Death Song

here, Daddy?”

“I came to tell both of you and your mother that I have to work up in Santa Fe for a while. I’ll be staying there.”

“Will you be gone for a long time?” Wendell asked.

“I don’t think so. But I’ll be back in time for us to go turkey hunting together.”

Wendell smiled. For the past two years in the early spring, his father had taken him turkey hunting. They had yet to bag a bird, but from a distance they had seen some big toms through the breaks in the thick underbrush.

“If you promise to look after your sister and treat her with respect,” Clayton added.

“I promise,” Wendell said solemnly.

“Good.” Through the glass wall that looked out on the common area where the children congregated, Clayton saw Grace approaching her office. “Now both of you give me a minute alone with your mother.”

He got a hug from both children as they left the office.

Grace smiled at Hannah and Wendell as they scooted around her. “I thought you were on your way to Albuquerque and Santa Fe,” she said.

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Clayton replied.

Grace’s smile vanished. “Know what?”

“I think you put a bee in Paul Hewitt’s bonnet about me staying with Kerney while I’m in Santa Fe.”

Grace shook her head, walked behind her desk, and sat. “I did no such thing.”

“Then why would Hewitt tell me that he knows Kerney would do anything to help me and my family?”

“Kerney could have told him so,” Grace said. “If not, Sheriff Hewitt probably figured it out for himself when Kerney gave him a check for fifty thousand dollars to help us get back on our feet after our house was destroyed.”

“Hewitt told me that money came from a wealthy citizen who wanted to remain anonymous.”

Grace laughed harshly. “And you believed him?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’ve been deluding yourself,” Grace replied. “Kerney was that wealthy citizen.”

Clayton gave Grace a speculative look. His wife was not a woman who told lies. “You know this for a fact?” he asked.

“I do.”

“And the sheriff told you?”

Grace smiled sweetly. “He did, after I explained to him that as Apaches we would be sorely embarrassed and lose face if we could not acknowledge another person’s generosity.”

Clayton almost choked in disbelief. What Grace had told Paul Hewitt was an absolute fabrication. In fact, the reverse was usually the case. Among the Mescalero, when giving or receiving a kindness it was polite to avoid making a big to-do about it, which served only to cause embarrassment. Gifts offered had to be accepted without question or fanfare. At best, one might say one was grateful for another’s generosity, but only on the rarest of occasions.

“Why would you tell him such a thing?” he asked.

“Since we rarely share our customs with outsiders, how would he know otherwise?” Grace asked. “Besides, surely you suspected that Kerney gave that fifty thousand dollars to us. I think in your heart you’ve known all along where the money came from and just didn’t want to admit it to yourself.”

Although he knew his wife was right, Clayton shook his head vigorously. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“Because I had no desire to deal with your false pride.” Grace rose, approached Clayton, and looked up at him with serious eyes. “So tell me, in this matter, who has been the better Apache? Kerney, who in spite of your pride, found a way to help us as part of his family? Or you, who has rejected most of his attempted kindnesses as though he were the enemy?”

Grace’s words struck home. As a child, Clayton’s uncles had taught him the four laws of the Mescalero Apaches: honesty, generosity, pride, and bravery. But a man could not be proud, brave, or honest unless he was first and foremost generous.

From the time he’d turned down Kerney’s offer to help him rebuild his home, Clayton had felt ill at ease with his decision. Whether Kerney knew it or not, in the ways of the Apache people, Clayton had insulted him. To repeat such an offense would show Clayton to be a man who’d lost his dignity.

“I will stay with Kerney and his family while I’m in Santa Fe,” he said with great seriousness.

Grace giggled. “Don’t make it sound like you’ve been sentenced to a week in the county jail.”

Clayton laughed in spite of himself and gave Grace a hug. The sound of the school bus horn outside the building ended the conversation. Grace and Clayton walked their children to the entrance, watched them board the bus, and waved when it drove away.

“I’ll call you tonight,” Clayton said.

“See that you do.”

Grace raised her face for a kiss and Clayton brushed her lips with his.

“You can do better than that,” she said as she grabbed his arm and pressed closely against him.

He gave her the full treatment—lips, corners of her eyes, tip of her nose, nape of her neck, a nibble on her earlobe—and left her smiling at the door.

There was no doubt in Clayton’s mind that the nervous man sitting outside the New Mexico chief medical investigator’s office, thumbing through an open file folder was Major Don Mielke of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. He was thin and haggard-looking with long legs, a narrow frame, slightly rounded shoulders, and the rosy complexion of a man who drank too much.

Clayton stepped up to Mielke and introduced himself. Mielke nodded, gestured to an empty chair, and shook Clayton’s hand after he sat down.

“My chief deputy said you’d be here for the autopsies,” Mielke said.

Clayton caught the faint scent of a cough drop on Mielke’s breath. “When do we get started?” he asked.

Mielke looked at his watch. “The chief MI and his senior pathologist will be here in ten minutes. They’ll do the autopsies simultaneously, so I’m glad you showed up on time. I’ll cover Denise Riley, you take Tim Riley.”

Clayton nodded. “Did you know them well?”

Mielke shot Clayton a sharp look. “Yeah, you could say that, but let’s save your interrogation into my relationships with the deceased until after we finish up here.”

Clayton smiled apologetically. Mielke’s annoyance at his innocent-sounding question signaled that the fun and games had begun. “I only asked because I thought you might have an idea, a theory, or maybe even a half-baked guess about why they were killed.”

Mielke shook his head. “If I had one single, off-the-wall, scatterbrained notion about who did this or why, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, Istee.”

Clayton kept smiling. The major’s answer was a neat feint that gave absolutely nothing away. “That’s good to know.”

A lab assistant opened the swinging door and invited Clayton and Mielke to enter. Inside the autopsy room, a stark, brightly lit, spotlessly clean space, Tim and Denise Riley had been reunited for what might be the very last time, unless they were to be buried together. Their stiff bodies were stretched out on adjoining tables still clothed in the garments they’d worn dying.

All that had been human about them was gone. Under the harsh light Tim Riley’s mangled face looked even more gruesome, and although Clayton could see that Denise Riley had once been lovely to look at, her slashed throat spoiled the image.

He stepped up to the table for a closer inspection of the fatal wound. It was a straight, clean cut that severed the jugular and showed no evidence of hesitation. The incised cut had edges that were sharp and even, which made Clayton suspect that the killer had struck from behind his victim with one swift swipe of his knife. He wondered why there had been no mention of such a clean kill in the reports he’d received from the Santa Fe S.O.

The two pathologists who entered the room were suited up and ready to go to work. After introductions were