A strong dry wind swallows Steve as he deplanes, and he regrets not wearing lighter clothes. When he left D.C., it was wet and cold. D.C.’s always either wet and cold or sticky and hot. One week a year, usually in April, the cherry blossoms bloom and the weather is nice.
Steve rolls down the windows of his rental car and lets the furnace air rush over him. His stomach growls as he drives through the town of Bishop and past several restaurants, but adrenaline propels him forward.
Forty minutes later, he smiles as he passes his destination’s marquee: “Welcome to Independence, Elevation 3925 ft., Population 574.” His West Point graduating class had more students than the entire population of Independence.
The two-lane highway splices through the tiny town, a small, desolate place with more abandoned buildings than occupied ones. The businesses that remain—a gas station, a diner, a motel, and a jerky stand—sag in various states of dilapidation.
He turns into a neighborhood of boxy clapboard houses, then makes the second right onto Campton Street. A sheriff’s car is parked in front of a toothpaste-colored home, and leaning against it is a stout older man wearing a tan uniform and a frown.
“Sheriff,” Steve says, extending his hand.
“Agent.”
Both flex their hands as they shake.
Steve gestures to the shattered front window beside the front door, shards of glass still in its frame. “Before or after?”
“After,” the sheriff says. “Door was bolted, so the EMTs needed to break in.”
The two men crouch beneath the yellow tape that extends across the entrance, and both wince as the stench of death hits them, a pungent smell akin to manure mixed with rotten cabbage, an odor Steve’s never gotten used to, no matter how many times he’s faced it. According to the report, the body was found three days ago, but it had been decomposing in the heat for several days, so the stink still lingers.
Breathing sparingly, he scans the front room, which is small, dark, and typical—a tweed sofa, likely older than him, a cracked leather recliner, a scarred coffee table, and an old television on a wood stand. There’s a small kitchen to the left and, across from him, a sliding glass door that leads to a fenced backyard.
The sheriff gestures to the kitchen. “Body was found beside the table.”
Steve steps closer. There’s not much to see—a glass of orange juice with a few flies floating in it, an open carton of Minute Maid, and a plate with a crust of toast. One of two wood chairs is pulled out and askew. Other than that, the kitchen is in perfect order, not a dish in the sink or a crumb on the floor. Parsons kept a meticulously clean house.
Steve walks a wide birth around the table, then leans in to examine the ingredients listed on the orange juice: 100% orange juice from concentrate contains pure filtered water, premium concentrated orange juice.
“Agent Patterson?”
Steve turns to see two young men in the front room. Typical FBI recruits, both have military-cropped hair, muscular frames, and one carries a forensics kit. Steve comes from a different generation, still military, but less gym molded and more life molded.
Steve tells them what he wants covered in the kitchen, then leaves them to do their jobs as he checks out the rest of the house—two bedrooms and a small bathroom with a shower and no tub. He opens each drawer and cupboard, along with the mirrored medicine cabinet. No EpiPens?
Returning to the front room, he looks out the sliding glass door. The yard is dirt and weeds, and beyond it is the desert. It would be the logical way to break into one of these houses, out of view and with nothing around for miles. As he reaches to unlatch the door, he realizes it’s already unlocked and pulls his hand away. Men like Parsons don’t leave doors unlocked.
He calls one of the technicians over and asks him to dust the slider for prints, then, leaving through the front door, circles around to the back.
He looks over the fence. Even in the light breeze, the sand swirls like a living, breathing thing, and whatever prints there might have been have long since been erased.
He moves to the sliding glass door, which is old and on a track system that allows the one that slides to be lifted on and off. He’s looking at the frame when he sees it, a smudge in the dust in the spot you would grab hold to lift it.
“No prints,” the technician says through the glass.
Steve nods, he already deduced that based on the smear, the swath too clean and sharp to have been made by a bare hand. He feels the sweat beneath his shirt and plays the crime through in his head. The perp walked across the desert to the backyard, lifted the door off its track, spiked the orange juice, and left. He wore gloves so as not to leave prints but made a single mistake. It was hot, so he wiped his brow before lifting the door.
He smiles at the smudge. “Got you,” he says quietly. Then raising his voice so the technician can hear through the glass. “I need you to swab this spot of the frame for sweat DNA.”
The sheriff steps into the backyard, and Steve turns to him. “I’m reclassifying Mr. Parsons’s death as a homicide.”
The sheriff blows out a hard breath, clearly not happy about the news. Leveling his eyes on Steve’s, he says, “Otis was a bad man, bad as they come, and he caused a lot of misery in these parts.”
“I understand, but we still have a job to do.”