“I’m visiting for a week, nothing much else to do.” She hefted the trap. “It was a little baby ca-yote, real scared, made pathetic noises.”

“I just saw a larger one near the lime pit.”

“They’re all over the place.”

“We get ’em in L.A.,” I said. “Clever little rascals.”

“Not so clever they won’t walk into a trap full of cat food. George gets everything here. Bobcats, raccoons, rattlesnakes. He’s had reports of mountain lions but hasn’t seen one yet. Anyway, I need to clean up. George is in his office. You can follow me.”

Stashing the trap in the jeep, she drove off. The turn was half a mile up. Rounding it revealed a main drag named Ojo Negro Avenue, fishboned by diagonal parking spaces. Four vehicles for two dozen slots. Three pickups and a white Bronco with a cherry on top.

Ricki pointed to the left and kept driving. The road swooped upward toward a hill of dirt and a couple of struggling sycamores. I pulled in next to the Bronco.

The sidewalks were cracked and sunken, weeds taking advantage of loose seams. Most of the storefronts were dark. Some were boarded.

The active businesses were a white cinderblock cube painted with Ojo Negro Sheriff in block lettering that tried too hard, a parrot-green stucco bar tagged The Limelite, a dry-goods/grocery store doing additional duty as an insurance broker and a U.S. post office, a beauty salon/barbershop with faded headshots in the window, and the O.N. Feed Bin graced by a Support Our Troops banner.

The weekly specials at the bin were oats and hay and live breeder rabbits from “Belgium, Europe.”

In the sheriff’s office, a young, completely bald man in khakis sat at a PC keyboard. Behind him was a one-room jail as clean as his head. The walls were papered with the usual wanted posters, bulletins, and safety pitches. Cinderblock made an inhospitable bed for tape, and some of the papers had curled loose.

“Dr. Delaware? George Cardenas.”

“Morning, Sheriff.”

This sibling shook heartily and smiled without reservation. His skin was clear like his sister’s, his eyes the same gold-brown. But his face was round and soft, with none of that falcon-alertness. Baby-face; the lack of head hair did little to age him. “Coffee?”

“Black, thanks.”

Cardenas poured both of us Styrofoam cups, dosed his with Coffee-mate, and motioned me to sit. “You’re a little early.”

“My previous appointment canceled.”

“Detective Bragen changed his mind, huh?”

“You know him?”

“Talked to him for the first time this morning. I figured he might do that.”

“Why’s that?”

“Talking about the case made him kind of annoyed. He called it a loser from the git-go, like he didn’t want to churn it up.”

Beside his computer was a short stack of paper. He peeled off the top sheet and handed it over.

Sheriff Wendell Salmey’s summary of the Bright-Tranh murders.