“Did you find that?” Hurt asks.

“Well,” Kateri says. She has a hard time keeping her eyes on the road because she keeps looking over to Hurt in the passenger seat. “The death was deemed natural,” she says.

In town, they get stuck behind slow-moving construction trucks, headed up to Fountain Street, where Bear Miller’s house is. She pulls off abruptly and takes a side street toward the station.

“You okay?” Hurt asks when he regains his balance.

“Let’s take a squad car,” she says.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” Bear says when Kateri comes to his door this time, but he stops smiling his wide, eerie grin when he sees Joel Hurt behind her.

Kateri holds up a warrant from the judge. “I have a warrant to search your property, Mr. Miller,” she said, “based on evidence that Shannon Jenkins was staying here.”

“Mr. Miller,” he repeats, and then laughs.

Hurt comes around to Kateri’s side and takes in the expanse of the house and the yard.

“You can cooperate,” Hurt says, “or you can wait in the car with me while Fisher does the search. But that’ll take longer.”

“I don’t get to wait in the car with Fisher?” Bear asks. He’s standing barefoot on the Persian rug in the great room. The dog—the same dog that has been riding around with Shannon—runs out back.

“Not an option,” Hurt says.

Kateri starts in the back bedroom, the master. She takes both toothbrushes from the en suite bath and a razor she finds in the trash bin. She grabs a book from the nightstand that she suspects is Shannon’s. The Weekend. She remembers then the books in his bedroom at his own house, the book he has in his cell. This kid reads, she thinks. She can’t decide whether or not it’s unusual, given his circumstances. He didn’t finish high school. He was working as an unskilled laborer. But he’s smart. She doesn’t know what to expect anymore.

Hurt stands looking out the back window while she bags things and labels them.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, at the pool, the tennis courts.

“Is this the only bedroom?” Kateri asks.

“No, there are like seven bedrooms,” Hurt says.

“I mean, the only furnished bedroom,” she says. “The only one being used.”

He looks at her bags of toothbrushes, the book.

“Shit,” he says. “That’s too weird.”

“Why?” She leans into the white pillows on the bed and plucks one of Shannon’s shorter, blond hairs. She threads it into a smaller bag. Then she grabs a longer, golden-brown hair and bags that.

Bear leans in the doorway behind her. “You could just ask me,” he says.

“Ask you what?” Kateri says, without turning to face him.

“If we’re sleeping together,” Bear says.

She presses the seal on another bag and hands it to Hurt, who collects them all in a large container.

“It’s pretty clear,” Kateri says.

“Do you need physical evidence?” Bear pushes. “That I’ve been fucking him this whole time?”