think about something he didn’t want to consider—that the family knew who the killer was and was protecting him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Sunday Morning

Gerald pronounced the woman dead, as Lucy went to get a sheet to cover her. They had to wait for the medical investigator to show up before they could leave.

Lucy draped the woman’s body and maneuvered the sheet so it also covered up a pool of blood nearby. Deputy Segura, who had been with her on the car fire two days ago, approached her and said, “I need your help.” He looked overwhelmed and tired, so Lucy agreed. She followed him over to a minivan parked on the side of the road, a few yards beyond the crash scene. In the back sat a woman and a child.

“Hi,” Lucy said softly. “How are you doing?” She assumed this was the dead woman’s family, who had been called to the scene by the police. Lucy had been asked once or twice before to check out a family who had just been given the news that a loved one had died, to make sure they were not suicidal or homicidal. The woman was just looking off into space, holding the little boy, who looked to be six.

“Ma’am,” Lucy said, “I just want to talk to you for a moment and see how you are.”

The woman said nothing. Lucy wondered if this was the dead woman’s sister.

Deputy Segura, standing next to Lucy, said, “This is Karen and Max.” Lucy smiled at the little boy and said, “Hi, Max.” He said nothing.

“Karen, I just want to say that I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you,” Lucy said. She was glad that she had thrown the sheet over the body. The accident scene was a few yards behind them, and the body wasn’t visible from the van, but Lucy wouldn’t want Karen to inadvertently see her dead sister just lying on the road.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Lucy asked.

Karen cleared her throat and said, “The officer mentioned that he could arrange for someone to take us home.”

“Of course,” Lucy murmured as she turned to look for Deputy Segura, who suddenly was nowhere to be seen.

“We can have your car towed to your house,” Lucy said.

“No,” Karen said strongly as she started to cry. “I never want to see this car again. Never.”

Max had started to cry as well now, but Lucy couldn’t tell if that was fear or grief.

Something in Max’s eyes made Lucy stop. He looked so scared. So petrified. She got out of the van slowly and walked to the front. It was dented in two feet from the impact. The bumper was painted red with blood. Lucy looked back at Karen and Max inside the van.

Lucy needn’t have bothered to cover the body for their sakes, because they had already seen much worse.

Joe was sitting silently next to Gil, not jumping in as much as usual. It concerned Gil slightly as he went on with Stevens’s interrogation.

“So I admit I’m a little confused,” Gil said. “Why didn’t you say from the beginning that you were in Socorro when Brianna disappeared?”

“Okay, well, here’s the thing,” Stevens said. “I had been drinking on the drive back to town, and then I got Ashley’s call that Brianna’s missing, and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I can’t go home because there are cops all over the house. So Ashley said that I should keep driving around to sober up and she’d say I’m out looking for Brianna.”

“So that’s what you did?” Gil asked. It wasn’t much of a master plan to avoid a DWI. It also wasn’t much of a reason to lie.

“Yeah,” he said. “I stopped and got some coffee and just sat in my truck until I was sober enough to go home.”

“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “Why not just tell the police that you were in Socorro and then when you got back to town you went to look for Brianna? Why lie about where you were? The only thing you really needed to lie about was driving while drunk.” Gil winced a little every time Joe used the word “lie,” but Stevens didn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t know,” Stevens said. Gil thought Joe made a good point. The lie Ashley came up with was overkill. It was too complicated.

“How long were you and Ashley dating before Brianna disappeared?” Gil asked.

“Like two months.”

“So you started dating while Brianna was still living with Donna Henshaw,” Gil