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they’d been drawn together mostly because they were both outcasts. Carolyn had become a pariah because she was a Navajo working with the dead, and Ella was a woman in male-dominated law enforcement. It didn’t help either that Ella had spentyears off the rez in the FBI, and lost the trust of many she once knew.
    Over the past year or so they’d become good friends, though they still usually saw each other mostly in the course of police business.
    As her call sign came over the air, she picked up the mike. It was Justine.
    “I’m on my way to Farmington now. What’s your ‘twenty’?” Justine asked, using the code for a location.
    “I’m onmy way to the morgue. Whatcha need?”
    “We’ve been trying to notify the Yellowhair family. But with the state legislature not in session, the senator’s not keeping office hours, and his wife’s not home. Their neighbor suggested we talk to your mom.”
    “I don’t get it. How come?”
    “The senator and his wife are members of the church where your father used to preach, though he doesn’t attend regularly.”

    Ella felt a cold hand squeezing her heart. More connections leading everywhere, yet nowhere. “I’ll swing by my mother’s home and see if she has any ideas before I meet the M.E. Anything new on the evidence processed from the crime scene?”
    “Not yet. But by the time you come in, we may have something. And I’ll go over that bat the minute I get it back to the lab.”
    “Good. Once the news is out aboutthe accident, I’m going to be on the hot seat because of my report. If I have an open murder case on my hands at the same time, we’re all going to be sweating, from the chief on down. Keep working.”
    “Ten-four.”
    Ella gazed at Ship Rock—standing like a distant sentinel about a dozen miles southwest of the town named after it—thinking about her father. He had been dead eighteen months, and hiskillers had been caught and punished, but the memory of his loss still filled her with intense grief. Such a brutal, senseless death.
    It was even worse for her mother. Ella could still hear her pacing the house at night, as if searching for the companion she’d known for a lifetime. Her heart twisted inside. So much pain, and so many dead because of beliefs as old as the Dineh themselves.
    Butright now Ella’s focus had to be on the cases before her. She thought of Bitah, and then Angelina Yellowhair. Both those deaths had been just as senseless as her father’s, in their own ways, and the questions about them needed to be answered.
    Ella drove up the bumpy dirt track that led to her mother’s home where Ella had lived ever since her return to the reservation. Her mother and she wereboth alone, both widowed, and living together had given each of them much needed companionship.
    She parked near the side of the house and saw her mother, Rose, out back by the clothesline, hanging out laundry. Dog Two, or “Two” for short, lay nearby. Dog, her mother’s old companion, had finally died of old age six months ago. Dog Two, another mutt, had wandered onto their porch one cold Novemberevening, and had been around ever since.
    Hearing the car, Rose turned her head and waved. Finishing with the laundry, she went to meet her daughter, Two at her side. “Is something wrong? You’re home early.”
    “There was a car accident,” Ella answered. “I was hoping you could tell me where to find Senator Yellowhair, or his wife.”
    “Their daughter?” Rose spoke in scarcely a whisper, avoiding thename.
    Ella nodded. “She’s dead. Just ran off the road.”
    Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Was she drinking or something? Her aunt said she has been pretty wild nowadays.”
    “We’re looking into that now, but we need to contact her parents. One of the neighbors suggested that you might be able to give us an idea of where to find them.”
    “Why? I used to see the senator’s wife when she went to your father’schurch, but I don’t go there anymore. Since