H6

H6

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.