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Cedar Creek, Nevada

Saturday, June 24, 1995 10 Days Prior . . .

DALE PICKETT WAS A LONG-HAUL DRIVER WHO OWNED HIS OWN RIG and sold the hours of his life the way a prostitute sold their body. But driving his eighteen-wheeler across the country was all he knew, and for thirty years it had paid the bills. He parked his rig in his driveway each December and took the month off to spend the holidays with his family—his wife, three kids, and eight grandchildren. Then, starting January second, he damn near killed himself for the other eleven months hauling freight for long and lonely hours. His current gig had him on a round trip from Boise to Reno. He was working on little sleep by 1:00 a.m., fueled by Adderall and Jolt Cola, and didn’t believe his eyes when he first saw the body in the road.

Positioned in the middle of the two-lane highway, he initially thought it was roadkill. He slowed down as he approached. The breakdown lanes on this stretch of highway were too narrow for his big rig, and due to the size of the heap in the road, he worried that speeding over it would cause a mess to the undercarriage. But as he got close enough for his headlights to fully brighten the highway, he saw that it wasn’t an animal in the road, but a body.

The brakes squealed into the night as he pulled partially onto the shoulder and brought the truck to a stop. He pushed open his door and climbed down from the cab. His Maglite flashlight was close to as bright as the truck’s headlights, and as he approached the body, he sprayed the beam of his flashlight around the dark expanse of brush and desert that flanked this empty stretch of road. He saw nothing and heard only the rumble of his truck’s diesel engine. But down the road, perhaps a hundred yards from where he stood, a car was parked in the breakdown lane. He pointed his Maglite into the darkness and saw that the driver’s side door was open.

He registered the car into an organized spot in his mind, then returned his attention to the body, bringing the glow of the flashlight in front of him. The body was crumpled upon itself, with the man’s legs splayed at odd angles and a circle of blood on the pavement that haloed the man’s head. Dale didn’t bother to check for a pulse. This man was as dead as any roadkill he’d ever seen. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a female voice asked.

“Not my emergency, but you’ve got a dead body in the middle of Highway Sixty-seven just north of Cedar Creek.”

“A body in the road?”

“Yes, ma’am, someone ran the poor son of a bitch over.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I doubt it.”

“Have you checked for a pulse?”

“Not a chance. Send the cops. I’ll wait for them, and they can do all the checking they want.”

With that, Dale ended the call and walked back to his rig. From the side compartment he removed flares and cones and blocked off the road. Then he climbed back into the cab, reached between the seats, and removed the SIG Sauer handgun he always kept there. He didn’t need to check if it was loaded, he knew it was.

In a slow walk, he set off toward the car in the distance, the headlights of his truck casting his shadow in a long, thin form in front of him.