The day had been long and it wasn’t over. She drank coffee. Through the passenger window, the Union Pacific train rolled on into the night, a dark wall of metal.Indio wasn’t far from Palm Springs, about twenty minutes in the car, but it was another country when it came to personality.Working in the police crime lab in San Diego, Grace had a view of Indio at odds with the image that came out of the glossy PR pamphlets—date farm capital of the world, center of a burgeoning country-western community, an agricultural mecca of opportunity and promise. The Indio Grace knew had youth gangs made up of homeless, abandoned, throwaway kids. Transient farm workers. Hispanic gangs at war with black gangs at war with Asian gangs at war with skinheads. Broken glass and graffiti.She wondered which Indio she’d be seeing this night.She took the off-ramp past a row of gas stations onto the frontage road. The area had built up since the last time she’d been there at night and it was bright with motels, a Denny’s, and a row of Mexican restaurants.After the commercial area came houses, their lights softer and smaller.
