again at night. That’s about all the excitement he can handle at his age.”

Bowman blows on her hands and rubs them together. “You ever go to the dog park over by Gatewood South High School?”

“Sure. We used to go there.”

“But you don’t anymore?”

“Not really.”

“Why’s that?” Bowman asks.

I can’t tell if she’s asking just to pass the time while we watch my elderly dog decide if he has to piss again. And he probably does. Or if she’s working up to something again. The paranoid part of my brain says Bowman has never had a casual, random conversation in her life.

“It’s the other side of town,” I say. “And Grendel’s getting old. If I take him for a long walk, he gives me a look that says, ‘Are you trying to kill me?’ ”

Bowman watches me. Face calm. Cheeks red from the cold.

She knows how much her silence induces people to talk. I know it too, and I know it’s a ploy. But I fall for it.