so easy. There had been no false contractions. She had been getting a prenatal checkup when the doctor said something about taking her over to the hospital for some tests. She was quickly taken to an ultrasound room. Blood was drawn. Exams were done. Then the doctor said, “Are you ready to have your baby?” It had taken Ashley by surprise. She was only at thirty-three weeks. She had almost seven weeks left to go until her due date, and she wasn’t in labor, but the doctors seemed so sure. So they gave her something to block the pain, and she had a C-section while she was still wide-awake. As soon as it was over, the nurse asked Ashley if she wanted to breastfeed, but Ashley said that she was too groggy. She really didn’t want the nurse to get mad at her, but she didn’t want to nurse Brianna. Just like she didn’t want to nurse the new baby. She had seen what nursing does to a woman’s breasts, and she didn’t want hers to end up sagging and loose. Plus, if she breastfed, she’d have to pump her breast milk if she wanted to leave the baby with her mom. A bottle was so much easier.

She had been in the hospital for a few days, but Brianna had to stay longer because she came too early and the doctors said her lungs needed some extra help. Ashley spent all day in the hospital, sitting next to Brianna, holding her tiny hand, but at night, she had to go home. Even during those few hours apart, Ashley missed her little girl.

The marker Joe was using on the whiteboard made squeaking noises as he wrote. He was adding items under a heading that now read MOTIVES FOR DISPLAYS. He had already put down “guilt” and “pleasure.” They had agreed not to debate the finer points behind each of their pet motives and instead just concentrate on getting all the possible ideas down.

“I guess if he used her bones like this because of his religious beliefs we should also add ‘faith’ as a motive,” Gil said, “and we should probably think about what Garcia said about a cult.”

“What kind of cult would do this?” Joe asked as he added the new items to the board. “Like Satan worshippers? Or a death cult?”

“I have no idea,” Gil said. The two men looked at the board for a moment before Gil said, “What are we missing?”

“What about a revenge motive?” Joe asked. “I would think if someone wanted Ashley or anyone else in the family to suffer, this would be a great way to do it.”

“That’s an interesting thought,” Gil said as Joe wrote it down, “and that means we should add ‘retaliation killer’ to the suspect list. Did Fisher ever mention anyone in the family who had enemies?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Joe said, “but I’ll go through his notes again as soon as we’re done here.” The two men stared at the motive list a little longer until they were out of ideas.

“All right, let’s move on to locations,” Gil said. “I guess you can write where we found all the bones.”

Joe wrote the list quickly: Zozobra, Mary, Mary, and Mary.

Gil smiled a little. “That’s not incredibly helpful, but it’ll work for the moment.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “What do all these locations have in common besides the Mary thing? . . . I guess they’re all downtown, and they all have significance to people from Santa Fe. A couple of the places are a little hard to find.”

“Good, good,” Gil said. “We can add that to the profile, that he’s probably a local.”

Joe stared at the board some more, then said, “I feel like we’re missing something about Zozobra.”

“How so?”

“Well, at all the other crime scenes, the bones were left at Catholic sites . . .”

“All with a statue of Mary . . .”

“Right,” Joe said. “Except Zozobra. Why put her in there?”

“Well, in a way Zozobra is about making amends and forgiveness of sorts. It’s a good point, though,” Gil said. “Zozobra really has nothing to do with Mary or the Catholic Church.”

“Maybe the better question is how the skull got there,” Joe said. “Access to Zozobra was tight, I mean really tight. I was there, remember? They had security out the ying yang.”

“Where were you stationed?”

“I was with the crowd.”

“So how did he get it into Zozobra?” Gil said.

“I can only think of one way,” Joe said. “He would