TCK

That evening the Zinter  house on  U Street  was turned  into a ransacked mess. A hooded invader held  Gabriel at  knife point while two others searched through it, but they didn't find what they were looking for. Gabriel was grateful his wife  had seen this all coming and made  herself scarce. She had already laid out the broad  outline  of how  it would  go. "This attack is important to Michael's  plans," Robyn had told  him. "You should just let things happen."

After Gabriel's attackers had searched the house  che was taken into Robyn's backyard and hung by small ropes wrapped around hez arms from a basketball hoop. Despite hez great height, Gabriel's feet, tied together around the ankles, dangled a few inches over the concrete of the patio.

"Cut his shirt off so he's not wasting my time."

Gabriel recognized the  voice as  belonging to  that of  Johnny Sunkel. When hez shirt fell away in strips  another voice said, "Look at that, he's got little titties!" Gabriel knew that voice too. It was Larry Porter.

"Where's the Golden Gift you fucking fairy?"

"It's in the Temple, Johnny."

"You don't know our names!" There was a whistle and  a crack. Gabriel grunted. It took about a second to fully disconnect from the sudden slash of astonishing pain.

"That's the stupidest  thing  I ever  heard,"  said Larry. "Of course it's in the Temple. But  we just came from  there and we turned that place upside down too. So where in the Temple is it, exactly?"

"I don't know, Larry. When  I need it  for the Last  Rites, Kim just gives it to me."

"You ain't staying hitched to  that Zinter gal,"  another voice growled, and Gabriel identified him as Scott Hilling

"After I pass  out, Scotty,  make sure  you fellows  keep going until I bleed  out. Then hide my body, because  I'm in this sort of club, see.  Red Wingers. We look out for  each other. If they find out you did this to me  they'll pick over your feet for two or three  days with  a sledgehammer,  blowtorch and  knives like they were leftover turkey."

"This is gonna pinch some."

Johnny hurled his whip at Gabriel's back again, two more times, whistle and snap. The boys kept waiting for Gabriel to scream, but instead they started to see a white layer of fat underneath the bloody split skin on hez back. Scott and Larry turned away and started puking.

With hez right hand Gabriel reached into  the space-time pocket that always tracked with him and came back out of it holding the Golden Gift. Che extended the shaft long enough to cut the rope binding hez left hand. Then che switched the relic to his free hand and cut hemself down from the basketball hoop.

Johnny swung the whip right at hez face but  Gabriel let it fly into the relic while it fully  deployed as a shield. The black dome simply ate the whip, leaving little more than a riding crop for Johnny to swing. Then Gabriel cut hez legs free. All three of the boys ran away,  but Gabriel was  in no condition  to run after any of them. Fortunately the neighbors had heard and seen the whipping and called it in, so the boys who attacked Gabriel only just made it away in time before deputies arrived.

At the  little hospital  that  served  Headwater Sheriff  Roddy Walker asked if Gabriel saw who it was that messed up him up.

"I don't know, sir. They wore black hoods over their faces."

"Did they tell you why they were doing it?"

"They didn't like me marrying one of 'their' white girls, sir."

"How do you feel, Gabriel?"

"Not any better than the last time it happened, sir."

"The last time? You've been flogged before?"

Gabriel nodded, and stared at Doctor Wahkan, who could confirm.

"It's a Kuwapi  thing, Sheriff  Walker.  The young  men of  the People camp out  on the plains overnight and have  at each other to see how much they can stand. But I suppose they grew tired of the game when they found out you were cheating."

"They found a better game they called Peace Pipe."

Three days  later  Klaus  Hansen came  to  the  same  hospital. Certainly it was not to visit Gabriel, who had been released the same day he checked in,  but instead  he came to  see Gabriel's attackers. Doctor Wahkan was still muttering about the "animals" who had slowly turned all six  of their feet into  just so much ruined hamburger, requiring a clean amputation of each one.

Every time the three boys were visited  after their operations, first by their parents, then by the sheriff, and later by Klaus, they took to sobbing miserably. It was not so much from the pain they were still suffering but from the memory of  the hell they had already suffered. Their tormentors worked day  and night, just like Gabriel  told them  would happen. The perps wore no hoods and used their real names  as they went about their bloody business, yet even now their victims refused to identify them at all, other than to say they were "Indians".

"Where's the Golden Gift?"

"Gabriel had it the whole time."

"You searched him, strung him  up like a pig,  and horsewhipped him, but Gabriel had it on him  the entire time? So where did he have it hidden, Johnny, in his asshole?"

"I don't know!"

"Did you mention he ought to forget all about  the Zinter girl, or did that slip your mind too?"

"I did tell him," Scott Hilling  whined, "but I don't  think he listened to me!  What's the world coming to when  you can't even get a little respect?"

Klaus Hansen and Paul Bergin returned to the Temple, but not, as it turned out, with their tail between their legs.

"I agreed to see you fellows again," Kim said  to them, "but if you act  like a  couple of  high school  students and  storm out again when you don't get your own  way, it will be the last time we ever meet." And Kim was perfectly able to follow through on that threat. Seeing the future, she  could simply  avoid going anywhere they went.

"It is you, rather,  who have  one slim  chance to  reunite the Church," Hansen said with  his trademark insufferable arrogance. "Paul and I must  get our  old jobs back,  or the  reunion will never come to be. That point is my nonnegotiable."

Kim sighed and turned to her husband. "Will you, Gabriel, resign the office of Deacon?"

"I will not."

Hansen shrugged, said, "You can't push a rope." He prepared once more to leave  the office  with Bergin,  muttering a  string of curses that completely obscured what Dory quietly said.

Kim asked Dory to repeat harself.

"I said, I will resign as Apostle of the Church."

Kim opened the  Printer's  Manuscript of  the  Green Book  once more and penned  the following  entry: APOSTLE  DORIEL SHYBEAR, RESIGNED, JAN. 20, 1943. Dory signed it,  and Kim  entered her initials. "It's done," Kim  said. "The office  of Apostle  is vacant. Will you,  Klaus Hansen, take har place, or  is Paul not getting Deacon still a non-negotiable sticking point?"

Klaus turned to  Paul  and said,  "A  temporary setback,  Paul, nothing more.  It will  be remedied  soon enough." Paul nodded. Then Klaus faced Kim once more. "Very well, Mrs. Shybear, make the appropriate entry."

She wrote KLAUS HANSEN, APOSTLE,  JAN. 20, 1943 and  turned the book for his inspection and signature. When he was done, Robyn applied her initials.

Looking at all the  recently entries  she said,  "I just  had a sudden image of someone in  2043 reading this and wondering what it must have been like, this whole sudden flurry."

Hansen said, "The Reformed Church is gathering  this morning to meet down  at our own temple.  Will you meet with  them, Prophet Shybear, and affirm our schism has reached an end?"

"I will."

"And I  would  have  them  meet the  new  Deacon.  One  of  our parishoners passed  away. I  would have  the Deacon  perform the Last Rites."

Dory was incredulous. "The Last Rites in that barn?"

"It would do much to  bring healing  between the Red  and White Wings of the Church," Bergin put in.

"Can it not wait a week until Gabriel can perform the Last Rites properly in the actual Temple?" asked Robyn.

"It has already been two weeks," replied Hansen, "and the corpse is beginning to grow . . . unpresentable."

Robyn nodded her head. "We should do it, Gabe. Everything leads up to a blank wall for me. But the Lord showed us that we always need to trust God  with the faith of a little  child and when it is necessary we should take that leap into the dark."

"I'm glad I don't have to see it," said Dory.

"You wouldn't be much welcome down there anyway," said Paul.

"I have to retrieve the Golden Gift," Gabriel said, "and I would not have our former Deacon Paul Bergin know where I keep it, as he is no longer an officer of the Church."

Paul said, "This is not a  problem. I can drive  the Prophet to our own  temple, and Apostle Hansen  can bring you along  in his own truck after you fetch the Relic."

To this Robyn and  Gabriel agreed, and  they shared  a farewell kiss before they parted, knowing that it was indeed farewell.

As Hansen drove  Gabriel down  off the  mountain he  said, "The sight of you kissing that girl was disgusting, do you know that? You're not cousins. Hell, you're not even the same species!"

"Sir," replied  Gabriel who  concealing  his  own disgust  over Hansen, "the Bible and the Book of Green  Dome acknowledge only ethnicities. We read  only of peoples and  kindreds and tongues, not Whites and Blacks and Red Men. Races are artificial things."

"What the hell do  you mean  artificial? Are  you asking  me to doubt what I can see with my own two God-given eyes?"

"Sir, consider the aborigines in Australia. They have Caucasian and Mongoloid genes, but they are  as dark as Negroids. Even our Lord Yeshua is a lovely coffee-with-cream brown."

Hansen grew angry at that last remark and pulled the truck over to the side of the road. "Get out. I can't stand to be anywhere near a blasphemer, let alone one who entices our women to become traitors to their own race."

"I still need to round  up the Golden Gift,"  Gabriel objected. "What about the Last Rites?"

"Fuck the Last Rites. What would be the point  of sanctifying a body if  the minister of the  Rite is a blasphemer?  The Lord is brown like coffee? Get out."

Gabriel did as he was commanded, and Klaus Hansen peeled out in the  snow, leaving  Gabriel stranded  on  the side  of the  road halfway down the mountain. Che decided to hoof it back up to the Temple where Dory  was waiting. Still, the move was  entirely expected. It wasn't like Klaus  was  going to  let Gabriel  be witness to what came next.

What came next was murder.

A short distance northwest of Green Dome was a  place where the borders of the states of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska all came together in a little fenced-off lot. When Hansen arrived he saw that only Paul  Bergin's truck was  parked there,  and only Bergin could be seen standing in the little corral. '

A bloody lump  of dead  and naked  girlflesh lay  at his  feet, covered with much blood that was nearly cool  enough to freeze. Paul stood there staring at  Robyn's body, not  quite believing that he actually  did it. He kept repeating to  himself, "I'm going to hell!"

"Shut up, Paul," Hansen told him when he drew near. "You'd only go to hell if you didn't do it. Is that the knife?"

Paul nodded. He had entirely forgotten about the murder weapon, but it was still grasped in his gloved hand.

"We can't afford to be caught anywhere near that thing. Throw it away right now. Anywhere, but throw it as far as you can."

Paul hurled the blade on the snowy wastelands lying  off to the west somewhere in Wyoming. The blade flashed once in the morning sunlight and disappeared from view.

"Now help me lift her on this."

There was a short post and a little sign  about chest high that marked the exact place where the three states came together. The sign was canted at a forty-five degree angle. They draped Kim's body across the sign, letting her head and  arms bend backwards and her legs droop down. It looked positively New Testament.

After that, Hansen circled the  area a  few times to  make sure Paul hadn't dropped  anything. Good. Even the snow splattered with the girl's blood was clear.

"Walk with me to my truck."

Hansen dropped the tailgate. In the bed of the truck  were two sets of coats, clothing and  boots laid out beside  a cardboard box. Hansen took off the boots he was wearing and threw them in the box, along with his  blood-stained coat, shirt and trousers. In the cold of high plains January he quickly  put on new outer garments, then sat on the tailgate to put on new boots.

"Throw your gloves in the box,  Paul. Then do exactly  what you just saw me do."

"How are you going to get rid of the box?"

"Trust me, I'll  have  it  done in  such  a  way that  nothing, absolutely nothing will  remain to tie this back to  us, as long as you don't  forget to dispose of the set  that knife came from when  you get  back  home. Cheer  up, Paul,  we  just saved  the Church, you and I. Shybear couldn't see it, but if that girl had children it would have meant the  end of both the White Wing and the Red  Wing. There wouldn't  be anymore wings, just  an unholy hodge-podge growing like a cancer until it ate everything."

Huge swaths of the high plains still lay under  snow that first fell in November of '42,  but it was a  dry cold and  the roads were clear. From the air Headwater looked like  an abstract map drawn in fine black ink on paper bleached an unearthly white.

The victim was found by a man in his eighties named Tashunka. He was older than the town of Headwater, a mere  boy of the People when the Golden Gift  came to  Wanica in  that final  hunt. The biggest animal he ever killed was a coyote baited with a rabbit he caught in another trap. Tashunka almost didn't see the girl. Her body was dangling at a roadside attraction  that had always bored him. On a map somewhere one line terminated  on another. Three states came together at  this place, but even  when there was no snow Tashunka had never seen any lines.

What caught his eye was not so much that the dead girl was naked but how her head and arms drooped back, and how her feet didn't touch  the ground,  as though  she were  nailed to  an invisible cross. So he backed  up his  truck and  parked  in the  little tri-state corral. There were two other set of tire tracks in the snow and two sets of footprints which became a tangled net near the body.

Tashunka tried to be careful in his approach to  leave the site clean for the sheriff. He could see no movement of  the girl's chest and no condensation from her  mouth. The dead girl was too pale to be one of the People. Of a certainty she had part of the White Wing of the Church of Green Dome. Her ponytail gave that away. And Tashunka wept with  frustration that he could  not do the simple kindness of closing  her frozen eyes staring out upon eternity.

Tashunka recognized the dead girl at last: Kimberly Zinter. Then he wept more deeply, knowing why she was  murdered and guessing who the killer must be. Of a certainty the unhappy union of the Red Wing and White Wing of the Church was finished. He retraced his steps to the truck.

An hour later Tashunka returned with Sheriff Roddy Walker to the little fenced-off area nigh to  the road. The tri-state marker was a wooden beam embedded in the ground, one foot square with a sloping top, and Kimberly's back  rested on this, held  fast by frozen blood. The sheriff told deputy  Bill to  start snapping pictures while deputy Bob followed Roddy around  with a notepad and took down a running commentary.

"I need to steal your sole with my camera, Chief," Bill said, so "lay it out there."

Tashunka smiled weakly at the joke and lifted one leg as best he could. Bill got a photo of the bottom of  both the old Indian's boots to make sure they  could differentiate his footprints from that of  the perps. Then Tashunka  was  left behind  as  Bill methodically photographed his way to the girl's body..

When the  sheriff  and  his deputies  completely  surveyed  and documented the murder scene they all pitched in, lifted Kimberly free of the survey marker,  and laid  her gently on  a foldaway stretcher that sheriff Walker had brought with him. Tashunka was surprised to hear the sheriff shout an oath. Roddy has read the plaque that Kim's body was  covering and realized they  were at the exact place some surveyor  decided the corners of two states ran flush against the border of a third. At a stroke that made the case Federal.

Then they walked the body  out of  there, pausing a  moment for Tashunka to get another close look at it.

"This was Kimberly Zinter," he told them, and he put his fingers on her face just long  enough to melt  the eyelids so  he could close them. "I've seen her at Temple."

The sheriff dug around in the  glove box of his  truck and came back with a manila folder containing a photo, which he compared to the dead girl's blood-streaked face.

"The gentleman is right, boys. This was the local  girl the FBI was looking for. One of the two, anyway."

He noted how the girl wore a headdress that  was similar to one that some of the Kuwapi townspeople often wore. It was a lattice of beads adorning two sharp white horns.

After the deputies carefully loaded the body of the girl in the canopy of the department's green 1940 Dodge half-ton truck, Bob said, "So this wasn't gonna be our case from the gitgo, even if she wasn't lying  dead spread out over three states.  What do we do now, sheriff?"

Tashunka said, "I remember when  you were just a  boy, sheriff, and  I  remember  when  you  left  us.  None  of  your  men  are Greendomites. You  might not be  up on Church politics  and they can't help you. I don't know  who did this terrible thing to the girl but I can tell you why."

But inactivity had cooled the  sweat under Roddy's coat  and he shivered in the face of a stiff wind from the frozen plains.

"This is not the place, Tashunka," he said, "This  body must go to our little hospital. But if you  meet me at the station in an hour I will listen to what you have to say about this."

After that Sheriff Roddy drove deputy Bill and  the body around the large hill near the crime scene which was named Green Dome. It was almost five thousand feet above sea level, but only eight hundred feet above the town of Headwater, and it was never green at all in January.

"I just  can't  win,  Bill," Roddy  lamented. "Half the  male population of  Headwater between 18  and 45 is off  killing Japs and  Krauts and  Eye- talians.  Things were  getting real  quiet around here. Then the FBI sets  up shop and stay all summer. Now I got my first homicide."

They passed the stretch where  the Bureau parked  their trailer but there were no lights on and no smoke from a wood stove.

Bill said, "The FBI  was here  last summer  but now  people are saying they  saw some G-men  back in  town, staking out  the bus station  and ask-  ing people  of  they've seen  our victim  and another girl  named Sofie  Krause. Those  girls were  in federal custody somewhere for half of  last year, but apparently they've escaped and made the FBI look … hell, they are incompetent."

"But they  wouldn't kill  the  girl  for  doing that,  if  your thoughts are trending on those lines, Bill."

Roddy drove  around  the  northern slopes  of  Green  Dome  and Headwater came into  view. With a  thousand souls  it was  the biggest town for a hundred miles around.

Bill asked, "What do you want me to do after we give the body to Dr. Wahkan?"

"Develop the film and file it,' Roddy told his deputy. "Then get back to the scene and  help Bob look  for the murder  weapon. I didn't see prints leading away from the marker so  I figure the perpetrator either tossed it away or  kept it. To know what he chose would be a good thing for me to know."

The town's sole doctor was known  as Wahkan to the  People, but the whites called  him Plenty  Practice. No one had  ever died under his knife, but even a local legend such  as Doctor Wahkan could not call back the dead.

"Kim Zinter," the doctor  said when he  saw the  bloody corpse. "Heartbreaking. And her  father died  only last  year. I  can't "imagine how Clara is going to take this."

The sheriff looked inward and frowned deeply, knowing he must be the one to tell her.

Dr. Wahkan donned a pair of rubber gloves. "I have never carried out this protocol for you before, Sheriff, and for your father I only had to do so three times. That alone tells you how, in the main, Headwater really is a good place."

"How did you know her name, Doctor?"

"I saw this girl last spring when her mother brought her in. And I also saw another girl  who is the  same age, one  named Sofie Krause. They both had the same symptoms."

"Symptoms?"

Dr. Wahkan pulled Kim's headdress away, but the two white horns remained in place. Removing the jewelry and  holding out  the jewelry, he said, "No doubt you have seen  something similar to this before."

Roddy nodded. "I know it is a Kuwapi thing.  My first guess was Kim was wearing it because it was  starting to catch on as a fad among  the white  kids in  town.  Sort of  like their  so-called music."

Wahkan reached down to grabbed  one on the horns  on Kimberly's head and shook it. This caused her whole head to shake as well. "Actually, they wear the jewelry to cover up the fact that these horns are real."

"I'll be damned," Roddy said. "I never guessed!"

Dr, Wahkan lifted Kim's hair so the sheriff could  see the skin of her scalp where the horns emerged from her skull. There was a smooth transition. The skin simply hardened and merged with the horns, yet the horns themselves were not mere a  feature of the skin, like calluses. They were rooted to the bone.

"We call this the Change," the doctor told him. "Naturally both girls and  particularly  their  parents were  alarmed  when  it started to  happen to them,  but they were actually  quite safe. The  Change is  known among  the  Kuwapi people.  It spreads  by sexual contact."

"You seem to know a lot about it, Dr. Wahkan."

"I know that among the Changed are the Begotten and the Made. I know both  the Begotten and  the Made  can Make the  Change, but only the Begotten can beget the Change. I told Kim and Sofie the Change had been present among some members of the Red Wing for a human lifetime  and more, and if  you believe the Green  Book it goes back  much, much  further than  that. But  when I  tried to explain all this to their mothers they wouldn't believe me. They took  the girls  somewhere  to  get a  second  opinion, and  now Headwater is infested with outsiders."

"Headwater is a good place, Doctor, just like you said, but the killer deliberately  draped her  body across three  states. That forces my hand.  I must report this crime to  the very outsiders who have made things less good here over the last few month. But I  can't  believe she  was  killed  just  for wearing  Red  Wing jewelry."

"A flirtation with the Red Wing might run deeper than a penchant for hair accessories," the doctor suggested. And with that, in the full view  of the sheriff, he  began to run the  body of the girl through the necessary indignity of an autopsy.

The town of Headwater, true to  its name, sat at  the source of the Squaw  River. Paved road ended there, as did  the railroad. There were no hotels. West, north, and  south of the  town was nothing but empty grasslands. No one from outside of town ever spent the night in Headwater because no one ever passed through. The Bureau had to  crane off a  trailer on  national grasslands just to have a place for its agents to sleep.

The Church of  Green  Dome had  steadily  lost adherents  since peaking in  1915  but   there  were  still  many  congregations scattered across America and even a few in Europe. When families of the deceased came to Headwater  for the Last Rite  often the only place for them to stay was the Temple itself.

The C Wing had six modest rooms which were  offered to visiting fami- lies for their brief stay  of a day or  two. Klaus Hansen had never giv- en them much thought. As far as he knew or cared the beds made them- selves,  so when  he arrived at  the temple with Paul Bergin in tow he was startled to find Dory and Gabriel cleaning the rooms.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"It went with the position of Extraordinary Lay Minister of the Last  Rite," Gabriel  replied. "Somebody has to  get the  rooms ready, and now I guess the Deacon does it."

"Then what's she doing here?"

"Cousin Dory is pitching in."

"I'm reclaiming Sundays  for the  White Wing.  I only  want Red Wingers to be here, if they must, on Wednesdays."

Dory and Gabriel,  being Red  Wingers both,  made as  though to leave, but Klaus said, "Not you, boy."

"I'll pick you up at five, cuz," said Dory on her way out.

"Where's the Golden Gift?" demanded Klaus after Dory  was good and gone.

"It's right here in the Temple, sir, just as we agreed."

"How do I know that's true?"

"This is the Temple of Green  Dome, sir. Liars have  no part in the life to come."

"Show it to me."

"Sir, my father told me to only bring it out at need."

"You need to show it to me."

Gabriel unlocked a supply room similar to the one downstairs in the temple basement. A red butter cookie tin sat on a shelf. It was empty but Gabriel needed  the can  for his trick. When che reached outside of the universe it always  looked like somebody chopped hez hand off with  an ax, which would  need explaining. Gabriel produced the relic. To Hansen's eyes it looked like che pulled it out of the tin.

"How do I know that's not just something you whipped up in metal shop and painted gold? Make this box disappear for me."

Paul Bergin set down a cardboard box he was carrying.

"What's in the box, sir?"

"Old clothes and shoes. Never mind what's in the box, just make it disappear with your alleged relic."

Gabriel squeezed the Artifact. The hissing shifted down in pitch as the black rip in reality grew, drinking in the light and air of the room. Hez ponytail tossed in  the growing breeze  as he lapped up the  box into nothingness. He tried not to damage the floor but it was unavoidable.

Neither Klaus Hansen nor Paul Bergin had never been so close to the Golden Gift  in operation. They were entranced by the sheer otherworldliness of it. Gabriel was amazed at hez self-restraint for not slicing the men in half where they stood.

When the thrill of the Golden Gift wore off,  Hansen said, "Put it back in the can and lock this room back up."

Gabriel gave  a  very  convincing performance  of  putting  the Artifact away. Slight-of-hand never entered the mind of Klaus.

When it was done Klaus  told hem to hand  over the key  and the look on his face seemed  to dare hem to  show even a  twinge of insubordination, but he got nothing. "Who else has a key?"

"Mr. Bergin never returned his key after he quit."

"I never quit," Bergin said.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Hansen said. "Your wife is dead."

"Oh, I know, sir."

"What do you mean, you know? You don't seem too cut up over it."

"Cut up. I get it, sir."

"The last thing I need from you is your mouth, boy."

"She predicted it would  happen, sir," Gabriel  said. "Besides, our Lord himself said, 'He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.'"

"Do you know what I believe,  son? I believe the  death of your so-called wife makes me the Prophet of the Church. And I believe you still have some rooms to clean."

Tashunka waited outside  the  sheriff's office  long past  when Roddy said he'd meet him, trying to stay warm inside his running truck. Roddy apologized for the delay and invited the old fellow to come indoors for some fresh coffee. "Doctor Wahkan had some interesting things to say," the sheriff told him.

Tashunka followed Walker inside and  sat shivering in  his seat until the coffee was ready. "And what of the three stupid boys who took  a bullwhip to  a plains  Indian and didn't  think he'd have friends who could do something far worse in retaliation?"

"The three  stupid  boys  were still  there  looking  perfectly miserable until they laid eyes on  the dead girl. That seemed to make  their  whole  day.  Would  that  Headwater  had  a  bigger hospital.  They wouldn't  tell me  what was  so funny.  I figure you're about to tell me."

Tashunka leaned back in his  seat nursing the coffee. His eyes landed on  a  photograph  of  the  elder  Sheriff  Walker,  now deceased. Two years already? "Everyone greatly respected your father, Roddy, both  White Wing and Red Wing alike.  I was there at his Final Rite."

Roddy flushed with  sudden  anger. "And I, his  son, was  not permitted to  be there  because I don't  believe in  fairy tales about angels  and sun  gods and  killing relics  and I  made the mistake of letting everybody know that."

"Sheriff," admonished Tashunka,"if you allow your heart to grow black you will take everything I say in a way I do not mean."

Roddy glared at him while he  took another sip of  coffee, then lowered his eyes. Soon he was  calm again  and said,  "You are absolutely right,  Tashunka. At a  minimum I know  how important the relic is in the life of your Church."

Tashunka said, "Red and White  wings swap power but  the Golden Gift stays  in the Red  Wing. God gave  it to Chief  Wanica, who gave it in turn to his son Jashen. Klaus Hansen says the Apostle should have it.  Jashen thought it would quiet things  to let it pass on, but he gave it to his son Gabriel Shybear."

"Gabriel Shybear. That explains how he got his whipping. And he said his house and the Temple  had been ransacked too. They must have been  trying to beat  the Golden Gift  out of him.  I count myself fortunate  I never embraced  the faith of the  Green Dome Church as my own, Tashunka. It's much too violent."

"It gets better," Tashunka  said. "Jashen said he  was setting aside the rule that Greendomites  must marry only their cousins, in just  one instance, so  that Gabriel could marry  Kim Zinter. When they  heard that Hansen and  half the Bunners stood  up and walked out of the Temple."

Roddy smiled   at  Tashunka's   use  of  the   word  'Bunners'. Greendomites had to wear their hair in a ponytail, even the men, but in the White Wing  this ponytail was done  up in a  bun. He shuddered at how close he had  come to being a  Bunner himself. But even people who had nothing to do with the Church knew about their biggest hobby horse: mandatory cousin marriage. Roddy knew a deep  current  of  racism  ran  among  the  Bunners  but  the requirement for consanguineous marriages had kept a firm lid on it. Kim Zinter was fourth generation White Wing at least, she'd have no kin among the Red  Wing. Her marriage and any subsequent children would have blown the door wide open.

As though he could  read Roddy's  mind, Tashunka  said, "Hansen would see  this marriage between  Gabriel and Kim as  a horrible disease infecting the  body of the Church.  Their children would have marriageable cousins  in both wings, and  with each passing year it would just grow worse."

"So now I have a possible motive," the sheriff said.

Deputies Bill and Bob rushed in just then and threw a Cellophane bag on the sheriff's desk containing the murder weapon.

"We found it," Bob said,  "Just like you guessed,  Sheriff, not more than throwing distance from the body."

The blade was thin and flexible. It was just a steak knife.

Roddy picked up the bag and frowned  with disappointment. "This game isn't as fun when the other side isn't even trying to win. Not a Sears Roebuck kitchen knife: no, something handmade.'

Next came a  duty  Sheriff  Walker found  to  be  every bit  as distasteful as  his father described. Roddy recalled the recent death of Erik Zinter. How does one tell a  newly-widowed woman that her entire family has been wiped off the face of the earth?

The young woman who answered the door was not Clara Zinter. Her hair was a rich, dark red. She had eyes that were a light, icy green, striking for being  so rare,  but she  was a  little too chubby even for a time before models made being  as skinny as a beanpole sexy. What stood out to Roddy, however, was the horns. She had two white horns  on her head  just like the  victim. In fact, Roddy was looking at the spitting image  of the deceased. She stood in the doorway patiently waiting for him to speak. He pulled out his file to be sure. Identical. So this must be Kim's twin sister. He cleared his throat and said,  "Good afternoon. I'm Sheriff Walker. Is Mrs. Clara Zinter at home?"

"Mother isn't here anymore," the  young lady said,  "She's with her own  folks in Pennsylvania. I'm  Robyn. Do you want  to come in?  I'm sure  you have  questions and  it will  be better  than standing here in the doorway."

Roddy took off  his hat  and accepted  her offer. The hardwood floors were covered with throw-rugs. He could smell the light odor of a gas furnace. A radio tuned to Headwater's one station was playing "I've Got a Gal  in Kalamazoo" by Glenn  Miller and His Orchestra. Robyn turned it down.

The sheriff said, "Please, Robyn,  if you could turn  the radio off entirely. I afraid I have very bad news for you."

The girl complied, then she invited the sheriff to be seated. He did so and got the overall impression that the Zinter family was firmly situated in the middle-class. Not destitute by any means, but not ostentatious either. A small coffee table  lay between them. Robyn smoothed out her plaid dress and Roddy saw that she wore bobby socks and saddle shoes. "You were about to tell me that you found the body of my sister," Robyn said, "and that she had been brutally stabbed to death."

On one  level  Roddy  felt  relief. His duty  to  notify  the next-of-kin had been mooted. But Robyn had stated  things she should not yet know. "You dont seem to be too upset about it," Roddy said, taking a small notebook  and pen out of  his jacket liner. The sympathetic bearer of bad news was a detective again. "When did you know your sister was dead, Miss Zinter? Did an old Indian fellow pay you a visit today?"

"Call me Robyn, please," she  said. "One name. Robyn. Not Miss Zinter. Nobody  else has  visited me today,  Sheriff. I  find it difficult to say  how I knew she  died. If I tell  you the truth you will probably think I'm a little crazy."

Roddy said, 'Robyn, this is a murder investigation  so I exhort you to hold to the thought that whatever you tell me must always be the truth. As for believing you  are insane,  frankly, I'm already having  trouble with  your attitude  toward the  news of your twin sister's murder."

"Sheriff, have you  ever  heard those  stories about  identical twins who seem to have a  link that defies any explanatio? Twins who were separated  at birth? They never met, yet  they they led lives  with coincidence  piled upon  coincidence, with  the same type of job, and even the same type of spouse."

"And the same type of horns, Robyn? Are you Begotten, or Made?"

"Made. Same way. I hated the idea of people telling us apart."

"Are you telling me you  have some kind  of radio in  your head that let you know what was  happening to your sister? Because if that's what you're saying, I wouldn't believe you were insane. I would run you in to the station for knowing material facts about this case with no plausible explanation why."

"Sheriff, there's no need  to do  that. I'm  going to  give you three tips that will break this case wide open for you in record time. If  they don't pan out,  I'll still be right  here because this is where I live. Then you can do what you will."

"I'm listening."

She held out a pinky. "One, the murder weapon was from  a set that is now missing one knife." She held a finger with a wedding ring. "Two, tomorrow is trash  day." She held out  her middle finger. "Three, someone clever enough to make this bigger than a local case is too  clever to  get his own  hands dirty,  but he might have a willing sidekick who is not quite so clever."