Ice and Stone

Sunday, January 6

2:27 a.m.

One of the windows above the bunk was propped open about five inches, but in a way that wouldn’t be visible from outside. Before I’d wrapped myself in the sleeping bag and blankets — so new they still had the store tags attached — I’d arranged my super-sensitive sound-activated tape recorder on the sill. In case anyone — or anything — came around, it would alert me and record their actions. The promise of snow was in the air, and sheets of ice groaned where they’d formed at the bend of the river. I’d drifted off to the sound of loose stones clattering in strong current.

Louder noises broke my sleep. I pushed up on one elbow, brushed my hair off my face. Heavy footsteps and men’s voices, two of them, coming down the hill. I checked my watch, then the recorder, to make sure it was working. Took my .38 Special from where I’d wedged it between the air mattress and its frame, lay back against the pillows, and waited.

The footsteps came around the cabin and stopped. One of the men gasped, and I could hear him breathing laboriously. The other said, “Christ, Gene, you’re gonna have a coronary if you don’t lose some of that flab.”

“Screw you.” Gene gasped again; it took him a moment to get the hacking under control.

“Well, listen to yourself,” the other said.

“Son of a bitch tells us to leave the ranch in weather like this, he’s trying to kill us. What’s with him, anyway?”

“Probably more of his fancy guests coming.”

“What’s that to do with us?”

“Don’t know. He pays good, though.”

“Not good enough for us to pay for a room in one of those fleabag motels.”

“It’s good money for these parts, though.”

“For these parts, but nowhere near city rates.”

“So take yourself off to a city, get a bigger-paying job, and then try to live on it at city prices.”

“I done all right in the cities back in the day. I bet if I went down to Sacramento, San Francisco—”

“You’d starve.”

“Look, I worked in L.A. once—”

“Yeah, once. When you was a lot younger. And thinner. A lot better lookin’ too.”

“Come on, Vic. You’re not in such great shape yourself. If you were, we might’ve gotten lucky today.”

“What does being in shape have to do with it? We never even seen so much as a goddamn deer.”

“All right, all right.”

“Man, I’m not looking forward to sleeping on the cold ground. Why don’t we break into the shack?”

I tensed, glanced at the shack’s door. Had I secured it properly? I cradled the .38 to my chest, waited.

“Nah, it’s too much trouble. Besides, it belongs to one of the tribes. We don’t want any hassle with their police — or the feds.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m so sick of Injuns. All the names they got for ’em too. ‘Native Americans.’ ‘Redskins.’ ‘Indians.’ What’s it matter?”

“Well, if you was one it might matter to you.”

“But I’m not. I’m a one hundred percent red-blooded American boy.”

“Red blooded?”

“Well, fuck you!”

Rustling noises, as if the men were laying out sleeping bags.

Long silence, then Gene’s voice asked, “You want some of this? It’s pretty good whiskey.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Kinda takes the sting outta the cold, don’t it?”

“Does. Look, Gene, I don’t know about you, but what I’m gonna do now is crawl into my sleeping bag. Come dawn we’re outta here, be at the ranch by eight.”

“Probably have to work the whole damn day.”

“So what? We get paid tomorrow.”

“Get paid, go buy us a couple more bottles, maybe play a little blackjack at the casino, then back to work again next day. What a life!”

“It ain’t so bad. Not lately, you got to admit that. Wouldn’t be better anywhere else, that’s for sure, even if you had someplace to go.”

“I got places I could go.”

“Sure you do. Just keep on telling yourself that.”

Silence, then, except for the sounds of the men settling into their sleeping bags. I curled up, breathing in small intakes and exhalations.

“Vic?”

“What now?”

“The old man — he’s crazy, ain’t he?”

“Hell, I don’t know.”

“He must be. I mean—”

“Shut up, Gene.”

“I mean—”

“Shut up!”

Gene snorted, shifted around, then fell silent.

A little time passed. Then Vic said in a plaintive tone, “Hey, I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Huh?”

“About you having no place to go. Even after that mess with the girl over in Reno, you could—”

“Leave it, man. She was nothing but a tramp, and she left town good and quick. Besides, I asked you never to talk about Reno. Stuff is what it is. Just let it be.”

Silence again.

Two minutes more, and then:

Gene: It’s goddamn cold here. Maybe we shoulda gone up to the other place. At least we could’ve slept inside there.

Vic: Too far away. And even colder and windier. You got any of that antifreeze left?

Gene: Got some, yeah.

Vic: You sharing?

Gene: Do I have a choice?

Drinking sounds, followed by a loud belch. After a few minutes, Gene said, “You asleep?”

“I will be, if you ever shut up.”

“But—”

“I said if you ever shut up!”

Silence, except for the drone of an airplane in the distance. Small jet, I thought, as I pulled my covers higher. I was still on edge but feeling reasonably safe, so I passed the time thinking about what little I’d learned from the men’s conversation. An old man on a nearby ranch had sent them away. Who was he? And what did the men do at the ranch? Couldn’t be anything important; they didn’t sound like the brightest bulbs in the box. Maybe they were security guards. Long ago I’d worked in the field; I knew what security guards sounded like, and these two fit my recollections. But why would someone need guards in this godforsaken outpost?

A hundred scenarios would dance in my dreams if I couldn’t tamp down my imagination, and I’d wake exhausted. I closed my eyes, tried to quiet my thoughts. It didn’t help much, and when I did drop off and dream, I saw shadowy extraterrestrials with tentacles and huge eyes on stalks creeping down the ridge toward the shack.

I swatted one on the nose, and they went away.

6:49 a.m.

Groans, grunts, and mumbles. The men were getting up.

Gene: Shit! My back hurts.

Vic: Keep thinking about the dough we’re gonna collect.

Gene: Yeah, I can use it for my spine surgery.

Vic: Why are you always so negative?

Gene: Just my nature, I guess.

Vic: Well, screw your nature. Let’s get outta here, get to the ranch. I’m hungry.

Gene: You’re always hungry.

Vic: You’re the one with the gut.

7:17 a.m.

After I was sure the men wouldn’t return, I got up, pulled on jeans, boots, and a wool shirt, and went outside. The snow that I’d expected had come at some point, but it must have been a brief flurry, leaving only a light dusting on the rocky ground. I could see vague outlines of where the men had been lying. I went over and studied the area.

An empty pint bottle of Four Star, a cheap blended whiskey. A pile of used tissues — I’d heard one of them hacking and wheezing as they got up. Cigarette butts — Marlboros. A Bic lighter. That was all. Nothing that might identify either of them.

Back inside the shack, I checked my image in the mirror from my purse. In this light my face had a grayish pallor and my eyes were dark circled. After years of wearing my black hair at shoulder length, I’d recently let it grow; without combing it, I caught it up in a rubber band and let it straggle down my back. As I looked at my reflection, a shiver touched my shoulder blades. Now I superficially resembled one of the murder victims, Samantha Runs Close, whose photo I’d studied over the past week.

I bundled up in a raggedy parka that I’d found among the things the Sisters had left for me and stepped outside again with the walking stick in hand. After replacing the lock and chain on the door, I headed north along the Little White River to the area where the bodies of the two victims had been found.

The morning was cold, the sky mostly clear now, but the chill air still held the scent of snow. The sun was barely cresting the eastern hills that separated Meruk from Modoc County, a strong pink glow.

The river wound through pines and aspens, many of them dead or dying from the West’s seven-year drought, which had partially broken last year. Unfortunately, the torrential rains that followed had produced catastrophic mudslides; I climbed over their leavings as I kept to my easterly path.

All the time I listened. To the forest sounds of unseen animals large and small rustling in the undergrowth, but mostly for the steps of the most dangerous animal of all — man. I’m always alert for danger in unfamiliar surroundings, especially on an investigation of the type that had brought me here.

I kept my free hand on the .38 inside the parka’s deep pocket. I have mixed feelings about firearms. From a professional’s standpoint, I’m damned happy to own one; I don’t carry often, but when I do, it’s for a good reason; a few times, doing so has saved my life — others’ lives too. Even though I’ve killed in self-defense with my gun, the memories of those times live on in my nightmares. I fully support more stringent regulations on the sale and licensing of firearms, and I despair that they’ve yet to be enacted.

Once I had a high school friend — a well-meaning but naïve naval officer — who, worried about his wife’s safety while he was on a long deployment, bought her a .22-caliber automatic at a pawnshop. He loaded it, put it in her bedside table drawer before shipping out to Alaska. Three months later she was dead, the victim of a burglar whom she’d confronted with the weapon; he’d easily taken it away and shot her because her husband hadn’t instructed her in the critical act of taking the safety off.

I wish we lived in a world where weapons of any kind weren’t easy to obtain or even necessary. But in this world, wishes don’t count.

The river meandered through the forest, in some places running fast, in others spreading out into still pools. Birds — from melodious songsters to harsh crows — provided a continual chorus. A long-tailed woodpecker went to work on a ponderosa pine, and a gimlet-eyed hawk swooped overhead, scanning the ground for prey.

At one point the river crested a rise, then cascaded into a small waterfall. I stopped and leaned on an outcropping, drinking from my water bottle and getting my bearings. I’d been headed due east, but ahead of me the river took a sharp bend to the north, and through the thick vegetation I could make out a jumble of dark stones. The remains of St. Germaine Riviere, the abandoned monastery where the bodies of the two murdered women had been found.

The monastery, Allie Foxx had told me, had been founded in 1910 by a little-known order of Catholic monks dedicated to educating the Natives of the area. They met with little success and considerable hostility, and when the structure burned to the ground in 1951, arson was suspected. The few remaining monks had fled, and the church had displayed little interest in the property, which now had been reclaimed by the forest, a monument to the failure of the faiths and races to coexist.

A wooden footbridge leading to the ruins had collapsed into the river, but heavy planks had been laid down beside it. Tattered, weathered yellow crime-scene tape fluttered in the light breeze, and on a wide section of open ground nearby I spotted ruts and gouges where a rescue helicopter had landed. Some of the blackened buildings had collapsed in huge scattered chunks, now covered by moss and birdlime.

I studied the ruins. A few walls still stood, others had been totally leveled. Decaying timbers stretching the walls’ entire length had caved into a stone foundation marking a large structure — perhaps a chapel. Heaps of slate from the roof littered the ground, and old, tough vines wound over them. Tall weeds swayed in a sudden breeze, and the heavy limbs of nearby oak trees moved, groaning and casting shadows across the whole area. Suddenly I felt as if I’d come upon a long-untended graveyard.

But there were no graves here — only the reminders of two violent deaths.

I tested the sturdiness of the planks over the river, then crossed them. Stopped and tried to match what I was seeing to the crime-scene photographs the Sisters had provided. Samantha Runs Close had been lying over a massive granite slab. The other victim, Dierdra Two Shoes, had been found farther in among the rubble. Both had been shot in the head. Neither had been sexually assaulted. The bodies had been discovered by a pair of bird hunters.

I prowled among the ruins, though I doubted I’d find any overlooked evidence of what had happened here. The murders — which occurred in early December — had been investigated by the county sheriff’s department and tribal police from the nearby Meruk reservation. But the sheriff’s department’s resistance to the Sisters’ and tribal cops’ request to see their files troubled me, as did the general assumption among the populace described to me by the Sisters — that the deaths had been isolated incidents, over and done with, never to be solved and therefore best forgotten.

No, dammit, you don’t ignore or forget such horrific crimes. They must be investigated, they must be brought to a conclusion.

It was only nine o’clock, but the sky was darkening. Gravid cumulus clouds moved slowly in over the hills to the east. More snow on the way, maybe heavier this time. Still I lingered, reluctant to leave.

Certain places, especially those where traumatic or violent events have occurred, have a distinctive feel. As the dark gathered, obscuring ordinary details, I was sensing that phenomenon here. Not through auditory hallucinations or Technicolor flashes, strong scents or unusual temperatures — those are special effects for Hollywood movies. Rather the place held a troubling aura: sorrow, regret, loss, a rending, as if some essential part had been irretrievably ripped from its whole.

I walked among the ruins for a long time.

10:30 a.m.

I was midway down the river trail when I found the silver pendant.

A glint of metal caught my eye, and I crossed the trail toward it. A tree had been uprooted, and in the disturbed ground lay a charm in the shape of a feather that had many more intricate feathers incised upon it. At its top was a ring through which a light blue silk thread was strung; the thread had been broken off about four inches above the ring.

A pendant, I thought. Fallen from someone’s neck, perhaps pulled off in a struggle.

I took out one of my plastic baggies and slipped the pendant into it, then put the bag in my jeans pocket. On the right of the path, between two jagged boulders, was an area where the damp earth looked trampled. I moved over for a close look at the rocks. On the leeward one, free of a dusting of snow, were crusty brownish smears that could be blood.

Samantha Runs Close and Dierdra Two Shoes had both been shot in the head and, according to the county medical examiner, died where they’d been found. I’d seen no signs of a struggle at either location, but there were definitely some here. A third murder in this area that the authorities had missed? It was entirely possible.

I took out my cell and snapped a few pictures of the disturbed earth and bloodstains. The light here was bad. I glanced up at the sky; the snow clouds had moved in closer, driven by high winds. I hurried down the trail, anxious to get back to the protection of the shack.

11:45 a.m.

I needn’t have hurried. By the time I reached the shack, the storm had bypassed the area, the winds whipping the snow-filled clouds to the southeast. I struggled with the difficult padlock. It stuck, started to give, stuck again, and finally yielded.

After chaining the door and turning on one of the lanterns, I sat on the bunk to examine the silver feather. It was an unusual charm, probably handcrafted, with the initials HH on its back. Made by a local artisan, who might recognize it and remember to whom he or she had sold it? Maybe someone in Aspendale? No reason I couldn’t go there this afternoon.

Of course, how to deal with showing the pendant was problematic. If it was evidence of a struggle, I didn’t want to make myself a target. Finally I decided I would wear it with the shabby clothing and parka that the Sisters had provided as camouflage, on the off chance somebody would recognize and comment on it. I’d have to be doubly on my guard; after all, I suspected it had last been worn by a victim of violence.

The path to Aspendale was easy to follow, compared to the trail along the river. It crossed Fisher’s Mill Road, where Allie had led me through the deadfall the other day, then wound downhill through forest. There were patches of ice on the ground, and a couple of times I didn’t notice them until I slipped and righted myself. Sunlight filtered through the branches, making the snow patches glitter; birds again took up their chorus, and I saw a buzzard sitting up high, spreading its huge wings to dry. I narrowly avoided plunging into slick runoff that coursed down a slope.

As I walked, I made a mental to-do list: wander about the village, allowing as many people as possible to see the pendant; stop in shops, making a few small purchases and trying to strike up conversations. Keep my ears open and senses attuned.

Undercover work like this was something I hadn’t done in a long time. In San Francisco I had a high profile that prevented it. I was used to making appointments with the principals in a case, walking in, and asking my questions. This process was more delicate and much more challenging.

The village appeared around a curve in the path: the main street was no more than three blocks long, with side streets bisecting it. Some of the buildings were false fronted, as in old Western movies; others were cement block; some were redwood plank and no sturdier looking than the shack. A few beater cars were parked in front of a bar called Billiards ’n Brews; a structure that looked like a former church advertised available office space; there was a Good Price Store, a Fine Food Mart, a Valero gas station, a lumberyard, a hardware store, and a hair salon called Gigi’s Curls. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

First the Good Price Store: overheated, with a smell of disinfectant. Short aisles crammed with all manner of merchandise: beach toys were shelved between lawn mowers and snow shovels; baby clothes hung limply next to plastic flowers; candy mingled with housewares. In a couple of long aisles the shelves were mostly empty. There was one register up front, unmanned. A bell above the door had tinkled as I entered, and I pretended interest in a display of greeting cards till someone appeared.

A thin, ponytailed young Native woman with a wide smile approached me. She said, “That’s a new line we just got in. Nice, I guess, if you’re sentimental.”

“I’m not.” I turned and touched the pendant so she had a full view of it.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “you’ve got one of Henry Howling Wolf’s pieces! That’s a particularly beautiful one.”

“I think so too.”

“Did he make it for you personally?”

“Ah, no. I ordered it by mail. I actually wanted to see him and thank him for sending it to me, but I’ve lost his contact information. Do you have it?”

“Sure.” She pulled out an old Rolodex from under the counter and wrote it down on a slip of paper. As she handed it to me, she asked, “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome. I’m Sasha Whitehorse, by the way.”

“I’m Sharon McNear. Glad to meet you.” The cover story had been suggested by the Sisters; the name was my choice — close enough to my own so I’d respond to it quickly.

“Thank you. Are you a tourist? We don’t get many this time of year.”

“No. Actually, I’m a journalist.” It was a cover story one of the Sisters had suggested to me.

“A journalist? Are you here to write about the murders?”

I feigned innocence. “What murders?”

“Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know. A couple of girls got killed here a while back.”

“Really? Did the police catch who did it?”

“Not yet.” Sasha fidgeted and changed the subject. “Where are you staying?”

“At a motel near Bluefork. The E-Z Rest.” Hal had asked the owner to vouch for me.

“It’s kind of a hot sheet.”

“I suspected as much. It’ll do for a while, though.”

“Will you be here long?”

“That depends on what there is to see and do. What I’ll be writing is a travel-oriented piece.”

She laughed. “Then you won’t be here long. Look where we’re at.” She swept her arm around — at the store, at the town, at everything, I supposed. “There’s nothing here, never has been. I stay because I’ve got no place else to go. You know how it is.”

No place to go. Like Gene, according to his friend Vic.

“I do, but tell me anyway.”

“Well, it’s a poor county. The minimum wage in this state is due to rise to fifteen bucks soon, but I make five, and I’m lucky to get it. The housing sucks — me and my boyfriend and another couple live in a drafty barn at Hogwash Farm and pay the old guy who owns it in chores. There’s nothing to do.”

“Are people afraid to go out because of the murders?”

A door closed at the rear of the shop. The woman cast a nervous look back there. “That’s the man who owns this place. Please go before he comes in!”

“Why? I don’t understand.”

“Please! He doesn’t like me talking too long with the customers!”

I went.

1:15 p.m.

Outside the store I tried to call Henry Howling Wolf, but there was no answer. Heeding hunger pangs, I stopped in at the Fine Food Mart for a sandwich, some chips, and a Coke. The middle-aged man at the register was closed faced and rung up my purchases silently. He glanced at the pendant but displayed no recognition.

I said, “How’s your day going?”

“Okay.”

“Think it’s going to snow again soon?”

“Nope.” He turned his back and studied the newspaper on the shelf behind him. The San Francisco Chronicle, probably two or three days old — proof that no matter how far you travel, you can’t escape the media in one form or another.

Back on the street, foot traffic had picked up. Women and men were shedding the heavy scarves that had been bundled around their necks and turning their faces up to the pale sun. A few smiled or nodded at me; most seemed indifferent. Ahead I spied a bulky man with his jacket flipped over his shoulder. He had dark hair going gray at the temples and walked with a pronounced waddle. A shorter, thinner, blond man carrying a paper bag joined him outside the Good Price Store.

“About time, Vic,” the other man said.

I quickly moved past them and halted in a narrow alley between buildings. Gene and Vic. Last night, they’d seemed like not-very-bright good ol’ boys, but in the light of day, their bloodshot eyes glittered and their mouths turned down as they pushed around other pedestrians, who drew back in response.

Not good ol’ boys at all.

The two of them climbed into a beat-up old pickup and drove off. I went back to the main street. The air was warmer now, and the ditches beside the badly paved road ran with melted snow. The Owl Cafe and Gigi’s Curls had CLOSED signs in their windows, and the gas station — an honor-system, pump-your-own type — was deserted too. Even the hardware store was closed. Didn’t people in this town ever work?

1:44 p.m.

I walked back through the village and turned off on a trail that a sign indicated led to Watson’s Pond, which Allie Foxx had mentioned as a quiet place that she enjoyed. The path was partly overgrown and little used, and it ended less than a mile later at a scum-covered body of water with a couple of old wooden benches on the grass nearby. Not the most scenic place to have my picnic and think, but so what? I took out my sandwich and settled down to consider the lives of the two victims.

Dierdra Two Shoes had been promiscuous, according to those who knew her — including her mother. Mrs. Lagomarsino had told Allie, displaying neither regret nor sadness, “That girl had every chance in the world. A couple of her men were very rich and powerful. They would have given her anything.” The mother had refused to name the men.

Samantha Runs Close had fit her name. An activist for Indigenous women’s rights, she’d clawed, scratched, and fought at demonstrations throughout the state. Before I’d come up here, I’d asked Hy, an avid supporter of environmental causes, if he’d heard of her. He’d said, “Every dedicated activist knew and respected Sam. She would demonstrate against anything, but finally focused on Native rights. I guess she fought for them until her dying day.”

3:01 p.m.

When I got back to town, I called Henry Howling Wolf’s number again. This time he answered, abruptly, on the first ring. He seemed disappointed when I identified myself, as if he’d been expecting to hear from someone else. I told him I had acquired one of his pendants and would like to talk to him about it. He brightened some, then invited me to come to his house.

The house was a white prefab on the outskirts of Aspendale, surrounded by a grove of small fir trees that had the super-green needles of new plantings. A homemade sign in the front yard read H. H. DESIGNS. Henry Howling Wolf was a short, slightly obese young man with black bowl-cut hair that covered his eyebrows. He stared at the pendant, seeming somewhat distracted, as he ushered me into his home.

The room was a long one, with a seating area near a woodstove and a work space at the rear. There were various tools hanging neatly from a pegboard, a long bench, a stool, and several machines whose purpose I couldn’t begin to imagine.

Henry asked, “You wouldn’t be a buyer, by any chance? My inventory’s sold out, but there’s always next year.”

“Sorry, no, I’m a journalist. I’d like to talk with you about your work — and your success.”

“Always glad to talk,” he said, although he didn’t sound glad at all. He motioned for me to sit down. “What can I tell you?” His gaze was jumpy, moving quickly to a telephone on a side table and then to me and the pendant again.

Before I told him how I’d gotten it, I decided to reduce his tension. Over the course of my career, I’d been subjected to many interviews of the “How did a girl like you end up in this business?” variety. They were as numbing as a heavy dose of Valium.

“Tell me how you got started,” I said.

He motioned at the shop area. “A few years ago, I was thinking of quitting this and going to school to learn refrigerator mechanics. I’d even enrolled at the technical college, but then my first big order came in. Ever since, I’ve been overwhelmed with work.”

“Who do you primarily sell to?”

“Souvenir companies. H. H. Designs makes pendants, key rings, pins, and any other number of whatchamacallits that are all available at airports, bus stops, and convenience stores nationwide.” His smile was self-deprecating, but beneath it I sensed a well-deserved pride.

“Good for you.”

“Well, some of the stuff is downright tacky — not the great Indigenous art I’d aimed for — but the people who buy them like them.”

The phone rang. Henry jumped up, but it immediately stopped.

I said, “Is there a problem, Mr. Howling Wolf? Anything I can help you with?”

“I don’t see how. It’s my girlfriend, Sally Bee. She’s missing. She’s been gone for almost forty-eight hours.”

“Gone. You mean she left you?”

“I don’t know what’s happened. Sally’s a photographer. She went out in the morning two days ago to get some shots of a place where she was having difficulty getting the right light. When she didn’t come back, I called around to our friends, thinking she might have stayed with one or another of them. She does that sometimes. But I’ve heard nothing.” His big hands dropped heavily to his sides.

“Do you think this pendant might be hers?”

He leaned forward, studying it. “I don’t know. It could be.”

“Could you tell by examining it?”

“No. I made only three with that design, all identical — one for a woman who died four years ago, the other for a friend who moved to Portland two years ago. It could belong to one of them. How did you get it?”

“I found it in the woods, on the trail to the old monastery.”

“That’s where Sally was going to get her photographs! You... you didn’t find anything else around there?”

“No, nothing. Just the pendant. Mr. Howling Wolf, I don’t mean to be unkind, but since you’re not sure it’s Sally’s, I’d like to keep it for the time being. When she comes back and if it is hers, of course I’ll return it. I’ll be here for several days.”

He didn’t put up an argument, merely drew a deep, steadying breath and then said, “Sally, she’s a talented woman. A photographer. She’s already published a couple of books on native California plants with a small press in Berkeley. She came here with the idea of doing a book on the Meruk. Her work complemented mine, and we used to talk about getting away someplace else where we could live quietly and practice our arts. But now she’s gone. Just... gone.”

“Did she take anything with her?”

“Only the camera she was using that day. She has several others, but they’re still here.”

“You didn’t hear or see her leave?”

“No. I was upset the night before and I’d taken a sleeping pill.”

“Upset?”

Again he hesitated, then, seemingly glad to have someone to tell his problem to, replied, “The county sheriff, Noah Arneson, had been coming around asking if we had business licenses, that kind of crap. But we knew what he was doing.”

“And what was that?”

“Arneson hates Natives. Especially successful ones. He’s been trying to make us leave the county, but we got our backs up and stayed. I wish to God we hadn’t.”

“You think the sheriff had something to do with Sally’s disappearance?”

“I don’t know. But it’s funny that he pestered us almost daily before she left and hasn’t bothered me since.”

It was interesting, I thought, that Henry hadn’t mentioned the murders. Maybe he didn’t want to believe that his Sally might be another victim.

I asked him for a photograph of Sally Bee, saying I might need it for the article I was writing, and — surprisingly — he didn’t have one. “A lot of photographers don’t like having their pictures taken, I guess,” he explained. We talked some more; he said they’d experienced no harassment except for Sheriff Arneson’s.

God, I wished the investigation weren’t leading toward corrupt law enforcement. Cases like that are hard to prove and incur the wrath of the public.

And they can turn ugly. Very ugly.

5:15 p.m.

There was nothing more to be done in town today, and darkness was setting in, so I made a hurried return to the warmth and relative comfort of the shack.

Seated on the air bed, I thought of home and Hy. My husband was probably working in his office at our house on Avila Street in San Francisco’s Marina district. McCone & Ripinsky, our joint firm, had recently experienced an overload in his bailiwick — international security and executive protection. No wonder, given how crazy the world felt these days. Almost everybody was afraid and feeling vulnerable, although many weren’t sure exactly what they feared.

I remembered accounts of the Cold War of the 1950s; at least then there’d been a recognizable adversary: the Russians, who had the bomb and were gaining the lead in the race to space. But now we were overwhelmed by threats from all sides: various violent factions in the Middle East; white power and other hate groups seemingly everywhere; crazies who wanted to use their bombs and guns against innocent schoolchildren; the Russians (again) interfering in our elections; unhinged people in our own government; mysterious viruses creeping around the world; even household products threatening to poison us all. Where and when would it all stop — if ever?

I smiled wryly. This was the kind of rant Hy would appreciate, but I hesitated to call him. It would only make me miss him more. Him and our cats, Alex and Jessie, who right now were probably making his life hell. They made their displeasure known when one or the other of us was away.

Well, enough woolgathering. I opened the iPad I’d brought with me — glad that I’d remembered my battery-powered charger — and pulled up the case file to add information on my day’s progress.

Not much so far, at least in respect to the murders.

But Henry Howling Wolf’s girlfriend, Sally Bee, had been missing for over forty-eight hours now. If the pendant was hers, how had she lost it? Was she another victim of the anonymous killer? Or was there some other reason for her disappearance? The couple had been harassed by the county sheriff, Noah Arneson, who, according to Henry, hated Natives — especially successful ones. Could Arneson have had anything to do with Sally Bee’s disappearance?

I ate a few bites of the salami and cheese the Sisters had provided, then tried to read an old paperback of War and Peace I’d brought along. But I couldn’t concentrate, and my eyelids grew heavy; it had been a long day. I crawled into my sleeping bag and was soon asleep.