“That’s good, Cammie, but reality is harder than theory. I’ll do the search while you stay with the decedent until the sheriff arrives.” He looked at his watch, tapping its face with his fingertip. “Something must have happened to hold up Jacobs. He should’ve been here by now.”

It took a moment for her to process what her father was saying. A chill crept through the soles of her cowboy boots and up past her faded jeans until it spread all the way into her chest. Once again, he was shutting her out. Before, they’d worked their cases as a team, but lately he’d been finding excuses to leave her at home. If she hadn’t taken the call about this morning’s crash, she suspected she would have been left behind on this one, too. “Wait,” she protested. “I don’t want to stay here with the body-I want to go with you.”

“And I want you to stay here. Do the inventory, okay?”

At that moment a semi appeared, blowing black smoke from an upright exhaust pipe. She heard a squeal as the driver engaged the brakes. The man, riding high in his cab, goggled the wreckage. Her father’s disgust deepened when the man honked his horn. “Keep moving! ” Patrick yelled, his arm circling like the blades on a windmill. “Go on!” Black smoke belched from the truck’s exhaust pipe as it strained to regain momentum up the steep hill. “People always want a bloody show. Cammie, get that sheet. This fellow shouldn’t be gawked at. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

“We’ll go twice as fast with me searching.”

“I’ll take it from here,” he said pleasantly.

Although lately he’d taken to wearing turtlenecks instead of his usual T-shirts, today he was dressed as he used to be: workmen’s boots and his frayed coroner’s cap with a star stitched in golden thread. But despite his familiar touches, there was something new in his demeanor. He, who had often pried into his daughter’s inner life, had himself become evasive. She could sense it.