The sixth gripping mystery featuring part–Hopi computer hacker Laura Winslow. When a reclusive Navajo and his female companion turn up dead––an apparent murder/suicide––Laura and her lover, policeman Nathan Brittles, take on the case. But things aren't always as they seem, and this time, with a mythical demon thrown into the mix, Laura may be in over her head.

A computer hacker and registered P.I., Laura Winslow has seen death before, but it never looked quite like the apparent murder–suicide of a reclusive Navajo and his female companion. A refugee from a violent world, she has become ensnared in an investigation she should steer clear of, joining her lover, policeman Nathan Brittles, in an attempt to make sense of a bloody puzzle where the pieces don't fit. Because the signposts on the twisted path to the truth warn of the impossible––a demon, a skinwalker on the prowl––as Laura Winslow follows a trail leading to the darkest corners of a gambling palace, chasing a phantom she cannot believe in...until it's her turn to die.

At sunrise the breeze shivered between the mesquite and palo verde trees, gusting in puffs and snorts strong enough to shake my lantana bushes. From the southsouthwest, the top edge of another monsoon working up from Mexico. It was the middle of an unusually fierce August monsoon season, so much rain driving north into Tucson that at times the foothills shimmered with green, trees, bushes, even grasses once dead but revived by the water.

I'd wanted a long run in Sabino Canyon that morning, at least fifteen miles up and down the roads for a serious muscle-burner workout, but when the breeze became a wind with twenty-mile-an-hour spurts, I stayed close to home, running a quiet loop through the Randolph Park section of Tucson around the two golf courses and along the wide sidewalks. Skateboarders wove between and around joggers, runners, and women pushing baby carriages, roller-bladers swooping in and out with their own internal rhythms or whatever popped on their CD player headsets. Nobody really working up a sweat, the breeze cooled us off.

Dust devils rising on the baseball field and dirt playground.

Nearing home, the vibrator of my cell whanged against my right hip. Close enough to slow down and read the LCD panel, caller ID showed me it was Nathan.

"You free later this afternoon?"

"Free for what?" Playful.

"I need you," he said.

"What did you have in mind?" Both playful and needy, wanting to see him. Instead of spending last night at his place up in Casa Grande, I stayed home because my daughter Spider said we'd catch a movie, but her boyfriend's lowrider snarled into our driveway before dinner. A black-pearl '78 Caddy convertible, rigged with all conceivable hydraulics, huge subwoofer audio system, chromed spinner hubcaps, whatever there was to buy, Carlos had it. Spider vaulted the closed passenger door into the leather seat, waved at me while Carlos backed into the street, she five months pregnant and not bothering with the seatbelt.

"It's work. Can't explain now, are you free?"

"I have a Reiki session, lunch with Spider, a doctor's appointment." I didn't tell him about what kind of doctor. "Maybe, I guess. Later. Why?"

"You're a registered PI," Nathan said. "Also certified to do photographic forensics at crime scenes. Meet me down south, past Green Valley."

"This a fresh scene?" I've done both murder scene and autopsy photographs, but hated fresh scenes, hated the blood and body parts.

"No." He gave me directions.

"How old?"

"Week ago. It's been closed as a murder-suicide.

Shotgun. Look, I just don't have time to tell you much."

"Why are we going there?"

"Two old friends," he said. "You'll be there at four?"

That was a question I'd ask myself many times in the next week. Well, not quite that question. Will I always be there for you? That question, the answer so far a big yes, but. I'll tell you about that later.

Two dead friends? I wanted to ask. One murder the other, turned the gun on himself? Herself? "Four o'-clock," I said instead. "Yes, of course I'll be there."

He'd already disconnected.

"Alex," I said. My seventeen-year-old partner, computer hacker Alex Emerine. "Stand by this afternoon, okay?"

"What's up?" she said.

"Stress call from Nathan, I have no idea what, but stay at your keyboard, just in case. What are you working on?"

"The ATM scams. Six-figure pledge to a nonprofit, funds no go."

"Is this a new client?"

"Tohono Chul park. Some guy pledged two hundred and fifty large, gave them a cashier's draft, guy committed suicide, draft no good."

"Work that as priority," I said. "That's a good place. Good people. I'll call you later if I need you."

Nathan Brittles is my...

David Cole is also the author of four previous books in this series. In 1994, he co-founded NativeWeb (www.nativeweb.org), an Internet corporation for Native Americans and indigenous peoples of the world. A long-time political activist, he is currently writing a sociological study of hate crimes and community healing, based on the 1998 murder of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas. He lives in Syracuse, New York, with cultural anthropologist Deborah Pellow, a professor at Syracuse University. He also has a place in the desert near Tucson, Arizona, where he spends eight to ten weeks a year writing and researching.