“Your father called ahead,” he said, gesturing for them to sit. “He said you had some questions about fieldwork protocols. How can I help?”

  “We’re investigating two recent deaths on the reservation, Dr. Bennett,” Kari began, keeping her tone professional and non-accusatory. “Both occurred in connection with NAC ceremonies. In both cases, we’ve heard reports of university research teams being present in the community around the same time. We’re just trying to get a sense of who is operating in the area.”

  Dr. Bennett’s friendly expression tightened with concern. “That’s terrible news. I hadn’t heard.” He paused, as if weighing his options. “Our primary concern is always the safety and sovereignty of our host communities. I can assure you, any team operating under our oversight goes through a rigorous ethical review.”

  “We’re not suggesting any wrongdoing on the part of the university,” Ben said smoothly. “We’re just trying to account for everyone who was in the vicinity. It’s a process of elimination.”

  Dr. Bennett seemed to relax. He turned to his computer. “Let’s see. Any team wanting to conduct research involving tribal ceremonies needs what we call a cultural protocol agreement, filed with us and the tribe in question. It’s a pretty short list.” He typed for a moment. “There’s Dr. Alarcon’s group from U of A. Her team has been working with several NAC chapters for a couple of years. Their focus is purely on the botanical side of things—different cultivars, growth methods. All their protocols are impeccable.”

  He continued scrolling. “There was a graduate student from ASU doing dissertation work on the evolution of ceremonial songs, but his permit expired last semester. And we had a proposal from a team from Stanford, but their methodology was deemed too intrusive, and the tribal council denied their request.”

  He looked up from his screen. “As far as active, sanctioned research goes, Dr. Alarcon’s team is really the only major one on the ground right now.”

  “And her team would have access to the ceremonies themselves?” Kari asked.

  “Sometimes, by invitation from the roadman,” Dr. Bennett explained. “But usually their work is observational and conducted outside the ceremony itself. Interviews before and after. Sourcing and documenting plant materials with the permission of the growers. It’s very sensitive work. Dr. Alarcon is one of the best at navigating it.” He frowned. “I can’t imagine her team being connected to any kind of trouble. Her entire career is built on a foundation of trust and respect.”

  “So, her research,” Kari pressed, leaning forward. “You said it involves studying different cultivars. Does her team ever provide the medicine for the ceremonies they observe?”

  Dr. Bennett shook his head immediately, a firm, unequivocal gesture. “Absolutely not. That would be a catastrophic breach of protocol. The line between observation and participation is sacred, for lack of a better word. Her team is there to document, not to administer. They would never interfere with the materials of a ceremony. The sourcing of the medicine is entirely up to the roadman and the Church. Our researchers just ask where it came from.”

  “And who is on Dr. Alarcon’s team?” Ben asked. “Is it just her?”

  “Oh, no, it’s a small group,” Bennett said, turning back to his screen. He clicked through a few windows. “Let’s see… she has a post-doc, Dr. Phillips, who handles most of the data analysis. And she usually has one or two graduate assistants helping with fieldwork, cataloging, transcription… the usual grunt work.” He squinted at the screen. “The current G.A. is a young man named Marcus Stone. Bright kid. Top of his class in ethnobotany.”

  The names meant nothing to them. They were just more layers of institutional legitimacy, more people with impeccable credentials and no conceivable motive.

  Kari opened her mouth to ask another question about their access protocols, but was cut off by the sharp, insistent beep of the intercom on Dr. Bennett’s desk.

  He flinched, his expression shifting from helpful to harassed. “Excuse me for one moment,” he said as he pressed the button. “Yes, Cynthia?”

  “Miles, sorry to interrupt,” a woman’s voice crackled through the small speaker, “but the Dean is on his way down. He wants to see the final draft of the acquisitions budget before he leaves for the day, and he’s not happy about the numbers from the geology department.”

  Dr. Bennett’s shoulders slumped. He ran a hand through his already thin hair. “Of course he’s not. Okay. Tell him I’ll be right there.” He looked up at Kari and Ben apologetically. “I am so sorry. A budget crisis. The most sacred of all university ceremonies.” He managed a weak smile. “I have to go deal with this.”

  “We understand,” Kari said, rising from her chair. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Bennett. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I wish I could have been more so,” he said, already gathering a thick folder from his desk. He walked them to the door, his mind clearly now on budget lines and angry deans. “Please, keep me informed. If there is any way the university can assist… we want to be partners in this.”

  Kari and Ben made their way out into the cool afternoon air of the campus. Students hurried past, their minds on classes and exams, their world a universe away from the one Kari and Ben had just left behind.

  “So, Dr. Alarcon’s team are the only researchers with official access,” Ben said as they got back in the SUV. “And according to Bennett, she’s a saint who would never break protocol.”

  “And her graduate assistant is the top of his class,” Kari added, her voice flat. She started the engine, pondering where this left them. They could speak with Dr. Alarcon. It was not the most promising of leads, but the more they could learn about those ceremonies and the people around them, the greater their chances of getting lucky.

  They had to follow the thread to its end, no matter how frayed it seemed. They had looked at the spiritual leaders, the community members, the academic gatekeepers. The only person left who sat at the intersection of all those worlds was the botanist herself.

  The drive back toward the reservation was a slow retreat. Each mile took them further from the clean, ordered world of the university and deeper into the ambiguities of the case. Kari felt the familiar frustration coiling in her gut. She was a good detective because she could connect the dots. But here, the dots were scattered across separate universes—spiritual, academic, criminal—and refused to form a line.

  "Alarcon, then," Ben said quietly, as if thinking aloud.

  Kari just nodded, her eyes on the horizon. The name felt like just another word, another potential dead end. They would go. They would ask their questions. They would perform the motions of an investigation. But deep down, a cold dread was beginning to settle in.

  What if the killer had created a crime that was, by its very nature, unsolvable

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The argument replayed in his head for the tenth time, a loop of sharp words and slammed doors. David Littlefeather kicked at a loose stone on the path, sending it skittering into the reeds.

  It didn’t help. The anger and frustration were still a hot, tight knot in his chest. His daughter, Irene, was seventeen. Seventeen and convinced she knew everything. Convinced that her father’s life—this life, on the reservation, fixing engines and walking the same creek he’d walked for forty years—was a prison sentence she was determined to escape.

  “There’s nothing for me here, Dad!” she had yelled, her voice cracking with the unique, dramatic despair of a teenager. “I want to see things! I want to live somewhere where the most exciting thing that happens isn’t the high school basketball tournament!”

  He had tried to reason with her. Had tried to explain the value of community, of family, of knowing your place in the world. But his words had sounded hollow even to his own ears.

  He saw the life she was railing against through her eyes: the dusty roads, the limited opportunities, the slow, unchanging rhythm of the days. He had made his peace with it long ago. For Irene, however, it was a cage. The fight had ended with her storming off to a friend’s house and him grabbing his fishing rod, seeking the only therapist he’d ever trusted: the creek.

  He adjusted the brim of his dusty baseball cap and followed the familiar, winding path, his boots making soft crunching sounds on the gravelly shore. He needed this. He needed the patient gurgle of the water over smooth stones, the flash of a trout darting for cover, the silent, watchful presence of the cottonwood trees.

  He wasn’t a man for ceremonies or sweat lodges. He found his spirit here. This place didn’t judge. It didn’t argue. It just was.

  Fishing was a connection to his own father, who had first brought him here as a boy, teaching him where to find the deepest pools, how to read the ripples on the surface. That felt like a lifetime ago now. A simpler time. A time before his own child looked at him with pity in her eyes.

  He rounded a bend where the creek widened into a shallow, placid pool. A great, flat-topped boulder sat near the opposite bank, a perfect spot to sit and let the anger drain out of him. It was his usual resting place. But as his eyes swept the area, he saw something that didn't belong.

  On the near side of the creek, nestled in a tangle of reeds at the water’s edge, was a splash of bright color. A blue Pendleton blanket, its geometric pattern unmistakable even from a distance. It was half-submerged in the shallow water, one corner snagged on a fallen branch.

  At first, he thought that maybe the blanket had washed down from upstream. But the creek was running too slow for that, and the blanket was too heavy.

  He felt a prickle of unease, a shift in the atmosphere of the afternoon. People didn’t just leave blankets like that behind. They were expensive. Prized.

  He walked closer, his boots sinking into the soft, muddy bank. The blanket was beautiful, a classic Two Grey Hills design. He reached down, intending to pull it from the water, maybe take it to the trading post’s lost and found.

  As his fingers touched the wet, heavy wool, he saw something else. Just beyond the blanket, mostly hidden by the tall reeds, was a man.

  David’s first thought was that he was sleeping. Maybe a tourist, or someone from the next town over, had come down to the creek to fish and had ended up napping in the warm afternoon sun. The man was lying on his side, his back to David, his head pillowed on the muddy bank. He was wearing jeans and a dark flannel shirt.

  “Hey,” David called out, his voice sounding loud in the quiet air. “You alright there, buddy?”

  There was no response. The man didn’t stir. The water lapped gently around his black work boots.

  The knot of dread in David’s stomach tightened. The argument with Irene, the anger, all of it evaporated, replaced by a cold, immediate fear.

  This was wrong. The angle of the man’s body was unnatural, too still. The peaceful afternoon suddenly felt charged with a silent, waiting tension.

  “Hey!” he called again, louder this time. He took a hesitant step into the shallow, icy water, the cold shocking his ankles. “Mister, are you okay?”

  He waded closer, the mud sucking at his boots. He reached out a hand to touch the man’s shoulder, to shake him awake. As he got closer, he could see more. The man’s face was turned away from him, partially pressed into the soft mud of the creek bank. One of his arms was extended, the hand submerged in the clear, cold water, fingers spread wide as if trying to grasp something that wasn't there.

  David reached the man’s side. He could see now that his flannel shirt was soaked through, clinging to his back. And he could see other things. Things that made his blood run cold. Ceremonial items, scattered in the grass and mud as if dropped from a nerveless hand.

  A small, feathered fan, its delicate beadwork glinting in the sun. A leather pouch, its drawstrings undone, lying empty on a rock. A gourd rattle, half-filled with murky creek water.

  The stories he’d been hearing all week rushed into his mind with the force of a flash flood. The man who fell from the cliff at Red Point. The woman who got lost in the desert near Sanders. Both from ceremonies. He felt a wave of nausea, a sour taste in the back of his throat.

  He knelt, his own jeans soaking up the frigid water. “Sir?” he said, his voice now a strained whisper. He gently touched the man’s shoulder.

  The body was cold. Not just from the water. It was a deep, unyielding cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the creek. It was the cold of absolute stillness.

  With a growing sense of horror, David realized the man wasn’t just asleep. He wasn’t breathing.

  His heart hammered against his ribs. He had never seen a dead person before, not up close. The reality of it was overwhelming. The finality.

  He looked at the man’s face, what he could see of it. He was Diné, maybe in his late thirties, his black hair wet and matted with mud. His cheek was pressed into the earth. His eyes were closed. It was a face that could have belonged to a cousin, a neighbor.

  A face that would never see another sunrise.

  David scrambled back, splashing clumsily, his mind reeling. He looked at the water. It was barely six inches deep here. A man couldn’t drown in six inches of water. Could he? Unless he was sick. Or drunk. Or… something else. The ceremonial items seemed to provide a silent, terrible explanation.

  Another one. Another 'accident.'

  He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, his fingers numb and clumsy. He almost dropped it in the water. He held it with a trembling hand, the bright screen a shocking intrusion of modern technology in this primal scene. Who should he call? 911? The tribal police?

  His signal was weak down here in the creek bed. He held the phone up, trying to get a bar. One bar appeared. Then two. He stabbed at the screen, his thumb hitting the numbers.

  As the call connected, his eyes were drawn back to the scene. He noticed something he hadn't seen before. A few feet from the body, on a patch of dry gravel just above the mud line, were a set of footprints. They weren't his. And they didn't look like they belonged to the dead man, who was wearing heavy, treaded work boots. These were smaller, made by a different kind of shoe, something with a smoother, flatter sole. They led from the main path to the spot right beside where the body lay and then back to the path again. It looked like someone had stood there, right beside the man, and had simply watched.

  And then walked away.

  The dispatcher’s voice, calm and professional, came on the line, asking for his location, but David could barely process her words. His gaze was fixed on those other footprints, a silent testament to a presence he couldn't explain. His earlier anger at his daughter felt like a foolish, childish thing now. He had been angry about a life he felt was closing in.

  But this man… his life was over.

  The peaceful creek bed no longer felt like a sanctuary. It felt like a crime scene. It felt like something terrible and deliberate had happened here, something far worse than a simple, tragic accident.

  And he'd had the misfortune to find it

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The drive to Tucson was a long, straight shot south through a changing landscape, a slow bleed from one world into another. The red rock and high desert plains of the reservation, with their deep shadows and stark clarity, gave way to the saguaro-dotted hills and sprawling, hazy suburbs of southern Arizona. It felt like a different country, one speaking a language of asphalt and commerce that grated on Kari’s nerves.

  As she drove, occasionally sipping from the half-empty travel mug of lukewarm coffee in the console, she mentally rehearsed the questions she would ask Dr. Alarcon. It was Tuesday afternoon, the same day they’d hit a wall with Dr. Bennett, and this felt like their last, desperate move before the case ground to a complete halt.

  Ben was quiet in the passenger seat, scrolling through his phone. "Alarcon's office is on the main campus," he said. "According to her university schedule, she has office hours until five."

  “We’ll make it,” Kari said, glancing at the GPS. They were less than an hour out. Perhaps she was being overly pessimistic, but she found herself expecting another polite, professional conversation that would lead nowhere, another dead end on a road full of them. This felt less like an investigation and more like an obligation, a box that had to be checked so she could tell Captain Yazzie they had exhausted every possible lead before admitting they were beaten. The thought was a bitter one.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, her phone rang, the sound jarringly loud in the quiet SUV. It was Captain Yazzie. Her stomach tightened. The captain didn't call for casual check-ins.

  “Blackhorse,” she answered, putting the phone on speaker.

  “Kari, where are you?” Nez’s voice was tight, urgent. The background noise was faint, but she could hear the crackle of a dispatcher’s radio.

  “On our way to Tucson, following a potential lead on the Natanii case,” she said. She tried to speak with more conviction than she felt.

  “Turn around,” he said. “Now. Dispatch just got a 911 call from a hiker down at Cottonwood Creek, about five miles off the main road. He found a body in the water.”

  Kari’s hands locked on the steering wheel. Her knuckles were white. Cottonwood Creek. That was reservation land, a place she’d picnicked with her mother as a child.

  “Another one?” she asked, her voice low.

  “Could be,” Yazzie said. “Male, Diné. The hiker said there were ceremonial items scattered nearby. I’m sending you the pin. Get there as fast as you can. I want you and Ben on it before the scene gets compromised—and I want to know whether this has anything to do with the Natanii case.”

  The call ended. Dr. Alarcon, the university, the entire academic angle—it all evaporated in a moment. They had far more pressing business at the moment.

  Kari executed a U-turn at the next crossover, the tires squealing in protest. She floored the accelerator, the engine roaring as they headed back north. Back toward home. Back toward another body.

 

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