“I’ll need access to everything.Crime scene reports, forensic results, witness interviews, the full case file.Not summaries—originals.”
“Done.”
“And I work my own leads.I’m not going to sit in this conference room and review paperwork while your team does the fieldwork.”
Marshall almost smiled.“I wouldn’t have called you if I wanted someone who sat in conference rooms.Agent Attcity will be your primary liaison—he knows the art community and speaks the language, literally.Soto handles forensics and data.I coordinate and keep Washington off our backs.You do what you do.”
“Then I’m in.”
Marshall extended her hand.Kari shook it.The grip was firm and brief, the handshake of someone who didn’t use physical contact to perform sincerity.
“Attcity, get Detective Blackhorse copies of everything.I want her fully briefed by end of day.”Marshall was already moving toward the door, pulling her phone from her pocket.“We’ve got a briefing with the Albuquerque SAC at noon that I need to prep for.Blackhorse—welcome aboard.”
She left.The room felt larger without her in it.
Attcity pushed a stack of folders across the table toward Kari.“These are the case files.Hard copies—Marshall’s old school about that.Digital versions are on the shared drive, which I’ll get you access to.”He paused.“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here.I’ve been telling Marshall for a month that we need someone who understands what we’re looking at.The staging isn’t just forensic evidence.It’s cultural.And we’ve been reading it like evidence.”
“What’s your nation?”Kari asked.
“Navajo.Crownpoint.”
“You knew Redhouse’s work?”
Something moved across Attcity’s face—not grief exactly, but the shadow of it.“My grandmother has a print of Ceremonial Dancer in her living room.Had it since before I was born.”He gathered the remains of his burrito and stood.“I’ll get you set up in the workroom down the hall.There’s coffee, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Kari picked up the stack of folders and followed him out.The top folder was labeled REDHOUSE, LEONARD—HOMICIDE in block letters, and it was thick enough to need both hands.
Somewhere in New Mexico, Raymond Honanie was running out of time.And somewhere in these files was the thread that would lead to whoever had turned two artists into replicas of their own work.
Kari intended to find it before the killer finished his collection.
CHAPTER THREE
Ben had been staring at the same incident report for twenty minutes without reading a word of it.
The report was routine—a fender-bender at the intersection of Routes 12 and 264, property damage only, no injuries, both parties cooperative.A report he could file in his sleep, and normally did.But today the words kept sliding off the surface of his attention like water off rock, because his mind was three hundred miles south, in a motel room outside Albuquerque where Kari was waiting for a phone call that should have come by now.
He’d talked to her last night.She’d told him about the FBI consultant job, the missing artists, the staged bodies.He’d told her to take it, and he’d meant it.But after they hung up he’d sat on Ruth’s porch in the dark for a long time, listening to the wind move through the scrub brush, thinking about the distance between them and how much of it was measured in miles and how much in something else.
Two weeks of watching over Ruth.Two weeks of sleeping in the spare room of a house on the western edge of the reservation that belonged to a friend of Ruth’s—a woman named Helen who spent winters in Phoenix and had left the keys without asking questions.Ruth had accepted the arrangement with the same quiet practicality she brought to everything.She’d moved in with a small bag of clothes and her loom and had not once asked Kari when she could go home.
Ben set down the report and rubbed his eyes.The station was quiet for a Thursday morning.Two patrol officers were out on calls, another was in the break room.Captain Yazzie’s office door was closed, which usually meant he was on the phone with Window Rock, navigating whatever political current was running that week.
Ben's desk was in the bullpen, a cluttered rectangle of laminate and metal that held his computer, a stack of case files, a framed photo of his parents that he kept meaning to update with something newer, and a coffee mug with a chipped rim that he'd been drinking from for six years.His service weapon—a Glock 22—was in his holster.
His old backup—a Glock 19, the one issued to him when he'd first joined the department and later replaced by the 22—had been sitting in the evidence room for over a year, turned in when the department decommissioned it.Standard procedure.Old service weapons got stored until they were scheduled for destruction.Ben hadn't thought about it in months.
Until two days ago, when the evidence custodian had flagged a discrepancy during the post-upgrade inventory.The station's security system had been replaced last month—new card readers, new cameras, new electronic logs.During the transition, there'd been a seventy-two-hour window where the old system was offline and the new one wasn't yet active.When the custodian ran his first full reconciliation under the new system, the Glock 19 wasn't where it was supposed to be.He'd told Ben about it almost as an afterthought—thought you'd want to know, probably just got misfiled during the shuffle, I'll track it down—and Ben had nodded and gone back to his paperwork.
Now, sitting at his desk with a report he couldn't read and a feeling he couldn't name, he wished he'd pushed harder on that missing weapon.
The front door of the station opened.Ben glanced up out of habit and went still.
Four men in suits came through the entrance in a formation that wasn’t casual.Two in front, two behind, moving with the coordinated purpose of people who’d done this before and rehearsed who would stand where.The lead man was holding a folded document.All four had FBI credentials visible on their belts.
Ben recognized the type before he recognized the intent.Federal agents executing a warrant moved differently than federal agents paying a visit.The spacing was wider.The hands were lower.
The lead agent was someone Ben had never seen—white, early forties, cropped hair, a jaw that looked like it had been set in concrete.He walked directly to Ben’s desk without stopping at the reception window, without asking for directions, without acknowledging anyone else in the room.
