Epilogue

Silas Clinch did turn himself in to the sheriff's department the next day. With his statement, and the information Cecelia and I had gathered, the official investigation was able to quickly round up the others who'd been involved in the cross burning. Whether they'll suffer even a fraction of the fear and distress that their actions caused is a question – our legal system, which is a legal system rather than a system which seeks to achieve justice, doesn't hold much with reparations, nor with the rights and sufferings of the victims. And how do you repay an entire extended family for all the terror and sorrow that burning a cross on the lawn causes? Prison time doesn't repay the victims. Money might be some help, but it doesn't cover everything.

I don't have all the answers. I've got my own ideas, but if I had all the answers I'd be God, and I'm nowhere close.

The nightmares that had sent us to Leanna in the first place – the terrors tormenting Cecelia after the serial murder investigation back in the fall of 2010 and early spring of 2011 – were gone. She wasn't waking up sweating every night, and she wasn't waking up screaming. But I was finding it hard to sleep – I was having nightmares, and there were nights when I'd toss and turn and give up, and sit in the living room till dawn.

So after we'd been back in Albuquerque for a couple of weeks, Cecelia sent me to visit my family in Washington. I hardly knew any of them – even my brother Memphis is in some ways a guy I'm still getting to know, since we grew up separately and don't see each other much. And I've got uncles and cousins and aunts and nieces and nephews up there on the Lahtkwa Indian Reservation, as much extended family, probably, as Cecelia has in Alabama, although the Lahtkwa reckon kinship differently than whites or blacks do in some ways.

I'm not a forest-and-streams guy. I'm a desert rat, and if all things were equal I'd pick up and move to our place in Lanfair Valley. But I found that I enjoyed the rez. It was humid, but not as stiflingly hot as Alabama is in the summer, for it's further north, pretty close to Canada. Memphis showed me around the rez, lakes and creeks and hills and mountains that were important in our history. He introduced me to people who were blood relatives but I'd never met, or knew only slightly. He tried to teach me the rudiments of the language, but I guess I'm just not a linguist – I speak fluent English, patchy Spanish, and a few words and phrases of Lahtkwa and Scots. Memphis' efforts didn't do any good.

And I was able to teach him a bit. The Lahtkwa have always been hunters as well as farmers and horse raisers, but I learned to hunt – to track and sneak and wait patiently – in the Mojave Desert, where there's so much less cover that I couldn't help but become an expert at it. I showed Memphis some things about cover, and about tracking, that even he hadn't known, and he's lived on the rez almost his whole life and is one of the elders, and a leader among the traditionals.

I spent a couple of months there – the longest time I'd ever spent away from my family. While I was gone Cecelia sent in her PI license application, and got the license back. I chuckled when she told me that during a phone call, but I had a plan.

When I got back to Albuquerque, I was also free of nightmares, and I was sleeping again. And on my first full day back in the office, I called Cecelia into my office and handed her a manila envelope. She raised her eyebrows at me, and when I didn't say anything opened the envelope and pulled out the papers there. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes.

"You didn't need to do this," she said.

"Maybe I didn't have to, but I surely did want to. Unless you really don't want it, go ahead and sign on the dotted line."

"I had never thought of this, and it seems a gift too high for me. Nevertheless, I am grateful, and I shall not offer disrespect to the love which thought of it." She took out her pen and signed the papers, then put them back in the envelope and handed it back to me. "I shall let you handle the rest of the necessities."

"Not a problem," I said, and then extended my hand over the desk. "Welcome to the firm – partner."