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I WAS CAREFUL OF the injury on my finger, double wrapped in some duct tape I’d found under the Jeep’s back seat to keep the gauze in place. And my lower back twinged on the journey out to Joey’s place along the unpaved roads toward the outskirts of Black Vulture. It was a bumpy ride to say the least.

And hot, but that wasn’t unusual.

I never seemed to get around to putting the doors back on my old Jeep Wrangler. Even in the middle of the worst heat or on the freeway to Tucson, I hadn’t taken the time. Along with the seed pods, it and I were always covered in a little dust, my shoulder-length hair always some level of windblown even with a ponytail and my hat.

But until funding for more paved highways came through, the roads were going to continue to be a challenge. We had a police chief now, though, so maybe more upgrades were on the way.

I made a disgruntled noise as I went through a rut that would take out a lesser vehicle’s suspension before I stopped, rested my arms on the steering wheel, and squinted at the sight ahead. It was always disturbing, even if you’d seen it before, even if you knew it was simply a part of Black Vulture.

All those bones …

Trisha’s scream had led to more questions than answers. She’d shown me the social media post put up by one of her friends.

EEEEW, a body’s been found not far from where I live. Gross, gross, gross.

A skeleton wasn’t a body, but semantics maybe. Trisha pointed out where her friend lived—about a quarter mile away from the skeleton’s pose, which might be considered close enough for her to think the skeleton was a body. I asked Trisha to attempt a phone call to her friend, which she did, but was greeted by a message saying that the voicemail was full.

Was there a body out there too or was the skeleton the only horrifying recent discovery, and Trisha’s friend just didn’t have the correct details?

I’d texted Calloway the question but hadn’t heard back. He had his hands full enough probably.

I also wondered about Joey’s seeming disappearance—enough to take a closer look.

Trisha’s boyfriend, Joey Smoot, lived in a trailer his grandfather had owned for at least fifty years. I might not like Joey, but his grandfather, Jerry, had been close to Wilmot, and when he’d disappeared, Jerry had been one of the locals who’d contributed to “taking care” of me. He’d even offered me a room in the three-bedroom single-wide. I’d declined.

Lots of people around Black Vulture had offered me a place to stay, but somehow, I’d been fine. My father had left plenty of money in his account to keep my bills paid and food in my stomach for a long time. In fact, I’d been surprised by the amount. Our building, though not fancy, was long paid off. I didn’t need to do much but take care of myself and clean everything, which I’d been doing for a while by then anyway.

The family court judge who’d ruled on my case had listened to me and my desire to continue living where and the way I had. While locals were there to tell the court that I could live with them, they’d also supported my wishes. The judge had ordered that social workers “check on me” until I turned eighteen. I’d had only a handful of visits over those five years. Folks like Dixie and Sheriff Calloway had made sure I was taken care of. It had worked out okay.

Twenty years ago, Jerry Smoot had driven to his meth head daughter’s trailer and gathered Joey. Rumor was that he hadn’t even bothered to explain himself, just took the toddler and brought him back to his place. Further rumors stated that his daughter hadn’t even noticed, never said a word.

She’d died ten years ago, up in Phoenix, in some abandoned building in a rough part of town. No one had been surprised, but I’d witnessed Jerry in real mourning for his daughter. If anyone understood grief over someone who’d lived with bad or unconventional decisions, it was me. I’d brought a bottle of whiskey out to the trailer. We’d sat in lawn chairs and got drunk as we discussed the family members you can’t choose and looked up at the blanket of stars, thinking that the answers to all our questions were out there somewhere but weren’t finding their way to us. The whiskey helped us not care too much.

That had been my last trip out to his place, though I’d seen him in town enough. He’d stopped by the museum a time or two, just to “check on me.” It hadn’t mattered that I was years beyond eighteen.

While Jerry was a friend, I didn’t like Joey at all. But despite being a jerk to Trisha sometimes, he wasn’t into drugs, the things that Jerry called his “breaking point.”

The reason Jerry and my father first hit it off all those years ago was their common tie to remains, bones specifically when it came to Jerry.

Over Jerry’s life and as he’d parked his trailer out in the middle of the desert, he’d become as enamored by bones as I had, though his interest showed itself in a different way.

The night we’d shared the bottle of rye and shed a few tears, Jerry told me that his obsession had begun with the skeleton of a dead rat. Like other folks out here, he thrived off the desert, its sights, sounds, and wildlife. He started most every morning with a walk “into the thick.” A walking stick, forged from the insides of a long-ago downed saguaro cactus, helping him along as he zigged and zagged around dangerous and deadly plants and animals.

Jerry and his rat bones had been the beginning of a years-long collection, one that had turned into a mound of bones in the spaces behind and next to the trailer. If you could get past the gruesome part, it was interesting. At least I thought so.

The last time I’d taken a closer look at the piles was just before sunset that night of grief. My eyes had scanned, but I’d been sure they hadn’t landed on anything human. Femur bones could be tricky, but the bone I’d picked up to take a closer look had been equine. I put it back.

I put the Jeep back into first and closed the distance toward the trailer, noticing quickly that the front door was open. I silenced the engine and listened for a long moment.

All I heard was the wind. I always thought it sounded like it came from another world just to whistle through all this dust.

“Jerry?” I called. “Joey? You guys in there?”

A distant hawk’s caw was the only response. After meeting Verro, I’d run back home and gathered the knife I did, indeed, find on the patio. Then, because of how far out into the middle of nothing I was headed, I went back inside and got my gun. I frowned as I grabbed it from the passenger seat and climbed out of the Jeep. I held the weapon at my side, pointed downward, and made my way to the door, announcing my arrival the whole way.

Open doors, though always a little odd, weren’t necessarily as unsettling out here as they might be in a heavily populated suburb. Maybe the trailer just needed aired out.