Joanna stared off to the horizon, where periodic flashes of lightning continually backlit a towering cloud bank. "Evidence or no evidence," she muttered, "I say bring on the rain."

"Don't let her Highness hear you say that," Ernie said, nodding toward Fran Daly, who was crouched on all fours next to what remained of the burial mound. "We're pretty well down to the body now. If it starts to rain before she finishes up, I'm afraid she'll go nuts."

"She already is nuts," Joanna said. "But what's going on? From down where I've been standing, I couldn't see a thing."

"You didn't notice that Dr. Daly got awfully quiet all of a sudden?" Ernie asked.

"Well, I did, but…"

"Maybe you'd better come take a look."

With the body almost totally uncovered, the stench of carrion was far worse than before. Joanna had been working far enough from the body to have to reacclimate herself to the awful odor and fight down her gag reflexes all over again. Approaching the site, she saw that Ernie was right. The majority of the rocks were gone and the corpse was mostly uncovered. Only the tops of the shoulders and head still remained hidden from view. What was visible lay pale and ghostly in a dark shadow that looked at first like it might be a pool of water.

It was only when Joanna was standing right over it that she realized what it was-saponification. That was the official, three-dollar word for the crime-scene reality of what happens to decomposing bodies. Body fluids and fat had rendered out, leaving behind a coating of fatty acid that spilled a black, greasy stain across the surface of the rock.

Joanna walked up to where Fran Daly was using a set of hemostats to pluck something off the ground. Whatever it was, it was so small that from where Joanna stood, she couldn't see what was going into the evidence bag. "What are you finding?" she asked.

Dr. Daly didn't look up. "Bone fragments," she answered.

Expecting a more detailed answer, Joanna waited for some time. When the medical examiner said nothing more, Joanna nudged the woman again. "So how's it going?"

This time Fran Daly stopped what she was doing and stared up at Joanna. "You've got yourself a real son of a bitch here, Sheriff Brady," she said. "A real mean son of a bitch. I've found three separate sets of bullet fragments so far. As soon as I finish gathering these bits of bone, I'll go looking for the fourth."

"You're saying the victim died of bullet wounds? And how can you possibly know how many bullets were used?"

"This guy didn't shoot her to kill her; I believe he shot her so she'd be helpless," Fran said. "He shattered both kneecaps and both elbows and then left her here to die-to bleed to death."

Joanna felt sick. "What kind of an animal would do such a thing?"

"Animals wouldn't," Fran Daly replied. "Most animals I know are better people than that."

Minutes later, when Sandoval and Wilson finished trading Broncos, Joanna stayed up top while Eddy manned the tailgate position below the ledge. Enough of the rocks were gone now so that from the shoulders up only a single layer remained. Even so, Joanna fell into the rhythm of silently moving rocks without necessarily watching what was being uncovered by their removal.

"Dear God in heaven!"

On the ledge, Fran Daly's groaned exclamation brought loading to a sudden halt. "What is it?" Joanna asked. "What's wrong?"

"Look."

Only the lower legs, exposed to sun, air, and animals, had been totally stripped clean of flesh. Under the protective layer of rocks, much of the rest of the desiccated body remained intact. The woman's tapered fingernails, covered with some kind of brightly colored enamel, still glowed purple in the artificial light. For some reason, the condition of those undamaged nails made Joanna think that the rest of the body would be pretty much whole as well. But that wasn't the case. Without a shred of either hair or skin, the back of the woman's skull glowed white and naked in the light.

"She's been scalped," Fran croaked.

The very idea was enough to take Joanna's breath away. "Scalped? How can that be?"

"Look for yourself."

For a moment Joanna stared at the bare skull in appalled fascination. Scalping was something ugly out of the Old West, something she suspected had happened far more often in the world of cheap fiction and B-grade movies than it had in real life. But still, here it was, staring back at her from the body of a murder victim in modern-day Cochise County. From the body of someone Sheriff Joanna Brady had sworn to serve and protect.

The Indian wars were long over in southern Arizona. Geronimo had surrendered to General Crook and had led his remaining ragtag band of warriors into ignominious exile in Florida. Cochise County might have been named after an Apache chief, but there were very few Apaches left in that part of the country. Real Apaches, that is.

But a few miles away from where Joanna stood at that moment, there was another Indian encampment, one made up of a band of self-declared "Apaches." She glanced back at Ernie and caught his eye.

"First thing tomorrow morning," she said, "you and Jamie and I will pay an official visit to Rattlesnake Crossing. I'm betting one of the warrior wannabes from there has declared war on the human race."

It was after midnight before Joanna finally headed for home. Miraculously, the threatened rainstorm had moved north into Graham County without ever hitting the crime scene. Once the body was loaded into a van-a second Pima County morgue van-Joanna had ordered the vicinity of the burial mound covered with tarps. That done, she and her weary collection of investigators had called it a job. If there was anything left to find, it would be better to search for it in daylight.

More than an hour later, when she was finally driving up the narrow dirt road that led to High Lonesome Ranch with Sadie and Tigger racing out to greet her, she saw two extra sets of tire tracks that had been left behind in the dirt.

Now who… Joanna didn't even finish framing the question before she knew the answer. Butch Dixon! Butch had come to take her to dinner and she had forgotten all about it-had forgotten all about him. She had stood the poor guy up. In typical homicide-cop fashion, she had become so embroiled with the body on the ledge that personal obligations had slipped her mind completely.

There was a note pinned to the screen door with a bent paper clip. "You must be tied up," it said. "Sorry I missed you. Butch."

Tired, dirty, and frustrated-pained by guilt and kicking herself for it-Joanna slammed her way into the house. She was mad at herself, but, unaccountably, she was also mad at Butch. After all, she hadn't meant to stand him up. She had tried to contact him. It wasn't her fault that he hadn't left a telephone trail do she could have caught tip with him in a timely fashion and let him know what was happening.

She slopped in the laundry room, stripped off her soiled clothes, and stuffed them into the washer. Then she went straight to the phone to check for messages, hoping there would he one from Butch. There was a single message, a short one from Marianne, that had come in at eleven-fifty. "It's Mari. I'll talk to you in the morning."

And that was all. Disappointed that there was no further message from Butch and believing it was far too late to call Marianne back, Joanna headed for the shower. She stood under the steamy water, letting it roll off her stiff and aching body. And in the course of that overly long and what Eleanor would have regarded as an "extravagant" shower, Joanna Brady made a disturbing connection.

She remembered all the times her mother had been irate with her father because D. H. Lathrop had gotten himself entangled in some case or other and had missed dinner or one of Joanna's Christmas programs at church or a dinner date Eleanor had set her heart on attending. And there had been times over the years, while Andy was a deputy, that Joanna and he had played out that same drama, following almost the exact same script. Andy would come home late, and Joanna would be at the door to meet him and gripe at him for getting so involved in what he was doing that he had missed Jenny's parent/teacher conference at school or her T-ball game down at the park.