the laundry she had done in the dishwasher. She ran to the kitchen and opened the dishwasher door. She was greeted by the smell of mold. Or maybe it was mildew. Or maybe she didn’t care, because she was naked and didn’t have any underwear or socks. She ran back to her room and pulled on her work pants, minus underwear, and then pulled on her work boots, minus socks. The only underwear she did have was a bra, which, truth be told, didn’t have all that much work to do. She pulled on her EMS T-shirt, grabbed her handheld radio, and ran out the door. She was in her car and down the street before she realized she hadn’t done the Breathalyzer test. She’d had just the four beers with Manny, so that should put her blood alcohol level around .02. She hoped.

She and Nathan had left the tow truck in front of the Cowgirl, and then Nathan had taken her home in his car, which, she noted, actually did have gas in it. More than half a tank, in fact. That had made it quite easy to turn down his advances the night before, since he had clearly lied.

Gerald was already in the ambulance as usual when she arrived and jumped in. They didn’t say much as he drove, instead listening to the sheriff’s deputies on the radio who called in as they arrived on the scene. All of a sudden, she heard one of them yell into the radio, “Expedite, expedite, EMS, expedite,” basically a mayday. Gerald hit the gas, the sirens, and the lights in one motion, and Lucy called in on the radio. “Santa Fe, this is Piñon Rescue One, we are expediting. I repeat, we are expediting.”

She looked over at the speedometer as Gerald nosed the heavy ambulance past 80 mph. They were on a straight open street with little traffic. An “expedite” call was bad. It meant that everything was going to hell in a handbasket.

Lucy braced herself as Gerald turned onto the interstate on-ramp and gunned it up the hill. On the radio, several deputies at once started calling out mile marker numbers to identify their location. Lucy tried to make sense of what they were saying. They kept talking on top of each other until the Santa Fe dispatcher said firmly, “This is Dispatch to all units. Clear the channel. I repeat, clear the channel.” There was silence for a moment until Dispatch said, “Piñon Rescue One, what is your ETA to scene?” She heard Gerald next to her mumble a swear word, something she had never heard him do before. He did so now out of frustration. He could not get the ambulance to go any faster, and whoever was on scene needed medical help. Now. The deputies would not be freaking out unless they were desperate.

Lucy checked the map book and made a guesstimate. “Santa Fe, this is Piñon Rescue One, ETA is approximately five minutes.” The dispatcher responded, “Copy that, Rescue One. All units, traffic can resume on this channel.” Gerald topped the speedometer out at 95 mph as the ambulance flew down the interstate. There was little traffic out this morning, so there were fewer drivers to frighten as a huge ambulance came hurtling toward them. Finally, in the distance, Lucy could see the strobing lights of the sheriff’s cars. She picked up the radio and said into the mike, “Santa Fe, Piñon Rescue One on scene.”

Now for the horror, she thought.

While Gil waited for Joe and Stevens to get situated in the interview room, he picked up a file folder on his desk and started to flip through it. It was all the information Kristen Valdez could find on Donna Henshaw, the Golden Mountain Ashram, and Guru Sanjam Dev, from property records to background checks. It turned out that the exalted guru, who was Anglo, had had a run-in with the law when he was in India. He was accused of defrauding female believers by charging them hundreds of dollars for an audience. Gil only had time to read a few pages of the file before he had to go observe the beginning of the interview.

He went into the room with the two-way mirror, which was kept darker than the room on the other side. He sat at the table and took notes while Joe asked his baseline questions. Alex Stevens seemed fairly relaxed but tired. Gil wondered how much sleep he’d had in the last