Photographing the Dead (Nameless: Season One, #2)

by Dean Koontz

Sitting at a table by the window, after charging the smartphone, he employs one of its functions programmed especially for this mission. A map of Death Valley appears on the screen. He scrolls to the middle third of the display and finds the red indicator that is the GPS signal from Palmer Oxenwald’s Mercedes SUV. The vehicle is still at Aguereberry Point, no doubt because the photographer needs time to fold his tent and pack his gear away. Soon Oxenwald is on the move. North on the unpaved road to State Route 190 and Stovepipe Wells, a tiny tourist-supported resort village. He drives through Stovepipe and takes another unpaved road almost two and a half miles before he stops. He is parked near Mosaic Canyon, which offers intrepid hikers many dramatic, winding corridors that, over tens of thousands of years, rushing water carved through breccia and white marble. The water is long gone, and this is another isolated, lonely location where naive people, who feel safe in the arms of Mother Nature, can be surprised by a sociopath spawned by decadent civilization but entirely at home in the barrens and the wilds.