Darius’s pickup and small trailer were still parked blocking my car in, halfway on the gravel and halfway on the grass; when I’d okayed that, I’d only expected him to be there for a little while. The ground had been nice and dry, but as I turned to go back into the house, big drops of rain began to patter down. We simultaneously thought of the truck making troughs in the softened dirt, and hurried back to check the cab of the truck.

Martin said a heartfelt and obscene word. The ignition was empty.

I looked in the passenger side. Perhaps Darius had just withdrawn the keys and tossed them on the seat to silence the little beeper that reminds you your keys are in the ignition. I do that occasionally, if I have to run back into the house for a minute or two.

“Look, Martin.” I pointed. But not at a set of keys.

Martin stuck his head in the door.

There was an open bottle of generic pain reliever, acetaminophen, on the seat.

Martin raised one eyebrow at me. “So?”

“He started acting so funny so fast, my first thought was that he’d taken a drug. And I don’t think he’s the kind of man who would ever think of doing something so dangerous.”

Martin said, “We’d better call the sheriff’s department again.”

So once again Jimmy and Levon drove the mile out of town that got them to our house, and Jimmy pulled on plastic gloves before he picked up the pill bottle. He poured its contents onto the gloved palm of his other hand. He didn’t tell us to leave, so we watched.

Martin saw it first. He pointed.

Levon bent over Jimmy’s palm.

“Damn,” he said in his deep voice.

One of the pills was a smidge smaller than the others, and not quite the same shade of white. It didn’t have the manufacturer’s initial on it as all the other pain relief tablets did. The difference was obvious when you were looking for it. But without some good reason to examine the medicine, who would think of doing so?