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chief’s office walls.
    “These are reminders,” she’d replied.
    “About?”
    “Places we need to find when we’re together.”
    “For what purpose?” Kerney had asked.
    “Are you dense, Kerney? Look at that cottonwood tree. Look at that pasture. What would we most want to do in either setting?”
    “Just checking.”
    Kerney put the remembrance aside and flipped through the Montoya case file one more time. It was Deputy Sheriff Clayton Istee’s homicide investigation now. He’d heard through the cop-shop grapevine that Clayton had recently switched from the tribal police to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department. He called the sheriff’s dispatch number, left a message advising Clayton he’d be available to discuss the Montoya case first thing in the morning, locked up his office, and walked downstairs through the quiet, almost empty building to his unmarked unit.
     
    Clayton bypassed the office and started work interviewing ranchers and home owners he’d missed yesterday. By the fifth stop, the responses became predictable. The canvass had turned into a see-nothing, know-nothing Q-and-A exercise. Nobody knew diddly or had a shred of useful information.
    Once the formality of being questioned was out of the way, everybody tried to get some juicy gossip-talk going. He just smiled and shook his head in reply.
    He contacted Sergeant Quinones and Deputy Dillingham by radio, who reported similar dead-end results. Dispatch called to advise that the local crime-stoppers organization had put up a thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of Anna Marie’s killer. The news gave Clayton a touch of renewed enthusiasm.
    When asked if he’d ever noticed anyone suspicious hanging around the fruit stand, one old rancher took off his cowboy hat, scratched his head, gave a Clayton a sly smile, and allowed that sometime back he’d seen Paul Hewitt nailing an election sign on the building. With a straight face Clayton promised to question the sheriff. In response the rancher grinned and said he’d like to be there to see it.
    At the end of a ranch road a pickup truck outfitted with a rack of emergency roof lights and sporting a volunteer-firefighter license plate pulled off the pavement and stopped just as Clayton closed the gate behind his patrol unit. Shorty Dawson, the medical examiner, got out and hurried toward him.
    At no more than five feet four inches, it was clear how Dawson came by his nickname.
    “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Dawson said, squinting up at Clayton, who topped out at five ten.
    All the firefighters had radios equipped with the department’s police band frequency. “Did you try calling me?” Clayton asked.
    Dawson shook his head and shifted a wad of chewing tobacco from one cheek to the other. “I didn’t want to do that. Too many people listen to police scanners. You know that John Doe that got burned up in the fire?”
    “His name was Joseph Humphrey,” Clayton replied curtly, out of respect for the dead man’s ghost.
    “Whatever,” Dawson said. “You were right, the fire didn’t kill him. According to the pathologist in Albuquerque, he took a knife blade through the heart.”
    “Thanks for telling me,” Clayton said casually as he wrapped the chain around the gatepost.
    Dawson eyed Clayton, waiting for more of a reaction. After yesterday’s phone conversation with the deputy he half expected a smug response. “It sort of complicates matters for you, I guess,” he said, smiling apologetically.
    Clayton shrugged. “Not really. I’ve been treating it like a homicide all along.”
    Dawson drove off, thinking Deputy Istee needed to loosen up and be a little more friendly if he wanted to get along in Lincoln County.
     
    Paul Hewitt, who had been a police commander down the road in nearby Alamogordo for twenty years before coming home to run for sheriff, sat behind his desk and listened as Clayton Istee talked.
    In his late forties, Hewitt, who