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Danny Coughlin’s last week in Manitou, Kansas, is both sad and a relief.

On Tuesday he finds a big pile of dogshit in his mailbox.

He dons a pair of his rubber work gloves, removes it, and washes the inner surface clean.

Someone will want to use that mailbox after he’s gone.

On Wednesday he goes to Food Town to pick up a few final supplies, including a steak he plans to eat on Friday night as a goodbye dinner.

He’s not in the market for long, but when he comes out the two back tires of his truck are flat.

At least they’re not punctured, he thinks, but probably just because whoever did it wasn’t carrying a knife.

He calls Jesse because Jesse’s number is in his contacts and he can’t think of anyone else who might give him a help.

Jesse says his dad left a lot of stuff when he ran out on his family, and one of those things was a Hausbell tire inflator.

“Give me twenty minutes,” he says.

While Danny waits, he stands beside his truck and collects dirty looks.

Jesse arrives in his beat-up Caprice and the Tundra’s back tires are good to go in no time.

Danny thanks him, alarmed to feel tears threatening.

“No problem,” Jesse says, and holds out his hand.

“Listen, man, I gotta say it again.

I know you didn’t kill that girl.”

“Thanks for that, too.

How’s the sawmill? I was driving by and saw you hauling lumber in a shortbox.”

Jesse shrugs.

“It’s a paycheck.

What’s up with you, Danny? What’s next?”

“Getting out of town this weekend.

I’m thinking Nederland to start with.

I’ll camp out, I’ve got some gear, and look for a job.

And a place.”

Jesse sighs.

“Probably for the best, the way things are.

Shoot me a text when you get someplace.” He gives Danny a shy look that’s all seventeen.

“You know, stay in touch.”

“I’ll do that,” Danny says.

“Don’t cut off any fingers at that mill.”

Jesse flashes a grin.

“Got the same advice from my moms.

She says I’m the man of the house now.”

On Thursday, most of his stuff packed and ready to go, the trailer looking nude somehow, he gets a call from Edgar Ball while he’s drinking his first cup of coffee.

Ball says, “I have bad news, good news, and really good news.

At least I think it is.

Which do you want first?”

Danny sets his cup down with a bang.

“Did they catch him? The guy who killed her?”

“Not that good, I’m afraid,” Ball says.

“The bad news is that it’s not just Plains Truth anymore.

You’re in the Telescope, the Wichita Eagle, the Kansas City Star, and the Oklahoman.

Along with your picture.”

“Fuck,” Danny says.

“The good news is the picture they’re running has got to be ten years old.

You’ve got hair down to your shoulders and a biker ’stash.

Looks like you’re standing in front of a bar, but I might only think that because you’re holding up a bottle of beer in each hand.”

“Probably the Golden Rope in Kingman.

Before I married Margie I used to do a lot of drinking there.

I think it burned down.”

“Don’t know about that,” Ball says cheerfully, “but that photo doesn’t look anything like you now.

You ready for the best news?”

“Lay it on me.”

“It came from a friend who’s a clerk in Troop F of the Highway Patrol.

That’s in Kechi, near Wichita.

I used to date the lady in question, but that was in another life.

She knows you retained me.

She called last night and said Frank Jalbert is taking a leave of absence.

Rumor is he’s going to retire.”

Danny feels a big grin break over his face.

It’s the first real one since he woke up after that fucking dream.

Jalbert has haunted his thoughts.

Not even talking to Stevie can get the inspector entirely out of his mind.

He reminds Danny of some animal—maybe a wolverine?—that supposedly won’t unclamp its jaws from whatever it’s bitten even after it’s dead.

“That really is good news.”

“Want to go out to Dabney’s to celebrate? Big breakfast, I’m buying.”

Dabney’s is two towns over and should be safe enough, especially if the picture the newspapers are running is from the days when Danny wanted to look like Lonesome Dave Peverett from Foghat.

“Sounds good.

I might bring a friend.

The kid I used to work with.”

But Jesse says he can’t, as much as he’d like to.

He punches in at eight.

“Also, my mom was pretty mad that I went out to help you yesterday.

I told her you didn’t do what they were saying and she said that didn’t matter, because I was a young Black man and you were… you know.”

“A white man accused of murder,” Danny says.

“I get it.”

“Well, yeah.

But I’d go anyway if I didn’t have to work.”

“I appreciate that, Jess, but your mom is probably right.”

He goes out to Dabney’s.

Ball is there.

They order huge breakfasts and eat every bite.

Danny offers to split the check but Ball won’t hear of it.

He asks Danny what comes next for him.

Danny tells him about his plan to go to Colorado to be near his brother, who’s on the spectrum but has a gift a psychologist who examined him in his late teens called “global recognition.” Basically, he sees where everything is.

They talk about that for awhile.

“Got something in mind,” Ball says as they leave the restaurant.

“I’ve been thinking about it ever since our first go-round with that hairball Jalbert, but then I got reading the comments in the Eagle and the Telescope and I thought yeah, maybe, might work.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.

What comments?”

“I guess you don’t read them.

It’s the equivalent of letters to the editor in the old days.

After you finish reading the story, you can comment on it.

There are lots of comments on the stories about you.”

“Hang him fast and hang him high,” Danny says.

“There are some like that, sure, but you’d be surprised how many people believe you actually did dream where the body was.

Everyone—those that believe you, I mean—has a story about how their grammaw knew the propane was going to explode and got everyone out of the house, or that the plane was going to crash so they took a later flight—”

“Those are premonitory dreams,” Danny says.

He’s done some reading.

“Not the same.”

“Yes, but there are also comments from people who dreamed the location of a lost ring or a lost dog or in one case a missing kid.

This woman claims she dreamed a neighbor boy fell down an old well, and there he was.

It’s not just you, Danny.

And people love stuff like that, because it gives them the idea that there’s more to the world than we know.” He pauses.

“Of course, there are also people who think you’re so full of shit you squeak.”

That makes Danny laugh.

At Danny’s truck Ball says, “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking.

It might be a way to get a little money, but that’s really secondary.

It would be a way to fight back.”

“You’re thinking… what? Filing a lawsuit?”

“Exactly.

For harassment.

Someone hucked a brick at your trailer, right?”

“Right…”

“Dogshit in your mailbox, let the air out of your tires…”

“Pretty thin,” Danny says.

“And I thought cops were protected from that sort of thing.

Jalbert may retire, but he was a cop in good standing when he came after me.”

“Ah, but he planted drugs on you,” Ball says, “and if we can get the cop who rousted you in court, and under oath… can we go back to your trailer and talk about it? I mean, what else have you got to do?”

“Not much,” Danny admits.

“Sure, I guess we could talk about it.”

He drives back to Oak Grove with Ball behind him on his Honda.

Danny pulls up at his trailer and sees someone sitting on the concrete block steps, head down, hands dangling between his knees.

Danny gets out of his truck, closes the door, and for a moment just stands there, struck by déjà vu.

Almost overwhelmed by it.

His visitor is wearing a high school letter jacket—where has he seen that before? Ball’s Honda Gold Wing pulls up behind his truck.

The kid stands up and raises his head.

Then Danny knows.

It’s the kid from the newspaper photo, the one standing in front of the hearse and behind his grief-stricken parents.

“Bastard, you killed my sis,” the kid says.

He reaches into the right pocket of his letter jacket and brings out a revolver.

Behind Danny, the Gold Wing shuts off and Ball dismounts, but that’s in another universe.

“Whoa, son.

I didn’t—”

That’s as far as he gets before the kid fires.

A fist hits Danny in the midsection.

He takes a step back and then the pain comes, like the worst acid indigestion attack he ever had.

The pain goes up to his throat and down to his thighs.

He gropes behind him for the doorhandle of his Tundra and can barely feel it when he finds it.

His legs are getting loopy.

He tells them not to buckle.

Warmth is running down his stomach.

His shirt and jeans are turning red.

“Hey!” Ball shouts from that other universe.

“Hey, gun!”

No shit, Danny thinks.

With his weight to pull it, the driver’s door of the Tundra swings open.

Danny doesn’t fall where he stands only because he opened his window on the way back from Dabney’s.

The morning air was so cool and fresh.

That seems like another lifetime.

He hooks his elbow through the window and around the doorpost and pivots like a stripper on a pole.

The kid fires again and there’s a plung sound as the bullet hits the door below the open window.

“Gun! GUN!” Edgar Ball is shouting.

The next bullet goes through the open window and buzzes past Danny’s right ear.

He sees the kid’s cheeks are wet with tears.

He sees Althea Dumfries standing on the top step of her trailer—fanciest one in the park, Danny thinks, crazy what goes through your head when you’re shot.

She appears to be holding a piece of toast with a bite out of it.

Danny goes to his knees.

The pain in his abdomen is excruciating.

He hears another plung as another bullet strikes the Tundra’s open door.

Then he’s all the way down.

He can see the kid’s feet.

He’s wearing Converse sneakers.

Danny sees the gun when the kid drops it on the ground.

Ball is still yelling.

Ball is bawling, he thinks, and then the world slides into darkness.