“Circumstantial Evidence” came about from two personal experiences of mine. In 1992, I bicycled solo across the United States. On August 12, 1992, I happened to cycle through Vega, Texas on their “Round Up” day. Vega was a small town of maybe 1000 people. But they put on quite a show what with the softball tournament, invitation Rodeo, the parade down Main Street and a bar-b-cue out in front of the town’s courthouse. The other incident was a murder investigation I covered as a newspaper reporter for a small paper in Connecticut. It seemed like a good idea to combine the two stories. West Texas and the characters I met gave me the perfect stereotypes to play off of. And as far as the murderer goes, he made only one mistake by overlooking the obvious.
“Circumstantial Evidence” marks Eric B. Ruark’s third appearance in AHMM. Currently he is supposed to be retired but is working on a series of sci-fi/mystery novels called Conquest of the Stars. For your listening pleasure, he has recorded several of his other mysteries which can be found on Audible and over 50 other audiobook sites.
Trace Evidence 
I’m looking forward to reading this story….as soon as I get my Nov/Dec issue. But aside from that, it should be interesting to see how the story melds two entirely different worlds: that of small town Connecticut and that of West Texas.