Sheriff Brody was a stocky man with meaty arms that stretched his shirt taut. His arms flexed as he leaned across the desk. “Start from the beginning,” he said when she’d told him she had information about Mr. Loomis. He smiled, showing teeth, and his eyes held a sort of glimmer. He was playing with her. A game where her answers would determine Jesse’s life. Mira relayed her story as best she could, careful with her words, every sentence muttered with the fearful hesitation that this would be what would sound the alarm and be what would make him turn his back on her and her effort to help Jesse.

Because she was afraid, she did not tell the whole truth, only pieces. She’d been with Jesse and she’d seen a man. Someone else was with them in that house besides Jesse. Someone else was on the property. Someone else hurt Mr. Loomis, not him.

“Someone else, huh? Sweetie, you going to have to give me a little more to work with. What did he look like? Can you tell me that?”

Mira opened her mouth but realized she couldn’t answer his question. She stumbled out an answer as best she could. “No, I—I can’t.”

Sheriff Brody leaned back and waited for her to continue. Mira rubbed her hands together, the only movement of her body she’d allow.

“You can’t?” he repeated, and as the seconds passed, his demeanor began to shift to one of irritation. “Was he white?”

“Yes,” she answered. “No, he was—”

“Well, which is it?”

“White. He was white, but—”

Mira stopped, trying to think, to get her answer right. She recognized that she had to give him something more. She had to keep this going, make him believe, and to do that she had to offer an element of the truth. “His face was bloody. It was covered in blood.”

Brody stared at her, clearly unsatisfied. He got up from his chair and told her he had to speak with someone else. “Mira, you said? You got a last name?”

She told him and he left, the door clicking shut behind her.

He made her wait a long time. Long enough that her back ached from her posture. She began to slouch in the seat but straightened up, fearful he’d come back at the moment she’d begun to relax in this space that wasn’t her own. She wondered if Jesse had been here, had sat in the same seat. If he’d been afraid. He wouldn’t have shown it if he had. He would have tried to look bored. Drummed his fingers against the shine of the desk. He would have slouched.