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like informing them we suspected
     foul play in the disappearance of their daughter and watching their hearts break.
     I’ll never forget it. Or what it was like when we had to tell them we found her body.”
    He’d known one of the victims. He was emotionally involved and prickly about questions.
     I understood it. But I wasn’t going to do my job on eggshells. “I need to learn as
     much as I can about Melinda and Tracy, Sheriff. It’s where I usually start—with the
     victims. If you have interviews already, we won’t need to go back to the families
     and reopen that wound. Have you spoken to the Davidson family yet? And do you have
     the initial reports from her disappearance?”
    “Major Brolin, my head of Criminal Investigations, notified Mrs. Davidson yesterday
     after the lab reports came in with a positive ID. And I’ve asked her to assemble everything
     we have on both cases for you.” The sheriff pointed to a thin trail weaving through
     thickets of privet and woody vines. “We’re going up this way so you can see the dump
     site. Then we can walk around toward the campground.”
    “I think I’d like to drive over to it later, if you don’t mind, then walk from there.”
    The sheriff uncapped his water bottle and took a long drink. I did the same. “You
     want to see what he saw if he came in from the road, is that it?”
    I nodded. “Any insight into his thinking helps.”
    “I don’t like looking through a predator’s eyes.” The sheriff said it flatly.
    “You must have had to before in your career.”
    “Started as a beat cop in Boulder, Colorado, made detective two years before I came
     here. Narcotics. Different kind of predator. I never wanted to be in homicide. I don’t
     like spending all my time thinking about killers.”
    “I’ve always been drawn to it,” I said.
    Meltzer stood above me on the hill with his open water bottle. He studied me for a
     few seconds. “Well, you seem perfectly normal.”
    “Do I?” I smiled. “That’s reassuring. What brought you to Georgia, Sheriff?”
    He screwed the top back on his half-empty bottle and started walking again. “My dad
     passed away. Mom was a southerner. She wanted to come back here.”
    “Your mother passed too?”
    Ken Meltzer turned back and looked at me. “Why do you ask?”
    “You said
was
. She
was
a southerner.”
    “God. That’s so telling, isn’t it? My mother developed Alzheimer’s symptoms nine years
     ago. I guess sometimes it feels like she’s already gone.”
    “I’m sorry. Is that why you came here?”
    “She had relationships here. I thought moving her would add to her confusion. And
     I was young enough to start over. It made sense.”
    “That had to be tough,” I said.
    “Thanks. It was.”
    Neil’s ringtone, Main Source’s “Fakin’ the Funk,” throbbed through the woods and hushed
     the birds. I’d forgotten to silence my phone.
    The sheriff looked at me. “My business partner,” I told him. “You mind if I take it?”
    “No problem,” he said.
    “What’s up?” I answered.
    “Jimmy’s here,” Neil told me. I watched the sheriff walk ahead. “He made zucchini
     bread for the office. Too bad you’re not getting any. So what are the cops like? All
     gun racks and shit?”
    I glanced at Ken Meltzer moving easily through the woods. “Ihaven’t met the others but the sheriff is a little bit of a Boy Scout,” I whispered.
     “He’s also totally hot.”
    “Bradley Cooper hot or Channing Tatum hot?” my brother piped in.
    “Keith Urban hot,” I said.
    “Ah,” Jimmy cooed. “A rebel. A little too wild and uncombed for the city. But sensitive.
     Probably exfoliates.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “Listen, I’m in the woods on the way to the scene. Can this wait?”
    “I found eight registered offenders that meet your criteria,” Neil said. “I figured
     you’d want to know. They’re in the area we mapped out. The timeframe works and they
     have sheds, garages, barns,