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Pat Grady shows up on time for work every day of the following week.

Danny dares to hope Pat’s learned his lesson, but he’ll never be the worker Jesse Jackson is.

As the oldtimers used to say, that young man knows how to squat and lean.

Meanwhile, information about Danny’s dream girl begins to accrete.

Although not named, she’s reported to be twenty-four and a resident of Oklahoma City.

According to a friend, this unnamed girl had had enough of both her parents and community college and intended to hitchhike out to Los Angeles and go to hairdressing school, maybe get work as an extra in the movies or TV shows.

She made it as far as Kansas.

The body had been there for awhile—KHP detectives weren’t saying how long, but long enough to be “badly decomposed.”

Dog might have had something to do with that, Danny thinks.

She had been “repeatedly stabbed,” according to a police source.

Also sexually assaulted, which was a semi-polite way of saying raped.

It was the end of the Thursday night story on the local news that made Danny uncomfortable.

The stand-up reporter was older than the weekend woman, male, obviously part of the A Team.

He was standing in front of the gas station, where the tarmac was blocked with yellow police tape.

“Kansas Bureau of Investigation detectives are actively seeking the man who phoned in the original tip giving the location of the body.

If anyone knows his identity, detectives hope they will come forward.

Or if anyone recognizes his voice. Listen.”

The screen showed the sort of silhouette some people used to hide their faces on social media.

Then Danny heard his own voice.

It was awesomely clear, hardly distorted at all: The body’s located behind an abandoned Texaco station in the town of Gunnel… County Road F, about three miles in from the highway.

Behind the Texaco station.

Get her out of there.

Please.

Someone’ll be missing her.

He was starting to wish he’d left well enough alone.

Except when he thought of that chewed hand and forearm sticking out of the ground, he knew there was nothing well enough about it.

He snapped off the television and spoke to the empty trailer.

“What I really wish is I’d never had that fucking dream.” He paused, then added: “And I hope I never have another one.”