In the kitchen sink, a plastic bag of chicken was defrosting.

Rusty thinks Wyatt has run, which he was instructed not to do. But I know about the ditches and cubbyholes he drew like a little da Vinci, starting at age six, and I’m not sure.

Rusty is on the porch, alternately directing traffic and sucking on his vape pen. Occasionally, he glances at me, leaning against the patrol car, like I’m his sick child he had to bring to work.

Every puff of toxic air he inhales makes me seethe a little more. He strolls over, his eyes hidden behind those two mirrors, wearing a smile that smirks victory. “You feeling better now?” he asks.

I snatch the vape pen out of his hand and toss it across the grass. “For a smart man, you’re stupid. Aren’t you the one always saying that what kills you will be the thing that says it won’t? Do you read the studies? Watch the news? This new vaping habit of yours is a lie, like just about everything else in your mouth lately.”

“That pen cost fifty bucks. It was a loving present from my wife.” Playing it slow and cool. He doesn’t want to take any shine off his beautifully orchestrated moment in the Branson case. We’re already getting a few curious stares from the army of box loaders.

I motion my hand in the direction of the house. “Finn and his lawyer buddies are not going to like this. They’re going to say it was an illegal search and seizure. That the cops have no right to drag his stuff out because we had no right to enter in the first place. Whatever you find in those boxes, a judge will probably throw out.”

“The chief gave it a go. Gabriel brought me the signed search warrant. You were standing right there.”

“It won’t hold up.”

“You know, I didn’t hear you so loud and clear on the staircase when you were wondering if your boy was in trouble. Or when we were staring into that crawl space I ripped open, asking ourselves if that nest of dead squirrel babies was really a nest of dead squirrel babies.”

He reaches in his pocket for the pack of Marlboros, crushing it into a furious ball when he sees it’s empty. He’s not so sure about everything himself.

“Why do you keep punishing yourself?” he asks. “Worrying about him? Is it because he’s the first man who screwed you? Because he has something on you? You tell me what that is, and I will take it to the grave, and we will finish this together. We—”

“Did you break into my desk at work?” I interrupt. “The locked drawer at the bottom?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you take something out of my father’s desk that has to do with Trumanell?”

“No, Odette, I did not. But now I’m curious. Do you have some evidence in the Branson case I don’t know about? Something your father didn’t disclose?”

Up in Trumanell’s window, shadows are merging behind the curtain. “You are wrong about me,” I say softly. “You are wrong about everything.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m not wrong about, Odette. Just like your father, you make up your own rules. Every time I think we’re a team—just a team operating with a difference of opinion—you pull something. I asked Gabriel to bag the pennies in the kitchen, and you know what he told me? There were no pennies. So I have to wonder—did you lie about there being pennies? Or did you go in there and take them when you told me you needed some air? And in either case, I have to ask myself: Why?”

“Do you want another partner, Rusty?”

“No, Odette. I just want the truth. And my vape pen back so I can kill myself any way I damn want.”

“Everything is a joke to you.” I’m already sliding into the patrol car, starting it up. “I’m going to make this easy.”

“Don’t say goodbye like this.” Rusty hovers at the open window, hand on the door panel. The tang of a hard, sweaty night is pouring off his body.

Tears punch the back of my eyes. I feel a sudden impulse to unburden myself. To tell him everything.

Where Wyatt’s hiding places are.

About a lost girl with one eye who needs our help.

How my father had a very dirty pair of boots.

Rusty’s intensity, the concern on his face, is dragging my heart out of my chest.

He almost, almost makes me believe.

32

I’m pushing the odometer of the patrol car to ninety, my father’s key burning against my skin. Black night is pouring through the windshield.

It’s not Rusty that I hate. It’s this fucking town. It stole my leg. It stole Trumanell. It twisted me up from the beginning.

I was six when a doll appeared on the porch of the Blue House with an eerie resemblance to me. A long pigtail. Two chubby legs.

One doll was odd. Eleven dolls were creepy. That’s how many were dropped off that day. Maggie’s had freckles like hers and was sitting in her front yard tree. Trumanell’s was roped by brown yarn to the cattle guard at the Branson place.

I overheard my dad say the words serial stalker. I thought he meant cereal, and imagined a Lucky Charms leprechaun in our bushes.

Two days later, my uncle the reverend drove all the little girls who received a surprise doll to a small frame house on the edge of town. It turned out that an elderly woman in the Baptist church with an extensive doll collection had just wanted to do something nice for the little girls in town before she died.

She poured us grape Kool-Aid in paper cups and gave us each four stale vanilla wafers. We sat in a circle in her living room while my uncle “calmed” us down. He informed us that demons don’t waste their time attaching themselves to dolls with pigtails. They’re too busy using people.

I took away two things from that circle.

Vanilla wafers tasted like cardboard.

The devil was watching me.

To hell with my uncle and his sermons. To hell with my father and his secrets. This necklace, usually so cold, is now a ring of fire. I rip off the chain, roll down the window, and let it fly into the night.

My phone has lit up at least ten times since I tore out of the Branson place, leaving Rusty in the dust. I ease the patrol car behind my pickup, still nudged off the side of the park road under a grove of trees.

A jogger out for an early morning run tosses me a hesitant wave on his journey through the early gray of the Twilight Zone. I return a tight smile, locking the patrol car and walking over to my truck. People will never learn that alone with the sun out is more dangerous than together at night. Stick with your partner is a kindergarten rule that should hold for life.

I adjust the rearview mirror, eyeing the jogger, hoping he sticks to the main roads. I shift the car into gear. It’s early, but not too early to show up at a house with a hungry infant.

I’m still aching. Still conflicted. Not ready to call him back. If I tell Rusty about Angel, will he help me save her or turn her into collateral damage? If I lay out everything I know and feel about Wyatt, will he open his mind or nail it shut? If I hand over my scrapbook of glitter and blood, will he understand me better or never look at me the same?

With Rusty, it could go either way.

On one of our first cases together, a math teacher in town was accused of sleeping with a sixteen-year-old student. The boy’s mother had found a package of condoms under his mattress and a selfie with his nail-bitten fingers cupping one of his teacher’s breasts.

The teacher was a tearful witness. She told us that the boy raped her in the kitchen of the school cafeteria after hours. The picture was a threat the boy held over her in case she told. She claimed he pressed a butcher knife to her stomach while he forced her to smile.

There was not a single piece of evidence to suggest that was true. She’d slept around on her husband before, and this incident triggered him to file for divorce. Her phone dump revealed six more images, all texted to her by the boy, who had her personal cell number memorized. The background, an unhelpful blur.

It was Rusty who decided to bring the boy in and have one more go at him. He laid down an 8x10 print of the two of them naked. It took everything in me not to flip it over.

“Can’t see it here, but there’s a rumor your teacher’s got a tattoo on her backside,” Rusty said to him. “They say it’s a horse. Tell me, is it a horse? My mother raised me to believe that a tattoo is always the sign of a slut. Marry a girl with a tattoo and she’ll eventually cheat and break your heart. But for messing around? Tattooed girls are great.”

The boy had grinned, lapping it up. “Yeah, it’s a horse. For sure. Mothers get all worked up, you get that. It’s my mom who’s got a problem with this situation. Not me.”

“What about your dad? Doesn’t he raise horses?”

“Yeah, he does. Mostly Paints. A few Arabians.”

“So you know your horses versus your mythological creatures.”

“Myth a what?”

“Here’s the thing, son,” Rusty said. “That tattoo is a unicorn, not a horse. Purple, with a big horn on its head. When I make love, I pay attention to the details. I’m a little worried you don’t. Should I be worried? I can’t protect you if you lie.”