A month ago, shortly after their first meeting, Roy Dean had called to give her his new address. It was one of the rules: all of her parolees were required to inform her of any change in their personal information. Besides address and phone number, they were required to report all their income sources and what they did in their leisure time and, most important, any new relationships with the fairer sex.

Reporting back to Stella was not optional, but her parolees were usually anxious to comply. First meetings with Stella tended to have that effect.

Second meetings—if a parolee was dim-witted enough to require one—put any lingering doubts to rest.

Stella wasn’t bound by all the bureaucratic red tape that real parole officers had to wade through. She didn’t have to fill out paperwork. She didn’t report to a boss. She didn’t have to appear in court. And she could make the parolees tell her any damn thing she wanted to know.

She couldn’t, however, always make them tell the truth. Stella had no doubt that the address Roy Dean had given her, on Cedar Street in Harrisonville, existed. She’d even lay odds that Roy Dean or one of his relatives had lived there at some point.

But a punk like Roy Dean would never give her a fact if he could spin her some fiction instead. It was in his blood.

After a late breakfast of Pop-Tarts slathered with peanut butter, Stella made a halfhearted effort to get the laundry started, and paid a few bills from the bottom of the stack. Then she set out to track down Roy Dean.

She found a lead an hour later in a dank and yeasty booth in the back of the High Timer. The place was little more than a squat shed at the intersection of a couple of farm roads five miles out of town, but it was popular with local bikers, and Jelloman Nunn was exactly where she thought he’d be, enjoying a lunch of Polish sausages sizzled in the deep fryer and a mug of Busch. Jelloman was happy to see her, folding her into a hug that mashed her face against his greasy leather vest and tickled her forehead with his long, scratchy gray beard.