H7

H7

“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.