“Detective?” I called into the living room. “You’d better come in here.’’

He was beside me in a flash, proof that he hadn’t been asleep, either. I pointed at a sheet of folded notebook paper under my pillow. My name, misspelled, was printed in crude block letters between the wide blue lines: Mase. A love note from a demented fifth grader.

“Should I pick it up?’’

Martinez’s jaw was clenched. His eyes were dark, unreadable. “Do you have any tweezers?’’ he asked.

“In the medicine cabinet. Be right back.’’

He used the tweezers to open the note, and then placed it on the nightstand. In the glow of the lamp, we read it together:

You dindt stop. To many questons. See how easy I could kill you? I’m coming for you. Your mama to

The printing looked the same as on the note tossed on Mama’s porch. The misspellings and bad grammar looked familiar, too.

“Get me another plastic bag, would you?’’ Martinez said.

“What are you going to do?’’

“Not much I can do, tonight. Or I guess I should say ‘this morning.’ I’m going to take it in later, when I go to work. We’ll compare it to the other note, and see what, if anything, we can learn from it.’’

He didn’t sound optimistic.

“It looks a lot like the note from the mutilated toy dog,’’ I said.

“That it does. Unfortunately, they’re both written with pencil on common notebook paper. Finding out who wrote it would be easier if they’d used expensive parchment, or an unusual color of ink. Or a fountain pen. The more distinctive, the better.’’

“What about DNA?’’

“It’s possible. But you have to match it to a suspect whose DNA is known. And we don’t have a suspect.’’

We both looked down at the piece of paper. So ordinary. So disturbing.

“This puts my burglary in a different category, doesn’t it?’’

Martinez’s mouth was a grim line. That vein throbbed in his right temple. “Yes,’’ he finally said.

And with that one word, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back into my bed. I knew that whoever had killed Jim Albert had been in my home, standing right here. And I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep at all until we found the murderer who was now threatening Mama and me.

“Mama? It’s Mace.’’

“Well, hello darlin’. I’m just finishing up my Cheese ’n’ Ham Surprise for the church breakfast. Are you on your mobile phone?’’

Mama still treats each call from a moving car as a miracle, even though cell phones have become as common as cowboy hats in Himmarshee.

I bit back a smart-aleck remark, though sleep deprivation and sheer fear might have given me a pass to make one. “I’m in Pam’s car, on my way into town. I wanted to let you know I’m running a little late.’’

My thoughts drifted back to why I’d been delayed.

I’d finally fallen asleep, for an hour and a half, on the floor of my front porch. The idea of a killer in my house, maybe even in my bed, creeped me out. Martinez wanted to leave the sheets and pillows as they were, to preserve any evidence. Even though I’d rolled around in there, the intruder may have, too. He could have left behind skin, hair, maybe even bodily fluid. That last prospect alone was enough to make me grab a sleeping bag, plug in a fan, and hit the porch.

Martinez pulled all the bedding off the sofa and insisted on bunking on the floor next to me. His presence was solely a comfort. Feeling scared and vulnerable effectively squashed any erotic leanings I had earlier.

“I know how it feels when you don’t want to be inside your own house.’’ His voice was barely a whisper beside me. “After my wife was killed, I couldn’t use the front door. For months, I entered and left from the back. Finally, I sold the house and moved here. Too many memories.’’

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,’’ was all I came up with. Marty would have done better.

I must have finally dozed off, because I dreamed of Patricia Martinez’s murder. But everything was confused. She wasn’t in the front hallway of their home in Miami. She was in the woods in Himmarshee. Throughout the dream, the faces of her attackers stayed hidden in the shadows. And then finally, just before she was shot, the two men looked up. In my dream, one of them was Sal Provenza. The other one had my granddaddy’s gun. It was Jeb Ennis.

The sound of the fatal shot in my dream turned into the beep of the alarm clock I’d brought to the porch. I awoke, tangled in my sleeping bag and soaked in sweat.

My porch mate was already up and dressed. He’d folded his bedding, placing it neatly in a corner. After I showered and came out in my bathrobe, he handed me a cup of coffee he’d made.

“Sorry, no café Cubano,’’ I said, sitting at the kitchen table so I could linger a bit longer.

“That’s okay.’’ He took the seat across from me and smiled. “I’ll make you some when you come to my house.’’

I’d been parsing that sentence ever since. Was it an invitation? A promise? Or, was it like, “Let’s have lunch sometime,’’ a casual remark without real meaning? One way or another, I was oddly eager for my first taste of that Cuban coffee.

Now, I was hurrying across the bridge at Taylor Creek—just as I’d done the night Mama called from the police department to tell me there’d been a murder. I passed the site along State Road 98 where I’d spotted Emma Jean’s car, pulled off into the marshy weeds.

I swerved to avoid a dead raccoon in the road. One of my garbage can bandits? I hoped not. I wanted things to be like before, when my sole worry was a gang of marauding critters.

“I’m still about twenty minutes out, Mama,’’ I said into the phone.

“That’s okay, honey,’’ Mama said. “The VFW’s only a couple of blocks away. Alice and Ronnie from next door are already here. We’re gonna walk over together. I’ll meet you.’’

No criticism about my tardiness. Not a single complaint. Mama’s mood was as sunny as the September day would be. I didn’t have the heart to tell her someone might be gunning for both of us with her daddy’s shotgun.

“I wish you wouldn’t walk, Mama. I’ll be right there to pick you up.’’

“Don’t be silly, Mace. We’ll be at the hall in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’’ She lowered her voice. I pictured her cupping her hand around the phone. “Alice begged me to walk with them. She’s doing everything she can think of to get Ronnie to exercise. He’s getting as fat as the only tick on a hound ever since he hurt his shoulder. The doctor says it’ll be another month before he can go back to full-time work at the feed store.’’