“Digging?” she asks.

“Into your past,” he says.

She lets her hands fall to her sides and stands with her shoulders square, looking him in the eye. “I didn’t realize anyone was already digging,” she says.

“We were all curious.”

She turns around to walk back to her own car. “Then ask me,” she calls out over her shoulder. “Fucking ask me.” She has to try not to slam the door.

On her way back into Spring Falls, she finally catches sight of Shannon Jenkins. It startles her and she pulls across two lanes of traffic into the Stewart’s parking lot.

He wasn't at work when Junior Savage said he should have been. The multiple times she tried his phone, it appeared to be off, with no voice mail or text messages received.

It’s the morning rush at Stewart’s, and she’s in danger of losing him. His height, his slight build, the way he shrinks his shoulders make him easy to miss. He ducks through the crowd and into the store, and he disappears for a minute.

When he comes back out, he picks up bags of firewood and throws them into the back of the blue Toyota truck she’s been tracking. In the front seat is a black, pit-ish mutt with a square head and a white blaze. Kateri parks by the free air pump and gets out.

“Shannon Jenkins,” she calls, and he jolts, his arms raised like a startled baby or an electrocuted man. The crowd at Stewart’s is enough to swallow her voice. She’s in plain clothes, in her own car. No one else there notices her.

Shannon puts a hand to his chest and then to his belly, calming himself.

He’s just a kid, she thinks. So was Craig O’Neil.

“Kateri Fisher,” she says up close.

“I know.”

“I need to talk to you,” she says. “You’ve been hard to find.”

“I’m—” he starts. “I’m not staying at home.”

When the sun catches him from behind, his hair lights up like a ball of amber. Kateri suspects it’s prettier than he knows.

“I need you to come to the morgue,” she says, “and I need you to come in for questioning.”

“The morgue?” he says, and pales.

“I need a next-of-kin identification,” she says.

From inside the truck, the dog gives one warning bark to Shannon.

“For?” Shannon asks.

Smart, Kateri thinks. “An adult female,” she says.

His chest seems to give way, to cave in.

“Now?” he says.

“I’ve been waiting,” Kateri says, “so yes, now would be good.”

She goes around to the other side of the truck and pets the dog through the open window. He’s a big baby who laps at her open hand. “Who’s this?” Kateri coos to the dog, and while she waits for Shannon to answer, she gets the address off the dog’s collar. It’s Burlington. She thinks he cannot possibly be staying that far away and driving back and forth. She also cannot have him leaving the state.