what we have to. Once all of this gets out, we are going to have more than we can handle in this investigation.”

“What if the other scenes come up or if the press asks if the skull is related to Brianna?” Garcia asked.

“I think ‘no comment’ about covers it,” Kline said, settling the matter.

Judge Otero sat on the bench, listening to a middle-aged local woman. The case was another domestic abuse. The woman was explaining why she had thrown a plate at her boyfriend.

He straightened his class ring on his finger. It was starting to look worn at the base. He rubbed it with his fingertip to see if that would improve the polish. The stone was blue and on the sides was etched “1971” and “UNM.” He had gotten his degree in engineering from the University of New Mexico. That was ages ago. Before his nineteen years on the bench and his five reelections.

He looked up as the woman stopped talking, saying, “I’ll send you to anger management yoga and meditation class. My clerk will give you the information.” He heard a few snickers in the audience. Before the woman could thank him, he said, “Next case.”

Judge Otero had started sending offenders to yoga and meditation classes after getting tired of seeing the same suspects over and over. Clearly, the usual methods other judges used didn’t work. So he decided to be creative and try something new. Only he didn’t expect the amount of publicity it generated. He had reporters all the way from New York calling him for interviews, and one of the cable news networks had scheduled him to talk about criminal sentences. They had canceled after the Judicial Standards Commission started its investigation a year ago, but he fully expected that they would call again once that was dealt with.

His clerk read the charges of the next case: racing on the streets, no license, no seat belt, and no registration. A young man came forward. He looked to be no more than sixteen, and his mother was with him.

“Son,” Judge Otero said, “do you realize that the punishment for this is ninety days in jail and three hundred dollars? It is an extremely serious offense.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I do, sir, but I want to plead guilty with explanation.”

Judge Otero leaned back in his leather chair and surveyed the boy, who looked like he might pass out from nervousness. The judge felt this pause was necessary—especially in juvenile cases—to make the defendant realize the power of the court. Often, this was the first and last time that a citizen would step into a courtroom, so the judge felt it was his duty to show his authority. Here, in this chamber, was a rare world—a place where only one person made the rules, and not following those rules had serious consequences.

Judge Otero nodded slightly and said, “Go ahead.”

“I was just getting done eating and it was my birthday and I was only two blocks away—”

“Stop,” the judge said. “I’ll dismiss because it was your birthday, not because it was two blocks. Always wear your seat belt.”

The next case was called as the judge looked at his watch and then over the courtroom. He had only a half hour left of hearing cases until he had to head off to the Plaza for the main fiesta celebration. He watched a redhead in boots play with her hair as his clerk called up a man with a suspended driver’s license charge. Before the clerk finished reading the case particulars, Judge Otero interrupted with “You have a suspended license. How did you get here?”

“I walked,” the man said.

“You better keep walking,” the judge said as the courtroom laughed.

Chief Kline and Garcia drove off, leaving Gil and Joe standing in front of the crime scene. Near them, a goldfinch sang happily in a blue spruce tree. Gil felt like he’d been put into a pot of boiling water and left to drown. He was drifting, being pushed wherever the current took him. The chaos of the crime scenes and the implied violence were hard to wrap his head around. He needed to regain control.

“We are getting nowhere,” Gil said. “All we’ve been doing is rushing from one scene to the next and never having a chance to formulate a real theory.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Joe said. “We need to step back and regroup.”

A half hour later, Joe and Gil were set up in the office conference room with a few stacks of papers