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would be staring from their office windows, so at least they wouldn’t get in the way of the forensics investigation, such as it was. Was it really a crime scene if the shot came from 100 yards away?
    Land jumped the counter easily and headed over to where Danvers stood, but not before he issued a warning that I should stay put. Being the good “little woman” that I was, I let myself out by way of the door and headed in that direction as well. I stayed back further from Land, having taken a more orthodox route to the crime scene.
    Land was leaning over the body of the dead woman. I’d seen enough dead bodies in my life, including some on this very government square. I had no need to fill my nightmares with any more. I stayed back, watching Land examine the woman. I was shocked to see that Danvers was letting him. If I’d been that much up into a murder investigation, he would have been yelling and screaming loud enough for the suburbs to hear.
    Yet Land was allowed to check out a recently deceased woman. It appeared to me that he was looking directly at the gunshot wound. From what I could see, she’d been shot in the head. Fortunately the breeze had taken her long hair and covered part of the wound, so that I didn’t have to stare into a gaping hole. Land still stared at her face. Apparently my chef doubled as a forensics investigator, which I didn’t know. His role in this seemed curious.
    I turned my attention away from the body and looked down. A brown leather woman’s purse lay at my feet. Both Danvers and Land were busy with the dead woman, so neither of them noticed me reaching down to examine the bag. Looking at faux animal skins was far more my style than dead bodies.
    My main concern, or so my rationale went, was that if the sister had been killed trying to tell me something about the missing Zoz family then I needed to let them know that they were in danger. The purse likely held the woman’s cellphone, and I could get the number for Andy Zoz from that. I might leave a few fingerprints, but save a few lives in the process. Besides, the cause of death was already pretty well defined.
    I picked up the purse. Even in the midst of the melee, no one noticed me. A woman with a purse is hardly a spectacle. There were some tissues, lipstick, eyeliner, and a pair of headphones. I noticed that there was no wallet in the purse.
    Since I’m a twenty-something, I went right for the smart phone. Even if I didn’t have one, I still knew that most people kept their lives on the device. I pulled it out. Fortunately for me, the woman had not set a passcode on the phone. A quick swipe later, and I was in. I went to the phone list and started looking for the phone numbers called recently. I wrote a few of them on my hand with a pen from my jeans pocket.
    I knew my time was short, so I jumped over to the contacts list. I looked for anyone named Zoz, but I couldn’t find any. I was frustrated. I tried to think of other ways that a sister could be located. I tried “Linda,” “sister,” and “family,” but there were no listings. The woman had a very short list of contacts, which mainly appeared by first name.
    I hopped over to email and brought up the inbox. Nothing. The inbox was cleaned out. There were no sent mails or deleted mails either. Someone was being very careful about what outsiders could see. I wondered again about the lack of a passcode, but I shrugged. People are hard to explain.
    Business school had given me the wonderful skill of being able to multitask, and so when I saw Land and Danvers stand up, I shoved the phone back into the purse and walked it over to them.
    “This was on the ground over there,” I said, pointing to where I’d just stood. “I’m guessing it’s the dead woman’s purse. No one else was claiming it.” I held it out like an offering.
    Danvers grunted and took it. He waited for a tech to come by, and he passed it off to her. If I’d have known that, I would have spent a few