Strange lights are spotted over the high desert of northern New Mexico. Unmarked helicopters fly to and from Archuleta Mesa on the Apache Reservation. A ranch foreman is found dead. And, after nearly a decade, livestock are being killed and mutilated, again.
Deputy Cliff Lansing is running for his first term as sheriff. In the midst of his campaign, the one-time rancher has to deal with divorce, the loss of a friend, and the gaggle of UFO enthusiasts who have descended on San Phillipe County.
Lansing joins forces with Ned Koteen, the newly appointed Apache Reservation Police Chief, to investigate government cover-ups, conspiracies, and murder. While Koteen struggles with tribal secrets, Lansing has to fight his own family's demons.
In a rugged land steeped in the blood of history, a killer has come back for revenge. New blood on an ancient ground ...
In an air-conditioned university office, a man lies dead, brutally bludgeoned. A hundred miles away, in the high, arid New Mexico mountain country that Sheriff Cliff Lansing is sworn to protect, an animal is devastating ranchers' livestock, and is now turning to human prey ...
For Lansing, the two cases are linked. The murder victim was part of an archaeological dig, and a local Indian believes that the animal killings have been unleashed by the excavations. Struggling to put together the jagged pieces of a puzzle, Lansing unearths a mystery of a missing emerald carving, a hundred-year-old diary, and a man accused of a crime he did not commit.
To stop the bloodshed, Lansing must throw out everything he has ever believed about police work, evidence, and reason. Because between an archaeologist's ambitions and the secrets still hidden in the land, Lansing must follow his own trail of myth, legend, and intuition-to find a very real killer stalking the night.
A serial killer. An Apache legend. A time of murder and magic on ancient ground ...
The owl moves on heavy wings,his eyes piercingly bright,his cry loud and haunting.The owl is the last thing they see before the sharpknife flashes ...
Sheriff Cliff Lansing is a single father, a part-time rancher, and an overworked lawman suddenly faced with a serial killing spree. A madman is moving through San Phillipe County on New Mexico's Continental Divide, leaving an owl feather by each of his ritually mutilated victims.
While Lansing first suspects that Apache tribal politics lie behind the killings, he cannot ignore a troubled boy who claims to see the murders in his sleep, and then leads Lansing to the bodies. Suddenly, the sheriff is plunged into a bizarre world of Native American legend and magic. And in a hauntingly beautiful land, Lansing must walk a dangerous path between hard evidence and fleeting visions-to cleanse a blood rage from the earth.
Coyote made Mother Earth angry. Coyote made the deer dance. Now Coyote has returned, trailing violence and death.
From a New Mexico arroyo, a bullet-ridden body has been mysteriously dragged to a highway. In a small town, a lawman is swamped by complaints of coyote attacks. On Navajo land, a young man faces the truth about who he is, where he comes from, and where he must go.
Investigating the murder of a Navajo leader, Sheriff Cliff Lansing comes up against an official whitewash that has branded the victim a drug dealer. But Lansing's deputy, Gabe Hanna, has already made a connection between the dead man and a multimillion-dollar timber deal on Navajo land. Suddenly, a land torn between ancient spirits and high-stakes power struggles is burning with violence. And as men die, the Trickster, Coyote, runs through the land-demanding justice and revenge.
A thousand years ago a people's blood was shed on this parched earth. Now the dying has begun again.
High on a desert ridge, The Watcher awaits ...
The body in the arroyo belonged to a man who'd made his living plundering ancient Indian sites. And the only witness to the crime would not change his story: a demon had killed his friend.
Sheriff Cliff Lansing has an unexplained death on his hands, and it's only the beginning. In Las Palmas, New Mexico, a U.S. senator is on his way to meet a Zuni shaman who is holding up a land swap involving 150,000 acres in New Mexico and Arizona. Backed by a powerful businessman, the senator intends to push the deal through. But in a long, dark night on the high desert, he is led into a storm of violence and shame.
Now Sheriff Lansing is headed out to the Anasazi Strip, where the truth awaits him-in the swirling dust of magic, greed, and murder.
