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he found Lily, Arizona, to be like a little piece of hot, dry heaven.
    Betty went out to report on the day, but there wasn’t much. Sloan closed his computer and went to retrieve Jane Everett.
    He knocked on the door before opening it. She was sitting in front of the easel and had just finished a drawing.
    Sloan paused, staring at the rendering she’d done. It was only a sketch, but she’d done a remarkable job of capturing life. The woman on the page seemed vibrant—on the verge of speaking. Jane had her hair tucked in a bun, a few tendrils escaping to fall over her forehead. She wore a secretive smile as if she held some tidbit of information that she might be convinced to share with others.
    The oddest thing was that he sensed something familiar about her....
    “Sheriff? Ready to go?” she asked briskly.
    “That’s her?” he asked. “You’re already done?”
    She shook her head. “No—well, yes and no. I attached the jaw and did some of the easier work. That’s my preliminary, a bit of a guesstimate. This is what you might call a special science, because it’s a combination of science and art. It’s two-dimensional. You take photographs, feed them into the computer, fill in the tissue-depth approximations for race, age and sex and get a computer mock-up. In the sketch, I worked with images of the skull, using printouts and tracing paper, and this is what I came up with. Tomorrow, I’ll start with the tissue markers—build in the most likely muscle and tissue depths measurements, and begin physically reconstructing. This is just my first imagining.”
    “That’s pretty remarkable,” he said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the image she’d created. He gave himself a mental shake. “Yes, I’m ready when you are.”
    Jane picked up the coffee cup she’d apparently gotten from the kitchen, collected her bag and moved toward the door. She stopped. He was still in the doorway, he realized, staring at the drawing she’d done, wondering why he felt he knew the woman in the drawing.
    “Sheriff?”
    He stepped aside. She exited the room ahead of him, and he heard water running as she washed her coffee mug. He was still gazing at her rendering of a woman’s face.
    He made himself turn away and leave.
    Back in the front office, he introduced Jane to Declan McCarthy, Scotty Carter, the night man on the desk, and Vince Grainger. Now she’d met his entire department.
    Once outside, he again opened her car door, before he walked around to his own.
    They didn’t speak. He didn’t try to make small talk.
    He couldn’t dislodge the mental image he now had of a living, breathing woman.
    Except that she was long dead.
    And nothing remained of her except her skull.

2
    T he Gilded Lily’s bar and restaurant was open for business when Sloan Trent dropped Jane off. The inner doors that had been locked earlier were now wide-open, and the slatted doors invited travelers to enter—just as they had for over a hundred years. Jane walked in, quickly noting there was no one around that she’d already met. She was assuming the actors she’d encountered that morning were getting into costume or makeup or perhaps finishing dinner somewhere else. In any event, she didn’t recognize a single person in the bar.
    A waitress in a prairie costume, her hair covered by a bonnet, greeted her as she came in. “Dinner, miss? Or did you just wish to sit at the bar?”
    Jane smiled. “Neither. I’m going upstairs. I’m staying here for a few days.”
    “Oh!” The young woman smiled. “I’m Liz. You’re the artist. Welcome. If you want to eat, call down to the bar. We can run something up if you want privacy. And if not, well, come on down! I know you’re here to work on a project, but you should take some time to see the place. Desert Diamonds across the street has great books and weird little treasures. The spa is terrific. The Old Jail is a neat place to stay—really scary. I live in town, but I rented a room there once.