The fire-damaged wreckage of the truck was found approximately a mile south of what previously had been considered to be a one-car rollover accident that seriously injured two people.

  The two individuals in that vehicle, airport limo driver Hal Holden of the Village of Oak Creek and tech entrepreneur B. Simpson of Sedona, were both airlifted to St. Gregory’s Hospital in Phoenix with serious injuries.

  At this time, investigators are not releasing any details about the possible connection between the two incidents, but they are currently operating under the assumption that the two are related.

  So far there is no indication as to what caused the fire, and there has been no sign of any individuals who might be connected to the stolen truck.

  The investigation is ongoing.

  “So the wreck really wasn’t an accident,” Ali murmured aloud, “and unless I miss my guess, Chief Detective Biba is going to be pissed as hell that details of his investigation are now being made public.”

  CHAPTER 13

  QUARTZSITE, ARIZONA

  Wednesday, January 1, 2020, 11:00 a.m. (MST)

  As a pillar of smoke rolled skyward from the torched Silverado, Dante Cox and Tyrone Jackson high-fived each other in the front seat of the speeding Subaru. With Dante at the wheel and Tyrone slouched in the passenger seat, they felt like a million bucks. They’d done the job exactly the way they’d been told, and once they got back to LA, they’d each have two thousand dollars to show for this little all-expenses-paid vacay through Nevada and Arizona.

  Just outside Anthem, Dante turned off at a truck stop for some breakfast. They’d been up all night and were starving. The drive from Kingman to Flagstaff had been scary. They were both from LA. Neither of them had ever seen snow in person before. The highway had been dry and clear but the piled snow on either side of the freeway had freaked them out. What would happen if they got stuck in it? Wasn’t Arizona supposed to be desert? How could there be this much snow?

  After breakfast while Dante gassed up, Tyrone bought a celebratory six-pack for them to sip on along the way. In Phoenix they turned onto I-10 and headed west. Eventually, as the beer asserted itself, the adrenaline in their bodies began to wear off. The third time the Subaru’s tires meandered over the rumble strip and startled Dante awake at the wheel, Tyrone had had enough.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Next motel we see, we’re stopping. No sense in getting ourselves killed or picking up a DUI along the way.”

  Minutes later a gas, food, and lodging sign indicated they were approaching a place called Quartzsite. Neither had ever heard of it before, and when they drove into town, it looked like a dusty set for some low-budget, end-of-the-world movie.

  “Not here,” Dante objected. “This place is crap. Let’s keep going.”

  “Nope,” Tyrone told him. “Come on, man. We’re beat. I say we sleep for a couple of hours.”

  Grudgingly Dante turned off. They ended up at a hardscrabble motel called Trail’s End where the lady at the reception desk took Tyrone’s cash and barely glanced at his ID. Tyrone had seen that old black-and-white movie called Psycho once, and their dingy room—shower stall included—reminded him of that, but there were two double beds covered with floral bedspreads. Within minutes both of them were fast asleep.

  Three hours later they were awakened by the chirp of Tyrone’s burner phone. “Where the hell are you?” Big Eddie demanded. Big Eddie Gascone was the guy who had gotten them not only the gig but also the phones.

  “At the Trail’s End motel in a town called Quartzsite,” Tyrone replied. “We stopped to grab some sleep. We were both running on empty.”

  “Stay where you are,” Eddie ordered. “I’ll come get you. It’ll take me a couple of hours, but we need to ditch that stolen car.”

  “Why?” Tyrone asked. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s all over the news. That burning truck started a huge brush fire that shut down a major freeway. It caused quite the uproar. If the car you’re driving was spotted at the scene, cops are probably on your tail right this minute. If you try to cross into California, they’ll nail you at the highway checkpoint at Blythe.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Like I said, stay right there. When I’m close, I’ll tell you where to meet me. I don’t want to end up being caught by your hotel’s surveillance cameras.”

  Tyrone didn’t bother telling Eddie that Trail’s End probably didn’t have surveillance cams.

  “We’ll be there,” he said. Then, putting down the phone, he rolled over on his side and promptly fell back asleep.

  CHAPTER 14

  BEAVERTON, OREGON

  Wednesday, January 1, 2020, 6:00 p.m. (PST)

  In Beaverton, Oregon, Ramon Muñoz was beyond relieved by the time the football game ended and his sisters finally packed up and headed north to their respective homes in Olympia and Seattle. They had arrived together on Monday afternoon, and now they were gone. By the time they backed out of the driveway, Ramon had become a firm believer in that old saying about company and fish wearing out their welcome after three days.

  With his stepdad’s knee-replacement surgery scheduled for Friday morning, Ramon knew that his mother would have preferred having her daughters visit over Christmas rather than New Year’s, but both had had other plans. Tina had spent Christmas with her fiancé’s family in Shoreline, Washington, and Lucy’s presence had been required for some kind of shindig at the governor’s mansion in Olympia.

  Watching the Rose Bowl Game together should have been fun, but it hadn’t been. Their stepfather, Larry Rogers, was a University of Oregon alum, so he was a Ducks fan all the way. Ramon had attended Lane Community College in Eugene, so he was a Duck through proximity rather than matriculation. “The girls,” as Ramon generally called his sisters, had both attended college in Washington State—Lucy at Evergreen State College in Olympia and Tina at the University of Washington.

  During the game, more out of spite than anything else, they had rooted unashamedly for the Badgers. When Oregon won with that single-point lead, they had taken it personally and had huffed out shortly after the game ended. Their mother may have been saddened by their abrupt departure, but Ramon wasn’t, and he doubted Larry was, either.

  As far as Ramon was concerned, he had always considered his sisters to be a pair of spoiled brats. That might have been cute when they were little, but it wasn’t cute now. To his way of thinking, they were overeducated snobs and lazy to boot. The whole time they’d been home, they’d sat on their butts, letting their mother wait on them hand and foot. Mom had done all the cooking and cleaning, with neither daughter lifting a finger.

  Ramon had helped out, of course, but since he still lived at home, having “failed to launch” as the girls jokingly called it, they assumed those chores rightfully fell on his shoulders. And neither of them had offered to hang around and help with Larry’s upcoming surgery, either. Apparently, that was also Ramon’s responsibility. During their visit, he’d tried to not let his sisters’ constant jibes bother him, but they did. Their double-teaming him was nothing new. They had been doing it for as long as Ramon could remember.

  Lucinda had a four-year degree in political science from Evergreen, and Cristina was working on a master’s in psychology at U-Dub. Both of them sneered at Ramon’s lowly AA degree from Lane Community College, but his two years of higher education had given him exactly what he wanted—the ability to do a job he loved with police agencies large and small all across the Pacific Northwest.

  And no matter what Tina or Lucy thought or said, Ramon was no freeloader. Yes, at age twenty-seven he lived behind his parents’ main house in an ADU cottage Larry had created for his ailing mother by remodeling what had once been a woodworking studio into a livable, handicap-friendly studio apartment. Grandma Rogers had passed away two years earlier. When Ramon had mentioned that he was shopping for a new apartment, Larry had told him he was welcome to move into the cottage and stay for as long as he wanted.

  Ramon earned enough from his consulting jobs that he could easily have moved out, but he happened to know—as his sisters evidently did not—that things were a bit tight for his parents right now. Larry was only in his early sixties, but ongoing health issues had necessitated his taking early retirement, meaning that his retirement income was lower than he and Sylvia had anticipated. Despite their somewhat straitened circumstances, Larry had insisted on paying the freight for “the girls” to go to school—at out-of-state schools, no less—because he didn’t want them starting out in life with a mountain of student-loan debt. Ramon thought it ironic that his sisters could make fun of his so-called failure to launch without noticing their own, but he kept that opinion to himself.

  Although Ramon’s folks weren’t nearly as well off as they had once been, they still lived in a neighborhood where people were expected to keep their houses and yards in good repair. Ramon helped with expenses by paying rent, but he did a lot of physical labor as well, filling his nonworking hours with chores that were now beyond Larry’s physical capability.

  His folks had been forced to let their longtime yard guy go, so Ramon did that, keeping the lawn trimmed and mowed as well as raking leaves and pruning trees as needed. In the fall he turned off the irrigation system and blew out the pipes so they wouldn’t freeze over the winter. And he made sure the gutters on both the main house and the cottage were in good working order.

  His industry didn’t go unnoticed. On more than one occasion, strangers driving past had stopped to ask if he was interested in working in their yards as well. They were noticeably surprised and more than slightly embarrassed to learn that Ramon actually lived there as opposed to being some hourly paid Hispanic guy doing random yardwork.

  Ramon was loading the last of the football party dishes and glassware into the dishwasher when his mother poked her head into the kitchen. “Thanks for doing that,” she said. “Dad’s knee was really bothering him. He went to the bedroom to lie down for a while. Having the girls around wears him out. Truth be told, they grind me down, too.”

  Make that me three, Ramon thought.

  “It’s still early, though,” Sylvia continued, “so if you wouldn’t mind bringing some of the boxes in from the garage, I’d like to get a start on taking down decorations. With Dad’s surgery on Friday…”

  “Say no more,” Ramon said cheerfully. “Will do.”

  He was more than willing. That’s exactly what he needed—some time alone with his mother while they took down decorations. There was something he needed to discuss with her, an issue that couldn’t be mentioned in front of anyone else, Larry Rogers included.

  Ramon had understood from an early age that, as far as his family was concerned, he was the odd man out. Presumably, at the time he was born and maybe for a short time afterward, Frank Muñoz had been proud of his baby boy, but by the time Ramon was old enough to remember, Cristina and Lucy had arrived. The two girls were inarguably the apples of their father’s eye with Ramon a distant third. Frank doted on them, and they could do no wrong, and it didn’t take long for Tina and Lucy to understand the lay of the land. From then on, Ramon’s relationship with his sisters became one of constant open warfare—him versus them.

  In the meantime, relations between his parents weren’t all sweetness and light, either. Frank and Sylvia Muñoz had a volatile relationship punctuated by lots of heated arguments and raised voices that, on more than one occasion, had devolved into physical violence.

  Ramon’s father was a cop. To Ramon’s way of thinking, that meant Frank should have been one of the good guys, but he wasn’t. When he slapped Sylvia’s face or came after Ramon with his belt for some offense or other, Frank Muñoz seemed more bad than good. As a result, the boy grew up being afraid of his father and stayed out of his way as much as possible.

  Ramon was in fourth grade when things at home had gone from bad to worse, and that was when his grade school—one within easy walking distance of their home in Pasadena—became Ramon’s refuge. His teacher, a wonderful woman named Mrs. Lawson, must have noticed things weren’t good for him, and she had taken him under her wing.

  Before getting her teaching degree, Mrs. Lawson had been an art major, and she recognized and encouraged Ramon’s natural talent for drawing. She gifted him with his first pocket-sized sketch pad and allowed him to spend time in her classroom after school, giving him space to sit quietly and draw to his heart’s content.

  Even as a child Ramon had been intrigued by faces—by old faces with lines and wrinkles on them and by smooth, young faces as well. He paid attention to how eyes and ears were placed. He studied the shapes and sizes of noses and how people’s expressions changed when they laughed or frowned. Soon he was sketching at home as well as at school, capturing images of his family members while they were living their everyday lives.

  That’s when he had first noticed something odd. When he studied his sisters’ faces, they could have been twins. Some of their facial features, especially their cheekbones, bore a clear resemblance to Grandma Lupé’s. As for their eyes? The set of those came straight from their mother, while their skin tone matched their father’s.

  But when Ramon looked at himself in the mirror, only a few of his facial features lined up with anyone else’s. He had his mother’s eyes and nose but that was it. His face was squarer than his father’s. His nose wasn’t nearly as sharp, and his skin was darker, too. Ramon bore no resemblance to any of his near relatives, including his mother’s brother, the uncle for whom he’d been named. His looks seemed to set him apart from his family rather than allowing him to blend in.

  Ramon was in fifth grade when the family’s life in Pasadena fell apart completely. Suddenly their father was in jail awaiting trial on some kind of criminal charge Ramon didn’t understand. At school he became a pariah. Boys who had once been Ramon’s pals no longer wanted anything to do with him. Tina and Lucy still had each other. Their brother was on his own.

  When their mother announced that she was getting a divorce, selling the house, and moving the family to Oregon, the girls had been devastated. Ramon had been thrilled. He was more than ready to leave Pasadena and everything in it behind, including Frank Muñoz and his belt.

  Once the family arrived in Portland, Sylvia had gotten a job working for an escrow company, and that was where she met Larry Rogers—at work. The couple dated for some time before Sylvia finally allowed her new beau to meet the kids. Tina and Lucy had been wary of Larry to begin with and still maintained some distance, but Ramon had welcomed this new man in his mother’s life from the start. Larry was older, sandy-haired, and a bit on the chunky side, but he was an incredibly kind man without a mean bone in his body, and he loved Sylvia Garcia Muñoz with all his heart.

  Financially speaking, Larry was clearly better off than Frank had ever been. Compared to the cramped two-bedroom house the family had inhabited in Pasadena, Larry’s spacious mid-century modern on Beaverton’s NW Telshire Drive seemed downright palatial. Not only that, Larry loved spoiling his new family, giving them lavish gifts they could never have afforded otherwise.

  Unlike Frank, Larry took a genuine interest in Ramon. He was in junior high when his stepfather stumbled onto the fact that Ramon loved art and had zero interest in team sports. At that point, Larry had sprung for private art lessons—a small but loving gesture that permanently altered the trajectory of Ramon’s life.

  Mrs. Clarke, his new art teacher, soon noticed Ramon’s keen interest in faces and his skill at drawing them. “You know,” she told him one day, “you could probably earn a living doing this.”

  “Like being an artist in a studio or something?” Ramon had asked.

  “More like in a police station,” she said.

  That’s when she had explained what police sketch artists do. When Ramon expressed an interest in following through on that, Mrs. Clarke had mapped out a path for him to get there, including enrolling at Lane Community College where he had earned an AA degree, with a double major in art and human anatomy.

  During his second year in Eugene, a series of rapes occurred on campus. When campus cops had asked the art department for assistance in creating a composite sketch, one of Ramon’s instructors had recommended him for the job. He had spent hours working with the two victims, slowly using a charcoal sketch pad and a book of suggested facial features to create a black-and-white rendition of their attacker’s face.

  Once released to the public, Ramon’s sketch was instrumental in helping to identify and ultimately arrest the suspect. When the rapist’s mug shot was shown on a television newscast side by side with Ramon’s sketch, he along with everyone else had been astonished by how close he had come to re-creating the bad guy’s features. That was the moment Ramon knew for sure that Mrs. Clarke had been right all along when she had directed him onto this path.

  By the time Ramon was twenty-one, he was already self-employed, building a consulting business that allowed him to function as an on-call sketch artist for any number of small law-enforcement agencies that, due to budgetary constraints, were unable to keep one on staff.

  And it was while doing that job—working with cops and dealing with forensics and DNA evidence—that Ramon once again began examining his own face and wondering about it. Finally, in late November, he had taken the plunge and sent a DNA sample off to Ancestry.com. The results had come back the previous Friday, but with his sisters due to visit, he’d kept quiet about it until now.

  Although Ramon had more or less expected the news, he’d still been shocked once he saw his DNA profile in print. He was 100 percent Hispanic, all right. Half of his ancestors, the ones on his mother’s side, had immigrated to the US from either Sonora or Chihuahua in Mexico. Immigrants on his father’s side hailed from Central America, from El Salvador, to be exact.