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“Hit me with it.”

I hand her the mud-stained and water-wrinkled neuter-and-slay pamphlet with the golden retriever front and center.

“Look familiar?” I ask. “Not the dog, the half-cropped-out owner.”

“Oh, shit,” Bristal says, smoothing the flyer out. “That’s Denise.”

“Except it’s not,” I tell her. “It’s a model. That picture is from a stock-photo company, and if you search for other photos with the same model, every single one of them is used on Denise’s Facebook page.”

Bristal goes quiet, her finger tapping against her knee. “Okay, that’s super fucking suspicious, I’ll give you that. But could Denise actually be a model? Like, what if that is her and she uses her professional photos for—”

“No, sorry,” I tell her, shaking my head. “There’s more. Remember when we talked to Dover at the prison?”

“Yes,” Bristal says, her mouth going into a grim line.

“Listen,” I say cautiously. “I’m going to ask you some things, and I just want you to answer me as you remember them.”

“Okay,” she says, but her eyebrows are coming together, and I sense a storm brewing inside my bedroom to match the gale outside.

“According to Dover, how did he get hurt when he was cleaning up after the tornado?”

“He got hit in the head by a brick,” Bristal says.

“A brick from where?”

“From the Fairlawn, the old hotel,” she answers, and I nod.

“That’s what I remembered, too,” I tell her. “We couldn’t take any notes because we weren’t allowed to have our phones, or anything to write with. I wanted to double-check with you to see if I was remembering right,” I explain as I click through some keys on my laptop before turning it to Bristal.

“The Fairlawn wasn’t made out of bricks,” I say, showing her an old photo. It’s sepia-toned, the double-decked porches of the Fairlawn holding that evening’s guests, their wagons and horses lining the street outside.

“Okay,” Bristal says stiffly, pushing the laptop away. “But he was telling us a story from thirty years ago, Lydia. He could’ve just gotten a detail wrong, or maybe he didn’t even know what building he was working on. Bailey Foxglove said herself some people couldn’t find their own houses, with all the landmarks gone. And he could have had a concussion, too. You saw that video. Something definitely hit him in the head.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Something did. And I think it was Randall Boggs’s fist.”

“What the fuck?” Bristal says, coming to her feet, no longer able to contain her anger. “Let’s just be clear—my uncle suddenly went from killing exactly nobody to murdering two people?”

“Yes,” I say, my tone even. “I’m sorry, but I truly think so.”

She stands over me, motionless, hands curled into fists. I see the feeling in her eyes, see her lips forming the words. Bristal Jamison is going to tell me to fuck off again, and this time, we won’t come back from it. Her mouth quivers, and she takes a deep breath, then closes her eyes.

“Prove it,” she says, her words coming out shakily.

I say nothing, tapping keys until I find the video from June 14. I look up at Bristal, who is buzzing with energy, every line of her body infused with rage and the attempt to rein it in.

“Hear me out,” I say, then click play on the video.

Dover Jamison, eighteen, was staying with family in town when the tornado hit . . .

Bristal comes to my side, sinks to the floor next to me as the reel plays.

“They got air-conditioning, and I don’t,” Dover says. “Thought I’d be able to get some rest, but . . .”

“Was it worth it?” the reporter asks.

“Well . . .” Dover scratches at the bandage above his ear, the grin still spreading. “That AC unit is sitting in the nonfiction section of the library now, and the couch I was on at the time got moved down to Third Street, but hey—at least I didn’t get hurt.”

I hit pause, the screen frozen as Dover’s lopsided smile can’t quite reach the eye that’s swollen shut, the skin a deep, dark purple.