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the same as the symbol carved into the boy’s belly.”
    Stanton Manchester had been Joanne’s predecessor, serving as sheriff of Cross County for almost thirty years before retiring. Precisely one week after Joanne had stepped into the job, Manchester had taken a lamp cord, tied one end to the knob of a closed door, wrapped the other around his throat, got down on his knees, leaned forward, and strangled himself. He hadn’t left a note, but Dale had told Joanne once that Manchester hadn’t needed to.
    Everyone knows why he did it. A man sees a lot in three decades on the job. Things that he can’t forget, no matter how hard he tries. Stan saw too much, that’s all
.
    Joanne wondered if that was truly the reason why Manchester had committed suicide. She also wondered if, when she retired, she’d end up doing the same thing.
    “It’s a copycat, Dale. And don’t tell me that the sheriff’s office and you are the only ones who know about Coulter’s mark. It became public record during his trial. Besides, you know how people talk around here. Anyone who’d seen the corpses — cops, EMTs, the coroner at the time, morgue attendants — any of them could’ve described the symbol well enough for someone to copy it. It’s not as if it’s all that complicated an image to reproduce.”
    “True. But why copy it now, almost twenty years after the original murders and six after Carl’s execution?”
    Joanne wadded up the wet paper towel, walked over to the sink, and threw it away in the wastebasket underneath.
    “You know I don’t like making guesses without facts, Dale.” She returned to the table, sat down, and took a sip of her remaining water. “You can come up with as many ideas as I can. Maybe whoever killed the boy decided to carve Carl’s design into his belly to throw suspicion off him or herself. Maybe the killer’s simply crazy.”
    “I know one thing. There’s nothing
simple
about this murder. If there was, you wouldn’t have had one of your patented Feelings.”
    Joanne could hear the capital F in the way Dale stressed the word. She grimaced. “I should’ve known you’d notice.”
    “I see all and tell little.” Dale’s tone was light, but Joanne wasn’t certain he was joking. “So … how bad was it?”
    She recalled the roaring in her ears, the stabbing pain behind her eyes, the nausea roiling in her stomach, the memory so intense she almost felt the sensations anew.
    She swallowed to prevent her gorge from rising, and thrust the memory away. “Bad enough,” she said, her voice raspy and strained.
    Several seconds passed before Dale responded. “I’ll keep digging then. I’ll let you know if I find out anything. Try to get some sleep, Joanne.” He paused. “Sounds like you’re going to need it.”
    Dale disconnected before she could reply. She continued holding her phone to her ear for a moment, as if she thought he might call back to say goodbye. But Dale wasn’t a hello-goodbye kind of person. He wasn’t inconsiderate. He just thought social niceties were a waste of time. She put the phone back on the kitchen counter and returned to sit at the breakfast nook table.
    When Dale said he’d “keep digging,” Joanne knew he meant more than going through his old files. Decades ago, before coming to Cross County, he’d been a crime reporter in Chicago. She knew the reason he’d left the big city for life in rural Ohio had something to do with the deaths of his wife and daughter, but she didn’t know the details. Whenever she asked, Dale would only say they’d died in an accident and then change the subject. Joanne understood that it remained a painful subject for him, even after all these years, and so she never pried any further.
    But big city or Ohio countryside, Dale was a hands-on reporter, which meant that he would start his own investigation into tonight’s murder. Joanne knew she should try to dissuade him. A civilian, no matter how well meaning, shouldn’t interfere