She passes by twice, hours apart, and can see from the window in the door and from the two-way mirror in the observation room that David Brewer sits with Shannon Jenkins for more than three hours. He takes notes on a yellow legal pad, his handwriting slanted and hard. Some items are underlined, others starred. She catches a glimpse of Shannon’s face, lit up with recognition, and then he shakes his head.

But I didn’t, she imagines him saying.

She’s not sure why it makes a difference to her at all.

She watches Shannon move his hands around the table, plotting out, she thinks, the layout of the house, the kitchen, Pearl’s bedroom, Birdie’s safe spot in the closet. She wants to tap on the glass. You have to tell the truth, she thinks. Tell him everything.

He was a soft-faced boy, she thinks, the first time she talked to him. Soft and scared. And now something has crept in at the edges, has hardened the bones in his cheeks and jaw. Something has left a shadow under his eyes and around his neck like long fingers.

She looks at the way the bruises are disappearing on his skin. Where the thumb would have gone. Where the fingertips were. She puts her hand to her own throat and feels, recognizes what it was that unsettled her before.

There’s no way Pearl Jenkins’s hand was that big.

On her way back from Interrogation B, she swings by Hurt’s office to see if he’s in yet. It’s past three. His office is still generic, still like he’s using borrowed, temporary space. The chair pushed in, the computer monitor off.

She walks around the desk and opens a side drawer, not sure what she’s even looking for.

A lint roller. A small paper copy of Be Here Now with an ornately illustrated cover. A river stone. She closes the drawer abruptly, and when it slams, she jumps.

On her way out, she glances at the reception desk.

“Any word from Detective Hurt?” Kateri asks, her phone buzzing in her pocket with a text message.

“No, ma’am,” Dawn says.

She turns her back to Dawn’s desk as she reads the message.

It’s an unknown number: Envious of the person who does get to have a drink with you, Detective. Maybe we can fix that.

Kateri stands still in the middle of the reception area, Dawn answering the phone, keyboards clacking away, the printer whirring and spitting out pages.

Bear? she types and sends, and regrets immediately not using a more formal tone.

What big … eyes you have, he answers.

She laughs aloud, but it’s tight and nervous.

She deletes the messages, her hands jumpy. And then regrets that too.

TWENTY-ONE: SHANNON

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10

He finally told me. I was afraid to ask, and threw myself into work—shifts at the diner, work in the house—and it took more than a week before I could ask anything. What did she mean? What didn’t I know? I couldn’t even begin to explain what I did know.