AN EXCERPT

I shuddered in the hot August sun. There was something sinister in the drab simplicity of the small structure across the street. Maybe it was because I knew the police were interested in it. But there seemed to be something else.      Alex, my wife and partner, gazed with her hand over her eyes in the same direction. "So this must be it."      "Yep, that's the one," Detective Jesus Garcia replied.      "The Glorified Church of Jesus Christ with Signs Following" was spelled out in red plastic letters pressed on a white plastic background, with "Rev. R. J. Hurley" underneath. The sign hung above the front doors of a rectangular clapboard building with a peaked roof and battered composite shingles. White paint peeled from its walls and trim, revealing bare wood underneath. An air conditioner drooped out of a side window, and a too-small steeple perched tentatively on the front edge of the roof. The weeds in the front yard were dead. It was like a little piece of Appalachia had been transported to southern California.      "Now, what exactly happened to this woman?" I asked.      Detective Jewel Taylor put her hands on her hips and squinted toward the church. "She was stung by scorpions several times on the bottoms of her feet and died in the hospital before they could treat her with antivenin. Name of Corrine Teague. Happened last Sunday night. She was all of seventeen." She sighed and looked down, kicking at the street.

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