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essays and tests. I’m sure we could find something to compare it with.”
    Frank didn’t address any of her suggestions. Instead, he said, “I remember when my daughter was her age.” He cleared his throat a fewtimes. “She used to draw circles over her
i
’s instead of dots. I wonder if she still does that.”
    Lena kept quiet. She had worked with Frank her entire career, but she didn’t know much about his personal life beyond what most everyone else in town knew. He had two children by his first wife, but that was many wives ago. They’d moved out of town. He didn’t seem to have contact with any of them. The subject of his family was one he never broached, and right now Lena was too cold and too wired to start sharing.
    She put the focus back on the case. “So, someone stabbed Allison in the neck, chained her to some cinder blocks, threw her in the lake, then decided to make it look like a suicide.” Lena shook her head at the stupidity. “Another criminal mastermind.”
    Frank gave a snort of agreement. She could tell his mind was on other things. He took off his glasses and stared at the road ahead.
    She didn’t want to, but she asked, “What’s going on?”
    “Nothing.”
    “How many years have I been riding with you, Frank?”
    He made another grunting noise, but he relented easily enough. “Mayor’s been trying to track me down.”
    Lena felt a lump rise in her throat. Clem Waters, the mayor of Heartsdale, had been trying for some time to make Frank’s job as interim chief a more permanent position.
    Frank said, “I don’t really want the job, but there’s nobody else lining up to take it.”
    “No,” she agreed. No one wanted the job, not least of all because they would never in a million years match the man who’d held it before.
    “Benefits are good,” Frank said. “Nice retirement package. Better health care, pension.”
    She managed to swallow. “That’s good, Frank. Jeffrey would want you to take it.”
    “He’d want me to retire before I have a heart attack chasing somejunkie across the campus quad.” Frank took out his flask and offered it to Lena. She shook her head and watched him take a long pull, one eye on the road as he tilted back his head. Lena’s focus stayed on his hand. There was a slight tremor to it. His hands had been shaking a lot lately, especially in the morning.
    Without warning, the rain’s steady beat turned into a harsh staccato. The noise echoed in the car, filling up the space. Lena pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She should tell Frank now that she wanted to resign, that there was a job in Macon waiting for her if she could bring herself to make the leap. She had moved to Grant County to be near her sister, but her sister had died almost a decade ago. Her uncle, her only living relative, had retired to the Florida Panhandle. Her best friend had taken a job at a library up North. Her boyfriend lived two hours away. There was nothing keeping Lena here except inertia and loyalty to a man who had been dead for four years and probably hadn’t thought she was a good cop anyway.
    Frank used his knees to hold the steering wheel steady as he screwed the cap back on the flask. “I won’t take it unless you say it’s okay.”
    She turned her head in surprise. “Frank—”
    “I mean it,” he interrupted. “If it’s not okay with you, then I’ll tell the mayor to shove it up his ass.” He gave a harsh chuckle that rattled the phlegm in his chest. “Might let you come along to see the look on the little prick’s face.”
    She made herself say, “You should take the job.”
    “I don’t know, Lee. I’m gettin’ so damn old. Children are all grown up. Wives have moved on. Most days, I wonder why I even get out of bed.” He gave another raspy chuckle. “Might find me in the lake one day with my watch in my shoes. But for real.”
    She didn’t want to hear the tiredness in his voice. Frank had been on the job twenty years longer than