beers were probably for the father, the diet drink for the mother, Coke for the kids, and water for someone else. A sixth person.”
Emerson appealed to the others. “It’s pretty damn reckless to assume that an extra sleeping bag and bottle of water prove the presence of a sixth person. They could’ve put down all the sleeping bags they had, and any of them could have been drinking water.”
Dupree’s look invited her to respond.
She did. “On the floor by the sleeping bags there’s a little cloth case full of pills and tablets, the sort of medicine a senior citizen would take. Blood thinners, blood pressure medicine, tablets for arthritis, sleeping pills. The elderly carry their medicines with them wherever they go, and they take their pills with water. Add to that the fact the water bottle has obvious lipstick traces. Neither the mother nor the girl is wearing lipstick.”
“There’s a problem, though,” Tucker objected as she pushed herself to her feet. “There’s not a trace of this person. According to their files, neither spouse had living parents. Both were orphaned at a young age, and they were in foster care in their teens. Neither had any other family.”
Amaia left the house. Winding her way through the vehicles blocking the drive, she got far enough away to get a wider view of the property. The dirt road to the Allen farmhouse connected it to a state highway about two hundred yards away. From the edge of the highway, she scanned the rolling plain.
The crop, probably soybeans, had been harvested, so the absence of machinery wasn’t unusual. She remembered seeing a fridge magnet from the Alvord Farmers Co-op. The only structure in sight was the ravaged farmhouse, and they’d been told that the closest neighbors were more than two miles away. She looked up at the passing clouds and started back toward the house.
A state trooper was leaning against a patrol car. She gave Amaia a friendly look and nodded toward the farmhouse. “Unbelievable, right? Looks like a turtle with its shell ripped off.”
Amaia’s lips twitched in a faint, wry smile. “I thought the same thing when I saw it. Too bad there’s a threat of more rain.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. A company from Oklahoma will be here in an hour or two with an industrial tarp to cover it. After the examiner takes the bodies out, we’ll go through the place room by room and inventory everything. It goes to a warehouse until the case is closed. After that it goes to the heirs. That is, assuming there are any.”
Amaia gave her a real smile this time. “Pretty efficient!”
The friendly woman extended her hand. “Alana Harris, state trooper.”
“Assistant Inspector Amaia Salazar.” She touched the FBI badge pinned to the front of her baggy jacket.
The trooper grinned at her. “They didn’t take too much trouble getting you the right size, did they?”
Amaia returned the grin and pointed toward what was left of the farmhouse. Dupree stood with a Texas Ranger on the front porch watching them. “Any idea where the roof wound up?”
“Sure!” was the cheerful answer. “It’s a bit less than a quarter of a mile from here.” Harris pointed. “You’re lucky. Three years ago, a storm following Hurricane Helen tore off part of the church roof and left it on a silo two miles away.”
Amaia nodded in thanks. She headed around to the back of the Allens’ destroyed home. In contrast with the front yard, the field behind the house was littered with splintered wood, clothing, and smashed furniture. A six-armed standing lamp stood incongruously upright in the field, all of its bulbs intact. The roof was nowhere in sight.
“You’ll have to go down yonder to see it,” her new friend called after her. “It got stuck in a hollow.”
Amaia turned and waved her thanks. She saw that Dupree had left the supervising ranger on the porch and was headed in her direction.
She strode forward single mindedly, aware Dupree was behind her. There was no sign of the roof, but when she turned back, Trooper Harris waved her on.
The hollow was about six feet deep and seventy-five feet wide. And lo and behold, the roof was there, almost intact, still fastened to the joists that had anchored it to the farmhouse. The grassy field had been trampled by someone; the track ahead of her was as obvious as boot prints in a snowdrift. She turned and saw a similar grassy trail in her wake.
Dupree caught up with her and