Places the Dead Call Home — Paul L. Hall

Places the Dead Call Home begins on a summer night in 1958, as bullets tear through the body of a young man on a lonely Oklahoma highway. Nineteen years later, a soldier lies in the pool of his own blood on an army base in Virginia. Death has made room at home for both of them. Death can always find room for more. Josh Kincaid is happy with life in Phoenix where he manages a bar and sells a few drugs on the side. His serenity is soon shattered, however, by a call from his cousin, Frankie McKnight, who claims to know why Josh's father died many years earlier in the parking lot of a gas station in Oklahoma City. Soon, a reporter named Jeffrey Bonus and his traveling companion, Jeanette Koskos, arrive with questions for Josh about the death of Bonus's father, a highly decorated army colonel. All of these characters converge on Mesa Verde, where Josh and Frankie seek the answer to Jimmy Kincaid's destiny and Bonus hopes to learn the true fate of his father. But others are making plans of their own to ensure that the dead stay where they belong-the places they call home.