“We’ll wait for news,” said Wingate. “You better go.”

Jordie Dunn lived in one of the two-storey apartment buildings at the entrance to Kehoe Glenn, cheap living quarters for locals, the Lorris Arms. After his nervous appearance at the station house, she’d asked around about him and discovered he was an irregularly employed handyman with no family. His connection to Wiest was as he’d said: he sometimes came along on a job or Wiest tossed him a little gig. She understood that his specialty was wiring and plumbing. Dunn had also declared bankruptcy in 2002. As far as she knew, he’d been living in the Lorris Arms since 1999, which was when he’d moved into the environs. She didn’t know where he’d come from, and an inquiry to the Ministry of Transport hadn’t come up with any addresses before Kehoe Glenn.

On her way down, Wingate had called to say they would tell Greene that they were still collecting information. News about Dunn could wait another hour or two, until she’d had a chance to talk to him. Once she got Dunn back to the station house, Greene could sit in on the update. She pulled off the road that led under the gateway at Kehoe Glenn and went around the back of the Lorris Arms. She had no idea what kind of car Dunn would be driving. It was possible, if he’d made a purchase in those trees, that he was already home. She parked and walked casually to the front of the building. His name was on the directory inside the vestibule and she buzzed his apartment. There was no answer. She buzzed again and still nothing. She went back out to the front and looked across the road. There was a dingy little coffee shop with dusty-looking windows, but there were people inside and she’d be able to see the front door of the Lorris Arms, so she crossed and ordered a coffee. It was poured for her out of a carafe with coffee she was sure had been brewed the day before. It stank of rubber. She sat with it in the window and stared across the road, lifting the mug to her lips but not drinking from it.

The mug was still full an hour later, but it was cold, and Dunn had not entered his building. Her mind was travelling, gazing out over the quiet entrance to Kehoe Glenn. They had a little bit of AC in this place, but not enough to allow her to forget how hot this August was turning out to be. You could often count on a cold front in the county in August, something that finally smoothed the edge of July. July was always hot, but now August was hot, too.

It’s your old hag body, she said to herself, that no longer readily ventilates itself. The summer hasn’t changed.

But a lot of things had, actually. Driving down to the Indian reserve this week, her attention had finally been drawn to something she knew didn’t belong in the landscape, and this last time – passing it earlier – she’d really looked at it going by in her window. The town of Dublin, which you saw if you came directly into the reserve from the north, was one of the county’s prettiest little hamlets, and she hadn’t paid attention to the sign because the first time she’d passed it, she’d thought it was a billboard.

But it wasn’t. It was news. Some comfy housing corporation was about to dump a ready-made suburb here, right outside of Dublin, if not right on its edge. The sign, she had now confirmed, made the town itself sound like a selling point, it was “unspoiled country rustic.” Dublin was also going to be lucky enough to share itself with not just Tournament Acres, as this monstrosity proposed calling itself, but the golf course that would also be built here. Which, as luck would have it, would have its own hotel. On the grounds of the hotel would be the world’s biggest outdoor wave pool.

Why not an atom smasher for the old folks? It was disgusting to think of, here, off the main highway – protected, you’d have thought – from these marauding people who wanted to live in Disneylands for their money to play in. It was forty minutes from Port Dundas, and Port Dundas had a waterfall. It made her throat tighten to think of it. The cutline at the bottom of the sign had read, “It’s always your turn in Tournament Acres.”

So they were going to gobble up Dublin. The summers were getting hotter and the small towns of Westmuir County were now officially bait for cityfolk.

She was staring at Jordie Dunn as the word bait drifted through her mind. He was walking up the front steps of the Lorris Arms. She stood so suddenly she almost spilled the cold coffee. He was inside now. She waited two minutes and then she crossed the road stiffly, unconsciously keeping her arms from swinging as she did, as if displacing that much air could warn him of her intent.

She got into the little, locked foyer, just as a woman was coming out of the stairway. Hazel waited for her to open the door and she simply slipped inside and went down the hall to 1F, Dunn’s apartment, and knocked. There were sounds from within: a chair scraping back, followed by silence. Second thoughts. Who did he think was at the door? She called through, identifying herself, and when more silence came, she announced she knew he was inside. Then the door opened and he was standing there, looking sheepish.

“Yes?”

“Hi, Jordie. Can I come in?”

“I was just about to –” he said, but she put her fingertips on his door and pushed it open.

“Thanks,” she said.

She stepped him backwards and he retreated into the musty apartment. Little particles of dust were catching light in the few shafts of illumination that pierced the gloom. She walked in slowly, watching Dunn’s eyes and breaking her gaze long enough to look to her left and right. She stood a few feet in front of the still-open door, aware that her fingertips were tingling.

“How’re you doing, Jordie?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“You just getting in from church?”

“From?”

“Never mind. Why don’t you pour us a couple glasses of water, Jordie, and you can tell me the price of soybeans.”

He looked behind her to the hallway, still exposed in the open door, and she closed it. His kitchen was as dark as the rest of the apartment, although the sink and the countertop were spotless, as if he never ate there. It seemed a distinct possibility: she couldn’t imagine Jordie Dunn so much as boiling an egg.

He opened a cupboard and took out a waterglass. There were three inside, and a couple of plates. The spigot coughed to life and spat out little gobs of water. He passed the glass to her and she left it on the tabletop untouched. He remained by the sink. “Not thirsty?”

“No,” he said.

He watched her sit at his kitchen table and she marked the effort it was taking him to remain still. “Jordie, why did you want to know if Henry Wiest had been murdered?”

“It was eleven o’clock at night.”

“And at the edge of a wooded area. Would that be strange?”

“Depends.”

“You’re not afraid of insect bites, are you, Mr. Dunn?”

He seemed to slip through the air to the kitchen table, where he silently pulled out a chair and sat in it. “Take me in,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I intend to.”

“Now. Take me in now.”

“What’s in those fields, Jordie? What’s in that grove of trees?”

He pushed his seat back and asked her if she was done with her glass. She handed it to him and he poured the water she hadn’t touched into the sink. There was a hurried shape to all his actions, like there was a countdown running only he could hear. “Let’s go,” he said. He grabbed his jacket off a hook on the wall and held the door open for her. He went out the back door of the building and she led him around to the front, where she’d parked her car. “Sit in the passenger seat,” she said, opening the door for him and standing aside. He put his hand on the top of the door and a warm ribbon of liquid lashed against her blouse and her neck right before she heard the shot. The weight of his body knocked the door forward and pushed her to the ground. She went low, squaring herself behind the door, and listened to Dunn slide down on the other side. She could only see his legs below the door; he was braced against its inside, hacking blood onto the asphalt. His knees shook violently.