The crime scene tape had been removed from 1422 Sycamore Way by Tuesday afternoon, but the house still wore the scars of the weekend like open wounds.
The front yard was littered with flattened red plastic party cups that had blown into the dried-out agaves. The vinyl banner that had announced the housewarming hung crooked from one grommet on the patio arbor, flapping listlessly in the dry ninety-eight-degree breeze.
Marisol pulled her rental car into the driveway and killed the engine.
She sat behind the wheel for five minutes, looking at the low-slung ranch house her parents had bought in 1984 for sixty-two thousand dollars. Her father had hand-laid every single flagstone on the front walkway. He had planted the sweet orange tree near the mailbox when Marisol was four years old; now its branches were heavy with dusty green fruit, drooping under the Arizona summer.
She stepped out into the heat.
A Mesa Police cruiser was parked across the street, a patrol officer sitting inside with the engine running to keep the air conditioning on—a courtesy Sergeant Miller had arranged until the locks could be re-keyed and the property secured.
Marisol walked around the side of the house first.
She stopped at the detached garage.
The door hung slightly crooked on its hinges where she had pried the hasp loose with the spade. The wood around the screws was splintered, revealing pale, raw pine beneath the peeling white paint.
She pushed the door open.
The smell inside was already fading, replaced by the neutral scent of concrete and old motor oil, but the camping cot still stood in the corner.
Marisol stepped across the threshold. The blue plastic dog bowl still sat on the floor near the head of the cot.
She knelt down, picked up the bowl, and walked it over to the trash barrel near the alley gate. She dropped it inside. The hollow plastic bang against the bottom of the empty drum sounded like a period at the end of a long, foul sentence.
She returned to the garage, stepped around the cot, and walked to the wall behind the wooden tool bench.
Just as Arturo had said, hidden behind a rack of rusty open-end wrenches hanging from pegboard, five distinct clusters of pencil marks were etched into the white drywall.
Four vertical slashes and a diagonal cross.
Five clusters. Twenty-five marks.
Twenty-five days he had been kept behind that brass padlock after the summer heat began in earnest.
Beneath the bench, tucked into a cardboard box that had once held oil filters, lay a stack of folded newsprint. Marisol pulled them out. They were daily editions of the Arizona Republic, carefully folded into quarters.
Every single crossword puzzle was completely filled out.
In blue ballpoint pen. Not a single letter crossed out. Not a single blank space left unfilled.
Marisol held the yellowing newsprint against her chest. A dry, shuddering sob tore through her throat, but she swallowed it down, blinking back the burning in her eyes.
"He never lost it," she whispered into the empty garage. "Not for one second."
She walked into the main house through the kitchen door.
The interior felt dead and hollow. The air conditioning was running, set at a cool seventy degrees—the very comfort Ray and Tiffany had denied their father while they slept twenty feet away.
The living room had been stripped of Elena's knickknacks, her ceramic roosters, the framed family photographs from the Grand Canyon trip in 1996. In their place were generic, mass-produced canvas prints of geometric shapes and gray coastal scenes bought at HomeGoods.
Marisol walked down the hallway to the master bedroom.
A mountain of Tiffany’s designer clothes lay strewn across the unmade king-sized bed, left behind when she had fled in the white Lexus. Expensive shoes, perfume bottles, and shopping bags were scattered across the dresser.
Marisol didn't touch any of it. That would be handled by the public administrator and the defense attorneys during the asset forfeiture proceedings.
She walked back to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out an unopened carton of orange juice. She poured a glass, sat down at the small laminate kitchen table where she had done her algebra homework thirty years ago, and dialed her nursing agency supervisor in Denver.
"Denver Staffing, this is Karen."
"Karen, it's Marisol Navarro."
"Marisol! How are things in Phoenix? We were just looking at your file—there’s an open twelve-week contract at Swedish Medical in Englewood starting next Monday. Fantastic rate, crisis pay included. Do you want me to lock it in?"
Marisol looked out the kitchen window toward the sweet orange tree in the front yard.
"No, Karen," she said, her voice steady and clear. "I'm terminating my travel roster status."
There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Marisol, you're one of our top-tier nurses. If you step off the travel circuit, you're leaving twenty-five hundred a week on the table."
"I know," Marisol said. "I'm taking a permanent line. Banner Desert has an opening for a charge nurse on their medical ICU. Day shift."
"Are you sure? Mesa isn't Denver."
"I'm sure," Marisol said. "My father needs me home."
She hung up the phone and set it on the table.
Through the front window, she saw a gray sedan pull up to the curb behind the police cruiser. Brenda Miller stepped out, carrying a glass casserole dish covered in aluminum foil.
The older woman walked up the flagstone path, her head down, looking hesitant, almost ashamed to step onto the porch.
Marisol stood up, walked to the front door, and pulled it open before Brenda could knock.
Brenda looked at Marisol, her eyes filling with immediate, helpless tears.
"Marisol... I didn't know," Brenda said, her voice barely audible over the hum of the air conditioner. "We didn't know. We thought... Ray had the death certificate. He had the urn. He cried at the chapel. How could someone do that to their own father?"
"They did it for eighty-four thousand dollars and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house," Marisol said gently.
Brenda held out the casserole dish with trembling hands. "It's green chile pork. Arturo used to love it when your mother made it. The doctor said he could have soft foods starting tomorrow."
Marisol took the warm dish from Brenda's hands.
"Thank you, Brenda. Come inside. I want you to tell me everything Ray told the neighborhood in March."
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