Bullock and Price were tall, tanned, strong young men, polished. They wore ties and dark Brooks Brothers suits.
“What's the FBI interest?” asked Lucas, knowing the FBI didn't investigate murder unless requested by local authorities to do so. All the same, Price read them the standard line.
“We're here at the request of local law enforcement. Same as you. Maybe you'd like to tell us more about why you're here?”
Meredyth launched into a full explanation, detailing their involvement, concentrating mostly on the murder of Judge Mootry, but laying out the trail of other deaths. “That's what took us to Oregon,” she finished.
“Oregon?” Bullock and Price looked at one another. “You can't seriously be denying the connection,” Meredyth blurted.
“We haven't heard anything about Oregon,” replied Price in a cool and controlled voice.
Lucas shook his head. “Every man for himself, huh? There was talk there of FBI on the way when we left a kill scene very similar to this one.”
“Damn, really?” Bullock for the first time looked shaken.
Price and Bullock conferred in a comer about this development.
Lucas said to Meredyth, “These two are full of it.”
“Whataya mean?”
“They're lying. They're putting on an act for us.”
“You really think so?”
“Body language gives 'em away. They knew about Oregon; that's why they're here.”
Price returned to them alone. “We'll happily share what we know if you're willing to pool your knowledge. We need to know everything, just how far you've gotten to date.”
“Hell, that sounds rather lopsided,” replied Lucas. “I mean, you guys don't even have anything on Oregon.”
Price's face hardened and Bullock came forward, hearing what Lucas had said. “Forget it, Price. We don't need these amateurs.”
“Yeah, forget it, Price,” agreed Stonecoat.
“You're a damned Indian, aren't you, Stonecoat? You don't particularly like the FBI, do you?”
“Not much to like about a tail-wagging-the-dog agency that tramples on human rights and breaks up Indian families, no. You are, after all, part of the history of the extermination of Indian rights and lives.”
Meredyth was trying to snatch him away, but he stood up to the FBI men.
“We'll keep our own counsel then, and you keep yours, Mr. Stonecoat.”
“Okay, if that's how you want to play this thing out. Fine with us.”
“Lucas!” Meredyth hardly agreed.
“If we wanted to, we could bar you from these premises,” countered an angry Bullock, who was easily Lucas's size and obviously in much better condition. “I'd say we're being fair, Detective. Now make your sweep. Come on, Stu. We've seen enough.”
When the FBI men disappeared through the door, Meredyth hit him.
“Ouch! What's that for?”
“Your stubbornness.”
“They had nothing we could use.”
“You don't know that.”
“They're at least as perplexed as we are as to motive and understanding of these brutal attacks. “How do you know that?”
“I just know.”
“What is it, some kind of mystical thing? You can look into their souls because they don't know how to hide their souls from your gaze? Give me some reason to trust you on this, Lucas.”
“I know what I know, and those two were just in the way.
Now, if you don't mind, there's a lot of work to do here.” Lucas stepped away, going for the ghastly torsos on the wall, examining each more closely. Wearing latex gloves, he studied the metal shafts that pinned the bodies to the wall. On either side of the metal shafts, the weight of the torsos was pulling them down, enlarging the entry wounds.
The sheriff wanted very much to take the bodies down and wrap them in body bags for the coroner, who had come and gone, and be done with this day's work. Meredyth could hardly blame him. He had been the force here that had kept the crime scene intact to this point, and he wasn't winning any prizes for his decision to do so.
But Lucas wanted to take some measurements. He created a hooked line to fit through the holes in the window where the arrows had penetrated. The string was then attached to the ends of each arrow still protruding from the decaying white torsos. Each arrow had hit its mark, directly through the heart. A side window had been smashed and a dirt trail led from there to the phone and to the torsos.
Walter Hindman, the local sheriff, walking them through, said, “The alarm was set off at exactly 10:49 P.M. the night before the bodies were discovered. But the alarm company got a call from the doctor's wife at 10:53 to say it was triggered accidentally, so nobody came out here.”
“It was a woman's voice on the phone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who discovered the bodies?”
'Tourists… day after the alarm call.”
'Tourists?” asked Meredyth, swinging around, confronted by the awful torsos.
“Well, actually, it was one tourist at first, one tourist with a pair of expensive binoculars. There's a favored picture stop and scenic viewing area right over there, if you look just beyond that stand of juniper trees. Anyway, this fella from New York, eighty-one years old he was-traveling by bus coach-he'd decided to use his binoculars this way, to take in the house. When he sees what he sees, he tells the tour guide, a fellow I know who comes through all the time. Anyway, Tony contacts me, tells me this bizarre story, and, of course, I don't believe him for one moment, because Tony's forever pulling my leg. But he pleaded so much, I told him I'd come out and have a look, let him have his fun, you see.”
“But it didn't. work out that way,” finished Stonecoat.
“You got that right, son.”
Lucas again studied the two shiny, steel-alloyed shafts.
They were of the same make as those found in Oregon.
“Don't touch nothing,” suggested the sheriff.
“Rule number one of criminal detection,” countered Lucas.
“And rule number two?” asked the sheriff. “Don't touch nothing.”
This made the sheriff laugh for the first and only time during their meeting.
Lucas saw that Meredyth was turning pale as she stared at the filthy work of the crazed killers, one now possibly a female.
“You okay, Dr. Sanger?” he asked.
She swallowed as if unable to get air. “Fi-fine.”
“Return those sheets to the bodies and get 'em to the coroner,” suggested Lucas.
“Yeah, well, FBI's done finished, too, so you're right.”
“How long has the FBI been here?”
“Very interested in the case. They came straightaway when I called, yes, sir.”
“When did they arrive?”
“Yesterday. Seems they were in Wyoming on some other matter. Said their Pierre office buzzed them to make the stop.”
Lucas mentally chewed on this information before saying, “Nothing more we can do here. We've got the angle at which the arrows entered. We trace that back, we might find the spot where the assassins were standing when they fired.” This meant outdoors and air. Meredyth was pleased, and she was the first to go through the door, but the stench of death had already permeated her nostrils and clung to her hair, and not even the cleansing South Dakota winds, so clear and sweet, could eliminate the odors now clinging to them both.
“Don't you find it curious that the FBI has become so interested in our cases?” he asked her.
“Well, the sensational nature of the killings… might attract any law enforcement agency.”
“I wonder.”
“You wonder what?”
“I wonder what they know?”
“Probably about as much as we do, like you said. Why? Are you having second thoughts now about pooling our resources and information with Bullock and Price?”
He grunted and began his search for the position from which the arrows began their journey, once again figuring on more than one assassin.
She followed, anxious to get away from the house. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the sheriff's men and paramedics working to remove the arrow shafts and placing the headless, handless, footless torsos into body bags.