ONE

Once, when Bill Renney was a teenager, he had been bitten by a Southern Pacific rattler while partying with some friends in Antelope Valley. He hadn't seen the thing at first, merely heard the ominous, inexplicable maraca of its tail, then felt the hammer-strike against the bulge of his left calf muscle. He had just set down an Igloo cooler full of beer and ice beside an outcropping of bone-colored stone when he felt the bite, and for a moment, in his confusion, he thought he had snapped a tendon in his leg. But then he saw the beast- four feet of sleek brown musculature retreating in a series of s-shaped undulations across the sand-and he knew he was in trouble.

His friends had loaded him into the back of a Jeep where someone tied a tourniquet fashioned from a torn shirtsleeve above the wound to slow both the bleeding as well as the progression of venom through his bloodstream. Renney pivoted his leg and could see blood spurting from twin punctures in the otherwise pale, mostly hairless swell of muscle, in tandem with his heartbeat, and the sight of it made him woozy. As the Jeep sped across the desert toward civilization, Renney could feel a burning sensation traveling from the puncture marks up his leg, combined with a moist, roiling nausea in his gut. By the time the Jeep pulled up outside the nearest medical facility, Renney was vomiting over the side.

The experience-now over three decades in the past-had left behind a pair of faint white indentions in the tender meat of Bill Renney's left calf. It had also left him with a healthy respect for the desert, and for all manner of creatures that resided there.

On this morning, the desert was alive. As he drove, large black flies swarmed in the air, and he periodically turned the windshield wipers on to swipe their smudgy, bristling carcasses from the glass. Beyond the shoulder of the road, the occasional coyote would raise its head and scrutinize the passage of Renney's puke-green, four-door sedan as it rumbled along the cracked, sun-bleached pavement. When he finally eased the sedan to a stop, he could see the boomerang silhouettes of carrion birds wheeling across the bright blue tapestry of the sky.

Two L.A. County Sheriff's Department SU Vs and a few Lancaster cruisers were parked on the shoulder of the desert highway, their rack lights on. An ambulance sat at a tilt off the blacktop, next to a solitary green road sign that read, simply, LOS ANGELES COUNTY LINE. Two paramedics and a uniformed officer stood before the open rear doors of the ambulance, their faces red and glistening from the heat of the early morning, the chrome plating on the ambulance reflecting the sun in a spangle of blinding light. Farther up the road was an old Volkswagen bus, sea-foam green except for where the scabrous patches of rust had taken over. One more officer stood there, talking to a young couple who looked like Woodstock refugees. Beside the bus, bright pink road flares sizzled in the center of the roadway, but they were nothing compared to the sun that blazed directly above the desert.

Bill Renney popped open the driver's door of his unmarked sedan and swung his feet out onto the blacktop. With a grunt-he really needed to get back to the gym and lose the burgeoning spare tire that had been expanding around his waistline this past year, ever since Linda had passed-he bent forward and tucked the cuffs of his pants into his socks. Much like everything else out here in this desolate wasteland, the ants could be merciless.

He got out of the car, swung the door closed, then casually swept aside his sports coat so the officer and the two medics standing by the ambulance could glimpse the gold shield clipped to his belt, right beside the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson M&P. The officer nodded at Renney then went back to talking to the paramedics. Flirting, Renney thought.

He nodded, too, at the uniformed officer standing with the couple beside the VW bus. The couple was young, the guy maybe in his early twenties, sporting ratty Converse sneakers and a tank top with marijuana leaves embroidered across the front. He had what looked like tribal tattoos on his biceps and the feathered blonde hair of a surfer. The woman standing beside him looked even younger- nineteen at best, if Renney had to guess-and she was wearing a loose, cable-knit shawl over a neon-green bikini top, and, despite the rising heat of that early morning, appeared to be shivering. They were both in handcuffs.

Renney stepped between the two SUVs and out onto the valley floor, where the blacktop gave way to hard-packed sand, spiky tufts of sagebrush, sprigs of desert parsley, and the prickly pompoms of scorpionweed. The sun was high and bright and directly at his back, stretching his shadow out ahead of him along the rippling contours of the earth, and making it appear as though he were traversing some alien landscape. He could feel the intensity of the morning sun as it bore a hole in the center of his back.

He was suddenly craving a cigarette.

A group of uniformed officers stood beyond a scrim of sagebrush. They were maybe thirty, forty yards from the road, but their collective stare as Renney approached was undeniable, even from such a distance. Renney could see that they were all wearing paper masks over the lower half of their face, just like people did back when that whole COVID shit started.

"Detective Renney," one of the officers called to him, the man's voice slightly muffled behind the paper mask.

Renney checked his watch as he advanced toward the officers and noted that it was just barely after seven in the morning. He took another step, and a horde of blowflies was abruptly congregating around his head; he absently swatted at the air in an attempt to disperse them, bobbing and weaving his head like a prizefighter. Another step, and a prong of sagebrush grazed his thigh, thwick, causing him to jump and take a quick step to the side. He searched the ground at his feet for any signs of snakes.

"Watch out for the anthills, too," one of the other officers called to him, pointing toward Renney's shoes.

Renney froze in midstride. He glanced down again and saw crumbly mounds rising up from the desert floor like booby traps. Beyond the anthills, a set of tire tracks wove a clumsy arc across the floor of the valley. He made a mental note of the tracks as he stepped over them, careful not to disturb any potential evidence.

"We called dispatch first, but Politano here suggested we ask for you by name," said the muffle-voiced officer who had warned him about the anthills.

"Which one's Politano?" Renney asked.

A young-looking male officer with short, raven-black hair raised his hand. "That'd be me, sir. I remembered you from last year. Your name, I mean. We met briefly at a press conference." His voice was also muffled behind the paper mask; Renney realized now that they were wearing them to keep the blowflies out of their mouths.

"Right," Renney muttered, although he did not recognize the young officer with the mask on. "So, what've we got?"

"She's maybe in her early to mid-twenties, if I had to guess," said Officer Politano. "We didn't check for any ID or anything. Frankly, sir, we didn't want to do anything until you got here."

Officer Politano nodded down at the reason Bill Renney had been summoned all the way out here so early this morning.

There was a body on the ground. Adult female. Caucasian. Beneath the unforgiving glare of the sun and through a cloud of frenzied flies, Bill Renney could make out a turquoise halter top, and a pair of faded denim shorts that were frayed to tassels at the hems. What at first looked like a bruise on the left thigh was actually a tattoo of a rose, with a tendril of thorns running down the length of that pale, fly-bitten leg. The feet were bare, but a bit of gold jewelry caught a sunbeam and sparkled along one slender ankle. The woman's head was turned at an angle away from Renney, so that he only saw the nest of dusty, knotted blonde hair at the back of her head. The one arm that he could see from his vantage was crooked in a position that propped the left hand into the air. All five fingers from that hand were missing, the wrist and forearm stained in striations of dark blood.

A sinking sensation overcame Bill Renney. It felt like he was suddenly plummeting down an elevator shaft.

Jesus Christ, he thought. What the actual fuck?

"Those two up by the road spotted the body about an hour ago," said Officer Politano, who nodded in the direction of the VW bus and the young couple in handcuffs being questioned by the police officer at the shoulder of the highway. Politano lowered his mask and Renney saw that he was indeed young and fresh-faced, and he thought maybe he did recognize him after all. Maybe from Palmdale, although he couldn't be sure. "They were driving by, doing a little day-tripping, when they saw vultures circling something on the ground," Politano went on. "Guy said he could tell it looked like a person out there, and his girl agreed. He got out and had a look. Then the girl, she called it in on her phone. We asked them to wait for us to arrive, and they did. The girl said they kept honking the horn to keep the vultures away, which mostly worked."

"Why are they in bracelets?" Renney asked.

"Well, they gave us permission to search the van. We found some coke."

Renney stepped around to the other side of the body.

He wanted to see the face.

"The body probably hasn't been out here for very long," Officer Politano continued. "A...