The last case we worked together involved victims who looked nearly identical. I turn the page, revealing Ruthven. He’s tall, fat, balding, and a decade younger than Biggs. I’m strangely relieved that he’s not the other guy in my freezer, not this that would have made any kind of sense.

‘They’re both white males,’ I say. ‘But different in every other way. How do you know the cases are connected?’

Thistle takes another corner like a Nascar driver. ‘His phone signal,’ she says. ‘The trail goes to a landfill and then just stops. Five days ago.’

So he’s been missing longer than Biggs. There’s a stirring in my bones. ‘The same landfill as Biggs’s phone?’

‘Right. Someone is using it as a dumping ground.’

‘Is that where we’re going?’

‘That’s where we’re going,’ Thistle confirms. ‘What else does the file say?’

‘Uh, born and raised in Houston, father died of prostate cancer, mother still lives here. Went to Waltrip High School—’

‘He didn’t go to the college Biggs taught at?’

‘No college at all.’

‘And yet he still managed to get a low-level job building a fast-food place,’ Thistle says. ‘Your kind of guy.’

I ignore the gibe. ‘He was reported missing by his roommate, Ian McLean. McLean works for a software company.’

‘We’ll have to talk to him, too.’

‘Hey, do you know how much Biggs took out in his second-last ATM withdrawal?’

‘A hundred,’ Thistle says. ‘Same as the one before that. Further back, I don’t know. But two-sixty is a lot, for him.’

‘Hmm.’

Ninety minutes later we drive past a blue sign with a fleur-de-lis: WELCOME TO LOUISIANA—BIENVENUE EN LOUISIANE. Thirty-six hours now since I found Biggs in the forest. The trail is cold and getting colder.

It’s just gone two o’clock when we slow down and turn a corner. Thistle says, ‘This is it.’

Up ahead are mountains of trash as tall as skyscrapers. It looks post-apocalyptic, the landscape jagged and bleak, all the colours faded and stained and scraped to sewage-brown.

We drive up a dirt road to a big steel gate and a sign—SULPHUR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CENTER. Sulphur is the name of the nearest town, and it could also describe the stench. I’m gagging even before Thistle rolls down the window to show the security guard her badge.