“I told him I’d do that,” Major said. “His curiosity has become infectious. So I take the picture of Garth and go around the casinos and hotels and motels ask them about couples with this guy. His name is Garth Hammerling, but he could be going under another name. No luck. I call the smaller motels and ask about couples named Hammerling. No luck with the hotels. Then I think a little. Maybe the guy got into a car accident. I call up HP and ask if any bad accidents went down in the area in the last week. Well, I don’t have any luck finding Garth Hammerling. But there was an accident a day ago: a one-car crack-up in the middle of the desert. A couple of boys were dirt-biking and came across the wreck with a body in the driver’s seat.”

“Oh dear,” Marge said. “That’s not good.”

“It was a miracle they found the car, but that wasn’t the biggest miracle. When the HP got there and took a pulse of the body, they found out that the passenger—a woman in her twenties—was still alive.”

Silver said, “The poor woman was a wreck. Burns on her lower body, broken bones, but she was breathing on her own.”

“Weaving in and out of consciousness,” Major said. “She was rushed to the burn unit at Las Vegas Medical Center. She’s in a medically induced coma. The coroner’s immediate thought is a one-car suicide. But we really don’t know squat because she didn’t have any ID on her. And she can’t talk because she’s unconscious.”

“What about the car?” Oliver asked.

“It’s a Toyota Corolla—older model—’02 or ’03. It’s a tangle of metal and burned at spots, but it hasn’t been gutted by fire. It’s at the forensic lab. We haven’t been able to get an owner off of the VIN number, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Marge spoke up. “What about burns on her face?”

“As far as I know, it was just her legs. She was wearing her seat belt, so she’s got some bruises from the air bag deploying. But she’d be recognizable. Do you know what Amanda Kowalski looks like?”

“We do,” Oliver said.

“That’s what I thought,” Silver said. “So I called up one of the doctors this morning and asked about her. She was still in a coma, although the doctor—her name is Julienne Hara—is optimistic. Then she tells me that the woman had Xanax in her system, enough to cause death. So it’s beginning to look like a suicide. She took a fatal dose of Xanax, put her foot on the accelerator, and that was that.”

“We think our murder victim was drugged before she was hanged,” Marge asked.