Why tonight? As she lay staring up at the lazily circling blades of the ceiling fan, Kaylie asked herself the question again and again. She wasn’t sure what caused her to ask herself that question more than any other, especially as there were certainly other matters she should be addressing before the sheriff arrived. But through the numbness that surrounded nearly every other line of thinking, one question occurred to her repeatedly, refused evasion by tricks of distraction: Why tonight? Was it because of the heat? It was hot tonight. But then, it wasn’t the first hot summer night in Kansas. Even her grandmother used to say that the devil couldn’t be found in Kansas in August; in August he went back to hell, where he could cool off. No, the heat had not decided this night would be the night that Joseph Darren died. She had met the man whose body hung from a rope tied to the rafters of the garage on another, long-ago August night, when she had gone down to the small, man-made lake on the edge of town, hoping it would be cool there.
