Detective continued. “By my calculations, Rock Springs is weird. Used to be a hard-bitten coal town, but, of late, it’s shared in the tourist boom. That’s why you see all the cornball Old West cowboy shit around. Anyhow, with tourists, you get homeless, as old-school settlers are too judgmental to give nickels and dimes to the scarecrows. But the tourist hands over five-spots just so they won’t have to look at them. So they’re drawn here in the warmer months. Progressive city council, so we can’t get rough with ’em. They hang on somehow. I got to know a few, that’s why I can tell what’s going on. They talk to me. I try to talk for them, but nobody listens.”

“We’re listening.”

“It started about three months ago. I picked up on it fast. ‘Where’s Paul?’ I had to know, because one day Paul was gone.”

“Paul was special?”

“Most of them are self-made wrecks. Paul was wrecked by fate. He had no character flaws. It’s just that God decided it was time to squash a bug, and Paul lost the bug lottery.”

“What was his deal?” asked Nick.

“Paul Finley. Beloved English teacher at Rock Springs High. By all accounts, smart, funny, generous, forgiving, concerned. One day, he backs out of his garage and kills his daughter. I guess some folks can come back from that, but he wasn’t one of them. He just starts falling through pathologies. Drunk, unemployed, suicidal, drug-addicted, divorced, on the streets. We tried hard—and I mean everybody—to help out. But he couldn’t make it back. Last time I saw him, he was sawing away on a Robitussin-and-Ripple high in an alley behind North’s, the restaurant. Maybe if I’d pulled him in that night. But I didn’t.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Gone. I noticed a few days later and asked. Nope, just gone. No one knew where.”

“Is that odd?”

“It is. These folks don’t have homes, but they do have a kind of community. They talk. Nobody leaves without good-byes, advice on where it’s better, towns that are softer, the weather easier, blue less inclined to hit. But Paul was just gone.”

They waited. She took a few puffs.

“Jerry was next. Followed by Husky. Finally, Frank. Same deal, just gone. No one saw a thing. I got an old wheezer named Big Bill to talk. He said he saw three guys come into the alley—the homeless bomb out most nights in an alley that runs two blocks behind the North Street restaurants—give Frank an injection, and load the guy into an SUV. It took about thirty seconds. They’d done it before. Then it stopped.”

“And you say it started up again?”