I see a potato chip bag stuffed next to the console.

Shouldn’t be eating chips, I think.

“Well looky here,” he says as the barn and house come into view. “A real house.”

I’m surprised too. The sight of the Torrance farm is unexpected and makes me think of a bias that I have about Snow Creek. Yes, they are off the grid. Yes, they want to be by themselves. Dan, Maxine, the Wheatons, and now Regina and Amy Torrance… they carved out their own lives in the woods. They weren’t living in squalor—with the exception of Maxine’s herd of cats—like a bunch of tweakers or head and neck tatted white supremacists.

We get out and go to the door where we find a note referencing an RV trip and someone named Jared, who was watching the animals.

“No one on the county property rolls around here with that name,” I say.

“He must be from town,” Sheriff says, peering through the window on the door. “A caretaker, I guess. Someone has to be taking care of the animals around here.”

A hint of smoke from the barely burning embers of a firepit across the yard between the house and the goat barn fills my lungs.

“Must have just missed ’em,” I say. “I’ll leave a note for Jared to call me.”

I tuck my card with a message into the door jamb next to the note.

“No one’s in trouble,” I write. “Just trying to find out if anyone knows anything about the Wheatons. Please call me.”

Just as we hit the highway off Snow Creek Road, my phone pings. I feel an adrenalin surge even before I play the voice message from the crime lab on speaker.

It’s the call that I’ve been waiting for.

“Hey, Detective Carpenter,” lab tech supervisor, Marley Yang, says, “we got a match. It’s mother and son. This is no guess. Real thing. No doubts. Your victim is Ida Wheaton. Good luck with the case. Find the son of a bitch who killed her. There, I said it. Bye now.”

“Let’s go get a warrant,” Sheriff says.

My phone pings again. It’s from a number I don’t know. This time I put the phone to my ear and listen.

It’s Dan Miller.

“A… Detective, I saw you admiring some of my work. Would like to give you a carving. No charge. OK? Unless that’s against some county government policy. If it is, it’s a dumb one. Let me know. Okay? Bye. It’s Dan. Dan Anderson.”

“Everything okay?” Sheriff says. “You’re suddenly very quiet. That’s a trait I’d never ascribe to you, Megan.”

I look at him, then out the window. “Nothing. Landlord’s going to fix the broken window in the basement.”