She throws the tissues into the garbage can under her desk and then moves her coffee cup away from the computer keyboard. “Where did they see her?” she asks.

“Dirt road near Star Lake,” Hurt says. “Beside an old Buick.”

“Alone?” Kateri asks.

“No description of the driver,” Hurt says.

“Fuck,” she says. She needs to get a DNA kit on Bear Miller.

She presses her fingers into her lips, and Hurt asks her, “Are you okay?”

“How can I see if someone has a sealed file?” she asks.

“Shannon Jenkins doesn’t have previous,” he says.

“Not Shannon,” she says.

“You need an order,” he says, and shrugs. “It’s not hard. Who?”

“Bear Miller,” she says.

She’s afraid he will go straight to last night, but his head is in the case. “What makes you think?” he says.

She presses her mouth closed and shakes her head. “A feeling,” she says, annoyed, and disappointed that it’s the best she can offer.

She holds up her hand. She was grateful for him last night, for his sitting up, waiting, making her tea. But right now she doesn’t want a work lecture on how feelings affect cold analysis.

“Let me figure it out,” she says.

He backs down. “Okay,” he says. Then, “I trust your feeling. I’ve had the same one,” he says. “Well, maybe not exactly the same.”

She gives him a look. “Can we get an APB on the Buick?”

“Already done,” he says, and leaves her with the evidence report and damp pants.

The judge sets Shannon’s arraignment for November third with no bail. The closest local news stations come to perch on the lawn in front of the justice center, reporting on the arrest of Shannon Jenkins and the continuing searches for Pearl Jenkins and a small child. It makes Shannon sound like a serial killer, and Kateri thinks, he’ll never get a fair trial in this town. Photographers from the paper flash lights in Kateri’s eyes when she goes in to work.

Brewer comes in every day. She begs him to please not talk to the news.

“I might suggest the same to you,” he tells her. “The less info we have out there, the fairer a trial this kid gets.”

Nothing in this kid’s life has been fair.

Brewer wants the charges reduced. He tells Kateri that Shannon shouldn’t be charged with murder at all but manslaughter self-defense, and adds that Shannon keeps fighting him on it because he insists he didn’t do it at all.

“She was abusive,” Brewer says to Kateri.

“I know.”

“Did you see the bruise on him?”

She thinks before she answers. “I did,” she says.

“I don’t know why he won’t trust me,” Brewer says. “I can get him off.”

“Because he didn’t do it at all,” Kateri says, against her better judgment. “And because he’s probably been raised not to trust people in authority. His father’s incarcerated,” she reminds him.

Brewer shakes his head. “Sometimes it’s in the blood,” he says.