On the table, Betty lay with her eyes open. The left one was half shaded by her eyelid, the other dilated to almost pure black. Her throat had been savagely cut from ear to ear. Her left breast had been completely removed, and her vaginal area was wrecked. John stepped forward and placed his hand on her hair. It had been tinted with tiny streaks of blonde dye. He shook his head.
“Please don’t touch her until—”
“Until what? Until you examine her, Doctor?” John turned and faced the much smaller coroner. His own nine-millimeter handgun was temptingly heavy at his right hip.
The sheriff looked at the gun and the man wearing it. John was dressed in Levis and a plain blue chambray work shirt under a denim jacket. His features, although darker than the sheriff’s own, were light in comparison to some of the other Indians that frequented the town, but he looked most definitely like most white men would expect a modern day warrior to look.
“Why are you armed, John? You’re not on the Rez; you’re in my bailiwick now.”
Instead of answering the sheriff, Lonetree walked to the other side of the table and looked down at Betty.
“She used to walk up to my pa’s porch. We could see she had been crying. Her face was puffy and swollen…she was only nine, and had learned even at that age to cover up her mother’s beatings. My father and mother would feed her, clean her up and wait until morning to send her back.” He looked up at the sheriff. “Betty’s ma would be sobering up by then, and would be more regretful. On the Rez secrets are kept pretty well.”
“John, why are you here?”
“I had a dream the other night.”
“Do your dream-walking on the Rez, John. Not here.”
“The dream was of falling stars, a meteor shower. Then a smiling girl came into the dream. It was the young Betty, coming over to my ma’s house after a beating. The stars in my dream circled her, colliding as she smiled at me. Then the stars stopped, and all but one fell. That lone, single star stayed floating around her heart, and then it too finally vanished, and as I looked up in my dream, Betty wasn’t smiling anymore.”
“And?” the coroner asked.
John shook his head and smiled briefly. “Then…nothing. I woke up. Didn’t think a thing about it until this evening. I received a call from Randy Yellowgrass’ mother, telling me about Betty and of her son’s arrest.”
“All right, John. Now that you’ve entertained us, the doc has an examination to conduct. I’m sure this young woman’s mother would like her daughter’s body back.”
“Betty’s mother died of cirrhosis of the liver five years ago.”
“John, damn it—”
“Tell me, Doctor what you make of this.” He pointed to a small red line, a mere impression to the right of center on Betty’s chest, not far from the breast that had been removed. It was shaped like a tilted, backward L.
The coroner leaned in close, and then lowered the large light and magnifying glass.
“Seems like a compression wound.”
“That’s what I see, Doctor. Obviously postmortem, wouldn’t you agree?”
The coroner nodded. “Yes, there was no blood pumping through her system when this was made.”
“And the vaginal wounds, I see the same. Post mortem. Oh, there was blood, but not as much as should be present in a wound such as this.”
The coroner examined the vaginal area and then looked up. “I concur, Chief, but—”
“Don’t call me that,” John said. He walked to the head of the examination table.
“I meant no—”
“It’s an Indian thing, they don’t like the word Chief,” the sheriff explained.
“Now, the removal of the breast was obviously done while she was still alive. The wound would have eventually been fatal if she hadn’t had her throat cut, correct?”
This time the coroner didn’t have to look at the body. With the amount of blood that had been expelled through the chest wound, the large Indian was obviously correct. He nodded his agreement.
John swallowed and then raised his right hand and gently touched the cold flesh at the side of the young woman’s face. Then he slowly pulled her lips apart. The girl’s front teeth were broken all the way to the gum. John looked from the table to the coroner, waiting.
“Well, from first impressions, I would say the killer held her mouth closed while he tortured her. Maybe even struck her with a fist.”
“Close, Doctor. But, notice the bruising around the mouth, the redness, the breaking of small capillaries in the lips and the lower cheek area, all the way up to the orbital bones of the face?”
“Yes, I see that now. Not a blow to the mouth, but a constant pressure, yes. Her mouth was being kept closed with some considerable force.”
“Not only that, but with enough force not just to loosen her teeth, but to snap them off. Quite a feat for little Randy Yellowgrass, all one hundred and forty-five pounds of him.”
“There could be any number of expl—” the sheriff started to say, but John cut him off.
“Yes, any number of explanations for it, I’m sure,” John patted Betty’s face lightly, closing her destroyed mouth. “Sheriff, it’s not the wound itself, but the size of the impressions left on the skin. Randy would have had to use both of his hands to cover that much area with that much force. Not only that, but he would have to have fingers of steel. Mere pressure would not have been enough to sheer those teeth off like that. The hand that did this was not only a larger one, but one that wore at least one ring, possibly two. Metal needs very little help to cause damage to teeth. I suspect if you check Betty’s throat, you’ll find a few of the broken teeth, chipped by metal.”
The coroner nodded his head, conceding that John was possibly right.
“So?” the sheriff asked.
“Randy Yellowgrass wears no jewelry, except for a small cross around his neck. But you know that, because you took his personal effects when he was booked.”
“Jesus Christ,” the sheriff mumbled.
“You agree with this so far?” he asked the coroner, who merely nodded once.
The sheriff’s radio crackled to life. “Sheriff, this is Jennings. We just had a message dropped off at the station from the reservation. I was told to deliver a telegram to John Lonetree over at the coroner’s office. Is he there with you?”
Sheriff Kimble reached for the microphone clipped to his brown jacket, but stopped when John raised his eyebrows and then held his hand up.
“Your deputy, Jennings, he was the one who discovered the body?”
The sheriff’s silence was answer enough for John.
“Ask the deputy to bring the message to me here.”
After the sheriff relayed the order, the answer came.
“It’ll only be a minute, Sheriff; I’m right outside the county building.”
John picked up his cowboy hat and put it on.
“What now?” Kimble asked.
“We wait.”
Five minutes later, a knock came at the door. The sheriff opened it and took the small yellow piece of paper from the young deputy and invited him inside. Spotting the exposed body on the table, the deputy quickly turned away. He started to leave, but John stepped forward and closed the door, effectively blocking it with his large frame. The sheriff looked up from the message, then at the closed door, and then at John. He handed the telegram to Lonetree.
“From New York, of all places,” he said. Lonetree pocketed the paper, ignoring it and the sheriff. Instead he looked at the deputy.
“Hard thing to look at, isn’t it?” he said to the young man, who removed his hat and then turned and looked at John, carefully keeping his gaze away from the examination table.