worlds, respected by the Anglo community but maintaining that elusive reservation credibility.
Luke had never figured out how to walk that line.
During his summers on the rez, kids with light hair and blue eyes had taunted
Luke decided not to share his suspicions about tribal police or to mention his own deputy’s shady dealings. Either way, he’d seem disloyal.
“The medical examiner called me yesterday when he couldn’t reach you,” Mike continued.
“What did he say?”
“Tests indicate the presence of more than one blood type on the samples taken from the victim’s body.”
“Human blood?”
“Yes.”
Luke’s mind swam with possibilities. Perhaps Yesenia had been assaulted in the hours or moments before the attack. Transfer of evidence was common in violent crimes. When one person hit another, he often picked up a little blood and left a little behind.
“DNA won’t be back for weeks, but the doctor was able to determine blood type and the sex of the donor.”
“Male?”
Mike shook his head. “Female.”
Luke sank to a seat behind the desk in his office. “Hell.”
Mike checked his appearance in the small mirror on the back of the door. From gleaming black ponytail to polished black boots, he was formidable. “The media won’t leave without a sound bite, but I think it would be best to keep the… unsavory details quiet. When we catch the proper lion, no one will be the wiser.”
Unless the animal struck again, Luke thought. “Have there been any incidences of a lion attacking multiple victims?”
Mike moved his gaze from the mirror, meeting Luke’s eyes. “Unfortunately, yes. A few years ago a mountain lion took down two people in the same twenty-four-hour period, killing one and seriously injuring the other.”
“Hell,” Luke repeated, rubbing a hand over his tired face. He really, really wished he’d slept last night.
As far as keeping the details quiet, it was Luke’s call. Failing to alert the press about a rogue lion might pose a threat to public safety. Then again, having a dozen gun-toting good ol’ boys roaming the woods might be worse.
“What do you want to tell them?” Luke asked.
“Just that we have a lion in custody and are processing the evidence.”
Luke threw open a desk drawer, searching for the uniform shirt he kept there and sorting through his mental list of suspects. None of them were female.
Jesse Ryan, the last known person to see Yesenia Montes alive, was a smoker with a motive for lighting the fire. And yet, Jesse didn’t strike Luke as the violent, vindictive type. Guys like him coasted through life, playing it cool, manipulating women, and taking the easy way out. Sneaking around didn’t gel with his bad-boy image.
Garrett Snell was sneaky, but he was smart. Driving out to Los Coyotes in broad daylight to burn down the place didn’t seem in character for him, either. Besides, he’d been in the office all day yesterday. Hadn’t he?
Clay Trujillo may have had the opportunity to start a fire, and if the movement of the body was tied up in reservation politics, he also had a motive, but he seemed genuinely fond of Shay. The arsonist wouldn’t have been concerned with additional casualties.
Fernando Martinez found the body, so that automatically put him under suspicion. Other than the unfortunate sequence of events leading to the dissolution of his marriage, Luke didn’t think there was anything odd about him, though.
He found his extra shirt in the back of the desk drawer, still in the package. It was a generic tan button-down with front pockets and no rank patches, but with his star pinned to the breast pocket, he’d look official enough from the waist up.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said, pulling his T-shirt over his head. He changed into the uniform shirt and tucked it in, his frustration increasing by the moment. His list of suspects was useless, he had no evidence that any crime had been committed, and the media was going to have a field day with this fatality.
If word got out about the lion mix-up, his career would be over.
Again.
“You’re going out there?” Mike asked, surprised. He knew the circumstances of Luke’s transfer.
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a death wish?”
“It’s not like I’m undercover here,” he said, running a hand over his jaw, wishing he’d taken the time to shave. “The press has already seen me. What do you expect me to do, hide?”
Mike studied him anew. “It’s your funeral,” he said finally.
Luke disagreed, but he didn’t bother to say so. His funeral had been in Vegas a few months ago. This place was more like hell.
After the press conference, Luke went with Mike Shepherd to the Graveyard and then revisited the burned-out area on Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. They didn’t find any more clues, but Mike was able to set up security cameras at both locations in hopes that the perpetrator (or the lion) would come back to admire his handiwork.
Shay called while they were gone, leaving a message in a husky, emotional voice that made Luke’s stomach clench and his pulse skyrocket. He’d been trying not to relive those stolen moments in the fertility cave, trying not to remember the feel of her body and the scent of her skin, to no avail.
After Mike left, Luke listened to the recording three more times, just to torture himself.
“My little brother told me he was at the Graveyard on Friday night with a couple of his friends. Chad Pinter and Travis Sanchez. I don’t think they know anything about Yesenia.” She paused, said, “This is Shay,” and hung up.
Something about her forlorn tone, and the way she assumed he wouldn’t recognize her voice, ripped him to shreds.
He wanted to throw the phone through the window. Instead he grabbed the receiver and called Garrett. “Tell me what you know about Dylan Phillips,” he ordered when his deputy answered the phone.
“He’s a punk.”
“Why?”
“He’s got a foul mouth and a bad attitude. I’ve arrested him a few times.”
“What for?”
“Being out after curfew and, uh, starting a fire in the Dumpster behind the post office.”
Interesting. No wonder Shay sounded upset. Luke looked down at the names on his list. “What about Chad Pinter and Travis Sanchez?”
“I don’t know Sanchez, but Pinter’s a troublemaker like Dylan Phillips. Drives a beat-up Chevy Nova like a bat out of hell.”
A Chevy Nova was a car, not a pickup. It couldn’t have made the marks he’d seen on Yesenia Montes’s body. “I need you to come in,” he decided. Luke had interviews to do, and bad help was better than none at all.
Garrett breathed heavily into the receiver, probably wanting to refuse. “I can be there in an hour,” he muttered.
Luke didn’t bother to thank him before he hung up. Frowning, he rifled through the papers on top of his desk, looking for the fax from the emergency room at Palomar Hospital. He’d requested the names of any patients from over the weekend on the off chance that whoever bled on Yesenia Montes had gone there for treatment.
Travis Sanchez was on the list.
Luke sighed, annoyed with the direction the investigation was taking. Every time he turned around it widened, and he had the feeling that the answers he was searching for were getting farther and farther away.
He took the autopsy pictures out of his top desk drawer and studied the dark, linear bruises, the dried blood, the marks on her neck. “Who moved you?” he murmured, brushing his fingertips over the surface of the photo.
Shay dropped by her house before heading out to Dark Canyon, deciding a meal and a hot shower were imperative. There was a message on her answering machine from Mike Shepherd, telling her not to worry about
