can return the favor one time, no problem.” Joe leaned his head against the passenger-side window and went to sleep for the rest of the ten-minute drive.

Gil was back at the office, making corrections on his last report, when his phone rang. It was his cousin Suzanne.

“I’m sorry I’m just calling now, but I had to wait until I left work,” she said. “Don’t you dare tell my mom that I’m helping you like this.” Gil knew she was actually breaking the law in helping him.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“We had a patient in the ward a few months ago who was schizophrenic and his delusions revolved around the Freemasons and the Catholic Church,” she said. “Hang on . . .” He heard her talking to her four-year-old in the background. “Sweetheart, you need to go lie down.” He heard a little voice respond to her but couldn’t make out the words.

“Devon’s not in bed yet?” Gil asked, remembering the sleep schedule of toddlers.

“No, he’s in bed, he just can’t seem to stay there,” Suzanne said in the typical harried voice of a mother. “I might have to go in a minute. Anyway, the patient was brought in by the sheriff’s department after he threatened them with a sword.”

“Really?” Gil said, feeling that they finally might have gotten a break.

“Yeah, and according to his chart he was approached by police after his neighbor said the man threatened his kids.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “I never treated him.”

“What’s the name?”

“David Geisler,” she said and gave him the address.

“That’s just a few blocks from Brianna’s house,” Gil said.

“I know,” Suzanne said. He thanked her, and they hung up.

Gil looked up the sheriff’s arrest report online. On May 24, Santa Fe County sheriff’s officer Jackson Yazzie approached a white male about suspicious activity. A 911 caller reported that the man, who was acting strangely, walked near some children playing outside in the street and reportedly said something about blood on a head. The arresting officer went to the suspect’s house. When he opened the door, the man was holding a samurai sword. The officer called for backup, and the man was taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation.

Gil got Yazzie’s cell phone number from Dispatch. Yazzie confirmed the contents of the report and added, “We’ve been over to the house a couple more times since then just to calm things down. The neighbors are really spooked by the guy.”

“When you picked him up in May, do you remember him saying anything in particular?” Gil asked.

“He was hard to follow, but he talked a lot about religion and how God was eating our innocence,” Yazzie said. “It didn’t make much sense.”

“Do you have his fingerprint card?” Gil asked. If so, they might finally have something to match against the prints found at the scenes.

“Yeah,” Yazzie said, “but I never entered his prints on the system since he wasn’t charged with anything. I can e-mail them to you.”

Gil thanked him. After they hung up, Gil grabbed his keys and said, “Joe, how would you like to go on a field trip?”

On the way, Gil called Liz, who was still in the office, and asked her if the stab marks in the skull could have been made by a samurai sword. She didn’t hesitate in her response. “Yes, that would fit,” she said. “The wounds aren’t actually that unique. I was thinking maybe a strong kitchen knife, but any thin sword would fit.”

“Thanks,” Gil asked, “and later on I’m going to be e-mailing you some fingerprints to check against the ones from the scenes.”

“Do you have a suspect?” she asked.

“Not quite yet,” he said.

Gil pulled up in front of David Geisler’s house and cut the engine, but neither he nor Joe got out of the car. Dusk was coming, and some neighbors already had their porch lights on. Geisler’s house was dark brown and flat-roofed, with large cracks in some of the stucco. The yard was overgrown.

No lights were on in the home, but it wasn’t full dark yet.

“What do you want to do?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know,” Gil said. “We need to talk to him and get access to the house.”

“At least he left us plenty of evidence at all the crime scenes to compare to if we can get inside,” Joe said.

“We don’t really have enough probable cause to arrest him.”

“I think that means we go knock on the door and see what’s what,” Joe said, getting out of the car.

They walked up