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“Shit,” I said quietly.

“Yeah,” she sheriff said. “Wilmot carried one of those bones around with him.”

Decades earlier, my father discovered a mostly complete human skeleton out in the middle of nowhere, maybe not far from where we currently were. He’d told me that he’d been too tempted not to take a bone for himself. The one he chose was the middle finger’s middle phalanx. Then he notified the authorities about the skeleton, a male whose identity has never been determined, as far as I knew.

I’d never told anyone about the theft, but over the years word had gotten out. My father had been a talker, and he’d probably shared his “secret” with far too many people.

His story was part of how I had been given my nickname. My fascination with bones, my real collection (all legally obtained), my profession, and then my father’s strange habit of carrying around the bone, rolling it between his fingers like a magician’s quarter, had led to me being called the Bone Woman.

I didn’t hate it.

I looked back at the sheriff and squinted. “You don’t think …”

“Your father, Hazel … there were rumors, things he did. Different sorts of things. Did you listen to Minnie’s podcast?”

My jaw clenched as I felt myself go into defense mode. “No. What things? Sheriff, this could just be the perpetrator giving us the finger.” Other than the one theft and the nature of his job, I wasn’t aware of a slew of other controversy.

A local, Minnie Chavez, had been producing a true-crime podcast for a long time. She’d done a series about Wilmot and him going missing, but I had not listened to it. I hadn’t listened to any of Minnie’s podcasts.

“I was just … maybe the podcast would help with remembering,” Calloway said.

I didn’t have amnesia really, but I hadn’t ever been able to remember clearly some of the days right before and right after my father’s disappearance. Shock had had its way with me. I didn’t need therapy to understand that some sort of denial was at play, but that didn’t stop me or other people from questioning me every now and then, wondering if anything new had come back to me. Nothing had. I wasn’t the only one who wanted answers regarding what might have happened to Wilmot.

I considered those days one of the desert’s biggest heists. The least it could have done was let me keep all my memories. But life did go on, and I had too much to do to dwell on that loss. I didn’t have any desire to “fix” it, whatever that might mean, particularly after so much time had passed. That didn’t stop Calloway from continually doing his job—investigating, questioning.

“What specifically do you think I need to remember?” I asked.

The sheriff sighed and continued, “Have you heard from Wilmot? Recently maybe?”

My knee-jerk answer was “No,” but as the moments ticked by and the sun rose a little higher, I couldn’t deny the fact that the skeleton’s pose and the extra bone stuck in between the fingers, just might be some sort of message that Wilmot could have concocted. Or perhaps someone was sending a message about him, maybe even via his remains.

Had the desert spit up my father, and if so, had he become some sort of psychopathic killer, or perhaps a victim of one? Were these his bones? Why would someone pose them this way?

I glared at the sheriff. I hoped he didn’t see my doubt or maybe it was confusion. No matter what this all turned out to be, I knew I had to redirect any light of suspicion until I could figure out for myself what might be going on.

“No, of course not.” I nodded back at the sculpture. “You think this could be him?”

“Could be anybody,” he said, his voice scratchy, desert dry. “Thanks for taking a first look. I’ve called Tucson too.”

I nodded. “The bones’ll go up to Tucson?”

“Probably. I don’t think we can take them to your lab first. That’s too much … moving things around.”

“I can make the trip up there if need be.”

As a consultant, I took on individual jobs throughout the entire world, though mostly the southwest. I was also on retainer with the state of Arizona, so those cases were my priority. I was available at their request and if my schedule permitted.

“Thanks.” Calloway paused. “But can you tell me anything else right now?”

I didn’t want him to read the personal things twisting around inside me, so I turned back to the bones. Photographs can be key to any crime scene, but I hadn’t thought to bring my digital SLR, and Calloway hadn’t thought to suggest it. I didn’t want to waste time going back to get it, give the Tucson people a bigger head start, so I grabbed my phone from my back pocket and started snapping pictures.

“Not yet, but I’ll keep looking.”

“Good enough. Thank you, Hazel.

I ignored the tinge of sympathy in his tone. I just needed to focus on the work, the task at hand, not try to superimpose some old image of my father over the sculpture in the desert.

I hoped it wasn’t him, but I would figure out the story these bones had to tell. That’s what I did, and I was very good at it.