Moon’s key opened the Riviera perfectly, but Pike did not get in. He pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves, then searched the glove box and under the front buckets, hoping for a cell phone or some hard link to Michael Darko.

He found it on the backseat, as alien to the car’s cracked, filthy interior as a perfect white rose—a baby’s bib. Made of a soft white cloth with a pattern of blue bunnies. Orange and green stains streaked the front. Pike felt the supple material, and knew the bib had been in the car only a few days. He held it to his nose, and knew the stains were recent. The orange smelled of apricots, the green of peas.

Pike folded the bib into a square and tucked it into his pocket, wondering what Moon Williams had done with the baby. Then Pike remembered Moon’s grandmother. The freeway noise was loud, but multiple gunshots had been fired. The woman should have heard. Her grandson and the other two bodies had been here for at least three days. She would have discovered them.

Pike locked the Riviera and went to the double-wide. This time he didn’t knock.

The gray-and-white cat raced out when he opened the door, and the same terrible smell seared his throat. The living room was neat and orderly the way he had seen it through the window, but as soon as he entered he saw the broken door at the end of the hall, and heard the cheery, upbeat melody of game-show music. Pike found Ms. Mildred Gertie Williams dead on her bedroom floor. A small television on her dresser was showing a rerun of Bob Barker’s The Price Is Right. Ms. Williams was wearing pajamas, a thin robe, and furry pink slippers, and had been shot twice in the body and once in the forehead. She had been shot in the left hand, too, but the bullet had entered the palm and exited the back of her hand, making a through-and-through defensive wound. She had been trying to ward off the shooter or begging for her life when the shooter fired, shooting through her hand.

Pike turned off the television. Her bed was rumpled and unmade, with a TV remote by the pillows. She was probably watching TV when she heard the shots, and got up to see what happened. Pike pictured her standing as she would have been before she was murdered. He placed himself where the shooter would have stood, made a gun of his hand, and aimed. The spent casings would have ejected to the right, so he looked right, and found them between the wall and an overstuffed chair. Two nine-millimeters, same brand as the casings in Moon’s trailer.

Pike stood over Mildred Williams, her face now misshapen and rimed with blood. Framed pictures of children lined the dresser, smiling gap-toothed boys and girls, one of whom was probably Moon.