Laurene Chase liked to sit in the back of the bus.

It tweaked her sense of irony, as a black lesbian who’d managed to survive and even thrive in Waco, Texas. Right now she had the aisle seat next to Carmen Garcia by the window, with Jenny Blake and Nancy Hughes across the way, as they headed for a town in North Dakota (were there towns in North Dakota?) called Rolla.

She held in her hands hard copy of material Jenny Blake had downloaded about the burg of fourteen hundred or so, which covered a scant mile and a quarter. Median income was just a shade over thirty thousand, meaning nearly twenty percent of the population lived below poverty level. One statistic stood out to Laurene: seven-tenths of 1 percent of the population was African-American.

Across the aisle Jenny was pounding at the laptop keyboard as if sending repeated SOS messages from a sinking ship. The petite blonde, hair pony-tailed back, wore jeans and a white T-shirt, the letters OMG printed on the front (the back, Laurene had previously noted, read: WTF).

Laurene asked, “How’s your math, Jen?”

Jenny reacted with her usual caught-in-the-head-lights freeze, fingers poised over the keyboard like gripping claws. “Okay.”

“Good, ’cause mine sucks. What’s seven-tenths of a percent of fourteen-hundred-seventeen?”

“About ten.”

Jenny had given up three whole words in the exchange. What did that make, in the three days they’d spent together on the bus, twenty-six words out of the cute little nerd?

Laurene settled back in the bus seat. So they were headed for a town with ten black people. Two-thirds of the populace was white, with nearly 30 percent Native American. Totals for Asians and Latinos were higher than blacks, with those listing their race as “other” outnumbering African-Americans three times over.

Suddenly, Waco seemed pretty damned progressive.

Sure as hell wouldn’t be a police force in Rolla, which meant they’d be dealing with the Rolette County sheriff, a thought that in itself made Laurene uneasy. She kept thumbing through the information, and when she read about the last sheriff being removed from office for gross misconduct, she immediately pictured a big old redneck John Madden-looking motherhumper, sweat stains in the pits of his dirt-brown uniform shirt, nose a mass of red veins below mirrored sunglasses and a campaign hat.

Then she laughed to herself, thinking, That’s me, just another progressive from Waco.

Laurene remembered what her mother had once said to her: God made us each in His own image, darling child. That’s why we are all completely different. Still wasn’t sure she understood that, but it often floated through her mind.

“Something funny?” Jenny asked, with just a little attitude.

Laurene, who’d been laughing to herself, held up a hand, like one of Rolla’s Indians saying, How.

“Not laughing at you, Jen,” Laurene said. “Just amused by my own dumb ass.”

From her window seat, where she’d been half-napping, Carmen Garcia looked over and asked, “Did I miss something, girls?”

Jenny, naturally, said nothing.

Next to her, the ponytail blonde, Nancy Hughes—who’d also been napping—came slowly awake and stretched.

“So,” Carmen said, looking over at Laurene, “spill it. What’s so funny?”

Shaking her head, Laurene said, “I was wondering how the folks in Rolla, North Dakota, are gonna react to me and Jenny here—the world’s most beautiful black Amazon, and a nearly mute blond girl wearing a T-shirt sayin’ Oh My God, What The Eff?”

Jenny looked injured, and Carmen frowned. Nancy wasn’t awake enough yet to have an opinion.

Laurene made a dismissive wave. “Jen…guys…I’m not making fun of anybody.”

Carmen said, “Kinda sounds like you are.”

“Well, maybe myself a little. The locals see my fine gay black ass, they are going to shit gold bricks, and start the gold rush all over again.”

That made Carmen laugh, Nancy too, and even Jenny managed a tiny smile.

“Hey,” Laurene said, “we’re all freaks to somebody.”

“You can’t just be figuring that out,” Nancy said.

But the other two had given all their attention over to Laurene, who not only was Harrow’s right hand, but the oldest and maybe wisest of them.

“I always lived my life the way I wanted,” she said, no laughter now. “Nobody could make me believe I was wrong—even when I was.”

That drew wry smiles out of Carmen and Nancy, though Jenny remained poker-faced.

“I really thought I was in charge of myself, if not my destiny—I mean, no cop thinks the world is anything but a random damn mine field. But I was in a relationship that was working, and I really thought I was the captain of that frickin’ ship too. Me and Patty. That was her name.”

Now it was Carmen and Nancy whose expressions had gone blank with the fear of getting too much information, while Jenny had tight eyes and a cocked head, like a dog just figuring out what those words its master had been blurting were all about.

“Since Patty died, though, I realize I wasn’t the one with the hand on the rudder. She’d been runnin’ things, all along. Made me think I was in charge. Out front, leading the way.” Laurene chuckled again, but this time there was no humor in it. “Leading the way? Hell, I lost my way.”

“We all do, time to time,” Nancy said, and Carmen nodded.

But Jenny said, bluntly, “I don’t.”

All eyes went to the petite computer guru.

“Never had a way,” she said with a shrug.

Laurene laughed. “That’s a good one, kid,” she said. “First joke I ever heard you crack.”

Jenny said, “Joke?”

Then the other three howled and, truth be told, Jenny was smiling herself, just a little.

They all rocked forward a little as the bus stopped. Looking past Carmen out the tinted window, Laurene made out a low, long building with a sign proclaiming they were parked by the Rolette County Sheriff’s Office.

In the aisle, Laurene Chase smoothed her blouse and pants with only moderate success, after ten hours on the bus, but for a couple of pee breaks. She slipped into a black Crime Seen! silk jacket, retrieved her carry-on-type bag from its perch, and headed for the front of the bus, Carmen and Nancy behind her, Jenny staying on the bus, still glued to her laptop.

They walked down the few stairs and outside into bright sunshine and a cold north wind. Behind their bus was the semi that was home to the lab and the mini production studio.

“Damn,” Laurene said, zipping up the jacket at the chill. “Wasn’t it just summer?”

“Not convinced it’s ever summer up here,” Carmen said, shivering as she stepped down, a hand trying vainly to keep her hair intact.

Blond Nancy, still wearing only a T-shirt and jeans and seemingly impervious to the windy North Dakota welcome, walked off toward the semi to collect her gear.

“Tough kid,” Laurene said, nodding toward the sound woman.

“Crew,” Carmen said with a shrug. “Different breed.”

The street was two-lane with curb parking, the buildings mostly one-story, a gas station across and down the only real sign of life, as cars pulled in and out. A parking lot to the right of the sheriff’s office revealed two cruisers and a four by four bearing the department logo.

From the semi, bulky Maury Hathaway emerged, lugging his camera, Nancy Hughes and Billy Choi tagging after. Hathaway, like Nancy, wore only a T-shirt, this one with a Phish logo, and jeans—in his fifties, he remained a teenager. Choi, his hair “Werewolves of London” perfect despite the wind, wore a black leather jacket over a black tee and black slacks.

Laurene gathered the camera crew plus Carmen and Choi trailing behind them, and left them grouped on the sidewalk like a parade that got sidetracked as she went in through the double glass doors. The meeting had been set up by Harrow via phone—all Laurene knew was the sheriff’s name, Jason Fox.

A tall, broad-shouldered Native American in uniform with sheriff’s badge loomed over a long counter. His hard brown eyes under a helmet of raven-black hair looked past Laurene at the group gathered beyond the glass doors.

So much for the redneck musclehead she’d pictured. Maybe the sheriff who got thrown out of office had looked like that.

“Sheriff Fox? Laurene Chase with Crime Seen!”

“Been expecting you.” His eyes went past her again. “Didn’t expect that kind of entourage, though.”

“Not really an entourage, Sheriff—that’s actually a very pared-down TV crew, plus a forensics expert working with us. I’m a crime scene analyst myself—on leave from the Waco P.D.”

He clearly liked the sound of that, his thin mouth even turning up at the corners enough to qualify as a smile. “Okay. You can let ’em in.”

She did, and soon they’d all shaken hands and made introductions, after which Sheriff Fox said, “Shall we move into my office? It’ll be snug, but you should all make it.”

The pebble-glass door had to be left open so that Hathaway could shoot from there. Otherwise the modest office accommodated them, but just—nothing fancy, a metal desk, computer desk next to it, file cabinet in a corner. Walls were spotted with diplomas, commendations, and some colorful outdoor pictures of sheriff and deputies in wooded areas.

The sheriff sat himself behind his desk, signaling for Laurene and Carmen to take the two seats across. Choi leaned against the file cabinet while Nancy ran the boom from the close-quarters sidelines. A file folder sat before the sheriff on the neat desk like a meal he was contemplating.

Laurene asked the sheriff for permission to start rolling and got it.

She asked, “Sheriff Fox, what can you tell us?”

Fox flipped open the file folder. “Burl Hanson was county comptroller.”

Not law enforcement, she thought, but another public servant….

“He came home from work and found something terrible.”