Black Hills

point.”
    “Damn it, Lil, what good is it going to do for you to look at photos of Tyler before and after they dragged him out of the river, after the fish had been at him? Or to read the details of an autopsy? What’s the point in having that in your head?”
    “Tyler was practice. I’m the main event,” she said, quoting the e-mail. “If you’re worried about my sensibilities, don’t. No, I’ve never seen pictures of a body. But have you seen a lion spring out of the bush and take down an antelope? Not human, but take my word, it’s not for the faint of heart. Stop protecting me, Coop.”
    “That’s never going to happen, but I’ll show you the files.”
    He unlocked a case, drew them out. “The photos won’t help you. The ME determined the time of death somewhere between fifteen and eighteen hundred.”
    Lil sat, opened the file, and stared at the stark black-and-white photograph of James Tyler. “I hope to God his wife didn’t see him like this.”
    “They’d have done what they could beforehand.”
    “Slitting his throat. That’s personal, isn’t it? From my vast police knowledge from CSI and so on.”
    “You have to get in close, make contact, get blood on your hands. A knife’s generally more intimate than a bullet. He took Tyler from behind, going left to right. The body had cuts and bruises incurred perimortem, most likely from stumbling and slipping. The knees, hands, elbows.”
    “You said he died between three and six. Daylight hours, or just going to dusk on the later side of that. To get from the trail Tyler was seen on to that point of the river has to take several hours. Probably more if we agree he’d have driven Tyler over the roughest ground, the least likely areas where he’d have found help or another hiker. Tyler had a day pack. If you’re running for your life, you’d shed weight, wouldn’t you?”
    “They didn’t find his pack.”
    “I bet Ethan did.”
    “Agreed.”
    “And when he maneuvers Tyler to the right position, he doesn’t shoot him. Not sporting. He comes in close for the personal kill.”
    She flipped through to the list of what the victim’s wife stated Tyler had on him when he’d started for the summit. “It’s a good haul,” she added. “Victory spoils. He won’t need the watch. He knows how to tell the time by the sky, by the feel of the air. Maybe he’ll keep it as a trophy, or pawn it later on, a few states away, when he wants more cash.”
    She looked over. “He took something, some things from every victim you think he’s responsible for, didn’t he?”
    “That’s the way it looks. Jewelry, cash, supplies, articles of clothing. He’s a scavenger. But not stupid enough to use any victim’s credit cards or IDs. None of the MPs have had any account activity on their credit cards since they disappeared.”
    “No paper trail. Plus maybe he considers credit cards a white man’s invention, a white man’s weakness. I wonder if his parents had any credit cards. I’d bet not.”
    “You’d bet right. You’re a smart one, Lil.”
    “We’re the smart girls,” she said absently. “But he buys a crossbow, not traditional Native American weaponry. He picks and chooses. He’s full of shit, basically. Sacred ground, but he defiles it by hunting an unarmed man. For sport. For practice. If he really has Sioux blood, he’s defiled that, too. He has no honor.”
    “The Sioux considered the Black Hills the sacred center of the world.”
    “ Axis mundi, ” Lil confirmed. “They considered—and still consider—the Black Hills the heart of all that is. Paha Sapa. Sacred ceremonies started in the spring. They’d follow the buffalo through the hills, forming a trail in the shape of a buffalo head. Sixty million acres of the hills were promised in treaty. But then they found gold. The treaty meant nothing, because the white man wanted the land, and the gold on it. The gold was worth more than honor, than the treaty, than the promise to respect what was sacred.”
    “But it’s still under dispute.”
    “Been boning up on your history?” she asked. “Yeah, the U.S. took the land in 1877, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and the Teton Sioux, the Lakota, never accepted that. Fast-forward a hundred years, and the Supreme Court ruled the Black Hills had been taken illegally, and ordered the government to pay the initial promised price plus interest. Over a hundred million, and they refused the settlement. They wanted the