“It’s small,” Adam commented.

“Yeah. Pretty much a one-woman enterprise. Cynthia was the curator and sole employee. Most of her time was donated. A few years ago—when the economy was better and we had more visitors—she had part-time help, but for the last few years it’s just been her.”

“And it’s way out in the middle of nowhere.”

Rob made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “That’s right, city boy.”

Adam glanced at him. “Correct me if I’m wrong. Isn’t Portland the largest city in Oregon?”

“Why yes, it is. I’m flattered you remember that I’m from Portland.”

“I remember.” He held Rob’s gaze for an instant.

A yellow crime scene banner and rope stretched across the road. Parked by the side of the road, a state trooper was pouring himself coffee from a thermos when they pulled alongside.

The trooper and Rob spoke briefly, and then he unhooked the rope, and Rob drove through and parked in the small parking area reserved for visitors.

They got out and crossed the empty lot, boots crunching the thin crust of snow.

“Was it snowing Thursday night?” Adam asked.

“Raining. We didn’t get any usable tracks from the lot or the road.”

“Maybe he didn’t drive up.” Though it would be a long way from anywhere to walk.

The wooden steps creaked forlornly as they walked up to the porch. Rob pointed out one of the tall windows along the side of the structure. The window was covered by a tarp.

“That’s where he got in. Nothing fancy. He just smashed the window. Cynthia must have heard the glass breaking. The Josephs live over there.” Rob indicated a small single-story white house on the far side of the clearing. “Out here sound carries at night.”

Adam studied the house. It was not immediately visible from the road. “You said in October there was an attempt at a break-in?”

Rob nodded, opening the door and holding it for Adam. “Though it doesn’t prove this was the same guy.”

“You’ll want to put together a list of everyone who ever worked in the museum,” Adam said.

“Why didn’t we think of that?” Because of the high ceiling Rob’s sarcasm seemed magnified, echoing emptily as they walked past the reception desk with its tidy display of maps and NPS brochures. Adam’s nostrils twitched at the scent of raw wood, old leather, and crime scene chemicals.

“This way,” Rob said, and they turned left, passing a tall display case containing a full-size mannequin wearing ceremonial dress and a fierce and elaborate black and orange bear mask. The mannequin held aloft a painted staff which he seemed to point at the viewer. Glass case or not, the masked figure was pretty intimidating. The eyes behind the mask glittered with lifelike alertness.

“Imagine seeing that out of the corner of your eye all day long,” Rob commented.

“Maybe she considered him a coworker.” Adam stared up at the cathedral ceiling with its steeply sloping open beams. “I’m not seeing surveillance cameras.”

Rob said, “That’s because there aren’t any.”

For God’s sake. In this day and age?

Rob stopped in front of a dugout canoe propped on pedestals a few feet above the glossy floor. Behind the canoe was the broken window, now secured with tarp and heavy duty tape.

Adam stepped forward to examine the shattered, scattered glass on the floor behind the canoe, careful not to disturb any of the plastic crime scene markers.

“He’d have to know he was in full view of Joseph’s front window. If this was the same intruder, he’d certainly realize there was a chance she might see him breaking in.”

“Maybe he thought he was invisible. Or maybe he didn’t give a shit if he was seen or not.”

Adam nodded absently. Maybe there had been a plan. Maybe that plan had been to get Joseph over here on her own. “Why wouldn’t she call for help? Why did she storm over here on her own?”

He was thinking aloud, but Rob answered. “She wasn’t afraid.”

He turned and Rob was right behind him. Not really enough room for two grown men in this small confined space. They looked uncomfortably into each other’s eyes. Rob backed up and Adam squeezed past the canoe. He was conscious of the warmth of Rob’s body. He remembered how it had felt to lie in Rob’s arms.

It took him a second to remember what they had been talking about. He said, “She should have been. This was a bold and aggressive intruder. Why wasn’t she afraid?”

“She thought she could handle the situation.”

“Did she? Because that’s the question. Is the X factor here Joseph’s character or the character of her killer?”

Rob raised his eyebrows. “Maybe both. Maybe she thought she knew who the intruder was.”

Adam’s gaze zeroed on Rob’s. He nodded. “Maybe she did. Yes. Where did he leave the body?”

“The other side of the museum.” Rob turned away, and Adam followed him past a display of baskets and woven bowls and bottles, and then a wall of maps and black and white photos of early Twentieth Century Oregon.

The rain was coming down hard now. He could hear it drumming against the sloped roof. The light through the windows cast an eerie blue tinge over the rooms and their contents. It felt much later in the day than it actually was. An artificial twilight.

Rob paused, pointing out a few dots of red brown on the knotty paneling. “We think she came around this corner, and he hit her using one of the stones from that display.”

The display dealt with diet and food preparation. The Modocs had been hunter-gatherers subsisting on everything from grizzly bears and pelicans to rye grass and yellow pond lilies. There were fishing spears, bows and iron-tipped arrows, boiling stones and grinding stones.

“He picked up a stone instead of an arrow or a spear,” Adam said. “It’s possible he didn’t initially intend to kill her.”

“Or, on the spur of the moment, a rock seemed less complicated.”

Adam murmured acknowledgement. Rob was right. The unsub’s election of weapon could have been based on something as simple as the grinding stone being closest to hand.

Rob said, “He knocked her out. Stunned her at the least. You can see by the smeared blood that he dragged her over here.” He skirted the gruesome stains on the wood floor and led the way past a couple of glass cases to the far end of the building.

This final exhibit was a beautifully conceived diorama. The raised flooring was covered with dirt and grass. The painted backdrop depicted trees, lake, and wickiups in the far distance. In the center of the diorama was a funeral pyre of real wood piled several feet high. Very lifelike.

The most unrealistic element were the plastic crime scene markers surrounding the pyre. Now there was irony for you.

Rob said, “I’ve been reading up on this. The Modoc washed their dead, wrapped them in tule mats, and carried them headfirst out of their homes. The body was taken to the cremation grounds and laid on a funeral pyre with the head pointing to the west. That’s supposed to be where the entrance to their underworld was.”

West. The direction of the setting sun. That made sense.

“Was Joseph’s body arranged so that her head was pointing west?”

“Yeah. He undressed her, but wasn’t able to wrap her in the tule mat, so he just draped it over her. She was lying with her head to the west.”

Had it been a real attempt to adhere to ritual, or just a sick joke? Impossible to know. The staging of the body suggested someone familiar with Modoc death ceremony and/or the museum. Given that this was a very small museum in a very small town, it was possible that everyone in Nearby had visited the museum at some time or the other.

Watching him, Rob said, “So is this the part where you close your eyes and a grainy flashback of how the crime was committed comes to you?”

Adam smiled faintly. “Complete with Theremin soundtrack and slashing sound effects? No.”