The Bone Fire: A Mystery by Christine Barber

the way from New York calling him for interviews, and one of the cable news networks had scheduled him to talk about criminal sentences. They had canceled after the Judicial Standards Commission started its investigation a year ago, but he fully expected that they would call again once that was dealt with.
    His clerk read the charges of the next case: racing on the streets, no license, no seat belt, and no registration. A young man came forward. He looked to be no more than sixteen, and his mother was with him.
    “Son,” Judge Otero said, “do you realize that the punishment for this is ninety days in jail and three hundred dollars? It is an extremely serious offense.”
    “Yes, sir,” he said. “I do, sir, but I want to plead guilty with explanation.”
    Judge Otero leaned back in his leather chair and surveyed the boy, who looked like he might pass out from nervousness. The judge felt this pause was necessary—especially in juvenile cases—to make the defendant realize the power of the court. Often, this was the first and last time that a citizen would step into a courtroom, so the judge felt it was his duty to show his authority. Here, in this chamber, was a rare world—a place where only one person made the rules, and not following those rules had serious consequences.
    Judge Otero nodded slightly and said, “Go ahead.”
    “I was just getting done eating and it was my birthday and I was only two blocks away—”
    “Stop,” the judge said. “I’ll dismiss because it was your birthday, not because it was two blocks. Always wear your seat belt.”
    The next case was called as the judge looked at his watch and then over the courtroom. He had only a half hour left of hearing cases until he had to head off to the Plaza for the main fiesta celebration. He watched a redhead in boots play with her hair as his clerk called up a man with a suspended driver’s license charge. Before the clerk finished reading the case particulars, Judge Otero interrupted with “You have a suspended license. How did you get here?”
    “I walked,” the man said.
    “You better keep walking,” the judge said as the courtroom laughed.
    Chief Kline and Garcia drove off, leaving Gil and Joe standing in front of the crime scene. Near them, a goldfinch sang happily in a blue spruce tree. Gil felt like he’d been put into a pot of boiling water and left to drown. He was drifting, being pushed wherever the current took him. The chaos of the crime scenes and the implied violence were hard to wrap his head around. He needed to regain control.
    “We are getting nowhere,” Gil said. “All we’ve been doing is rushing from one scene to the next and never having a chance to formulate a real theory.”
    “Yeah, exactly,” Joe said. “We need to step back and regroup.”
    A half hour later, Joe and Gil were set up in the office conference room with a few stacks of papers that represented Fisher’s case files, evidence logs, and crime scene photos.
    They sat before a whiteboard. On it, in green dry-erase marker, Joe had written four headings— SUSPECT TYPE, PROFILE, MOTIVE , and LOCATIONS .
    “All right, so our goal here is not to get locked down on specifics,” Gil said, hoping that it might forestall any disagreements. “Let’s just talk in generalities.”
    Joe added, “I think we have to, since we still don’t have any information.”
    Liz and Adam had yet to return any of Gil’s phone calls. Kristen Valdez hadn’t discovered any new crime scenes.
    Under SUSPECT TYPE , Joe had already listed “serial killer,” “pedophile,” and “mentally ill.”
    “Okay,” Gil said, looking at the list. “What do all these kinds of suspects have in common?”
    “All of them would have committed stranger abduction,” Joe said.
    “Good thinking,” Gil said. “So, if it is Brianna, she was snatched by a stranger. That at least gives us a broad profile to start with.” He started to pace a little in front of the whiteboard, feeling