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body: James Price. She noted a similar gunshot wound to the head, then moved her flashlight down to inspect the face. She used her pen to pull the duct tape off Price’s mouth. It was wet, so it gave way easily. Liz started to say something else, then stopped. Instead, she stuck her gloved hand in between Price’s teeth and forced his jaw open. Using her fingers, she pulled out something. It was Jacobson’s severed penis. She sat back on her heels and looked at the mass of tissue in her hand. A minute passed. Then another. Gil wondered if seeing firsthand this level of violence against people she knew was starting to take its toll. It certainly had for Joe, who was now pacing nearby. Liz stood up silently and placed the penis into an evidence bag. Only after she had written all the proper information on the bag, did she finally speak, “I’ve only ever seen this level of torture once before,” she said. “And that ended up being a hate crime.”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    December 21
    Mateo Garcia stood watching his quarter horse, Baby, play in the new snow, her cold breath forming wisps around her muzzle. As she galloped down the field, the horse’s gray coat flashed past dark tree trunks, barren of leaves. The white snow that Baby kicked up as she played flashed out like glitter being sprinkled over the ground. Mateo was watching to see if Baby was still favoring her front right leg. Yesterday, he thought he had seen her wince after they got home from their evening ride, but today she seemed fine.
    Phantom, as usual, stood near the fence closest to Mateo. Her Appaloosa coat—a solid bay color in the front with white leopard spots in the back—made it look like someone had thrown snow over her hindquarters. He patted Phantom on her side while the cold snapped at his ears, making him pull his cowboy hat tighter on his head. He went into the barn to flake a bale and a half of hay into the trough, then cracked the ice that had formed overnight on the watering station. He had brought hot water down in a bucket and stirred in the wheat bran to make warm mash as a treat for the horses. His two goats had stayed in the barn, not liking the new fallen snow quite as much as Baby.
    But then she always seemed happy, even when he’d first found her. Back then, she’d weighed only six hundred pounds yet was more than fifteen hands high. Mateo had been on a training maneuver with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s posse. He was riding Phantom, whom his two daughters had trained to be a barrel racer. But when the girls went off to college, Mateo trained her to be a search-and-rescue horse. Mateo had been in the posse since he was sixteen, joining his father and other members on rides deep into the rough desert or up into the heavily wooded mountains, looking for lost hikers or hunters. The posse no longer did searches for runaway inmates or dangerous criminals. That had stopped twenty years ago, but the members each still wore a gold star badge with S ANTA F E C OUNTY S HERRIFF’S P OSSE written across it.
    The day Mateo found Baby, he was following a steep path between yucca plants and cholla cactus when Phantom hesitated and then veered off the path. Mateo’s first instinct had been to rein her in and pull her back to the trail, but he didn’t. Phantom was a dependable horse who did what she was told and was eager to please. She wouldn’t go off trail unless she had a reason. After a few minutes of riding through the brush, Mateo saw something move beyond the piñon trees. He sat perfectly still as Phantom made her way over to a white-and-gray quarter horse. Her ribs were sticking out of her matted coat and she was almost too weak to support her own weight. Mateo had decided then and there to take the horse home and lie about having looked for her owners. He sat with Baby through much of the first night, with an anxious Phantom in the next stall stomping her feet, whinnying, and swishing her tail. That first week, Mateo fed Baby six