Single mother with three kids under the age of five. No smoke detectors. Fire started in the middle of the night. Some kind of electrical fault. By the time the smoke woke the woman from a deep sleep, the flames had already overtaken much of the house.

No one made it out.

That had been the worst thing Harry’d ever seen in his career. Until last night.

Some six hours before he’d shown up at the diner and had that restorative cup of coffee, the cell phone on his nightstand started buzzing, only two feet from the pillow where he laid his head. He’d been to bed late, having had a meeting with all six of his staff to discuss whether there were any other possible leads they might pursue when it came to those two missing men. And as if that weren’t enough, Dell Peterson, who had a dairy farm on the road heading south out of town but also had a few animals that were not cows, had called around ten to say his pet goat was gone.

This was not, in the overall scheme of things, a high priority for Harry. But he told Dell he would get back to him the next day, take a run out to his place. Maybe the goat had managed to get free, had gone exploring, and by morning he (she?) would be back.

Picking up his cell in the dark, Harry said quietly, “Yeah.”

“Sorry to call at this hour, Chief. It’s Stick.”

His real name was Ben Bloodworth, but he was a skinny dude and topped out at six-foot-six, hence the nickname. One of Harry’s brighter officers, who was more valuable dayside handling weightier responsibilities, but everyone had to take a turn working overnights, responding to the odd burglar alarm or car accident. Someone having too much to drink and rolling their pickup into the ditch was a weekly occurrence. Harry was not one to pine for a return to Prohibition—he liked a tumbler of scotch at the end of the day as much as anybody—but, honest to God, the list of mishaps that could be traced to alcohol was too long to compile.

“What’s up, Stick?”

“Out on Miller’s Road? Before you get to the cutoff? Guy coming home thought he saw a coyote in the ditch that had gotten into something?”

Harry said, “Yeah?”

The pause at the other end of the line was long enough for Harry to think the call had dropped out.

Finally, Stick said, “Looks like it might have been a person at some point.”

Harry let that sink in for a second. “Be there soon.”

He ended the call. From the other side of the bed, his wife, Janice, stirred.

“Duty calls?” she asked, her mouth pressed into the pillow, the words muffled.

“Stick’s found something.”

“Hope it’s my Ray-Bans,” Janice mumbled.