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I drove through the empty rows of storage buildings for five minutes until I located mine.

It was colder when I stepped outside, the moon still rising, the snowfields glowing high on the distant peaks. I unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway of small storage lockers. Mine was a 3’ by 4’ on the bottom row. I’d rented the space for nine years at a cost of $1,200.

Kneeling down, I removed the padlock and pulled open the door.

Dust plumed.

I coughed.

The overhead light had burned out in the corridor and the moonlight that streamed in through the doorway did not provide adequate illumination. So I dragged the filthy suitcase out of the locker. I walked back outside, set it down on the hood of the Buick.

I unzipped the suitcase.

They moved me in a terrible way, these artifacts of Orson. Sitting down on the hood, I lifted a manila folder and a notebook from the stash. Despite what I would have to pay for looking at his photographs and reading his words, I intended to examine everything, to immerse myself once more in my brother’s depraved world, to learn what I could of his accomplice, Luther Kite, and where he might possibly be.

27

THE starting gun for the girls’ race fired as Vi opened the back hatch of the Cherokee and grabbed the folded blanket she always brought to Max’s cross-country meets.

She followed the trail to the start/finish line, staring through the tall limbless loblollies of MacAnderson Park at the field of runners dashing up the first hill of the 3.1 mile course. The cheers of the spectators faded as the runners moved out of sight.

It was the first Monday of November, a mild one, the sky unblemished and sapphire, the leaves a week beyond peak—red into crimson, gold into russet. The air stank of pine needles and exhaust from the tailpipes of the yellow buses that had carried the six cross-country teams of the Foothills Athletic Conference to this championship meet.

Vi walked over a footbridge and made her way toward the circle of blue and white uniforms near the start line. Max stood in running shorts and a tank top amid eight lanky boys, charging them for this last race of the season. He’d woken her this morning practicing his pep talk as he shaved in the bathroom.

Stepping out of her heels and spreading the blanket across the grass, she listened to Max, tickled at his excitement.

"This is a special day, gentlemen. You each have the opportunity to make history for your school. Now I know we aren’t favored. I know ya’ll think the Raiders over there are an awesome squad—and they are—but anything can happen at a conference championship. What’s the most important thing? Somebody tell me."

"Having fun?" offered the smallest boy on the team.

"Well, yeah. But after having fun."

"Breathing," said Patrick Mullins, truest athlete of the bunch and oldest son of Barry Mullins, Vi’s sergeant in Criminal Investigations Division. Patrick would be attending Davidson next year on a track scholarship.

"That’s it," Max said. "Breathe, gentlemen. That’s all I want you to think about out there. Filling your lungs with sweet oxygen. Now it’s thirty minutes till the gun. Go warm up." As the boys took off from the start line Max jogged over to Vi’s blanket.

"You came," he said.

"Wouldn’t have missed it."

That wasn’t entirely true. She would’ve missed it had Sgt. Mullins not left a message on her cell phone saying he needed to see her at the cross-country meet to "discuss things."

"You look cute, honey," she said. "Just don’t let your package hang out of those itsy bitsy shorts."

Max grinned, said, "Violet King, you better watch that mouth." He leaned down, kissed her, and ran off toward the footbridge to rejoin the team. As Vi watched him go, someone called her name.

"Violet! Hey, sweetie, how are you?"

She saw Judy Hardin walking toward her from the scoring station. Judy was a magpie, the loquacious mother of Josh Hardin, a junior, and the second fastest runner on the team behind Patrick. As Vi rose