Read Valley of the Lost for Free Online Page A

across his cheeks. He’d been adopted by a Spanish family. The Celtic looks were a startling contrast to his sometimes casual Latin habits.
    Winters dropped into a chair and rolled it across the floor. “Heroin overdose for sure, Doc says.” He looked at the painting on the wall. His ugly words a sharp contrast to the scene of a child playing in a mountain meadow filled with yellow flowers.
    “Poor kid.” Lopez shook his head. He was a good bit shorter than Winters, compact muscle slowly turning to fat on his wife’s famous cooking and meals served at their legendary family gatherings. He had four daughters of his own, and a soft spot for young women in trouble. “Regular user?”
    “Apparently not. Tracks on her arms, but Lee says they’re more than a year old, at least, and she couldn’t see anything more recent. Except for yesterday’s, of course.”
    “Only takes one.”
    “Yup.”
    “Who was she?”
    “There’s the funny thing, I don’t know. No last name, no friends I can find. No sign of a boyfriend. Gave cash to her roommate to pay the rent, never got any mail. Kept to herself, her and her baby. Lucky Smith said she came to the support center sometimes. I’ll pop by and talk to Lucky later, ask if she’s remembered a last name since we talked.”
    “You got any idea where she might have gotten the stuff?”
    “I hate to think it might have been here in Trafalgar. Check with your guy if he’s seen the dead girl with any of the people he’s watching. If so, it’s bad news.”
    Marijuana was plentiful in Trafalgar; plentiful, inexpensive and, according to the users, of the highest quality. Harder drugs were not unknown. Lately a bit of heroin had been spreading through the Kootenays, and the RCMP thought it originated in Trafalgar. Lopez was working hard trying to find the source.
    “There may be a complication,” Winters said. “There were signs of restraint around Ashley’s wrists and ankles, very recent, put there within a day or two, Lee said. And it looks as if the girl struggled against them.”
    “Sex games gone beyond her control? Maybe she was a working girl?”
    “That’s what I thought, at first. But the roommate says Ashley never left the baby.”
    Lopez laughed. A laugh without mirth. “After all these years in this job, John, nothing would surprise me. It’s possible she specialized in turning tricks for guys who get a kick out of doing mommy while baby watches. You might want to have the kid checked out.”
    Winters looked into his partner’s blue eyes, and his stomach turned over. But Lopez was right. “I’ll get Barb to call a public health nurse to have a look. Ashley paid her rent in cash. Like the heroin, she had to get the money from somewhere. Someone has to know who she is.”
    Winters rubbed his thumb across the face of his watch. “The paper called earlier, looking for a quote,” he said, to himself as much as to Lopez. Winters often thought out loud; he liked to have a sounding board. “Haven’t had a chance to call them back yet. We’re not letting anything out about the cause of death, or that we think it’s suspicious. Just saying we’d like to talk to people who knew her. She went out most days, the roommate said. In the morning.” He stood up and went to stand at the window. The sun was shining, but it was raining. A laughing couple, young, happy, ran up the hill, one arm around each other’s waist, the other trying to fend off the raindrops. It wouldn’t matter if they got wet, he thought, they’d have fun drying each other off. Jolene, who worked at Big Eddie’s, came down the hill, the beads in her hair bouncing behind her.
    He idly stroked the leaf of one of Ray’s violets.
    “Step away from the plant,” Lopez said, his voice pitched low and slow to make him sound like an American TV cop. “And no one gets hurt.”
    “Sorry. Forgot.” Winters turned back to face the room. “Okay, this is how we’re going to play it. You have to