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“I swear, I’m keeping to my diet. Hey, don’t look at me like that. I admit I had a couple of relapses, but I learned my lesson. I’ve never eaten more wholesome food in my life.”

“Fifteen pounds. That health club I joined really sweats the weight off.”

* * *

“Hi, Mark.”

The tall, thin, sandy-haired young man behind the vegetables looked puzzled at him.

“What’s wrong?” Romero asked. “I’ve been coming to this market every Saturday for the past six weeks. You don’t recognize me by now?”

“You’ve confused me with my brother.” The man had blue eyes, a hint of their color in the crystal around his neck. Jeans, a white T-shirt, a glowing tan, and the thin-faced, high-cheekboned aesthetic look of a saint.

“Well, I know you’re not Luke. I’m sure I’d recognize him.”

“My name is John.” His tone was formal.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Gabe Romero. Nobody told me there were three brothers.”

“Actually—”

“Wait a minute. Let me guess. If there’s a Mark, Luke, and John, there’s got to be a Matthew, right? I bet there are four of you.”

John’s lips parted slightly, as if he wasn’t accustomed to smiling. “Very good.”

“No big deal. It’s my business to deduce things,” Romero joked.

“Oh? And what business is—” John straightened, his blue eyes as cold as a star, watching Luke come through the crowd. “You were told not to leave the stand.”

“I’m sorry. I had to go to the bathroom.”

“You should have gone before we started out.”

“I did. But I can’t help it if—”

“That’s right. You can’t help me if you’re not here. We’re almost out of squash. Bring another basket.”

“I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Luke glanced self-consciously at Romero, then back at his brother, and went to get the squash.

“Are you planning to buy something?” John asked.

You don’t exactly win friends and influence people, do you? Romero thought. “Yeah, I’ll take a couple of those squash. I guess with the early frost that’s predicted, these’ll be the last of the tomatoes and peppers, huh?”

John simply looked at him.

“I’d better stock up,” Romero said.

* * *

He had hoped that the passage of time would ease his numbness, but each season only reminded him. Christmas, New Year’s, then Easter, and too soon after that, the middle of May. Oddly, he had never associated his son’s death with the scene of the accident on the Interstate. Always the emotional connection was with that section of road by the Baptist church at the top of the hill on Old Pecos Trail. He readily admitted that it was masochism that made him drive by there so often as the anniversary of the death approached. He was so preoccupied that for a moment he was convinced that he had willed himself into reliving the sequence, that he was hallucinating as he crested the hill and for the first time in almost a year saw a pair of shoes on the road.

Rust-colored, ankle-high hiking boots. They so surprised him that he slowed down and stared. The close look made him notice something so alarming that he slammed on his brakes, barely registering the squeal of tires behind him as the car that followed almost hit the cruiser. Trembling, he got out, crouched, stared even more closely at the hiking boots, and rushed toward his two-way radio.

The shoes had feet in them.

As an approaching police car wailed and officers motioned for traffic to go past on the shoulder of the road, Romero stood with his sergeant, the police chief, and the medical examiner, watching the lab crew do its work. His cruiser remained where he had stopped it next to the shoes. A waist-high screen had been put up.

“I’ll know more when we get the evidence to the lab,” the medical examiner said, “but judging from the straight clean lines, I’m assuming that something like a power saw was used to sever the feet from the legs.”

Romero bit his lower lip.

“Anything else you can tell us right away?” the police chief asked.

“There isn’t any blood on the pavement, which means that the blood on the shoes and the stumps of the feet was dry before they were dropped here. The discoloration of the tissue suggests