"What?" he said, peering into the small, shallow hole.

"Pay dirt," the undertaker said. "Want them to finish it up, or you looking to use that spoon?"

The investigator knelt at the hole's edge and scraped away some dirt.

"This is an…" the investigator said, puffing and continuing to dig.

Casey peered over his shoulder as the trowel scratched away. She saw the circular gleam of stainless steel.

"Urn," the investigator said, finishing his sentence and looking back over his shoulder at Casey and Jessica. He wiggled the trowel and extracted what looked like a martini mixer. "It's an urn."

"So much for DNA," Jessica said.

Everyone looked at Morris, who stood smoking and looking off at the other graves, unconcerned. Gage fought back a smirk.

Casey stepped toward the chief and said, "You people cremated him?"

"What the wife wanted," Gage said, removing a piece of paper from his front pocket, unfolding it, and handing it to Casey. "Signed it right there."

Casey looked down at the creased paper and saw Isodora's signature.

"You like playing games?" Casey asked, looking back at the chief.

"Yeah," Gage said with a puff of laughter. "When I win."

CHAPTER 33

DO I LOOK LIKE A TURNIP?" THE DA ASKED. "IF THIS WERE Brad Pitt, maybe you could get the National Enquirer to run with it. You want me to convene a grand jury on a US senator?"

Casey glanced at Jose, who sat with her across from Dustin Cruz's desk.

"We're not looking for an indictment yet," Jose said. "We just think that if you investigate, that's where this is going."

Cruz looked at Jose and blinked, as if noticing him for the first time.

"Did she tell you about the last conversation we had in this office?" Cruz asked Jose.

Jose looked at him and cocked his head.

"Last time," Cruz said, "she sat there telling me about how the press was going to react to me prosecuting a young woman for murder. Forget that I've got a confession. She's going to make the killer look like the victim with a bunch of talk about old rape cases, and stink me up for women voters.

"Remember that conversation?" Cruz asked, turning to Casey. "Rosalita Suarez?"

"She's an innocent woman," Casey said with a shrug, "and my client."

"So that means you can fight dirty?" Cruz said. "Go to the media?"

"We're not here about that," Jose said, spreading his fingers and raising his hand. "This is different."

"This is a US senator," Cruz said, his thick eyebrows arching.

"Exactly," Jose said. "Your office could investigate this thing and get people to talk. They've got a hundred or so Mexicans out there, people in the house, on the grounds, the ranch-you could get in there with some subpoenas and get things going. Hell, the undertaker, the police chief, the wife even, get them on record, build a case."

Cruz huffed through his nose. "You think that makes me hungry to stick my neck out? Let's say you can prove the dead guy was banging the wife, which you can't. You got headlines, but not much else. Let's say you get a DNA match with the blood on the shotgun slug, so what? They already said he shot the guy. They said it was an accident."

"With a deer slug?" Jose said. "They were hunting turkeys."

Cruz made a face. "That's what? Maybe fifty-fifty that a jury will even follow you?"

"What about cremating the body like that?" Jose said. "Destroying the evidence?"

"The wife signed off," Cruz said.

"She had no idea what she even signed," Casey said.

"Look," Cruz said with a grim smile, "Chase's no Sunday-school teacher, but you go to kill the king, you better damn well make sure you do it. That's advice for you two. I have no interest in this. None."

"Looking for a spot on the federal bench?" Casey said, blurting out her words.

Cruz forced a smile and said, "Nice thought. Wrong party. I'm not a fan of Chase. All those white-toothed television commercials with a bunch of happy kids around him don't fool me for a second.

"I'm just not stupid," he continued, narrowing his eyes at Casey, "and maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend? You ever heard that one?"

CHAPTER 34

CASEY AND JOSe CLIMBED BACK INTO HIS TRUCK AND HEADED for the coffee shop where their day had begun so she could get her car. The sun beat down on the metal snake of traffic, glinting off windshields, pulverizing the blacktop so that it quavered in the heat.

Traffic on the highway suddenly slowed to a crawl. Up ahead, Casey could see the flashing lights from the accident that had slowed things down. As they closed in, she saw the belly of a tractor trailer turned on its side. Pallets of disposable diapers had spilled from the truck onto the road and median, like snow from a land of giants.

A burst of white foam and smoke drew her eyes back to the wreck. A fireman sprayed down the naked engine of the big truck. The cab of the rig had plowed a compact car into the guardrail. Emergency workers scrambled to extract what looked like a body from the accordion of steel.

Casey noticed a new Audi sedan pull out of the line of traffic and off to the side. A man in a tailored brown suit hurried out of the car and rushed toward the open bay of an ambulance. A woman strapped into a stretcher, bleeding all over the sheets but fully conscious, strained to see the crumpled car. The man in the suit, whom Casey knew instinctively to be a lawyer, bent over the woman and handed her a card. Casey's stomach turned.

"And they bitch when lawyers get a bad rap," she said under her breath.

"What a mess," Jose said, easing the truck into the only lane moving through.

"The person in the car or the diapers?" Casey asked.

"The senator and the dead ranch hand," Jose said, stepping on the accelerator as the traffic opened up.

"That, too," she said, nodding.

"If I'm working this case," he said, glancing her way, "and I presume that's what I'm still doing-"

"Yes, please. I'm not giving up."

"The wife is the key," he said.

"The problem we'll have with the wife is spousal privilege," Casey said, using her thumb and forefinger to take hold of her lower lip. "She can't testify against him."

"At all?"

"Not unless someone else was present," Casey said. "Anything said in front of a third party loses the privilege. You said they have a hundred or more people working out there. Servants all around?"

"More like slaves," Jose said. "Doesn't it make you sick, a guy like Chase who's always bitching about a secure border, talking about these people like they're criminals? Where would he get his staff with a secure border? He wouldn't be out there hiring Caucasians. He might have to pay them minimum wage, more even."

"In my old life," Casey said, "in my ex-husband's world, everyone knew that if you wanted the inside scoop, you asked the servants."

"I doubt we'll get invited for dinner," Jose said, "but I can poke around the immigrant community out there and see if there's a way in. I wish I still had my badge, something that would make people more apt to talk."

Casey sat silently for a few minutes, thinking, the tension building up in her like steam in a kettle.

When they got off the exit for her car, the words burst from a seam in her mouth in a hot jet. "We can make them talk."

"Someone deputize you without telling me?" he asked.

"We can bring them in on our own," she said, forcing the words to slow. "Or threaten to."

"Oh. Kidnap them?" Jose said with a shitty grin.

"No. I'm serious. Subpoena them."

"How?"

"We agree Chase murdered Isodora's husband, right?"

"My gut says it was no accident," Jose said. "But you just heard the DA; he's not going to even look into it, let alone investigate. Where are you going to get a subpoena?"