She returned home by nightfall. Dog raised himself up, strutted over to her, swinging his head back and forth like a dejected lantern. One of Cyrus’s black Converse lay half-chewed on the floor. Both dog and tortoise regarded her sadly.

“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re mad I left.”

She let Dog out, fed him and Yard, took a quick shower with the homemade lavender soap she had once made for Cyrus, and then got in bed, checking the missing persons page on her phone.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am the broken-hearted mother of twenty-two-year-old Regina Smith seeking help in finding the someone or something that took not only my precious child’s life but also her eyes, heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. Her empty body was discovered in the Mojave Desert. Please contact me with any information leading to justice for my daughter!

The marine’s wife’s body was discovered in a deserted mineshaft near Joshua Tree National Park.

A human jawbone that was found was determined to be that of a man who was reported missing nineteen years previously. The discovery was made when a group of four hikers stumbled upon the mandible near an abandoned mine shaft. Deputies responded and took a photo and sent it to the coroner’s division, who later determined it was, in fact, a human bone.

The head of an unidentified male was found in a backpack in the Joshua Tree area. The decedent is thought to be a Caucasian male between 14 and 19 years of age. He had straight, light brown hair, numerous fillings, and had received high-quality dental care during his life. The reconstruction featured above is an artist’s rendering of what the John Doe may have looked like. Anyone with information should contact the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner.

Bad shit happened in the desert. So much agony, everywhere you looked.

Izzy clicked on a link to a video of still photos—people just before they’d disappeared. One little girl, seated on a rock, seemed to be laughing, revealing her missing front teeth, but—the video offered—she might have been grimacing in terror. A young boy who’d vanished on his paper route supposedly appeared to his mother late one night many years later and told her he was in fear for his life and had to keep his identity secret. A surveillance camera had caught the image of a man with hair styled into a pompadour, so perfect it resembled a wig, like the killer in a story Izzy once read. The bars of a metal fence hid his face as he walked away from an apartment building where a woman was later found in a pool of her own blood.

The robotic voice that narrated the video echoed inside Izzy as if she herself were made of tin.