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      “Yeah.” He angled. “Welcome to Arizona.” His teeth rattled as they bounced over a cattle guard.

      Pilar swerved south onto what amounted to little more than a washed-out arroyo. The hard-packed trail jolted the occupants of the SUV. Emily grabbed hold of the dashboard to steady herself as the car lurched forward. The rest of his team—Charles Yao, Sidd Patel, and Darlene White—muttered imprecations in a varied mixture of their mother tongues—Mandarin, Hindi, and Texan.

      Typical Pilar. She never slackened her speed over the rough places, just charged ahead. Alex set his jaw and accelerated, determined not to allow her to lose him.

      He pulled in alongside Pilar’s vehicle behind a clump of junipers at the mouth of a box canyon. He and the team exited the SUV.

      Impassive and remote as the jagged mountains surrounding them, Pilar leaned against the clicking, cooling engine of the tribal car. She pursed and jutted her lips, Apache-style, toward the blue tarp-covered grave in the distance. “Have at it, Torres.”

      His jaw tightened. Time to assert his jurisdiction and exert control over this crime scene. Over Pilar? Fat chance of that.

      Since the day they met as children, to the best of his knowledge, no one had ever managed to rein in Pilar from doing exactly what Pilar wanted to do. Not her brother, Byron. Certainly not Alex.

      “I’m going to do an initial walk-through first.” He motioned toward the shade of a cottonwood. “Let’s establish a command post over there, Em.”

      He felt rather than saw Pilar stiffen. In for a peso, might as well go in for a pound as Abuela would say. “Walk with me, To-Clanny.”

      Pilar clenched and unclenched her hand.

      She wanted to smack him. Even after all these years, he could still feel the sting of her hand across his cheek. Best to keep things professional.

      For now.

      She stalked alongside him, struggling to match his long strides.

      He assessed the canyon surrounding the crude grave. Desolate. Forsaken.

      Alex repressed a shudder. Squatting, he peered beneath the tarp someone had rigged to keep out the elements until his team arrived on site.

      “You’ll find out who did this to her?”

      He rested his hands on his thighs. “How do you know the vic is female?”

      “It’s usually a her, isn’t it?”

      He lowered his eyes to the grave. “How long since the body was unearthed?”

      At his deliberate tone, she uncoiled a notch. “Late afternoon yesterday. Dr. Chestuan didn’t realize the remains were fresh”—she searched for a more palatable word—“from a more recent homicide until he uncovered a cell phone tossed in the grave underneath the shoveled dirt.”

      Her mouth twisted. “Thrown in and thrown away like somebody’s old garbage.”

      “Where’s the cell now?”

      “He and I left everything we found as is for your agents to bag and tag. But it’d been crushed. A job for the geek squad to decipher.” She brushed her hands against her pants. “I’ll get out of your way and let you do your job.”

      “Don’t leave.” His tone came out harsher than he’d intended.

      “I-I won’t.” A frown creased her forehead. “I’m the tribe’s liaison until the tribal detective returns from a case in Peridot.”

      “Lucky you.”

      Her look speared Alex. “Yeah. Lucky me.”

      Over the next few hours, the early morning sunshine topped the ridge and blazed high in the turquoise sky. As team leader, he directed the exhumation and designated crime scene responsibilities. Photographer. Evidence Recovery. Evidence Recorder.

      Surveying the scene, he prepared a narrative description of the crime scene and instructed others on the crew to cordon off the perimeter. He set Charles to sweeping the immediate area—just in case—with ground-penetrating radar. Sidd sketched and photologged the canyon.

      With painstaking precision, Emily dug out one body part at a time, freeing the cadaver from the confines of the grave. Shifting the soil to a ground cloth and sifting the particles through a wire screen, she documented her findings in a running commentary on her digital recorder.

      As more of the victim surfaced, Darlene took photographs to document the body in situ. Using her pick and shovel, Emily found the outer edges of the body. Only scraps of denim encircled the victim’s legs. The remnant of a tattered blouse covered the torso.

      Finally at her signal, Alex, Charles, and Sidd hunched over the pit and helped Emily remove the body to an adjacent body bag. With the corpse flipped onto its spine, Emily did a cursory check of the remains.

      “Hypodontia.”

      “English, Em.”

      “Missing teeth.” Emily feathered sand off the jawbone with her brush. “Shoveled enamel on the incisors. Ridge on the edge of the teeth. Native American ancestry probably. But physiology in a melting pot nation can be deceptive and unreliable.”

      “Makes sense.” Alex glanced around. “Considering where we are. But for the record, they prefer American Indian. Better yet, their own tribal affiliation.”

      Strawberry-blonde Darlene looked at him sharply. “What makes you such an expert?”

      Alex nudged his chin in the direction of the evidence tent. “Her.”

      Her elbows clamped to her side, Pilar lingered out of the way, yet close enough to answer the team’s questions. Although Pilar had never been a traditional Apache with their deep-seated aversion to the dead, she didn’t get any closer than necessary. Probably not taking any chances.

      Emily gestured to the long forearm bone. “Growth caps fusing to the end of the ulna.”

      Alex growled at his Midwestern forensic specialist.

      Her lips curved. “Means she’s young. Late teens?” She pointed the end of her pick at the exposed white bones of the pelvis. “Large sciatic notch. Definitely female.”

      No scraps of fabric there.

      “Sexually assaulted?”

      “Like the others. Probably her, too.” Emily’s mouth thinned. “When I get to the lab, I can determine more fully.”

      “Cause of death?”

      She sighed. “There’s a slash that cut to the bone. I’m guessing her throat was cut from ear to ear. And from the marks, a knife blade. Long. Serrated. Like a hunting knife.”

      He caught her eye. “Did you find the mark on her? His calling card?”

      With the tip of her gloved finger, Emily brushed aside a portion of the mauve blouse. СКАЧАТЬ