TJ Scanlon glanced at the solid detective, who was sitting down across from her desk. ‘I never quite got that. Does it mean, “We’re in a desert area, so it doesn’t rain but sometimes there’s a downpour and we get flooded because, you know, there’s no ground cover?”’ ‘I don’t know. All I mean is, my plate’s filling up.’ ‘With rain?’ TJ asked. ‘A homicide.’ ‘Oh. Sorry.’ TJ often walked a fine line between jovial and flippant. Dance asked, ‘The missing farmer? Otto Grant?’ She was thinking of the possible suicide, the man distraught about losing his land to the eminent domain action by the state. She couldn’t imagine what he had gone through, losing the farm that had been in his family for so many years. She and the children had been at Safeway recently and she’d noticed yet more 8.5-by-11 sheets of paper, attention-getting yellow, with Grant’s picture on them. Have you seen this man? … O’Neil shook his head. ‘No, no, I mean another case altogether.’ He handed Dance a half-dozen crime-scene photos.
