Up till now, he’d done everything in near darkness. If he planned to shave without cutting his throat, though, he needed to turn on the light over the sink. If he did… Another interesting question, but, he decided, not one for right now. A cop who aimed to end things could always find a quicker, neater way than a disposable Bic.

He flicked on the switch. The vicious photons made him flinch. So did the ancient alky who peered out of the mirror at him. Sallow, sagging skin. Gray stubble. Not to put too fine a point on it, he looked like hell.

Scraping off the stubble helped… a little. So did Visine.. a little. He still had all his own hair, and the stuff on his scalp, unlike his whiskers, was only beginning to frost. Once he combed it, he didn’t look too much older than he really was.

“Coffee,” he said-the first word besides fuck that had come out of his mouth this morning. He could get some down at the front desk, but the coffee here was as chintzy as the rest of the operation. He quickly dressed (jeans, sweatshirt, denim jacket over it, Angels cap-the calendar might say June was starting, but Jackson was cool and Yellowstone, seventy-odd miles north and over a thousand feet higher, was downright cold). Then he went down to his rental car and headed toward the national parks.

Bubba’s was a lot closer. They brewed good coffee there, and cooked enormous, delicious, artery-clogging breakfasts. And they opened at half past six, so you could feed your face and head out for wherever you were going.

“What can I get you today, dear?” the waitress asked when Colin sat down. She wasn’t young or cute, but she said dear as if she meant it. Maybe I should have hit on somebody like her last night, Colin thought-too late, as usual.

Aloud, he said, “Coffee-and a big bowl of vanilla ice cream.”

It was the best hangover fighter he knew. It made people give him funny looks, though. Not this gal. It didn’t faze her a bit. She just nodded. “Hurt yourself last night, you say?”