“I’m going to need to know,” she says. She’s afraid of losing him.

She overhears only part of his phone call. “I don’t know,” he says, more than once. And then, “I will.” She waits on the other side of the door, grateful for a dim place, her foot holding the door propped so it won’t lock him out. Hurt sees her like that and gives her a look.

“Smoke break,” she says.

“For you?” he asks, shocked, as if she’s smoking inside out a cracked door.

“No,” she says, annoyed. “For Jenkins.”

“He’s out in the parking lot?” Hurt asks. When Kateri nods, he adds, “Hope he doesn’t run.” He looks down at Kateri’s shoes.

Shannon doesn’t. He comes back in, cowed and nervous, and Kateri starts right in on him, without giving him too much time to think.

“Who is your sister’s father?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“No idea,” Kateri says. “Your mother wasn’t dating, didn’t have people around?”

“No,” he says, rolling his eyes. “She barely leaves the house.”

“Someone in town?” Kateri asks.

His face goes blank, his mouth a straight line. “Do you know any black men in Spring Falls?” he asks.

But Kateri shrugs, nonchalant. “I don’t know that she’s black,” she says, cautious, but it’s clear from Birdie’s hair and even the tint of her light skin that she is likely mixed race.

Shannon laughs. “Have you looked at her?” he says. “Have you looked at me and my mom?”

“But you don’t know who,” Kateri says.

“No,” he says.

“When did your mother put up the cameras?” Kateri asks.

“After Birdie was born,” he says.

“How long after?”

“The spring,” he says.

“Is it possible that she’s afraid of your sister’s father?”

“It’s possible,” he says. “But he’s not the one who tried to kill her.”

“Are you afraid of your dad?” Kateri asks.

“No,” he says.

Kateri tips her head. “He tried to kill you too.”

“It’s not the same,” he says.

“How so?”

“I wasn’t the target,” he says. “I was just there.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Kateri asks. “You said you don’t remember.”

His face closes, gray.

Hurt knocks and comes in before Kateri says it’s okay. He carries a file folder and a legal pad.

“Shannon Jenkins,” she says, “This is my partner, Detective Joel Hurt.”

Shannon nods.

Hurt pulls a paper out of the file folder with a phone number printed on it and nothing else.

“Do you know this number?” Hurt asks.

Shannon’s cheeks pale. “No,” he says.

“Not at all?”

He won’t take the paper from Hurt. “No,” he says, and he adjusts the hood around his neck. “Whose is it?” he asks.

“It’s the number that called nine-one-one,” Hurt says, “the day the crime scene was first investigated.” Hurt waits. His tactic is more minimalist that Kateri’s, which is why they take turns. She builds a narrative. He cuts through it. “It’s an untraceable track phone,” Hurt tells him. “And it’s been disconnected.”