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Tess kept her eyes steady on the road. At least he thought she did; he couldn’t see past her sunglasses.

“Didn’t do what?” she asked.

“Kill those guys.” His throat was dry. He licked his lips. She seemed so damn calm . “Everyone thinks I killed those guys in the bomb shelter. Why else would I be a ‘person of interest’?”

She said nothing.

“You don’t believe me.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

He did. He described everything, how Luther had lured him to the house. How they’d kept him in the bomb shelter. The ransom demand, the kidnap video. “You know what my wife said?”

“Talia L’Apel?”

“Yeah, Talia. She said, ‘You can have him.’ What do you think of that?”

She shrugged.

“So now they think I killed them. Do you believe I have superhuman powers? How would I get the drop on three guys? Especially Corey. That’s one mean son of a bitch.” Stopped himself. “ Was a mean son of a bitch,” he amended. “But I didn’t kill him.”

“Who did?”

“I’m pretty sure I know.”

“Oh?”

First time there was an inflection in her voice. Interest. Could he be making headway with her?

“I think Gordon sent somebody.” He paused, realizing how paranoid he sounded.

“Who?”

He couldn’t tell if she was just humoring him, waiting for her chance to get at the weapon in the holster on her side. He should have grabbed it and tossed it out of the car when he’d had a chance, but he hadn’t been thinking straight.

His window was still open, the air buffeting him. “I’m going to take your gun. Don’t try anything.” He leaned sideways, reaching for the butt of her weapon.

And at that moment, quick as a snake, she knocked his hand aside and whipped out her gun.

The car started to slow.

“Nobody will believe me,” Max said. Staring at the gun muzzle. Mesmerized by it.

“Not after this they won’t,” she said.

“Listen, I—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. He felt the thud, rather than heard it. He did hear the squeal of tires. The car lurched sideways—Max had plenty of time to think about it, because everything slowed to a glacial pace. It was like one of those motion simulator NASCAR rides you find at amusement parks, only much slower: sunglasses floating through the air, Tess’s weapon joining his like an animated Disney movie, the one with the waltzing fork and spoon, the rear window taken up with a black and silver grille, an enormous grille with a giant Chevy logo, the squarish titan-sized white hood above; and then the view shifted and went topsy-turvy as their car left the pavement and soared-rolled-shuddered down the embankment in a fountain of dust.

Chapter Thirty

GUS STENHOLM, WHO worked part time for Belvedere Mining as security, had not been to the Rosasite Mine for a couple of days, due to a bad cold. Usually, he drove around there once a day to check the outbuildings for vandalism, but the main reason he had this job was to make sure no hiker or bunch of pot-smoking kids breeched the old adit on the property. That was pretty much his whole job, which would go away once Belvedere filled the mine up as required by law. He slowed for the Frying Pan Road exit, glad for the four-wheel drive SUV. Used to be hell driving around in the first car they gave him—a Mercury Marquis that had been run into the ground by Bajada County sheriffs. Got hung up on a hump of dirt on one of those two-tracks and dinged the oil pan. That was the end of the Merc.

The sun was low enough now for every stunted little bush to cast a long shadow. The graded dirt road wound through hills up onto the bajada. He turned off onto what was little more than a two-track out to the old mining buildings. The last time there had been a real road out to them had to be in the twenties. Now it was just twin paths that hunters used through the ocotillo and prickly pear cactus. But Jack Godin, who liked to fly his Piper Cub all over God’s green acre, said he’d spotted a wrecked car over by the slag heap.

A newly wrecked car, since a few people had dumped cars there over the years.

Jack was a teller of tall tales, but Gus knew he wouldn’t flat-out lie.

As he approached the old buildings from Belvedere Mining Company, the smell of burning came through the air vents.

He stopped outside the building. The many-paned windows at the front had been shot out by kids or by hunters or both, and the place was strewn with junk. He drove on past the mining building, up the steep road to the slag pile. He rounded the hill and parked on the little turnout and walked out to the edge, looking down the slag heap. The shadows slanting down in the red glare, the brown, black, and purple slag glittering here and there where the sun hit it. Down below he saw the long rectangular shape of a car lying on its side.

He called it in.

Couldn’t get down there—not with his knees.

Gus stepped out of the SUV and, gun drawn, walked along the edge of the slag heap, looking for movement. The light getting dimmer by the minute. He almost tripped over a rock, and looked down. The rock had been painted crimson, looked like. Kind of resembled a man’s head.

Vomit shot out of him like a projectile missile when he realized it was a head.

THE BAJADA SHERIFF’S Department had access to the automated fingerprint system. Marge, a ranch woman turned part-time deputy, was the go-to person for fingerprints. Marge rescued dogs and always had one of the smaller ones with her. You always knew when she was coming your way because the doggy smell preceded her.

Pat didn’t have to smell her, though; he was still at the slaughterhouse on Ocotillo Road. Marge told him the fingerprints on Jensen’s truck came back to one Max Conroy. Apparently, before Conroy became the world’s biggest dreamboat, he’d spent three semesters teaching auto mechanics at a community college in Fullerton—the system required every teacher be fingerprinted. A lucky break.

So Max Conroy stole the truck, which, along with the kidnap video, put him right here on the stretch of road running right by the house on Ocotillo. Turned out his fingerprints were also all over the crime scene in the bomb shelter, as well as the carport and inside the Chevelle and the Saturn.

Amazing how that happened.

But he’d been acting strange at the cafe yesterday morning. Pat thought at the time that Conroy had been disconnected from the proceedings. In his own little world. Pat remembered Tess McCrae’s recounting of the men in the limo giving Max a hard time.

And now this: Gus Stenholm’s photos of the car wreck at the Rosasite Mine slag heap, sent via his cell phone. The car was a stretch limo. Gus had also sent a picture of a man’s head on the ground—it looked like a misshapen beet.

Jesus.

Pat didn’t know if the head belonged to Hogart or Riis—or if the head belonged to either one of them—but he was pretty sure that both Hogart and Riis were dead. Unless they’d pushed their own limo off the slag heap, which defied logic.

The body count was rising. Three dead in the house, and probably two at the mine. Max Conroy had been busy.

Pat knew Conroy was unstable—and that was a polite word for it. He’d sensed that from the moment he’d sat down with Tess and Max. No surprise that Max thought he could do anything he wanted, even kill. Hollywood was a cesspool. All those hijinks, everybody sleeping with everybody else, out-of-wedlock babies—and they were proud of it—the drugs, the alcohol, the silly liberal causes—they thought they were entitled .