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pairs of black jeans and black tops—it didn’t take long before I felt at loose ends again. Frustrated, I started vacuuming dust bunnies from under my bed but halfway through, struck pay dirt in the form of an old David Morrell novel I had never finished.
    Confident that Morrell’s grisly visions would keep my mind off my own, I tugged the book out and began to read. But fictional killers can only do so much to calm a troubled mind. Somewhere after one o’clock, I fell asleep…
    …and woke up on the white bus. The white bus that rocketed along a dark Phoenix street, the white bus filled with singing people whose voices almost, but not quite, drowned out my mother’s screams…
    …the white bus where my mother held the gun against my forehead…
    …the white bus where the gun went off and I fell away into the street…
    There was something different about the dream this time. My sleeping self studied the small body on the pavement and discovered that the injured child was, for once, not me.
    She was a different girl, a dark, tiny thing so beautiful she made my heart ache. As she lay bleeding on the street, she looked up at me, her eyes filled with the terrible knowledge that she was dying. Her lips formed two words, but the people on the bus sang so loudly that I couldn’t hear.
    The girl’s lips moved again. This time, all the way down through the years, I heard.
    “Help me,” she whispered.
    Then my own bullet came for me and I fell into the street beside her.

Chapter Four
    When I drove into Los Perdidos late the next afternoon, five days after finding that sad little body, tension filled the air. A woman leaving a children’s used clothing store clutched her toddler tightly, her eyes darting like a feral animal’s. Scant inches in front, two older children held hands, the same anxiety on their faces.
    In contrast to their fear, Avery’s annoyed expression when I walked into the sheriff’s office appeared normal. “Can’t say I’m glad to see you again, Ms. Jones.”
    He hunched over a deputy’s desk, going through some papers. The deputy looked no friendlier than his boss. They both wanted me to go away, but I couldn’t, not if I ever wanted to sleep again. Nearby, I heard the dispatcher calling out codes over the squawks of squad car radios. From a bulletin board on the far wall, the child known as Precious Doe gazed down at me. I stared at the photograph in silence for a moment, then drew out the article I’d clipped from the
Scottsdale Journal
.
    “You haven’t been able to I.D. this girl yet, Sheriff,” I said to Avery, trying to squelch my own annoyance. “Maybe I can help with the legwork.”
    Not even glancing at the clipping, he said, “I have plenty of men in the field so we don’t need any help. At least not from any Scottsdale private detective.” He was obviously one of those people who thought all we ever did in Scottsdale was lounge around resort swimming pools, courting melanoma.
    “I’m sorry you feel that way, Sheriff, but now that I’m here, I plan to make myself useful. Anything I find out, I’ll share. Okay?”
    “I told you, we’re fine.”
    The deputy, not quite as tall or weather-browned as the sheriff, spoke for the first time. “Otherwise we’d be thrilled to pieces by your offer of help.”
    “Jim. Go easy,” Avery warned.
    The deputy humphed and went back to shuffling paperwork.
    The sheriff studied me. When he finally spoke, it was with the easy confidence of a man used to being obeyed. “We can handle the investigation, so why don’t you play nice and go on home?”
    “No can do.” I would never forget the wind rippling through the child’s white wrappings, the growls of the coyote as it scurried away.
    Time to share some knowledge. “If the girl was an illegal, like most people seem to think, her family could be a thousand miles away working in some sweatshop. Or, and this is what I suspect, she might not have been an illegal after all. This