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away. “I’m going to find Stevie. I’ll be right back.”
    A few minutes later, Father Ted returned to the common room. He approached Cork, a look of anguish on his youthful face. “There’s someone in my office who wants to see you.”
    “Who is it?” Cork said.
    “The sheriff.”
    “What’s up, Ted?”
    “I think you’d better talk to the sheriff.”
    Cork turned to Annie. “Tell your mom I’m upstairs.”
    He followed the priest to his office. Inside, Sheriff Marsha Dross was waiting, standing at a window, looking out at the sunny May morning. She turned when she heard them enter.
    “Mind, Father?” she said.
    “No, I’ll be happy to wait outside.”
    “And would you close the door?”
    When they were alone, Cork said, “What’s going on, Marsha?”
    “Alexander and Rayette Kingbird were killed last night.”
    “Oh, Jesus.”
    “Lucinda Kingbird found their bodies this morning.”
    “How’d it happen?”
    “Before I answer that, I need to ask you a few questions, Cork.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “What was the nature of your relationship with Kingbird?”
    “Until last night I had no relationship with him to speak of.”
    “What changed last night?”
    “He asked me to come and see him. I went to his place and we talked.”
    “What time?”
    “I got there about eight thirty, left maybe twenty minutes later.”
    “He was alive when you left?”
    “Of course he was alive. Haven’t you got a time of death yet?”
    She lifted her hand to hold back his questions. “In a minute. What did you talk about?”
    “He wanted me to arrange a meeting with Buck Reinhardt.”
    “Why?”
    “To keep things from getting out of hand. Kingbird told me Buck and some of his men threatened one of the Red Boyz.”
    “Did you arrange a meeting?”
    “I couldn’t find Buck.”
    “Where’d you look?”
    “His house first, then four or five bars. I gave up a little before eleven and went home.”
    Dross was thirty-five, not a pretty woman exactly—big bones, broad face, hair kept short. She was wearing jeans and a blue flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled back. She pulled a paper evidence sack from the breast pocket of her shirt and handed it to Cork. He opened it and saw that it held one of the business cards he gave out for the work he sometimes did as a private investigator. There was dried blood on the card. He closed the sack and handed it back.
    “We found this on Kingbird,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you.” Her eyes were brown and, at the moment, edged with a look that might have been anger. “It was an execution, Cork. Their hands were taped. They were shot in the back, close range, a shotgun. Preliminary estimate of time of death is between eleven P.M. and one A.M. Ed and his team are working the scene. BCA’s on the way. Would you mind going out there with me? Something I’d like you to take a look at.”
    “Sure. Just let me tell Jo.”
    Father Ted was outside, staring down the hallway toward the open door to the sanctuary, where sunlight through the stained-glass windows fell on the pews in colorful, broken pieces.
    “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. He was not quite thirty, had been the priest at St. Agnes for a little over two years, and was full of a naive and vibrant energy that Cork sometimes found exhausting.
    Cork put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “You know any prayers for peace, Ted, now’s the time to haul ’em out.”

SIX
    Y ou could have had a deputy do this,” Cork said as they drove south along Iron Lake in the sheriff’s cruiser.
    “I wanted to talk to you myself,” Dross said. “Ever since Kristi Reinhardt died, I’ve been worried something like this would happen.”
    “Still no luck locating Lonnie Thunder?”
    “The people who could help live on the rez—and you know how much they like white folks in uniforms.”
    “A lot of them wouldn’t mind one bit if you arrested Thunder.”
    “No one’s come forward to