The April night Anthony had walked back with Trey had been colder, and they had walked briskly to stay ahead of the frost settling on the desert around them. The fact both men had someone to talk to about baseball, the price of gas, and asshole tourists made the journey pass quickly.

As they reached town at about 3:00 a.m., the men were bonded in drunken accomplishment. They shook hands and agreed they would repeat their journey the following weekend.

But that journey never happened. Anthony had been laid up in bed, after eating some bad prawns, and the furthest he journeyed all weekend was from his bed to the bathroom. The next time he was in Scottie’s, he looked for Trey at the end of the bar, but his space was occupied by a group of three women sharing glass jugs of cocktails.

When he asked Marianne if she had seen the small man, she rubbed her temple, and said he’d been in the previous weekend, and made his own way home alone.

Anthony hadn’t seen him in the bar in the following months either, and so he figured the journey out of town was perhaps not worth it without the promise of a free ride home.

Shambling through the dark night, Anthony began singing various Bon Jovi songs to cheer himself up. At one point, his tuneless murmur was interrupted by the startling sound of a snake’s rattle, coming from the road up ahead. Anthony stopped dead, spreading his fingers on both hands, he looked like a man who had wandered blindly into a field of land-mines. Anthony may have been drunk, but he still knew a bite from a rattler out here, in the middle of nowhere, would mean serious trouble. The creature fell momentarily silent, masking its location. Breathing carefully, Anthony leaned forward, and peered into the gloom. He could see the vague change in tone from the roadside to the sandy scrub, but nothing more than that.

From somewhere in the darkness he heard the rattle, like a crazed maraca. The chilling sound came from somewhere just in front of him, possibly within striking distance. Anthony let out an involuntary yelp, and leapt backwards. His survival instinct overpowered his rational mind, and he ran to the side of the road, then hurried a few metres ahead.

For several minutes, Anthony had walked quickly, imagining if he slowed down, the rattler would somehow catch up with him to take deadly revenge.

After half an hour of walking at a decreasing pace, Anthony decided walking to town had perhaps not been such a great idea after all. He was ravenous; his feet were hot and sore, with the first sting of a blister on his heel was starting to cut through his drunkenness. He looked over his shoulder in the hope of seeing a car to flag down, but there was nothing except the indistinct grey ribbon of road stretching away from him in both directions.

Eventually, a glow on the horizon swelled to reveal an approaching car. A smile crept across Anthony’s face, and he began to wave his arms wildly in the direction of the approaching vehicle. In his mind, he was already anticipating getting back home to his trailer, and microwaving some frozen pizza. Not only did the car not slow down, it accelerated and drifted to the opposite side of the road to Anthony.

‘Bastard!’ he shouted as the tail lights shrank into the distance.

He wandered on for a several more minutes, before the urge to urinate sent him to the edge of the road. He unzipped and sighed as his urine hissed on the arid sand. He shook and zipped up, then began his solitary wander along the deserted road once more. By the time the bus appeared on the horizon, Anthony’s attention was lost in a haze of fatigue. He was simply counting his steps in groups of ten. Eventually, the growling engine sound was too loud to ignore.

At first, Anthony thought the low groan was emanating from a 747 rising out of Vegas, but he turned around to see bright lights on the horizon. His next thought was it could be a truck delivering cargo or fuel through the night, but as he peered into the darkness, Anthony Morrelli smiled. It was a bus.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said. He began to wave his arm back and forwards.

As the bus approached, Anthony held his arm up to his eyes to shield them from the fierce lights. The bus jolted to a stop beside him, and juddered from the vibration of the engine’s intestinal rumble. The doors expelled a loud hiss, and slammed open.

Without waiting for an invite, Anthony leapt aboard, and climbed the two steps to face the driver.

The interior of the bus was lit by a cool blue light, in which Anthony Morrelli could discern the vague, dark shapes of sleeping passengers.

‘Hi,’ smiled the driver, a large man in a Hawaiian shirt. ‘You need a lift into town?’

‘That’d be great, but hey, I don’t have any cash.’

‘Don’t worry. The meter’s not running tonight,’ the driver said, as he pulled a lever and closed the door.

Anthony grinned as he staggered along the aisle – from his point of view, his luck was just getting better and better.

7

Leighton Jones was a relatively happy man. He had survived the final week of work with his dignity intact, and was finally getting acquainted with his dwelling. Having spent four days cleaning and de-cluttering, his small apartment was now more like a home than it had been in twenty years. His only stumbling block had been a drawer in the kitchen, where photographs and emotions lay undisturbed, but he promised himself, unconvincingly, he would get around to that whenever he finally felt ready.

However, in the process of tidying his wardrobe, he had dug out a pile of paperbacks he had previously started reading but never finished. They were now stacked neatly on a small table next to the patio door, and it was Leighton’s plan to spend each evening after dinner sitting in the setting sun, with a book in one hand, and a glass of iced rum or white wine in the other. There was something fundamentally relaxing about the warm evening air combined with a good book – though, the drink undoubtedly helped, too.

Tonight, he had eaten a small Caesar salad with home-made croutons for dinner, and, having washed up, had moved out on to the patio, where he sat in shorts and a faded denim shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. He took occasional sips from a tall glass of crisp Orvietto, dipping in and out of a Dan Brown novel. This, for Leighton, was as close to contentment as he ever got.

When the car pulled up in front of his small, neatly mown lawn, Leighton glanced absently up from the pages of the book. He took no specific interest in the vehicle; it was amazing how quickly he had slipped off the cop mentality when he had handed in his badge. Not recognising the license plate, he returned his attention to the book in his hand, and did not look up until the shadow of a figure passed over him. Glancing up, he found himself staring at the fresh-faced girl he had spoken to outside the station, three weeks earlier. Her shoulder length hair was tied into a neat ponytail, and she wore jeans with a grey t-shirt.

‘Hello again, Detective,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’

Leighton’s mind was momentarily knocked off balance, as he struggled to recall the nature of their previous interaction. He gestured her to sit, and smiled politely.

‘What can I do for you, Miss?’

‘My friend is still missing,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way.

‘Ah, now, I remember.’ Leighton nodded. ‘The bus girl, right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ she said flatly. ‘The bus girl.’

‘Okay.’ Leighton took a deep breath. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. I’m Leighton Jones, and you are Vicki?’

‘Yeah, Vicki Reiner.’

‘Okay, Miss Reiner. Would you perhaps like something to drink?’

‘No, thank you.’