Chapter 1

Sergeant Detective Robert Maxwell of the Pennsylvania State Police arrived at the crime scene, on a Tuesday morning about 9:30 a.m., to find two patrol cars from the Wharton Sheriff’s Office and a tan Jeep Wagoneer. Part of the parking area around the house was taped off with bright yellow “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS” tape.

Maxwell knew the Jeep well, as well as he knew the two Sherriff’s Deputies: Sgt. Beauregard Robinson - a large black man of middle years, former Military Police until he took a gunshot in the shoulder, and Deputy Dave Arnholt, a young man who was romantically involved with the Sherriff’s daughter. Robinson was standing at the open door next to Arnholt. The house -- a single story affair with solar panels and a windmill, set jutting up from the roof, in a clearing amid the evergreen forest -- was located on a graveled road called Elk Lick Run Road, south east of Wharton. Next to the deputy was a wolf, taking a nap in the early morning sun of what was shaping up to be a nice late-March spring day. The wolf lifted her head, looked at Maxwell, and put her head back down on the porch.

“Not that I believe in his voodoo,” Maxwell said to the two men from the sheriff’s office, “but what’s he found?”

“Seth hasn’t been here long, just went in,” said Beauregard Robinson.

“Of course,” Maxwell said. “Why preserve the crime scene for forensics, when we can turn an Indian voodoo-tracker loose.”

“Your forensics guys here already, are they?” Robinson said without turning from watching Seth Lightfoot, knowing that the State Police forensics team was still miles away.

“Two men,” said Lightfoot speaking loudly from inside the house. “Tall one knifed the guy in the front room, the short one took the girl in the bedroom. Coulda been a man and a woman, I guess, but that’s unlikely from what they did to the woman.” He touched the neck of the man on the couch, his throat cut from ear to ear. “I’d say the male victim was dead about ten hours back ... so make it about 11 last night.” Lightfoot walked into the bedroom, careful where he was putting his booted feet. After about five minutes he came back out to the living room. “Unfortunately, the girl got the worst of it ... they finished with her about 3, mebbe 4, in the morning. Had a real party with her. She’s slit open from crotch to breastbone. They’re nasty fuckers. So ... they have a four or five hour head start ... The only other person in here was Deputy Arnholt and now me.”

Lightfoot got up and walked to the door without walking on the direct path from the couch where the body was.

“Mind telling me how you deduced all that?” Maxwell asked.

Seth cast an eye back toward a corner where there was a small crack in the wall where a mouse had scurried out of sight. “Have your forensics men look at the scuffs on the floor without trampling on them too much. Knee indentation on the couch too. Musta been a heavy guy, ‘cause the couch spring is broke,” he answered with a quick smile.

“Wanna have a look at the tire prints?” Robinson asked, pointing.

“Well it’s a dually pickup as you can see, and you guys came in from the north, so ... I’d look south. But who knows? I can’t do your whole job,” he laughed. Seth called the wolf and the two of them piled into the Jeep.

Ellie sniffed the air and began sneezing. There was something unnatural in the air. Seth looked at her, and she looked at him.

“Oh,” he said to the policemen. “It’s a diesel.”

Maxwell muttered under his breath to the other cops, “Fuckin’ voodoo.”

Seth Lightfoot was a 4^th level Waabanow of the Anishinaabeg. The Anishinaabeg were a tribe of the Nipissing group of the Algonquin Nation. Or maybe the Algonquin are of the First Nation of the Nipissing, having descended from that group along with the Odawa and Ojibwe people. The Nipissing lived in the Lake Nipissing area of Central Ontario – generally. In ancient times, the Nipissing influence extended far to the east, west, and south; nothing extended far to the north because that was too much cold and snow. Over the 10,000 years between then and now, the First Nation of the Nipissing slowly became the Odawa, the Ojibwe, and the Algonquin Nations.

This particular Waabanow now lived in a cabin off Old Cross Fork Road, north of Cross Fork, where it branched off from Route 144, just inside the Hammersley Wild Area of the Sussquehannok State Forest, which was located in the north central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Also living in the cabin were Meredith Lightfoot – formerly Meredith Cooper -- Seth’s wife of five years and Steven Lightfoot, a child of four, who Seth insisted on calling Strongbow. The ‘cabin’ was a three bedroom log structure that was perennially under construction. Seth was 32 years old, Meredith was 26; he was 6 foot tall, she was 5’ 9”; he was dark with a typical AmerInd complexion with a long pony tail, she was blonde and blue eyed; he had an outdoorsman’s musculature, she was big breasted, narrow waisted, and long legged.

She was a writer of mystery novels, under the name of Mary Alice Kingsley, and sometime lecturer at Syracuse University. She wrote about murders, usually in the wilderness and usually set in the old west. That’s how she met Seth Lightfoot – every writer does some form of research. He was ... politely you could say he was underemployed. He tended to his responsibilities within the tribe. He acted as an unconventional vet for the people and animals in the area. He rebuilt and re-rebuilt his cabin. But he didn’t really get paid for anything. And yet he lived comfortably – well, Meredith’s salary paid for the Internet service, and the electricity – but he provided for nearly everything else. The various police departments did pay him for the little chores he performed for them.

Also living in the nearby portion of the Hammersley Wild Area were a pack of twelve wolves, including four pups, nineteen great horned owls, a couple of hundred deer of various types, lots of chipmunks, squirrels, beavers, possums, and so on – and several types of hawks: three red-tailed hawks, a mated pair of Cooper’s hawks just setting up housekeeping, four falcons, and currently a single northern goshawk, who said he was just passing through to his normal winter hunting grounds near the Chesapeake Bay – although he didn’t describe it by name – it could have been Delaware Bay from his description.

You read that correctly. The goshawk ‘said’ that he was just passing through. He ‘told’ Seth, when the Waabanow saw him in the forest. Waabanow means Shaman, as it is now known in the white man’s language. The word ‘shaman’ doesn’t really describe what a Waabanow is to the people of his tribe. And a 4^th level Waabanow could, among other things, converse with all sorts of animals. ‘Conversation’ does not correctly describe it: he can hear what they meant, and could send his thoughts to the animals. Usually he could see images that they had seen. He was one of three Waabanow in the Anishinaabeg: two second level Waabanow, who lived in the Canadian portion of the area, and Seth Lightfoot.

Seth clicked on the radio in his Jeep; his wife answered shortly.

Meredith: “Hi, baby. Wassup?”

Seth: “This one looks nasty. Couple of guys raped a woman, killed her and the man she was with. Probably a husband. No robbery that I could see, but I didn’t look real hard.”

M: “You gonna get involved? Gonna be a long time?”

S: “Don’t know yet. I wasn’t asked and it’s not really my business.”

Sometimes Seth appointed himself to a case if it was ‘his business, ‘ which meant it was either tribal or personal – and sometimes it was a paying gig.

M: “Okay. Let me know, whatever you decide.”

S: “I’ve got a bad feeling ‘bout this. Keep safe.”

She looked at the shotgun on a rack over the couch in the living room, and then at the pair of wolves curled up in front of the fireplace. Strongbow, her son, was playing with the tail of the female wolf: Kola. Her mate, Tars, was resting his chin on her midsection while she dozed, and gave an occasional glance at Meredith’s son.

M: “We’ll be fine. I’ve got company, since you hi-tailed it out of here this morning ... I’m making beef stew if you can find your way back home.”

S: “Ug! Big Chief maybe come home to wigwam for stew made by pretty squaw.” He liked to use a movie-Indian voice for playing with his wife.

M: “Okay, Big Chief. Keep it in your pants. See ya soon.” She laughed.

S: “Big Chief’s big chief always in pants. Later, blondie!”

They both clicked off the radio connection at about the same time. Seth’s scanner came alive soon thereafter, as he was headed down the highway toward home. Home wasn’t far, as the crow flies: only about seven miles. But it would take him nearly 40 minutes to get there using ‘the white man’s roads.’ Seth laughed to himself.