“You know it’s a guy?” I asked, hands knotting on the tabletop.

Sheriff Land paused. “We don’t know anything for certain at this point. But this kind of crime, the way they were killed . . .” He shook his head. “Be unusual for a woman, that’s all.”

I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Women might not act out as often as men, but they were capable of anything, could be as awful and vicious as men when they wanted to be. I knew firsthand the violence that could live inside women. “Were they raped?” I asked. “Is that why you’re sure it was a man?” Land’s face tightened up. He didn’t like my talking, interrupting the picture of how this was going to go that he’d already worked out inside his own head. Sheriff Land loved being in control, making everyone dangle on his string. On the other side of Zach, Jenny sucked in a breath, a low moan escaping on her exhale. Zach reached over and patted Jenny’s arm, shot me a warning look that took me by surprise.

“What?” I said. “Am I not supposed to ask things like that? Are there rules in this situation that I’m not aware of?” Anger simmered inside me, anger I’d been careful with for years. Not wanting to give anyone a reason to look down on my daughter. But now it didn’t matter anymore. Didn’t matter if I was a smart-ass or got in fights or acted a fool. Junie was gone and I could let it all spill out. I couldn’t think of a better place to start than right here in this room.

Land cleared his throat, glanced over his shoulder at Cal.

“No,” Cal said from his spot against the wall. “No rules.” He caught my gaze, held it. “We won’t know anything for certain until the medical examiner gets here. But from what we can tell, it doesn’t look like they were raped. Clothes were intact.”

I nodded, looked at Land, and waited for him to continue.

“We’re wondering if the girls talked about anybody new lately? Someone they’d met? Anything different with their routines? Demeanors? Anything stand out to you folks at all?”

I scrolled through the last few weeks, searching the corridors of my own memory and coming up with nothing. “I can’t think of anything,” I said finally. “Junie seemed like her regular self.”

“Izzy was fine, too,” Zach said, his voice hoarse with tears. “As far as I know.”

We all looked at Jenny, who nodded her agreement. “I don’t understand,” she said, from behind her fistful of tissues. “It was a stranger, wasn’t it? I mean, someone from another place? No one from here would do something like this.”

Spoken like the unofficial ambassador of Barren Springs, I thought. Even now defending the reputation of a town that didn’t deserve it. “Well, now,” Sheriff Land said, “we don’t get a lot of tourists or out-of-towners this time of year. We’re not assuming anything, but we’ve got to take a look at local folks, too.”