The overwhelming odor of disinfectant made my nose itch and burn. I sat alone at an oblong table big enough to comfortably accommodate six people. Hot air blew from a vent in the corner and with the door closed the temperature rose high enough to draw a trickle of sweat from my skin. It rolled alongside my spine, making my back itch. I clamped my hands around the white ceramic mug full of burnt-smelling coffee and waited, my mind like static on an old television set—full of noise and movement, but all of it incoherent and meaningless.

When Police Chief Richard Gibson opened the door, the hinges squealed in protest. He left the door ajar, presumably a sign of good faith, and sat in one of the two office-style chairs across from me. My chair was made of molded plastic and bolted to the floor, but my feet had not been cuffed to the bar between the front legs, so I guessed that was a good sign.

"Talk to me, Ms. Kellerman." His warm honey voice matched his muscular, masculine appearance. I'd have bet money he'd been in the military before going into law enforcement.

"I need to find my brother."

"Your brother, Jake?"

"Yes. Someone here must know us. We grew up in this town."

He smiled and it took ten years off his face. I thought maybe he was younger than me. "There aren't many of the old guard left on the police force." He folded his hands in front of him on the table, relaxed, the world's best listener. "Where do you think your brother is?"

"I don't know." As if the wind suddenly changed direction, the static in my mind came into sharp, detailed focus. The image was sharp and red—somewhere between rage and panic. "I don't know why that officer brought me here. I didn't do anything wrong. My father and my brother are missing and I saw blood in the house and—"

"Officer Hayes says she picked you up out at the old Kellerman farm. That house has been sitting empty for some time. We ought to officially condemn it before some kid kills himself setting a fire in there to stay warm while he makes the moves on his girl."

"It's my father's house. It's not empty. I saw him there yesterday."

"Your mean your father, Matthew Kellerman?"

"Yes."

"Ma'am, Matthew Kellerman died ten years ago."

I shook my head. "That woman said the same thing, but you're wrong. I saw him yesterday."

"As far as we can tell, he mistook rat poison for baking soda or some such thing."

Squeezing the cup in my hands even tighter helped stop my hands from trembling. My mind scrambled for explanations and came up empty.

"When did you move away, Ms. Kellerman?"

"June seventh, 2007. I crossed the village limit at five oh two in the evening. Byron was chief of police then. I drove past him on my way out of town."

Chief Gibson leaned back in his chair and rested his hands on the armrests. "That's very specific." Light twinkled in his eyes and I was struck by how long his lashes were. No doubt every single woman between the ages of sixteen and fifty had their sights set on this man who wore no ring on his left hand.

"It was a big moment for me."

"And you became a big star after that."

Was I supposed to say something about that? Yes. I was a big star. I had lots of money. Everybody knew my name. And I still slept with the lights on and woke up screaming in the night as often as not. "Do I have to stay here? Am I in trouble for something?"

"Well, ma'am, I have some questions about that Glock you had in your purse."

I'd lived in Michigan a long time. Boys in high school carried hunting rifles in their trucks and twice I'd been invited to birthday parties where kids shot targets as a party game. Gun laws were practically non-existent. "I've never seen that gun before, but even if I had, there's no law against having a handgun on your dining room table in this state."

"It's a pretty serious offense in California."

"If you're not going to help me find my brother, may I leave? I have something to do. It's fairly urgent."

"You said you don't know where he is."

"I don't."

"Where are you going to look for him, then?"

I rose from the chair, fighting the urge to throw the coffee mug at his calm, pretty face. "I saw blood in my father's house. I saw my father last night. My brother is missing. I'm leaving unless you're going to arrest me for something."

"You've broken no laws, as far as I'm aware, but we're very concerned about the claims you're making."

"You don't seem concerned enough to actually do anything about them," I said, and since he neither responded nor made any move to stop me, I walked out of the police station and found myself standing in the cold with no car and no idea what to do next.

Before I could sort it all out in my head, Dan Tanner came squealing around the corner so fast his nineteen seventy-something Dodge Dart nearly tipped up on two wheels. He braked so hard the bald tires steamed against the frozen pavement, leaned across to the passenger door, and pushed it open. "Get in."

Dan Tanner had been the town crazy for as far back as I could remember. He'd always driven this same car and it had slowly degenerated over the decades so that it was more rust than pumpkin orange as it had originally been. His hair, jet black when I was a kid and gunmetal gray now that I was grown, stuck up at wild angles in every direction like so many spikes on a long-needled cactus.

I had no intention of getting in Dan Tanner's car. In fact, I'd been specifically warned about doing just that more than once in my life.

"Swear to God, girl, there ain't no safer place in this town for you to be. I know they're playing games with you and I'm the only one in this town who'll tell you straight, but I ain't about to hang out in front of this fake-ass cop shop one minute longer than I got to. The cops are fake, but their guns are real enough to kill you."

Still, I hesitated, but then he said the magic words.

"Get in, dammit! Ain't you looking for your brother and your daddy?"

Lacking alternative options, I lowered myself onto the cracked vinyl seat. He hit the gas before I had the door shut and it slammed with a dull thud. As we roared away down the deserted main street of the town, I though I saw Chief Gibson watching us from behind a multi-paned window in the village office, but then again, it might have been a shadow or a figment of my imagination.