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Prologue
CLARA
It’s a ables, and crea A row of artless bushes lines the ay, courtesy of the builder’s uni It looks exactly like the house to its left and too siht
And yet the nuether unique
I hunch down in the passenger seat of the cruiser, just enough to spy the glow froh the cold drizzle A bayfra, the little boy curled within her arests he’s asleep
“Where are they going to go?” I ask, eyeing the large “For Sale” sign staked into the front lawn Just another thing for the neighborhood to look at as they throw sylances on their way by
“She can’t h a casual sip of coffee, its pungent aro the car’s interior “Her parents have a far”
“He had no life insurance? Nothing?”
“She had to take a loan out on the house just to pay for the funeral”
A dull pang throbs in s drift over to the , listless eyes resting on the driveway belohere puddles of water pool in the indents formed by the tires that used to sit there The exact place where her husband waved to her for the last tier side of his cherry-red Ford F-250 The truck he had advertised for sale on Craigslist The truck he was allowing a prospective buyer to test drive
Seattle police found Wayne Billings’s body fourteen days later in a city dump The truck hasn’t turned up and it probably never will No witnesses to interrogate, except for Wayne’s wife, and all they could get from her was that the driver wore a baseball hat and he was dropped off by so any real attention and I understand why With a two-year-old hanging off her leg and a three-week-old baby in her arms, the poor woman was asleep on her feet, exhausted When Wayne left, all she was probably thinking about was the family-friendly minivan they would buy with the cash from the truck
The wipers swish back and forth in aand heat blasts out fro air I arrived on the West Coast one week ago and, though locals swear it’s not usually this bad, it hasn’t stopped raining
I don’t , actually
“It’s a real shaet to find out,” Burk murmurs in that wearied voice that tells me that this is just another case to him He has succumbed to the job It’s not his fault; it’s how s we see every day
Detachment