“Curious.”

“We were lucky in that there was still some soft tissue on the face and more on the body. I was able to measure how much fat was present, which is extremely important for facial appearance.”

“The fellow looked rather lean to me.”

“He had no fat at all.”

“Perhaps he was starving.”

“Perhaps. But the man did have the remains of a last meal in his stomach—beef jerky, whiskey, and beans.”

“Camp food,” said Lathrop. “Breakfast of champions. Was there any poison? I haven’t seen the tox labs yet.”

“The first round came up negative. They’re working on some of the more exotic toxins now.”

Corrie realized she’d let her excitement get away from her and had gone on at greater length than she’d intended. Now she turned back to the model and finished laying on the muscles, while Lathrop breathed down her neck. She added little dabs of clay to build up the tissue depth to the precise point at each of the twenty-one markers, smoothing it out bit by bit.

“Amazing to see a man’s face start to come to life,” Lathrop murmured. “What’s the full process?”

“I’ll add eyelids and then sculpt the nose, lips, and soft tissues of the neck. Then I’ll add the ears and age the face, putting in the wrinkles and sags you might expect to see on a fifty-fiveyear-old man. Finally, I’ll paint it. That’s when it really pops. We’re lucky to know so much about this guy—that he was going bald; that his hair was brown and gray; that he had a deep tan and leathery skin from a lifetime outdoors.”

“And you’re confident we’ll end up with a good likeness?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Capital.” Lathrop checked his watch. He rolled his chair back and got up. “I’ve got to run on home and cook dinner, but I can’t wait to see the finished product. Will it be done tomorrow?”

“I hope so.”

From somewhere, Lathrop suddenly pulled out a folder and placed it on the table next to her. “My horse versus mule paper,” he said, with a tone implying he’d only just remembered it. He leaned over her, once again just a little too close for her liking.

Corrie paused. She opened the file up to see a handwritten manuscript, full of mistakes, crossings-out, and scribbled additions. “You don’t write with a computer?” she asked.

“It interferes with the creative flow.”

“I see.” The ideas had indeed flowed, Corrie thought—all over the page like diarrhea.

He gave her an ingratiating smile. “You agreed to jolly it into shape for me, right?”

Corrie swallowed. “Um, I’d be happy to edit it, but I can’t work on it like this. It needs to be typed first. I’m sorry.”

She felt a sudden coolness. “I beg your pardon, I thought you were going to help.”

“I will,” said Corrie. “But I’m not, you know, a secretary. Couldn’t you please get someone else to type it first? I’m going to be up most of the night as it is, working on this.”

Without a word Lathrop slipped the folder off the desk and turned and departed, leaving behind a most disapproving vibe indeed.

18

THE JEEP LURCHED along a dirt road and passed through a ranch gate made of two tree trunks with a crosspiece, a longhorn cow skull nailed to the center, but a little crooked, having slipped awry. The dusty road led to an adobe ranch house surrounded by massive cottonwoods and a rail fence.

Sheriff Watts pulled up in a shady dirt parking area next to an old stock trailer. He got out, and Corrie did likewise. One of the rear doors opened, and Fountain, the lawyer-historian, hoisted himself out. Although he hadn’t been able to identify the facial reconstruction himself, Watts had invited him along on the off chance his remarkable local knowledge might come in handy.

“Let’s see what Grandpa has to say,” Watts told her. “He’s been here all his life, eighty years old, memory sharp as a tack.”

“It was nice of you to volunteer your own family,” said Corrie.

“They’re going to love being part of this.”

He clomped up the wooden steps to a broad porch and pushed through the screen door into a kitchen. It had been frozen in time, Corrie thought, somewhere in the midfifties, still spotless and bright, showing no signs of age. The linoleum floor with its floating rectangles of color, the curtains with images of cowboys and horses, the rounded Frigidaire and chrome-trimmed stove … everything was like a museum of midcentury modern. And permeating it all, the smell of coffee and fresh-baked cookies.

“Grandma and Grandpa, it’s me, Homer!” the sheriff called out.

A plump woman in a gingham dress appeared in the kitchen doorway, threw open her arms, and gave Watts a big hug. He wriggled in her grasp, embarrassed, and she let him go. “And who’s this?”

“This is the FBI agent I was telling you about, Corinne Swanson.”

The woman was clearly surprised to hear this, but she covered it up quickly. “So good to meet you, Agent Swanson.”

“Good to meet you, too, Mrs. Watts.”

“Oh, and Mr. Fountain!” the woman said as she saw the lawyer enter the kitchen. “You all come into the den, where Mr. Watts is resting.”