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lived here were—like the stilled breeze—holding their collective breaths. Aside from the slow drumming of his heart, not a sound. Nothing moved. Moon melted into the undergrowth, became one with his unseen companions. Indeed, the petrified man seemed caught in a single frame of time—every leaf of aspen or fern, every blade of grass, a still life painted on glass.
    But something did not quite fit the picture. Which was why he noticed it. The thing near the toe of his boot might have been a red pebble. Or a crimson-tinted mushroom. It was neither. Charlie Moon picked it up. What he held in this palm was a large, plump strawberry. Now how’d this get here? The answer, when it came, was obvious. Astrid Spencer not only ate strawberries in bed…the careless lady carried her favorite snacks on walks into the woods. Which would explain how bears had picked up the scent, followed it back to her bedroom, and—He looked up the mountainside. Again, the distinct sense that something was up there. A man-killing bear?
    By instinct, the Ute’s right hand found the handle of his holstered revolver. The ghost of gun smoke returned to haunt his nostrils. And again, that absurd certainty that every cartridge was spent.

    Atop a crumbling granite crag, cloaked by the morning’s misty gray shroud, lurked a hairy, foul-smelling creature. Blood representing a variety of species was caked on its swarthy, unwashed skin. A pair of hard, unblinking eyes looked down upon the Ute. What went through its mind is beyond knowing, and does not invite speculation. But the mouth, after a manner of speaking, said something—so softly that the Indian’s sharp ear did not hear: “Hhhnnngh.”
    A brooding, bestial threat? Perhaps.
    Or was it something quite different—an expression of affection…of endearment ?

Five
The Public Servant
    When District Attorney Bill “Pug” Bullett got the 9:00 A.M. telephone call from Beatrice, he immediately acquiesced to her semipolite “request” for a meeting. The subjects for discussion, she told him, were:
    (A) The violent death of her sister.
    (B) What was being done about it.
    The DA said that he would invite the chief of police, the medical examiner, and—of course—the deceased woman’s husband.
    Beatrice advised him not to trouble Andrew Turner. He was in seclusion. Accepting no invitations, taking no calls.
    (The grieving widower was, at that very moment, relaxing with a favorite book—B. P. Lathi’s Linear Systems and Signals, chapter 7, “Continuous-Time Signal Analysis: The Fourier Transform.” A real page-turner. What is that old saying? Right. To each his own .)
    Pug advised the lady that though he was busy with several pending cases, he had an opening in the middle of next week. Actually, “middle” was as far as he got.
    “Today,” Beatrice informed him. Curtly. At precisely 11:10 A.M. Although she did not bother to explain it to this doltish graduate of a second-rate law school, after she enjoyed her midmorning honeyed tea and imported bisquitos, this schedule would allow her sufficient time for a leisurely drive into town, where she would pick up Cassie at her three-story nine-gabled Victorian mansion, which was, by general consensus, a major architectural blight on the corner of Copper and Second.
    “Ah,” the bullied DA muttered, shuffling some papers on his desk. “I think I can fit that in. I’ll call Scott Parris and Walter Simpson and see if they can break away from whatever—” There was a sharp click in his ear.
    Beatrice and Cassandra Spencer arrived at nine minutes and forty-five seconds past eleven, were courteously greeted by the district attorney’s smiling receptionist, who said, “Good morning, ladies. I believe he is ready to see you, so you may go right—”
    They swept imperiously past the hapless gatekeeper, charged into the inner sanctum. What they saw was the district attorney getting up from behind his desk. Pug was flanked on either side