He was halfway across town before he realized that he was whistling. So much for compartmentalization.

“Boss is in a good mood today,” Raeford McLamb said to Jack Jamison as he pulled out of the Hardee’s drive-through and turned onto the highway for Raleigh.

“Was he? I didn’t notice,” said Jamison, yawning widely as he uncapped his coffee. It was scalding hot, but the caffeine was a welcome jolt to his tired nerves.

“Jack Junior still keeping you awake?” McLamb asked sympathetically.

“He’s seven weeks old,” Jamison moaned, turning a plaintive face to his fellow officer. “Shouldn’t he be sleeping through by now?”

As the voice of wisdom and experience, McLamb said, “Well, Rosy was, but it was almost three months before Jordo gave up that two A.M. feeding.”

“Three months?” Appalled, the tubby young detective recapped the coffee and stuck it in a cup holder clipped to the dashboard, then leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get to Shaw,” he said. “I need all the sleep I can get.”

Deputy Mayleen Richards glanced again at the clipboard on the dash to confirm the address. One of the self-storage facilities on her list was right there in Dobbs, but it wouldn’t open till ten, so she’d decided to start with the one farthest away on the edge of Fuquay-Varina over in Wake County. The way the numbers seemed to be running, Six Pines Self-Storage should be—ah, yes, there it was, a gray cinderblock office with long rows of units out back, each looking like a single-car garage with a pull-down door. A high chain-link fence surrounded them all.

She pulled into a parking slot, adjusted the tilt of her hat, and made sure the blouse of her uniform was properly tucked in as she got out of the car.

A tall, sturdily built young woman with cinnamon brown hair and freckles across her prominent nose, Mayleen Richards had tried sitting at a desk after finishing a two-year computer course out at Colleton Community College, but she was farm bred, used to hard physical work outdoors. Another two years of trying to fit her awkward square personality into a comfortable round hole was all she could take before she quit her job in the Research Triangle and asked Sheriff Bo Poole for a job. He knew her parents, knew her, and was always glad to have another officer in the department who wasn’t afraid of computers. He’d been disappointed that she preferred patrol duty over an indoor job, but agreed to let her pull a normal rotation. Lately, Major Bryant had been giving her more detective chores, and with the county growing in population, she was hoping to get switched over permanently.