Rijah StJovite

During the years 1968-1974 there was a string of brutal homicides in New Mexico’s 4 corners area.  During this period there were 18 killings and the residents, particularly the female residents,  were terrified.   State Troopers, County Sheriff’s Departments and other local law enforcement authorities banded together to make catching the killer top priority.  Then, as suddenly as they had started,  the killings abruptly stopped.

For one deputy, Justin Blackhorse, the crimes had become almost an obsession.  He had known the first victim casually.  He had known the second very well, he’d had an affair with her, a fact he knew would come out under investigation.  He had told his partner, Lee Harris, he thought he was getting close to knowing who the killer was.  Then he disappeared without a trace and the s**t hit the fan.

When his close involvement with the second victim became known, Blackhorse become the prime suspect.  Even more so when the killings apparently stopped with his disappearance.  The entire mess caused a media feeding frenzy.  Unable to bear the scandal, whispers and suspicions, Blackhorse’s wife took their infant daughter and left town.  Time passed with no more murders and the case went cold.

But Justin Blackhorse wasn’t the only one obsessed with finding the killer, although he is the only one with more than a professional involvement.  His partner, Lee Harris, refuses to countenance any suggestion that Blackhorse was involved, and continues the search long after the young deputy disappears.  And then there is FBI Special Agent John Sixkiller, a consultant on the case, on loan from the FBI’s Field Investigations Bureau,  a branch that would years later become known as the Behavorial  Analysis Unit.  For him, this case becomes the proverbial “one that got away” and he devotes every moment of his free time continuing the investigation.  He, too, never accepts Blackhorse as the killer, a view he maintains until his death ten years after the case goes cold.

Now, 30 years later, Anthropology Professor Samara McClain has returned to New Mexico and it seems her presence has awakened a terror that never died.  Samara has no memory of her childhood home, other than what she has been told of the sparsly populated area, nor does she have any memory of the shadowy figure who gave her life or the tragedy that surrounded him.  No one can see in the confident athletic woman, the lonely mixed-blood child who was then known as Koura Blackhorse, daughter of suspected serial killer, Justin Blackhorse.  That child died upon her adoption by her mother’s second husband when she was three.  Although part of the motivation for her return is her curiosity about the Native American side of her heritage, she has no desire to be viewed as the daughter of a psychopathic killer.  As Only Sheriff Lee Harris, once her father’s partner, will find anything remotely familiar in the sophisticated scholar.

When a construction project unearths human remains, the first and natural assumption is that the location is a Native burial site.  Samara’s qualifications earns her an invitation to authenticate, identify and assist the appropriate tribal representitives in the relocation of the site and/or the remains.  Her subsequent investigations reawaken the terror of the past.   Clues found in the site are all too familiar to Sheriff Harris and he doesn’t believe in coincidence.   When Samara confirms that the remains are modern, he is sure that this is an undiscovered victim of the “Indian Country Killer”.  The Shefiff has always believed that the killer is still out there, that he has been “getting away with murder” for all these years.

What to do now?  They have evidence of a murder, but that crime is already 30 years old and long since cold and dead.  No one is willing to devote any time or resources to a 30 year old dead case.  Well…almost no one.  The one thing they might be able to do is identify the victim.  Samara’s avocation as a sculptor and artist may just come in handy.  Sheriff Harris has heard of Forensic Reconstruction, would Samara be willing to try it with these remains?  Samara is intrigued by the project and agrees to do so in her spare time.  But even before she can get started a number of incidents happen that make her uneasy.  Like telephone calls with no one there, notes whose tone makes it obvious that someone would rather she left town.  Then her dog is brutally killed and an attempt is made on her life.  Only she wasn’t home at the time, Julie Warren, her best friend was.  Somehow the word gets out and the media decends.  And so does one GJ Sixkiller, a hot-shot profiler from the State Police Criminal Investigation bureau and a more than a 30 year old case begins to heat up along with Samara’s personal life.