In the foothills of the desert mountains west of Smoke Tree, someone has murdered Caleb and Eunice Clovis. They were impoverished squatters living a life of bare subsistence far off the beaten track in a miserable lean-to made of discarded lumber and cast off building materials. Who would want to kill them? And why? There seems to be no motive for the crime. Lieutenant Carlos Caballo, known throughout the Lower Colorado River Basin simply as "Horse," is charged with solving the crime. A crime that might not have been discovered for months except for a minor twist of fate. As the commander of...

In the middle of an important investigation, Smoke Tree Substation Commander Carlos Caballo, known up and down the Colorado River Valley as "Horse," is suddenly called away to find a man who has shot an inspector at the California Agricultural Inspection station in the tiny desert community of Vidal, California. A California Highway patrolman has found the car abandoned alongside Highway95. When Horse and and the patrolman force open the trunk, they discover a body: the man's wife. Horse realizes he and his deputies must find a killer who is on foot in the vast, unpopulated area where the...

For over twenty five years, The House of Three Murders has squatted, abandoned and decaying, deep inside a dense mesquite and tamarisk thicket in the middle of the vast Mojave Desert. The infamous house was the site of gruesome and bloody multiple murders. The murders have gradually passed into barely-remembered Mojave Desert legend, but the house remains, foreboding, forlorn and nearly forgotten. Then, on a moonlight November night in 1960, five people are there at the same time. Well, four technically, because one of them has just died from a gunshot wound Three of the five are teenagers...