Read When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery for Free Online

bed. Tomorrow was her first day in a new position at the paper.
    She drove down Alto Street slowly and purposefully. She’d almost run over the Martinezes’ fourteen-year-old calico cat the day before, and she did not want to almost do it again. Her headlights played over adobe fences built within inches of the street curb. It might seem like that tightness would make the road claustrophobic, but Lucy found it charming and old-timey, especially at this time of year, with the electric farolitos lining the flat-topped roofs—real farolitos, with their candle-in-a-paper-bag fire danger, only for special days, such as Christmas Eve. For everyday Christmas lights, most everyone, from fast-food restaurants to government offices, used electric farolitos. They were just blocks of brown plastic shaped to look like paper bags that covered each white light bulb in a string; but the effect was magical.
    She parked in front of her house and touched the Our Lady of Guadalupe mosaic by the front door as she went inside. She was starting to have an indecent fantasy about taking a hot bath in her claw-foot tub with a roaring fire in her kiva fireplace when she frowned. The living room light was on. She hadn’t remembered turning it on. She dropped her keys in the bowl by the door and kicked off her shoes on her way to the bedroom. She stopped short in the doorway, looking at the person in her bed. She also hadn’t remembered having company.
    “How did you get in?” she asked Nathan, who was lying on her bed reading Catcher in the Rye.
    “The door was open,” he said turning to look at her. He was naked except for his boxer shorts and the endless tattoos that ran up his body. She must have forgotten to lock it in her hurry to get out the door and to the fire.
    “Why are you here?”
    “I thought we could hang out since you’re leaving on your trip in a few days.”
    Lucy sighed. “I feel like I need to explain to you the fundamental nature of a booty call,” she said. “First, I have to call you …
    “I get it…”
    “And, second there is no hanging out.”
    “Why not? Is that the law of the booty call?” He was trying to make her laugh. She smiled instead. He continued, “With as much as you are calling my booty, maybe we should … I dunno … talk about it or something. I’m here almost every night.”
    “Can we talk about it later? I need sleep.”
    “Sure,” he said, standing up to give her a hug. “But why do you smell like a campfire?”
    *   *   *
    The light path made by Gil’s flashlight reflected off the water in the hallway as he followed the sound of voices to the back bedroom. He stopped in the doorway but went unnoticed by the trio inside. Liz had arrived while Gil had been outside getting the names of the homeowners from Dispatch. The operator had sent two driver’s license photos to his cell phone. The photos matched the men in the living room, but the person hanging in the bedroom was still unidentified. Now Gil watched as Adam and Liz moved carefully about the room, hampered by the ice and their heavy winter coats, while Joe stood in the corner, out of the way. Liz and Adam had cleared away some burned debris and set up lights on tripods aimed at the hanging body. The white light hit the man’s blackened skin, which was cracked in places, showing pink tissue underneath and gleaming patches where ice had started to crystallize. The burns had been concentrated on the man’s upper body and face, which had sustained the most damage. His hands were black ash, and his facial features were burned down to bone and teeth.
    Gil heard a laugh. As usual, Joe was harassing someone. This time it was Liz.
    “I think having kids is the ultimate form of feminism,” Joe was saying.
    “What do you know about feminism?” Adam asked. “Or having kids?”
    “I think being a lesbian is the ultimate form of feminism,” Liz said as she crouched down under the charred body.
    “That would mean a man