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“Did you ever find out for sure what happened to your statement?” Baryn asks.

“Never heard anything about it again. No call asking me to clarify anything, either.”

“Was that the only time something like that happened?”

The man gives him a look that suggest the question itself is amusing. “Son, when you’ve lived here as long as I have, you learn there’s a difference between what happened and what makes it into the paperwork.”

“That’s enough,” the woman beside Baryn announces, reaching decisively for her wine. “Some of us came here to paint, not to reopen every argument this town’s had in the last thirty years.”

“Fair enough.” Baryn turns his attention back to his canvas. He looks remarkably unconcerned. “Although I do have one more question.”

She groans. “Of course you do.”

He holds up his paintbrush, its bristles permanently bent at an awkward angle. “Who do I have to mildly inconvenience for a new brush?”

For a few minutes, we paint in silence. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s not peaceful, either. There are too many unspoken questions circling the room—questions about the case, about what happens when we run out of leads, about what happens when the work is finished and we’re left with nothing to obsess over except each other.

Maybe that last one is just me.

The case has an ending.

I know that.

Eventually, Casey will stop being an open question. There will be no more tapes to rewind, no more records to request, no more reason for Baryn to appear beside me every morning with coffee and a new theory.

I push the thought away before it develops into something requiring analysis.

The wine helps.

Not significantly, but enough that somewhere between the second and third glass, the muscles between my shoulder blades stop trying to fuse together. The noise in the rec hall softens around the edges. Brushes swish through cloudy plastic cups. Someone at the table behind us is laughing hard enough to wheeze. The instructor circulates between easels, dispensing compliments with increasing desperation as the wine disappears and everyone’s barns become progressively less structurally sound.

I take another sip and assess my canvas.

The instructor’s barn is cheerful. Red siding. White trim. A field of yellow flowers in the foreground. There’s a sunset behind it in shades of pink and orange, and absolutely nothing terrible has ever happened there.

Mine has been the victim of arson.

The fire itself is mostly extinguished now. I’ve blackened the roofline, collapsed the eastern wall, and exposed several support beams through the burned siding. Thick gray smoke rises from what remains of the roof, and I’ve added enough orange along the interior to suggest a few stubborn pockets of fire are still active.

The surrounding grass is scorched.

One window is blown out.

Behind the barn, partially obscured by the remains of a fence, is the body.

I’ve positioned it supine with one arm extended into the grass, where three carefully placed streaks of greenish-purple suggest marbling beneath the skin. The abdomen is appropriately distended. A collection of black dots around the mouth and eyes represents insect activity, although at this scale they could admittedly be mistaken for an unfortunate amount of facial hair. Two fingers are missing from the exposed hand, courtesy of the fox I have not yet figured out how to paint.

There is also, perhaps unnecessarily, a small yellow evidence marker near the point where I’ve determined the fire originated.

I lean back.

Something is missing.

I dip the smallest brush into black paint and add another streak of soot above the window.

Better.

The instructor appears beside me.