“Kateri Fisher,” she says, and holds out her hand.

“A pleasure,” he answers. “Bear Miller.” His hands are soft and cold. Strong, but bony. He points at the café. “Well, this won’t work,” he says. He steps back, half turned toward her, and cocks his head. “What’s your preference, Detective Fisher?” he says. “Cheap beer? Or cheap beer?”

“The quietest, please.”

She doesn’t want to follow him, because he seems to want exactly that, to be followed, to charm the snakes right out of the woods. But she does, her work shoes padding softly on the pavement. She wears her lanyard badge and has her gun on her hip.

Of course, he walks into the Sweetwater Lounge. The other two bars are dives, younger joints with beer in plastic cups, simple mixers, bar nuts.

She blows out a slow breath, and her head makes a familiar whomp.

When the bartender comes, Kateri recognizes him, and Bear motions to her.

“I’m on duty,” she says to Bear, and then asks for a club soda with lime.

“What would you get if you were off?” Bear asks.

The bartender is a man over fifty with neat gray hair, wearing a slim black button shirt. He smiles at Kateri. She considers telling Bear that she’s sober. But it’s a lie.

“An old-fashioned,” she says, humoring him.

“Bourbon?” he asks.

She smiles. “Well, what I really like is Angel’s Envy, but that’s hard to find.”

The bartender shakes his head. “I don’t have that,” he says.

It had a different smoothness that she liked. And a bottle draped with the outline of wings.

“Basil Hayden’s,” Kateri says, and the bartender nods.

“I’ll have what the lady would have had,” Bear says.

She watches the bartender make it, muddling the orange and pouring the whiskey into the heavy-bottomed glass. It makes her mouth water, the crushed citrus, the color, the pop of cherries.

Bear takes his time. He sips his drink and offers nothing she doesn’t seem to ask for twice. She asks him what he does for a living.

“Real estate,” he says.

She’s never seen his name on a sign. Spring Falls has the same family names on everything. You’re either a Sullivan, a Berringer, or a Kurtz.

“Residential development,” he says.

She thinks about the string of new houses going up. There’s nothing to offer here except the landscape, and even that is harsh, cold, unforgiving, and beautiful. You have to go to the next town for a college. There is just the one small Catholic hospital. Not everyone stays year-round.

“Are you new to town?” she asks.

He nods.

“You didn’t grow up here.”

“No ma’am,” he says.

Kateri puts her notebook on the bar but doesn’t open it, doesn’t reference what’s inside. She may have come armed with crime scene photos that show the awkward bend in Craig O’Neil’s neck or his blue, water-bloated hands. Or the burned bits of Pearl Jenkins’s bones.

“You have a PO box,” Kateri says.