Ashes to Dust (Las Vegas Mystery)

body being burned. They must have forgotten to cover something up. Kind of stupid, after the cops already left and finished investigating. But since you’re still interested—I thought it might be useful to you.”
    “It is,” Snow said. “Would you recognize the women if you saw them again?”
    “No. They were too far away. All I could see was that they were short. Both the same size and figure. One looked older than the other.”
    “What about the car? Did you notice a make and model or license plate number?”
    “No. It was small and white. Fairly new. That’s all I could see from that far away.”
    “Okay,” Snow said. “Is there anything else you can tell us before we go?”
    “Yeah,” the old man said. He looked up at the sky with his mouth hanging open. “I’d advise you to stay out of the sun.” He turned his head back to Snow. “It can get pretty hot out here.”
    “Thanks,” Snow said. “That’s good advice.”
    “Have a pleasant morning, the both of you,” he said. He scratched his back one more time and resumed pushing his grocery cart, the basket rattling as the wheels rumbled along over the rough asphalt.
    Alice and Snow stood next to the car staring after him.
    “He seems content,” Alice observed.
    “Yeah,” Snow said. “Considering his situation—I wonder why.”
    “For one thing,” Alice said, “he’s completely free. For another, I imagine he has drastically lowered his level of expectation.”
    “Jesus,” Snow muttered. “And here I thought mine had hit rock bottom.”
    “Those two women he saw fit the description of Kathy and Crystal Olson,” Alice said. “Don’t you think?”
    “It sounds like it could be them.”
    “What about the car? Did you notice what type of car Crystal was driving?”
    “A white Honda Accord,” Snow said. “I even wrote it down. But that doesn’t really mean much; there must be a hundred thousand little white cars registered in Clark County.”
    “True,” Alice said. “But it looks like we’re onto something with meat in it this time. I think I’ll print out some photos of Crystal from her Facebook page. If we can find a pair of men’s boots at a department store near Crystal’s residence with soles that match the prints in the photos from the crime lab, we can ask the manager to check the footage from their security cameras. If we can place her at a store buying those boots a couple of hours before the fire—that’s all we need.”

The closest department store to Crystal’s residence was a Walmart located near West Charleston Boulevard. Alice and Snow stood in front of the racks containing the size twelve men’s shoes, studying the soles of the various styles.
    “It definitely wasn’t a hiking shoe,” Snow said. “The lugs on those are too pronounced. Tennis shoes have the wrong pattern.”
    Alice reached down and picked up a pair of brown high-top work boots. They resembled a hiking boot, but with a moderate tread on the outsole. She turned them over and examined the soles.
    “What do you think of these?” she said.
    Snow held out one of the photos of a shoe print taken at the crime scene. They looked at the photo, the boots, and back to the photo.
    “It looks like we’ve got a match here,” Snow said.
    “Definitely a match,” Alice agreed. “You got your tape measure?”
    Snow set the stack of photo printouts on top of a pair of oxfords and dug into his pocket, pulling out a pocket-size eight-foot tape measure. While Alice held the boots, Snow measured one of the soles in both directions.
    “Thirteen by five,” he said, “give or take a sixteenth.”
    “Bingo,” Alice said. “Thirteen by five. That’s the measurements Mary gave me for the prints.”
    “And the width is measured across the toe, right?” Snow said.
    “Of course,” she said. “That’s the widest part. She said the heel was four and a half.”
    Snow measured the heel. “Four and a half,” he said. “Alright. Let’s get ’em.”
    “Fantastic,” Alice said.
    They turned to leave and noticed a stocky Hispanic man staring at them with his mouth open.
    “How’s it going?” Snow said.
    “Pretty good,” the man replied.
    As they walked away on their way to a checkout counter, Snow glanced over his shoulder at the man. He had picked out of pair of the same boots from the size eleven rack. He was turning them over in his hands like a kid with a newly opened present at Christmas.
    After purchasing the boots, Alice and