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said finally. By then Dennis had drifted off to sleep. “I’m going to put him back in the crib. Don’t eat all the pizza while I’m gone.”
     
    By the time Joanna and Butch were finishing their pizza, the wash between their house and High Lonesome Road was running at full flood stage. Ten miles to the south and west was another gully, Greenbush Draw. That one, near the tiny border community of Naco, had also turned from a sandy creek bed into a rushing torrent.
    The transformation happened gradually. At first there was only a tiny trickle of water in the middle of the sandy bed, but as more and more water drained off the desert floor, the flow increased. Within minutes it expanded from being inches wide to more than a foot. Eventually a wall of water five feetdeep came roaring downstream, carrying in front of it the flotsam and jetsam—discarded backpacks, food wrappers, water containers—deposited by the unending army of illegal border crossers who also had to scramble through the usually dry creek bed and across that portion of the Sonoran Desert in their quest to gain entry into the United States.
    At first the water rushed over the sand, but as the flow deepened and strengthened, the sand in the gully’s bed liquefied and began to move—and so did something else, something that had long lain undiscovered in that desolate, sandy wash.
    Two black plastic bags, held together with a swathe of duct tape, had been buried deep enough in the sand that it took time for the anchoring weight of the sand to rise up and drift away. As the sand rose, so did the bags.
    Time, the elements, and ravening insects had done their work well. The contents of the bags weren’t nearly as heavy as they had been when they’d first been placed there. Holes chewed in the material—also the work of industrious insects—did their part to keep the grisly package from actually floating, but the bags did move. They tumbled along in the murky red flood like some evil-looking bottom-dwelling fish.
    Then, where the streambed curved sharply to the right, the roaring water overflowed the steep banks and surged out across hundreds of yards of flat desert floor. The trash bags were carried along there as well. They came to rest finally, caught up in the low-hanging branches of a scrawny mesquite tree. In the course of the night, as the storm moved northward, the water gradually receded. By morning the desert was a desert again, but the tattered bags were still there—sodden and stinking—waiting patiently for some poor unsuspecting passerby to see them and uncover the horror lurking inside.
     
    After being up with Dennis twice overnight, Joanna was sound asleep the next morning when Butch shook her awake at two minutes past six. “Up and at ’em, sleepyhead. There’s a deputy waiting for you outside. Didn’t you hear the dogs bark?”
    “A deputy?” Joanna mumbled groggily. “This early? Which one, and how come? What’s he doing here?”
    Butch shook his head. “I’m not sure which one,” he said. “I believe he said his name is Raymond.”
    That would be Deputy Matt Raymond, Joanna thought.
    “According to him, our landline phone is currently out of order,” Butch continued. “And lightning took out two cell-phone towers up on Juniper Flats.”
    Joanna sat up and tried to put her feet on the floor. They landed first on Lady, who refused to sleep anywhere but next to Joanna’s side of the bed. “That means my cell phone isn’t working either?”
    “What it really means is that nobody in Bisbee has a working cell phone.”
    “Great,” Joanna muttered. “So why’s Deputy Raymond here? What’s going on? Has something happened?”
    “There’s evidently been some kind of incident down near Double Adobe,” Butch answered. “A fatality mobile-home fire. Dispatch thought you’d want to know about it.”
    Joanna’s heart constricted. Jenny had spent the night with Cassie Parks in her family’s mobile home a few miles from