Part 1

The heat in the Utah desert hits you different. It’s a dry, suffocating weight that presses down on your chest, making it hard to breathe even before you step out of the cruiser. I’ve been a cop for a long time, seen a lot of bad situations, but the silence out here in Lucin… it was deafening.

I was responding to a missing person call. Dylan, a 19-year-old kid with big dreams and calloused hands, had vanished. He was trying to turn 600 acres of harsh scrubland into a farm. An American dream, right? But when I rolled up to his property, the only thing growing was a knot of dread in my stomach.

The family was there, frantic, dust coating their faces. But before I could even get a full statement, a man walked up to my window. He looked rough, worn down by the desert sun, wearing a tattered shirt.

“He was in a hurry,” the man said, leaning in a little too close. “I guess it was raining, he wanted to get this undercover.”

This was Jim. A neighbor. A squatter, really. He lived in a trailer nearby. He acted friendly, maybe too friendly. He started rambling about Dylan, about how they were friends.

“You don’t get rid of friends,” Jim said, looking me right in the eye.

It sounded like a nice sentiment. But then, he dropped a sentence that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“I’ll let you get down there before they disturb the crime scene.”

Crime scene?

We hadn’t even confirmed a crime yet. We were looking for a missing kid who might have just gotten his truck stuck or walked to town. Why was Jim already talking about a crime scene? Why was his mind going straight to the worst-case scenario?

I watched him walk away, kicking up dust with his heavy boots. My gut tightened. In this line of work, you learn to listen to the things people don’t say. And Jim? He was saying way too much.

We found Dylan’s truck abandoned. The window was broken. His g*ns were missing. The silence of the desert seemed to be hiding a violent secret, and I had a sinking feeling that the man helpful enough to point out a “crime scene” knew exactly where the bodies were buried.

Part 2

The red dust of Lucin, Utah, doesn’t just sit on your skin; it works its way into your pores. It coats the back of your throat until all you can taste is copper and dry earth. By the time the sun began to dip on that second day, casting long, bruised purple shadows across the scrub brush, I felt like I had been swallowing that dust for a lifetime.

We were standing near Dylan’s red Ford truck. It sat there like a tombstone in the middle of the vast, empty acreage he had bought with such high hopes. It looked abandoned, not parked. There’s a difference, and in my line of work, you learn to spot it instantly. A parked car waits for its driver. An abandoned car looks like it’s holding its breath, knowing no one is coming back.

The window was broken. Shards of glass littered the seat and the floorboard, glinting like diamonds in the harsh light. But it was what was missing that turned the knot in my stomach into a cold, hard stone.

Dylan’s father, a man carved from the same rugged stock as this landscape, was pacing around the vehicle. He was trying to keep it together, trying to be the stoic American rancher, but I could see the cracks forming in his eyes. He pointed to the cab.

“His g*ns,” he said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and terrified realization. “The 40. The shotgun. They’re gone. Dylan wouldn’t leave them. Not out here.”

Out here, a g*n is a tool, like a wrench or a shovel. You don’t leave your tools behind unless you can’t carry them. Or unless someone took them from you.

I noted it in my book. Missing firearms. That escalated things. We weren’t just looking for a lost hiker anymore. We were looking for a crime scene. And standing just a few yards away, watching us with eyes that seemed to miss nothing, was Jim.

Jim Brenner. The neighbor. The “friend.” The man who had told me just hours ago, “You don’t get rid of friends.”

He was leaning against his own beat-up vehicle, arms crossed, chewing on something invisible. He didn’t look worried. He looked… engaged. Like he was watching a TV show and waiting to see if the actors would find the plot holes.

“Did you see anyone else out here, Jim?” I asked, walking over to him. I kept my posture relaxed, open. You catch more flies with honey, and you catch more liars by playing dumb.

Jim shrugged, a jerky motion. “Just the usual trash,” he muttered. “There’s a kid, Chase. Chase Venstra. He’s been running around town, acting like he owns the place. A real scumbag. Thief.”

This was the first time I heard the name Chase Venstra. It wouldn’t be the last. In every small town, and especially in these lawless stretches of the high desert, there’s always a designated “bad guy.” The one everyone blames when a bike goes missing or a window gets smashed. Jim was handing me Chase on a silver platter.

“Chase,” I repeated. “You think he has something to do with this?”

Jim spat on the ground. “I told Dylan to stay away from him. Chase has been shooting his mouth off in Montello. Talkin’ about money. Dylan… Dylan was a good kid, but he talked too much about how well he was doing. Out here, you don’t flash success. It makes people hungry.”

It was a plausible theory. A young kid, new to the area, flashing cash or bragging about his land, attracts a predator. A robbery gone wrong. It fit the missing g*ns. It fit the broken window.

But something about Jim’s delivery felt rehearsed. It was too helpful. Too detailed. He wasn’t just giving me a name; he was giving me a motive, a suspect, and a narrative.

“I’ll check it out,” I said.

“You do that,” Jim said. “Before he disappears too.”

We left the site to head into town, to the Montello Cowboy Bar. If you want to know the pulse of a desert town, you don’t go to the library or the church. You go to the bar. That’s where the secrets get spilled along with the cheap beer.

The bar was a dimly lit box that smelled of stale tobacco and yesterday’s regrets. When we walked in, the conversation didn’t stop, but the volume dropped. Eyes shifted. Badge and uniform do that to a room.

I approached the bar owner, a woman who looked like she’d seen everything the desert could throw at a person and survived it all.

“We’re looking for information on Dylan Rounds,” I said. “And a guy named Chase Venstra.”

Her expression tightened. “Chase,” she said, wiping down the counter with a rag that was arguably dirtier than the wood. “Yeah, we know him. Everyone knows him. He’s bad news.”

“How bad?”

“Violent bad,” she said, leaning in. “He held a guy at g*npoint not long ago. Smashed his face in with the butt of a pistol. Over nothing. Just mean. If Dylan ran into Chase… well, Dylan’s a sweet kid. He wouldn’t know how to handle a rattlesnake like that.”

She told me about an altercation. Apparently, Chase had confronted Dylan on the road a few days prior. Words were exchanged. Chase had been aggressive.

“Dylan’s neighbor, the squatter guy, Jim… he mentioned it too,” the owner added.

“Jim comes in here?” I asked.

“Sometimes. He’s… odd. But he hates Chase. Everyone hates Chase.”

It seemed the whole town was singing from the same hymn sheet. Chase Venstra was the villain. Dylan was the victim. And Jim? Jim was just the eccentric neighbor caught in the middle.

As we drove back toward the search site, my partner looked at me. “Looks like we need to find this Chase kid. He’s got a record, he’s violent, and he was the last one seen arguing with the victim.”

“Yeah,” I said, staring out at the endless sagebrush blurring past the window. “It looks that way. But does it feel that way to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too clean,” I said. “Everyone points to the obvious bad guy. But back at the farm… Jim called it a ‘crime scene’ before we even found the truck. Who does that?”

The next morning, the heat was even worse. We had called in Search and Rescue. Volunteers were arriving—good people, honest people who just wanted to help find a missing boy. They brought ATVs, horses, and dogs.

I met up with Dylan’s parents again. His mother looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Her eyes were red-rimmed, scanning the horizon as if she could will her son into existence just by looking hard enough.

“We tracked his phone,” she told me, her voice shaking. “The last ping… it was right here. Near the shed. Near where Jim stays.”

“We’re going to search every inch, ma’am,” I promised her. It’s a promise I’ve made a hundred times. It’s the hardest one to keep.

We started a grid search. It’s tedious, back-breaking work. You walk in a line, eyes on the ground, looking for anything that doesn’t belong. A gum wrapper. A footprint. A piece of fabric.

Jim was there again. He wasn’t searching in the line, though. He was hovering. Moving things around his trailer. Watching us. At one point, he walked over to where I was coordinating the volunteers.

“You guys are wasting your time over there,” he said, pointing toward the west. “He probably walked toward the highway. If Chase picked him up, they’d be long gone.”

“We have to be thorough, Jim,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he grunted. “Just… watch out for my stuff. I got valuable equipment around here.”

Valuable equipment. He was living in a trailer on someone else’s land, surrounded by piles of rusted scrap metal and trash. But he was worried about us touching his “stuff.”

An hour later, the radio on my shoulder crackled.

“Detective? You need to come see this.”

It was one of the deputies. He was standing about a hundred yards south of the grain shed, near a large pile of dirt and debris. When I got there, he pointed down.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

Boots. A pair of work boots.

They weren’t just lying out in the open. They were tucked behind the dirt pile, as if someone had tossed them there, trying to keep them out of direct sight but not burying them completely.

I put on a pair of latex gloves and crouched down. They were high-quality leather work boots, the kind a farmer wears every day. The kind Dylan wore.

But it wasn’t the brand that made me freeze. It was the dark, rusty stains on the leather.

Bl*od.

It was dried, caked into the seams.

“Secure the area!” I barked, standing up. “Nobody touches anything. This is officially a crime scene.”

I looked up toward the shed. Jim was standing there, watching. He wasn’t close enough to hear us, but he saw us. He saw us gathered around the dirt pile. He stood perfectly still, like a statue carved out of malice.

I walked over to him, my hand resting instinctively near my holster. Not because I was going to draw, but because the air suddenly felt charged with violence.

“Jim,” I said. “We found boots.”

He didn’t flinch. “Boots? Yeah? Dylan’s?”

“We think so. They have bl*od on them.”

Jim let out a low whistle. A fake, theatrical sound. “Well, that ain’t good. Maybe… maybe he got hurt. Maybe Chase hurt him and he ran.”

“Why are they behind the dirt pile, Jim?” I asked, locking eyes with him. “If he was running, why take off his boots and hide them?”

Jim’s eyes darted away for a fraction of a second, then back to me. “I don’t know. Panic? People do crazy things when they’re scared. Or maybe… maybe Chase threw ’em there.”

“Chase again,” I said. “Everything leads back to Chase with you.”

“He’s the criminal!” Jim snapped, his facade cracking just a little. “I’m just the guy trying to help! I gave the kid water. I let him use my tools. And now you’re looking at me like I did something? I’m telling you, go find Chase Venstra!”

We had to follow the lead. That’s the job. Even when your gut is screaming one thing, the evidence—or the lack of it—dictates the pace. We put out an APB for Chase Venstra.

We found out Chase had an active warrant for domestic v*olence. That gave us the legal leverage to pick him up. But finding a drifter in the desert is like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands.

While half the team hunted for Chase, I stayed at the farm. The boots were sent to the lab, but DNA takes time. Time we didn’t have.

I decided to pay a visit to another name that had popped up. Robert. Robert was an associate of Chase. If anyone knew where Chase was, it would be him.

Robert lived in a trailer behind his mother’s house. When we knocked on the main door, his mother answered. She was a small woman, nervous, wringing her hands in her apron.

“Is Robert home?” I asked.

“He… he’s sleeping,” she stammered. “He’s been sick. In bed all day.”

“Ma’am, we need to speak with him. It’s about a missing boy. Dylan Rounds.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “Robert’s a good boy. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“We just need to talk to him.”

She eventually let us go back to the trailer. We found Robert inside. He looked rough—strung out, maybe. When we told him why we were there, he didn’t fight. He looked resigned.

We brought him into the station. The interrogation room is a sterile, cold place, designed to make you feel small. Robert sat in the metal chair, rubbing his face.

“I didn’t hurt that kid,” Robert said. “I swear.”

“But you know who we’re talking about,” I said.

“Yeah. I gave Chase a ride out there. To the farm.”

“When?”

“The day the kid went missing. I dropped Chase off. He said he had some business.”

“What kind of business?”

“I don’t ask,” Robert said. “Chase is… intense. He wanted a ride, I gave him a ride. That’s it.”

“Did you see Dylan?”

“I saw a kid working. I didn’t talk to him. I just dropped Chase and left.”

“Did Chase have a g*n?”

Robert hesitated. “Chase always has a g*n.”

It felt like the puzzle pieces were snapping into place. Chase was at the scene. Chase had a gn. Chase had a history of volence. And now we had a witness placing him there on the exact day Dylan vanished.

But then Robert said something that made the record scratch.

“But you know,” Robert mumbled, looking at the table. “Chase told me something weird when I picked him up later.”

“What?”

“He said the neighbor guy… the old guy… was acting crazy. Said the old guy pulled a g*n on him.”

“Jim?” I asked.

“Yeah. Jim. Chase said Jim was paranoid. Said he was waving a pistol around, screaming about trespassers.”

I leaned back in my chair. So now we had a circle. Jim blaming Chase. Chase blaming Jim. And Dylan caught in the middle.

I went back to the farm the next day. The silence was heavier now. The hope that we would find Dylan alive was evaporating with the morning dew. Now, we were looking for a body.

I walked toward the grain shed. This was Jim’s domain. Or rather, he acted like it was. It technically belonged to the land Dylan had bought into, but Jim had filled it with his junk.

I stood inside the shed. It was cool in there, shadowed. There were tools scattered everywhere. Saws, hammers, wrenches. Any one of them could be a w*apon.

I looked at the floor. It was dirt and concrete. There were drag marks in the dust. Faint, but there. Like something heavy had been pulled across the floor.

I followed the marks with my eyes. They led toward the back door, toward where the tractor was parked.

“Detective.”

I spun around. Jim was standing in the doorway. He moved quietly for a big man. The light from outside turned him into a silhouette.

“You find anything?” he asked.

“Just looking, Jim. Just looking.”

“You’re spending a lot of time in here,” he said, stepping inside. The space suddenly felt very small. “I told you, Chase and Robert, they’re the ones you want. Why are you harassing me?”

“I’m not harassing you, Jim. I’m investigating. And you’re the only one who was here all day.”

Jim chuckled. It was a dry, rasping sound. “I was helping him. I let him put his truck here because of the rain. I’m the good guy, remember?”

“The boots, Jim,” I said, stepping closer to him. “How did Dylan’s boots get behind that dirt pile? Did Chase take them off him and run 100 yards to hide them? That doesn’t make sense.”

Jim’s jaw tightened. “Maybe the kid was on d*rugs. Maybe he went crazy. Running around barefoot. People do strange things out here.”

“Dylan wasn’t on d*rugs. We checked.”

“You think you know everything,” Jim sneered. “You city cops come out here, you think you understand the desert. You don’t know anything. Things disappear out here. People disappear.”

“Is that a threat, Jim?”

“It’s a fact,” he said. “Look, I got work to do. Unless you got a warrant to arrest me, get out of my shed.”

He was right. I didn’t have enough. Not yet. I had bloody boots, but no DNA confirmation yet. I had a missing kid, but no body. I had a suspicious neighbor, but no smoking g*n.

I walked out of the shed, my blood boiling. I knew. deep down in my gut, I knew. I was looking at the killer. He was standing right there, mocking me.

---

That night, I sat in my cruiser, looking at the map of the area. 600 acres. It’s an ocean of dirt. You could bury a thousand secrets out here and no one would ever find them.

We had helicopters flying grid patterns all day. They saw nothing. Just sagebrush and dirt.

I called Dylan’s dad.

“We’re doing everything we can,” I told him.

“Is he… do you think he’s still alive?” he asked. The pain in his voice was so raw it made my own throat ache.

I couldn’t lie to him. But I couldn’t destroy him either.

“We haven’t found him yet,” I said. “And as long as we haven’t found him, we keep looking.”

After I hung up, I got a call from the lab. A preliminary report.

“Detective, the boots.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s human bl*od. We’re running the profile now, but it’s type O. Same as the victim.”

“Okay,” I said, gripping the steering wheel. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. We found touch DNA on the inside of the boot cuff. And on the laces.”

“Whose?”

“We’re running it against the database. But… looking at the elimination samples you sent… it’s a strong potential match for James Brenner.”

I closed my eyes and let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for three days.

Jim’s DNA on the boots. The boots found 100 yards from his trailer. The boots stained with Dylan’s bl*od.

It wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t a body. But it was a rope. A rope I could use to tie Jim Brenner down.

But Jim was smart. Or at least, street-smart. He knew we were circling. And suddenly, the “helpful neighbor” act vanished.

The next day, we arrived to serve a search warrant on Jim’s trailer. We weren’t asking anymore.

But the trailer was empty. Jim was gone.

“He ran,” my partner said.

“He didn’t run far,” I said, looking at the horizon. “He’s a squatter. He has nowhere to go. He’s hiding in the cracks.”

We found him a few hours later, walking down a dirt road with another man—Donald Hatley, a friend of his. They looked like they were just out for a stroll, but Jim’s eyes were darting everywhere.

We pulled up. I got out, hand on my weapon.

“Jim Brenner!” I shouted. “Stop right there!”

He stopped. He looked at me with that same arrogant sneer.

“What now?” he asked. “You find Chase yet?”

“We found your DNA on the boots, Jim,” I said, walking up to him. “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”

He didn’t fight. He let me cuff him. But as I clicked the metal rings shut, he leaned back and whispered.

“You got boots. You ain’t got a body. You ain’t got a w*apon. You got nothing.”

“We have you on a firearms charge, Jim,” I said. “You’re a felon in possession. That’s enough to keep you in a cage while we find the rest.”

“Good luck,” he laughed. “It’s a big desert.”

We took him in. But his words haunted me. It’s a big desert.

He was right. We had the suspect. We had the boots. But where was Dylan?

The investigation stalled. Days turned into weeks. Jim sat in jail on the g*n charge, refusing to talk. He played games with us. He’d hint that he knew something, then clam up. He’d blame Chase, then blame Robert, then blame Mexican cartels. He was enjoying it. He was the puppet master, and we were dancing on his strings.

The family was agonizing. Every day without a body is a day without closure. A day where hope fights a losing battle against grief.

Then, we got a call from Donald Hatley—the friend Jim was with when we arrested him. Donald sounded scared.

“I have something,” Donald said. “Jim… he gave me something to hide. Before you guys got him.”

“What is it, Donald?”

“G*ns,” he said. “He brought over some black powder rifles. And… and he was acting weird. Scared. He said he needed to get rid of them.”

“Did he say why?”

“No. But… the timing. It was right after Dylan went missing.”

We went to Donald’s house. We recovered the weapons. It was another nail in the coffin, proving Jim was hiding evidence. But it still wasn’t the smoking gn. It wasn’t the wapon that k*lled Dylan.

And it wasn’t Dylan.

Summer turned to fall. The heat broke, but the cold wind of the high desert was just as cruel. We had searched the ponds. We had searched the mines. We had searched the caves. Nothing.

I sat in my office, looking at the wall of photos. Dylan’s smiling face. The boots. The shed. Jim’s mugshot.

Jim looked smug in the photo. He knew where Dylan was. He was the only person on earth who knew. And he was taking that secret to the grave.

But criminals make mistakes. They get bored. They get lonely. And eventually, they talk.

I didn’t know it then, but the break wouldn’t come from a search party or a helicopter. It would come from the most dangerous place of all—inside the jailhouse walls. Jim Brenner was about to make a new friend. And this friend was going to listen very, very closely.

The desert keeps its secrets, but not forever. The silence was about to break.

Part 3

Time is the enemy of truth. In a homicide investigation—or a missing person case that smells like homicide—the first forty-eight hours are everything. After that, the trail goes cold. Memories fade, footprints blow away in the wind, and people convince themselves of lies until they become their new reality.

In the Dylan Rounds case, forty-eight hours had turned into forty-eight weeks. Over a year.

The seasons in Lucin had cycled through their brutal rotation. The blistering heat of summer gave way to the biting, bone-chilling winds of winter, and then back to the mud of spring. Through it all, Jim Brenner sat in a cell in the Box Elder County Jail. He was locked up on the federal firearms charge—being a felon in possession of a weapon—but not for murder. Not for Dylan.

Every day that passed was a victory for Jim and a knife in the heart of Dylan’s family. We knew he did it. The family knew he did it. Even the town of Lucin, with its population of misfits and hermits, knew he did it. But knowing isn’t proving. In the American justice system, you need more than a gut feeling. You need a body, a weapon, or a confession. We had none.

The investigation had become a ghost hunt. We had run down every lead on Chase Venstra—dead ends. We had interrogated Robert Ales until he was blue in the face—he was just a pawn, a driver who got caught in the orbit of a dangerous man. We had analyzed the boots until there was nothing left to test. Yes, it was Dylan’s bl*od. Yes, it was Jim’s DNA. But a defense attorney would tear that apart in court: “My client found the boots, panicked because of his past record, and moved them. That’s obstruction, maybe, but not murder.”

We needed a break. And breaks usually come from the places where hope goes to die.

It was December 2023. The snow was piling up outside the station when the phone rang. It was a corrections officer from the jail.

“Detective,” the CO said, his voice low. “You need to come down here. Brenner has a cellmate. And the cellmate wants to talk.”

Jailhouse informants are a tricky currency. They’re usually lying, trying to trade a made-up story for a reduced sentence or a better bunk. You listen to them with one ear open and a healthy dose of skepticism. But we were desperate.

I drove to the jail through a blinding snowstorm. The facility was a gray concrete block that smelled of floor wax and unwashed bodies. I was led into a small interview room. A few minutes later, a man in an orange jumpsuit was brought in. He looked nervous, his eyes darting to the door as if he expected Jim Brenner to walk through it and strangle him.

“You said you have information about the Rounds kid,” I said, skipping the pleasantries.

“I do,” the cellmate said. He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Jim… he talks. He thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. He thinks you guys are idiots.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

“He told me how he did it,” the inmate said. “Everything.”

I clicked my pen and opened my notebook. “Start from the beginning.”

The story that poured out of the inmate’s mouth was chilling in its banality. It wasn’t a grand conspiracy. It wasn’t a cartel hit or a robbery gone wrong. It was an annoyance. A petty, stupid grievance that turned fatal.

“He said it was early morning,” the inmate recounted. “Jim was in the grain shed. He considers that shed his shed, you know? Even though it ain’t his land. He was in there, and he heard a diesel truck.”

“Dylan’s truck,” I said.

“Yeah. Dylan pulled up. He didn’t back it in; he just parked it out front. Jim walked out. He said he had his .45 on him. He always carries it in a shoulder holster.”

The inmate paused, swallowing hard. “He said Dylan had moved some of his stuff. Moved his saw horses or something to park the truck. Jim lost it. He started screaming at the kid. Told him to get his stuff out of there.”

This tracked. Jim was territorial, paranoid. We knew that.

“Then what?”

“He said Dylan stood up to him. The kid wasn’t scared. And that made Jim madder. He said… he said Dylan reached for the g*n.”

“Dylan reached for Jim’s g*n?” I asked, skeptical. That sounded like a self-defense narrative Jim was spinning to make himself look better, even in his own story.

“That’s what Jim says. He says they wrestled for it. The g*n went off next to Jim’s ear—blew out his eardrum on the right side. That’s why he’s hard of hearing.”

I made a note. Check medical records for hearing loss/ear injury.

“Then,” the inmate continued, “he said Dylan bit him. Hard. On the thumb. The right thumb.”

I stopped writing. I looked up. “A bite mark?”

“Yeah. Jim showed it to me. He’s got a scar on his thumb. Said the kid latched on and wouldn’t let go.”

This was the detail. The “hold back” evidence. We hadn’t released anything about a struggle because we didn’t know there was one. But a bite mark? That’s specific. That’s intimate violence.

“So they fight,” I said. “Then what?”

“Jim said he got loose. He ran back to his trailer. But he didn’t run to hide. He ran to get his other g*n. The .22 rifle.”

My blood ran cold. He disengaged, retreated, retrieved a w*apon, and returned. That’s not self-defense. That’s premeditation. That’s hunting.

“He went back to the shed,” the inmate said, his voice trembling. “He said Dylan was still there, maybe injured from the first struggle, I don’t know. But Jim… he didn’t hesitate. He said he shot him. Three times.”

“Where?”

“Head shots,” the inmate whispered. “Execution style.”

The room felt devoid of air. I could picture it. The dust of the shed. The young man, cornered. The old man, consumed by a senseless rage.

“After that,” the inmate said, “he had to clean it up. He dragged the body. He used a backhoe. He buried him deep, somewhere out in the ‘high desert.’ He said you guys drove right over it.”

“And the phone?” I asked. “Dylan’s phone. We tracked it to the area, but it vanished.”

“The pond,” the inmate said. “Jim threw it in the pond. But here’s the kicker… Jim didn’t know the phone was recording.”

I froze. “What?”

“Jim said he watched a video later on the news or something, realized the kid was always filming stuff. He got paranoid that maybe the phone caught something. But he threw it in the Lucin pond.”

I left the jail with my heart hammering in my chest. This was it. The bite mark. The ear injury. The specific mention of the pond. It was too detailed to be a lie.

We moved fast. We got a warrant for a fresh medical exam of Jim Brenner. Sure enough, there was scarring on his thumb consistent with a human bite. And his right ear showed signs of trauma.

But the pond… that was the gamble.

The Lucin pond isn’t a swimming pool. It’s a murky, stagnant body of water, filled with silt and runoff. Searching it is a nightmare. But we sent the dive team in.

It was a miserable operation. The water was freezing. The visibility was zero. Divers were crawling along the bottom, feeling through the muck with their hands. Hours turned into days. We were losing hope again.

Then, a diver surfaced, breaking the black water. He held his hand up. In his gloved fist, dripping with slime and algae, was a smartphone.

It was a miracle the device was intact. We rushed it to the digital forensics lab. The tech guys worked around the clock, drying it out, bypassing the corrosion, praying the memory chip hadn’t rotted away.

Two days later, I was called into the lab. The technician didn’t say a word. He just pointed to a screen.

It was a video file. Time-stamped the day Dylan disappeared.

The video started innocently enough. Dylan was filming something on the farm, maybe the weather, maybe his truck. Then, the camera angle shifted. The phone was set down, or dropped. It was recording the sky, the edge of the shed.

But the audio… the audio was clear.

You could hear the argument. You could hear the roar of the diesel engine. You could hear Jim’s voice, raspy and hateful.

“Get that truck out of here!”

And then, the struggle. The sound of a scuffle in the dirt. A muffled pop.

But the video didn’t end there. There was another file, recorded slightly later. This one was the smoking g*n.

It was a time-lapse video. Dylan’s phone must have been recording in the background, unnoticed by Jim. The frame showed the inside of the shed.

And there he was.

Jim Brenner.

He was walking through the frame. He was wearing a shirt we had seen before, but now, it was different. There were dark, wet splotches on the chest and sleeve. Bl*od.

In his hands, he held a rifle. He was wiping it down with a rag, frantic, jerky movements. He looked like a demon, his face twisted in a snarl of exertion and panic.

He was cleaning the murder wapon while the body of the boy he just klled lay somewhere out of frame.

I watched the video three times. I felt a mixture of profound sadness and savage triumph.

“We got him,” I whispered. “We finally got him.”

But knowing how he did it and knowing where Dylan was were two different things. We had the evidence to convict him of murder now. The video, the boots, the confession, the bite mark. We could put him away for the rest of his miserable life.

But that wouldn’t bring Dylan home.

I drove out to the Rounds family home. Dylan’s mother was sitting on the porch, staring at the empty road. She looked older than she had a year ago. Grief ages you faster than time ever could.

“We found the phone,” I told her. “We have proof. We know Jim did it.”

She didn’t smile. She didn’t cheer. She just looked at me with those haunted eyes.

“Where is he?” she asked. “Where is my son?”

“We still don’t know,” I admitted, the shame burning my throat. “Jim hid him well.”

She looked away, fighting back tears. “I don’t care about the trial, Detective. I don’t care if Jim Brenner rots in a cell or dies in a ditch. I just want my boy back. I want to bury him. I want him home.”

That was the choice we faced. The Climax of this story wasn’t a shootout. It wasn’t a high-speed chase. It was a moral transaction.

We had to make a deal with the devil.

I went back to the prosecutor. We laid it all out. We had a slam-dunk murder case. We could go to trial, get a conviction for Aggravated Murder, and lock Jim away forever. But if we did that, Jim would never talk. He would take the location of the body to his grave just to spite us. Just to have one last bit of power over the family.

“The family wants the body,” I told the prosecutor. “They don’t care about the sentence as much as they care about the recovery.”

The prosecutor rubbed his temples. “If we offer a deal, the public will scream. They’ll say we let a killer off easy.”

“Let them scream,” I said. “They aren’t the ones waking up every morning wondering where their son is.”

We drafted the offer. It was bitter medicine. We would take the Death Penalty off the table. We would reduce the charge from First Degree Aggravated Murder to Second Degree Murder. In exchange, Jim had to lead us to the body. He had to give us Dylan.

We brought Jim into the interrogation room. He looked thinner, paler. The jail air had sapped some of his arrogance, but the meanness was still there in his eyes.

We played the video. We showed him the stills of him cleaning the g*n. We read the statement from his cellmate about the bite mark.

Jim watched it all without flinching. He knew he was caught. He was a survivor, a rat who knew when the ship was sinking.

“You’re going to die in prison, Jim,” I said. “That’s a given. The only question is, do you want to die with a needle in your arm, or do you want a chance to see the sun through a window one day? Do you want to do one decent thing in your pathetic life?”

Jim stayed silent for a long time. He looked at the photos of the shed. He looked at the photo of Dylan.

“I want the desecration charges dropped,” he croaked. “And the assault charges.”

He was bargaining. Bargaining over the body of a boy he murdered. It took everything I had not to reach across the table and shake him.

“If you take us to him,” I said, my voice like gravel. “If you take us to him right now.”

Jim leaned back, a small, twisted smile playing on his lips.

“Get the truck,” he said. “I’ll show you where the bones are.”

Part 4

The drive into the desert felt like a funeral procession. It was the spring of 2024. The snow had melted, leaving the ground soft and treacherous. The sky was a brilliant, indifferent blue, stretching over the vast emptiness of the Utah-Nevada border.

I was in the lead vehicle. Jim Brenner was in the back seat, shackled hand and foot, wearing a bulletproof vest. Not to protect him from us, but because if the townspeople knew he was out here, I couldn’t guarantee his safety. He stared out the window, his expression unreadable. He wasn’t remorseful. He was just calculating, ensuring his end of the deal was met so he could save his own skin.

“Turn left here,” he grunted, pointing a manacled finger toward a faint two-track trail that disappeared into the sagebrush.

I gripped the steering wheel. We had driven past this turnoff a dozen times during the initial search. We had flown helicopters over it. We had ridden ATVs across it. It looked like nothing. Just more dirt. More scrub.

“You sure, Jim?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” he muttered. “I dug the hole myself.”

The callousness of it stung. He spoke about burying a human being—a nineteen-year-old boy—the way a farmer talks about burying a dead calf. It was a chore to him. An inconvenience.

We drove for another five miles, the suspension of the SUV groaning over the ruts. The landscape became more rugged, more desolate. This was the “high desert” the cellmate had mentioned. A place where the wind howls and nothing survives unless it fights for it.

“Stop,” Jim said.

I slammed on the brakes. We were in a small depression, surrounded by low hills. It was invisible from the main road. Perfectly hidden.

“Over there,” Jim said, nodding toward a patch of disturbed earth near a cluster of greasewood. “By that dip.”

I got out of the car. The wind whipped at my uniform. The forensics team pulled up behind us, their white tyvek suits stark against the red dirt. I looked at the spot Jim indicated.

It didn’t look like a grave. Nature had already begun to reclaim it. Weeds had sprouted. Rain had settled the soil. If you didn’t know where to look, you would walk right over it. And we probably had.

“Start digging,” I ordered.

This is the part of the job they don’t show you on TV. The excavation isn’t fast. It’s slow, respectful, agonizing work. They used small trowels and brushes, peeling back the layers of earth inch by inch.

I stood back, watching. Dylan’s father arrived a w hour later. We had told him to stay back, that he shouldn’t see this, but he wouldn’t listen. He stood by his truck, a hundred yards away, watching the men in white suits work on the patch of dirt. He stood like a sentinel, guarding his son one last time.

Hours passed. The sun began to dip. Then, the lead forensic anthropologist stopped. She signaled to the team. They slowed down.

She looked up at me and nodded.

I walked over to the edge of the pit.

There, amidst the red clay, was the white of bone.

It wasn’t a whole body. The desert is cruel, and scavengers are relentless. But it was him. Remnants of clothing—a piece of a flannel shirt, a boot lace—confirmed it.

I felt a heavy weight settle in my chest. It wasn’t relief. Relief is light. This was leaden. It was the crushing reality of finality. Dylan wasn’t missing anymore. He was dead. The tiny, irrational flicker of hope that his mother had kept alive for two years was finally extinguished.

I walked over to Dylan’s father. He looked at my face, and he knew.

He crumbled. This strong, stoic man, who could wrestle cattle and fix engines and survive the harshest winters, fell to his knees in the dirt and wept. It was a sound I will never forget. A primal, guttural cry of a father who has lost his future.

I put a hand on his shoulder, but I didn’t say anything. There are no words for that kind of pain. “I’m sorry” is an insult. “He’s at peace” is a lie. The only truth was the dirt and the bones and the sobbing man.

The sentencing hearing was held in July. The courtroom was packed. The air conditioner hummed, struggling against the heat of the bodies pressed together.

Jim Brenner sat at the defense table. He looked small. Without his g*ns, without his shed, without the vast emptiness of the desert to hide in, he was just a pathetic, aging criminal.

He had pleaded guilty. Second-degree murder. Two counts of felony discharge of a firearm. The deal was done. He had given us the body, and in exchange, he would likely die in prison, but he avoided the death penalty.

Dylan’s mother took the stand to give her victim impact statement. She stood tall, trembling but unbroken. She held a picture of Dylan—smiling, wearing a cowboy hat, standing next to his grain truck.

“You stole my son,” she said, looking directly at Jim. “You stole his future. You stole his dreams. He wanted to build something. He wanted to grow something. And you… you just wanted to destroy.”

Jim stared at the table. He didn’t look at her. Cowardice, right to the end.

“You thought you could bury him and we would forget,” she continued, her voice gaining strength. “You thought he was just some kid alone in the desert. But you were wrong. Dylan was a soldier. He was a soldier for his dream. And we are his army. We never stopped looking. We never stopped fighting. You lost, Jim. You lost everything.”

The judge asked Jim if he had anything to say.

Jim stood up. He mumbled something about things “getting out of hand.” He didn’t apologize. He didn’t ask for forgiveness. He just sat back down.

The gavel came down like a hammer.

“One to fifteen years for the murder,” the judge announced. “Consecutive sentences for the firearms charges.”

It sounds like a strange number—one to fifteen. In Utah, the parole board decides the actual length. But with the consecutive charges, and Jim’s age, and the violent nature of the crime, we knew. He wasn’t getting out. He would die in a concrete box, far away from the open skies he claimed to love.

Epilogue: The Silence After the Storm

I drove out to Lucin one last time a few weeks after the sentencing. The grain shed was still there, but it looked different now. The wind had already started to tear the roof off. Without Dylan, without Jim, the desert was reclaiming the structures.

I walked to the spot where Dylan had parked his truck that morning. The ground was just dirt. No blood. No sign of the struggle. The earth swallows everything eventually.

I thought about the title of this story. The story of the soldiers.

Dylan wasn’t a soldier in the military sense. He didn’t wear a uniform. He didn’t carry a rifle into war. But out here, in the American West, he was a soldier of a different kind. He was fighting the elements. He was fighting the odds. He was fighting for independence, for the right to build a life with his own two hands.

And Jim? Jim was the enemy that soldiers fear most. Not the one across the battlefield, but the one inside the wire. The traitor. The “friend” who smiles while he loads his w*apon.

I looked at the pond where the phone had been found. The water was still and dark. It had held the truth for so long, waiting for us to be smart enough, or lucky enough, to find it.

We got justice, I suppose. The bad guy is in jail. The victim is buried with his family. The case is closed.

But as I got back into my cruiser and turned the key, I couldn’t shake the sadness. Justice puts a name on the tragedy, but it doesn’t fix it. It doesn’t bring back the 19-year-old kid with the big dreams.

I drove away, watching the farm disappear in the rearview mirror until it was just a speck in the vast, indifferent landscape. The desert doesn’t care about justice. It just endures. And so must we.

“Dispatch, this is Unit 4,” I said into the radio, my voice cracking slightly. “I’m clear of the scene. Show me back in service.”

“Copy, Unit 4. Welcome back.”

But you never really come back. You leave a piece of yourself out there in the dirt, buried alongside the boys who never made it home. That’s the cost of the badge. That’s the story of the soldiers who fight the wars no one else sees.