how to talk, what the hell good would it do?

Laura had pulled Justin’s hand onto her lap. She was definitely the one in charge of the relationship.

They sat in the living room, the two teenagers on the couch with Gil across from them in an easy chair. Joe stood nearby, restless as usual, while Mrs. Rodriguez went to check on Ashley.

Justin was fidgeting, tapping his foot, which was in contrast to his casual posture as he leaned back into the couch. Nervous but trying to hide it.

“It’s possible we found Brianna,” Gil said. Maybe, he thought wistfully, if he had been allowed to interview them properly, he could have saved that information to be used as needed, to get a response—but the chief had been clear.

“Yeah, we guessed that,” Justin said.

“You don’t seem too broken up,” Joe said.

“Whatever. This time, just check to make sure it’s human,” Justin said. Joe, perpetually pissed off, snorted in disgust.

Gil knew what Justin was referring to. A month after Brianna went missing and a week before the family filed the lawsuit, forensic teams were digging in the backyard of the Rodriguez house. They were using heat-sensing technology that could locate decaying flesh. The equipment and the tech were on loan from the FBI. Someone had gotten too excited by a heat signature coming from a few feet underground—or maybe because of the FBI presence. The family had been corralled in the house and kept there, being questioned on and off, while forensic techs dug carefully for over twenty-four hours, finally uncovering the family dog, which had been buried a year earlier.

“This isn’t no dog,” Joe said.

“But it’s not Brianna,” Laura said with a cock of her head.

“What makes you say that?” Gil asked as the phone in his pocket started to vibrate. He ignored it.

“Because of your track record,” she said, annoyed.

“Besides, Brianna drowned in the arroyo,” Justin added.

Gil looked over at Joe, who looked out the window. Gil wasn’t sure what else they would get out of the visit. He wasn’t even sure what they had hoped to get. He felt like he had just opened a book in the middle and started reading, with no sense of plot, characters, or back story. He felt his phone vibrate again in his pocket but continued to ignore it. He wanted to finish.

“What we found points to a small child—” Gil said before the girlfriend jumped in.

“Yeah, well, come talk to us when you know for sure,” she said.

Gil decided that he was pushing the limits of what Chief Kline had wanted him to do. He was taking down all their new contact information when his phone vibrated again.

“Thank you for your time,” Gil said automatically as he headed out the door. Once outside he popped open his cell phone just in time to catch it before it went to voice mail.

“Gil,” his chief said before Gil could even get out a “hello.” “Get to the Santuario de Guadalupe. Now.”

Gerald, finally finished with his good-byes, met up with Lucy in the foyer of the restaurant, and the two walked outside together, the new morning starting to cast its shadows.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Lucy groaned. No good conversation in the history of humankind had ever started that way. It was a line used all over the world, a thousand times a day, to break up with boyfriends, to fire employees, and to order assassinations. She waited for Gerald to say something.

He considered his words carefully before saying, “So, what’s going on with you?” He stared her so dead in the eye that she had to turn away.

“What do you mean?” she asked in what she hoped was a calm voice as she looked at her combat boots.

“I mean like on the fire call you seemed . . . out of it.”

“How so?” she said, her voice sounding high to her own ears. She could keep up these deflecting answers for days. She hadn’t even used the classic “Am I?” response yet.

“Have you been drinking?” The question almost made her take a step back. She thought she had been so careful. She had taken every precaution. She had the Breathalyzer. She had popped a mint. She had masked her dark circles with big sunglasses.

Without thinking she gave the lie she’d personally heard a hundred times. It inevitably was uttered by guys who caused DWI crashes and men who’d beaten their girlfriends in an alcoholic haze. She said, “I had a couple of beers.”

“When was that?

“Last night,