Dance of the Bones

S.D.: Let’s talk about her, then—­that alleged girlfriend. Did Ke

C.H.: No. We never talked about previous relationships. By mutual agreement those were off-­limits. But once he was gone and once I suspected another woman might have been involved, I started putting things together and wondering if maybe she was someone he’d knocked up and she’d come to him looking for child support.

S.D.: Did Ke

C.H.: It never came up and I didn’t ask him. Since I didn’t have kids, I assumed he didn’t, either. By the time I was ready to ask those questions, it was too late. He was gone.

S.D.: How long did it take for you to figure out that he wasn’t coming back?

C.H.: For sure by the middle of June. After that, I spent months drinking and got picked up for being drunk and disorderly. The judge ordered me into mandatory treatment. Once I got sober, I realized that since I couldn’t count on anyone else to save my sorry ass, I’d have to do the job myself. If my life was going to have any kind of happy ending, finding it was up to me.

Someone from AA helped me get into a shelter run by the YWCA. The ­people there helped me find a job and start taking classes. First I got my GED and then I enrolled in college. I have my own studio apartment now, and I’m halfway through my junior year.

S.D.: What are you studying?

C.H.: I’m majoring in religious studies. After I graduate, I want to earn a degree in divinity. It’s one thing for ­people in the suburbs to come swa

S.D.: Some ­people might think you were operating with a guilty conscience.

C.H.: Those ­people would be wrong.

S.D.: When Mr. Myers said he was leaving, he led you to believe that he was expecting to make a score of some kind? That he’d be coming back with enough money for the two of you to move out of the homeless camp?

C.H.: That’s right.

S.D.: Is it possible that he was involved in some kind of illegal activity?

C.H.: You mean like drug smuggling or something? No, Ke

S.D.: Let me ask you this, Ms. Horn: Did you kill Mr. Myers?

C.H.: No, absolutely not! I swear. Like I said before, I didn’t even know he was dead until just a little while ago when you told me. I always believed that he had taken off with another woman.

S.D.: Miss Horn, would you be willing to take a polygraph test?

C.H.: You mean a lie detector test? Of course. I’d do it in a heartbeat.

The interview ended there. And that’s when I realized I’d already seen a copy of the results from Calliope Horn’s polygraph test. It had been right there in the evidence box. The results indicated that Calliope Horn had known nothing about Ke

With those thoughts in mind, I went on to the other interviews. Calliope Horn’s wasn’t the only one that had been transcribed into what more or less passed for English. Between the time Myers disappeared and the time his remains were found, the encampment had been disbanded and most of the ­people who had lived there had moved on to wherever homeless ­people go when they have to go somewhere else. Only a few of the former residents had ever been identified, to say nothing of located.

Interviews with the few individuals who had been found, especially ones conducted by Kramer working alone, were easier for me to read than the ones with Sue’s name on them, but they shed little light on the matter beyond the fact that they all agreed Ke

Carl Jacobson, the person who had supposedly witnessed Ken Myers talking to the “ex-­girlfriend” and who might have been able to give a description of her, was one of the MIAs. As a consequence, the closest individual to an eyewitness was never interviewed.

Turning off my iPad, I could see why the case had gone cold: No murder weapon. No witnesses. No time of death. No actual crime scene. It wasn’t until years later that Mel Soames, using dental records, had linked the Myers homicide up to an Arizona missing persons report on someone named Ke

There was no explanation of why he had left Arizona, moved to Seattle, and changed his name. Yes, Ken Mangum had done time in jail on a DUI charge—­presumably the same one that had cost him his driver’s license. That meant that his fingerprints were probably on file somewhere, too, but he’d never been arrested again or linked to any other crimes, and the skeletal remains found at the crime scene hadn’t included fingerprints.

Mangum/Myers had died in Seattle. That meant solving the homicide was still Seattle’s responsibility. Once the cops there reached out to Arizona law enforcement in an attempt to notify the next of kin, cops in Arizona weren’t required to do anything more. In other words, the unsolved case was now cold twice over in two separate jurisdictions. With that in mind and given Seattle PD’s lack of enthusiasm for solving bum-­bashing cases, I didn’t hold out much hope that it would ever be solved. Not by me, not by Seattle PD, and certainly not by Ralph Ames’s cold case group, TLC.

CHAPTER 21

THE WHITE-­WINGED DOVES—­THE O-­OKOKOI—­CIRCLED AROUND until they found Evil Giantess guarding the sick girl who was holding Little White Feather in her hand. The doves knew that there was nothing they could do right then, so they went to a cave on Baboquivari to hold a council and decide what to do.

None of the O-­okokoi could come up with a plan, but Turtle overheard them talking. He said that the way to help Little White Feather was very simple. Evil Giantess watched Shining Falls all day, but Ho’ok O’oks herself had to sleep at night. Turtle said that the doves must find one of the white-­feathered ­people who was awake at night. Then Turtle suggested that since Owl—­Chukud—­was sleeping in the cave, the doves should ask him for help.

Since it was the middle of the day, it was hard for the doves to wake Owl. They had to shout at him and pull his feathers, but eventually he opened his eyes and said, “Whoo, Whoo.”

Then the doves told Owl that one of the White Feathers was in trouble and he must help. After Owl heard the story, he agreed that he would go to Evil Giantess and try to steal away the girl who was holding Little White Feather.

You see, nawoj, my friend, that Owl, too, had many white feathers. If Ho’ok O’oks had used any of the Black Feather tribe or the Blue Feather tribe when she put Shining Falls to sleep, Owl would not be able to awaken her.

DURING HIS THREE-­PLUS DECADES IN the Arizona State Prison, John Lassiter had seen any number of wardens come and go. The weak-­kneed ones tended to go sooner than later. Most had been honorable men who did the job to the best of their abilities. Some had been downright corrupt.

The current one, Warden Edward Huffman, was right at the top of Lassiter’s warden scorecard sheet. He was tough but fair in the way he handed out rewards and punishments. He had demoted or removed guards who were found to be dealing drugs, goodies, or bribes on the side and had done his best to motivate the ones that remained. He had instituted policies that made it easier for impaired prisoners to exist inside the system. He had found ways to stretch the food budget so things that actually resembled real food and vegetables ended up on the dining room serving trays. At his direction, the evening meal, served at the early hour of four P.M. on Saturday afternoon, was usually pot roast—­pot roast with gravy that actually tasted like gravy rather than brown-­colored flour.