Heather Sorrow, twenty-seven, five foot nine, blonde hair. Brakes gave out and the car flew into an electric pole. She died on impact. Seven witnesses, seven pairs of eyes that swore the same thing: sparks like July fireworks and a body slumped like a marionette with its strings cut.

  Samantha Patrick, forty, four foot eleven, brown hair. High heel broke and she tripped into oncoming traffic. Died on impact. Two witnesses, one of them a kid who’d never forget the image.

  Carmen Sandor, sixty-two, five foot four, grey hair. Slipped on a puddle and broke her neck. Died three hours later in a hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and regret. One witness.

  On paper, they were accidents. On paper, the world is neat and merciful. I’d learned long ago that paper lies smoother than a politician during election year.

  The one that truly made me sick to my stomach was the same that happened while I rode in. As if it were left for me. A cruel little gift wrapped in desert sand.

  Lillian Ashford, twelve. Found alone in the desert, face down like she’d dropped to pray and forgotten to rise. No prints. No witnesses. No ties between any of the deceased. Senseless. The first three accidents may be, but the last leaves a family bereft. They insist she could not have run away. She froze to death, body otherwise unharmed.

  Frozen to death in a desert. That was the punchline the universe handed me. Cold enough at night to steal the breath from a child, hot enough by day to cook a conscience clean. Whoever wrote this script had a taste for irony.

  I needed a smoke. “Haven’t quit for an hour, idiot.” I tried to plead with myself, but I’d never been a good negotiator. It didn’t matter. I needed one. My lungs had become a courtroom and nicotine was the only judge who’d hear my case.

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  I tossed the files from view to the back seat and pulled out as fast as gravity would allow. The engine roared like it had something to prove. I suppose it did. We both did.

  My mind and heart were in a race, and there was to be no winner. Whether they or my car were going faster, I could not say. It was impossible to clear my mind of their faces, looping ceaselessly. Heather’s surprise. Samantha’s terror. Carmen’s confusion. Lillian’s stillness.

  No witnesses. No witnesses.

  The town blurred past in streaks of rust. Streetlights flickered to life one by one, like reluctant stars. I drove without direction, which in my line of work is just another way of saying I drove home.

  I nearly kicked the corner store’s door clean off its hinges, but stayed the intrusion. I’d broken enough things in my life. Calmly, carefully, I entered.

  The store was an unsorted mess of knick-knacks and have-nots. Beside the flare guns was an assortment of overripened fruit sweating under buzzing fluorescents. Beside that, some cheap lingerie in plastic wrap, promising miracles it could never deliver. A rack of tabloids shouted about alien babies and political scandals. The air smelled like sour milk and desperation.

  I prayed to the heavens they at least had Luckies.

  The clerk’s pimple-ridden visage must have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Acne like a constellation across his cheeks. Salvation comes in strange disguises.

  “Pack of Lucky Strikes,” I heard my voice plead, unaware of sending the signal myself.

  “Yeah, man. Dollar o’ nine.”

  A price that cheap felt like a sin. I could have cried, but instead forked over the dough. Coins clinked like tiny confessions on the counter.

  I ripped the packaging apart like a savage beast who’s gone too long without a meal. That said, I still had the kind sense to flip one over for luck.

  I tore the filter off another, so as to taste the tar, and with one quick flick the match was lit. Sulfur flared bright as revelations. I drew deep. It felt like peace, an oasis of smoke surrounding me, flooding my senses with tranquility. The world softened at the edges. My pulse slowed to something resembling human.

  I was so enamored with this state that I hardly noticed the woman on fire not twenty feet to my east.