LITMIR.BIZ

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spun and trotted off, brushing past Blue Suit’s legs.

      “Get that animal on a leash!”

      Herb patted Blue Suit’s shoulder. “Agent Delaney, we’re all going to have to work together if we’re going to catch this killer.”

      “Look, I appreciate your confidence in her skills,” the agent said, “but there are plenty of people here who are trained to investigate. We do not need the assistance of a civilian.” He turned toward me. “So if you’ll just collect your dog — ”

      As if on cue, Sundara yipped twice from atop the butte.

      “Damn it,” Delaney said, “now what?”

      “She found something,” I said.

      David came up behind me. “Shall we see what it is?”

      Delaney patted his perfectly coiffed hair. “Oh, by all means.”

      There were two ways to crest the rise, and, even in my thick treaded work boots, neither would be easy. I took the lead, David followed. Agent Delaney brought up the rear with muttered curses. The curses accompanied the sound of his slick city shoes losing traction on the loose gravel in the center of the path.

      “Stay to the rock on the sides,” David said.

      I heard nothing but a grunt in reply.

      From below, this spot had appeared to be a stand alone mini-butte, but once on top I discovered that the other side hadn’t completely eroded. A finger of land reached out toward The Tribal Council, a formation of closely grouped spires off the end of Mitten Ridge.

      The heads I’d seen from below were those of the forensics team. They scrutinized the area around a ring of campfire stones. The victim’s body had been removed.

      Sundara waited for me beside a manzanita tree where the butte gave way to the finger of land. A purple collar lay at her feet.

      Agent Delaney made it up the butte, crawling the last few feet on his knees. He swiped at the dirt on his trousers and glared at me as if it were my fault that there wasn’t a paved concrete path to our destination.

      Without moving his lips, David asked, “Is he wearing Armani?”

      “O-yeah.”

      When the agent caught up to us, David said, “Looks like Sundara ID’d our Jane Doe.”

      Delaney eyed the collar with suspicion then directed the look at me.

      “Check out the tracks.” David pointed. “Coyotes, they took turns wearing him down, then here, a major attack. They must have ripped the collar off him in the fight.”

      David motioned for a technician.

      The tech came over and set a yellow evidence marker near the collar. He blew the dust off the tags with a tool that resembled a turkey baster. “We got a phone number.”

      David produced a pen and pad from his back pocket and wrote it down.

      Delaney snatched the paper out of his hand. “Get this collected,” he yelled to no one in particular, then walked back to the edge of the butte, squatted, and slid out of sight.

      The girl had found an ideal place to camp. For all the ridges and valleys in this canyon, this was one of the few flat spots, and though it was near the road, it would have felt secluded even in the daytime.

      Near her fire pit, a bundle of sage in an abalone shell sat beside a djembe African drum and two rattles. The girl had been here to honor the equinox with ceremony.

      “Here’s what we have,” David said. “Female, early twenties, estimated time of death between 12 and 2 a.m. Her body was found around 7 a.m. PD’s checking the trailheads. So far, no cars unaccounted for.” He nodded toward a large green backpack propped against a log. “She probably hiked in.”

      I studied the paw print of the victim’s dog; four feet, four pads to a foot, but only two toenails on his right front paw left indentations in the dirt. The missing nails were not an injury sustained during his battle with the coyotes. He’d come to the mountain this way.

      I’d been in a rush to get out here, but my brain had automatically cataloged, not only the dog’s unusual print crisscrossing the trail, but that of the topmost human print — a woman’s boot with the manufacturer’s stamp on the bottom: Cabela’s. There had been no matching track heading back in the other direction.

      “Check Grasshopper Point,” I said. “I just saw these prints on the Casner Canyon trail. They only went one way.”

      “Got it,” David said.

      He left me to go speak with one of the technicians. They knelt amid a plethora of red and blue evidence markers and studied the dirt near the outline of the body. The tech rose and pointed up at Schnebly Hill. His arms made a wide pie shape. David nodded and came back to me.

      “Looks like one shooter.” David pointed. “Splatter says the shots came from up there.”

      It was in keeping with what I’d already figured out by lining up the trajectory over the top of the yin-yang rock I’d seen in the dog’s vision, but as the dog hadn’t been able to pinpoint where the gunshots had come from, it left a lot of territory for us to cover.

      The half-mile-wide face of Schnebly Hill towered above us, dense with vegetation. A craggy black layer of basalt topped the mountain; a few huge boulders dotted the steep slope, any one of them might offer a clear line of sight to the campsite. I tried to calculate the general distance.

      “One hundred and seventy yards; two-ten if he stayed at the top,” David said, as if reading my mind. “What’s his longest shot?”

      “Two-ten.” I answered from memory.

      “Well, let’s get up there and see what we can find.”

      We climbed off the butte. In our absence, more agents had arrived. Delaney was making a production of his role as commander with his small personal army. His authority was undermined by the pink dirt stains on his knees and rump. When he was done with his people, he hovered over us.

      The map was still on the hood of David’s Hummer, the edges held down with four stones. We listened while Herb and David plotted out a search grid.

      An FBI agent came over and waited for Delaney’s attention. She was a slender redhead with alabaster skin. The laminated ID tag announced her as Agent Givens. When there was a break in the conversation, she said, “We’re on line, sir.”

      Agent Givens gave black walkie-talkies to each of us. She saved David’s for last, handing his over with flushed cheeks and a dazzling smile. David’s Nordic-God presence had that effect on women.

      We were joined by Colin Hunt, a Sedona PD officer, and his K9 partner, a German shepherd named Max. Max carried himself with the dignity befitting an officer, and he wore his bulletproof vest, bequeathed to him from Doggie Lama’s, with pride.

      A police dog has to stay emotionless while on duty. They won’t be certified if they feel the need to acknowledge anyone but their handler when they’re working, so Max and Sundara greeted one another with the barest flash of eye contact. Colin and I nodded to each other in the same manner. The four of us had brought out our fair share of stranded or lost hikers.

      “Colin,” Herb said, “you and Max take a team and search up the road to the lookout point then over from there. David, Abra, which way do you want to go up?”

      “Munds trail,” I said. “It’ll be faster.” It would be faster, but that’s not why I chose it.

      Herb made eye contact with each of us to make sure there were no questions. “Okay. Go to it.”

      Colin and Max headed up the road the way I’d come in. David and I headed down the road toward the Merry Go Round formation.Delaney started arguing with Herb again.

      The Munds Wagon Trail is easy to miss if you’re not paying

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