Mathias came home to find her sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by papers, a small recorder in her hand.

She looked up and smiled, "Hi, this is what you don't see in hospitals—all the dreaded paperwork. I decided I'd rather do it here, instead of at the morgue—more privacy. But now," she began to gather together the piles of paper, "I'd rather eat that pizza you're holding, I'm starving. Being on your feet for hours is tiring work."

"Find out anything interesting?"

"Well, I did the girl who they just found, and learned something interesting. She was strangled before she was hit with a rock, like he wanted to maim her, or maybe it's a signature. So, I have two other girls to autopsy, and I'm thinking maybe they'll have ligature marks, too, that we missed before. Either way, he's a serial killer, Mathias, I'm almost positive. For the most part, serial killers stick to their own ethnic group, which is what he's doing so far. And he's just killing women. There's got to be other bodies out there, but I don't know where you'd look for them."

"Some may turn up when hunting season starts, if they're there."

"But that's months away, Mathias, and they may be hidden in places we can't find them. When the snow melts, one or two may turn up. The FBI can't accuse you of trying to investigate if you just happen to come across a body, can they?"

Mathias removed a piece of pizza from the box. "Trying to make me lose my job?"

"Heavens, no," she replied, "But this case has gotten hold of me, and I'm having trouble letting it go. This guy, he makes me angry. What right does he have to kill these girls? Why's he doing it anyway? Did he get an STD from a prostitute? Did he have trouble performing and she made fun of him? Does he see it as a morality issue? I know I shouldn't do this, but I have a friend who's a profiler who'll take a look at this for me, just for fun. Just because you're not allowed to, doesn't mean I can't investigate this on my own. Especially since I have a feeling Rachel Rainwater may be one of his victims. I guess I'm personally invested on that count."

Mathias sighed, and leaned over the table and took her hands. "Ally, I want you to listen to me. I know you want to go after this perp, yourself, but don't, don't even try." She tried to pull away from him but he held her tightly. "Look, I know you've spent time in Syria and Lebanon, but it's not the same as here. You could get hurt, you could get lost, and how many days would it take for me to find you then? You're a stranger here, you don't know who to trust, and that Glock Nine you carry might not do you any good."

"If they're more girls, and I think I agree with you that there are, they're not going to be found, if, if they're found, until the snow melts. I know these mountains pretty well, I grew up here, but there are places that only your perp may know where the bodies are hidden. The bones may have been scattered, and we'll only find them if a hunter happens to stumble across them."

"Do you think that could happen, I mean, a hunter or a poacher just happening on these bones? Rachel Rainwater has been gone three years now, and no one has found any trace of here." She paused, "You know, I hope she's not dead, but that would be better than being a prostitute—and even then she might be dead now."

"I know, babe, a part of me feels that way, too. But, I want you to realize that you can't do everything that you want. There are people on the reservation who really hate whites…"

"I'm only half white, the other half is Arab."

He shook her hands, "Listen to me, you don't know the reservation, how dangerous it can be sometimes. You need to get to know people here, let them know what you're doing, who you are. Then you can find allies. Please promise me that you won't do anything without me. When spring comes, we can head up into the hills and see what we can find. In the meantime, I'll start asking around, see what people know. It may be possible to locate remains, and if we can, we should, I just don't want you doing it on your own, all right?"

"Okay," she sighed, "Maybe I'm a little too overconfident sometimes, especially if I want something really badly. And don't say anything," she warned as he was about to speak.

Mathias wondered why his alarm went off so early the next morning, but had his answer when Alia sat up and put on her woolen robe.

"Go back to sleep," she told him, "I want to get to the morgue early before anyone gets there. I used to do that at Quantico, and it was nice to be alone."

"Well, since I'm awake, I'll put on some coffee and fix you breakfast. It won't hurt for me to get in early, I just hope you don't make a habit of this!"

By the time he finished, he'd set out bacon, eggs, and toast. A pitcher or orange juice sat next "

"Mathias, when do you think the snow will start to melt? She asked him as she took another swallow of juice.

"Around April, maybe May, spring comes slowly here in the mountains. Why?"

"I want to put up some more posters on the rez, to see if we can identify the girls. I'm hesitant to offer a reward, but it would be nice if people had an eye out for more bodies. And make them aware that a serial killer is probably on the loose, and his prey is adolescent girls. They're hard to catch, and it usually takes public cooperation to bring them out from under cover. I want this guy off the streets, off the rez. I have a feeling more bodies are going to turn up if we don't find him."

"I have friends on the tribal council, I'll ask them to bring it up. You're right, he seems to be targeting Cheyenne girls, which means he's probably operating here."

"I'd appreciate that. The police force needs to start looking. A lot of things will probably change in the spring."

When she got to the morgue, she put on a pot of coffee, and set out the bagels and cream cheese that she bought. She scrubbed in, put on a gown and gloves, then took out the second body, the one found on county property, and put her gently on the slab.

She looked at her for a moment, gently stroking her cheek. "I think I know how he found you, being a prostitute is a hard life and risky." She looked at her arms, then examined the rest of the body, looking for track marks. "Well, at least it looks like you managed to avoid getting hooked on heroin. A pro usually winds up hooked on drugs, but at least you didn't."

She put the girl's hair into a net, then began the examination. She swabbed the body for trace evidence, then put it in a container to be sent to the lab—one of her choice if she could manage it.

She began to make the "Y" incision, saying, "Sorry sweetheart" as she cut into her chest. She spread the opening, and began the tedious task of removing the organs, weighing them, and packaging them.

The ligature marks were obvious, now that she was not wearing clothes. The mark where she had been hit with the rock, or whatever it had been, still stood out. Damn it, this girl was healthy, well fed, didn't show any signs of any disease. Pimps didn't take care of their whores, ever, yet someone had looked after this girl.

She was a prostitute, no doubt about that, judging from the abrasions on her vagina and genitalia. How long had she been hooking, anyway? Had on forced into it, or had she thought it was a way of making easy money? And who was she?

She lost track of time, working with the girl on the slab. Weston had come in and thanked her for the bagels, but she'd barely paid attention. It was just her and the girl on the slab that had her Ion her own.

She made herself take a lunch break, drinking a coke and allowing herself the luxury of a cigarette. The quiet she'd cherished had suddenly been broken, she heard a man's voice and a woman clearly objecting to whatever it was he wanted.

Suddenly, Walt Longmire stood in front of her. "You're Alia Kassam, right? The new assistant coroner?"

So, Weston had come up with a title for her. "Yes, what do you want?" she said rudely, wishing that he would go away. She needed to get back to work.

"I've come to tell you I'm taking custody of the body since it was found in Absaroka County." She couldn't tell if Longmire was smiling or not. But now, people seemed to have figured out that she and Mathias were serious.

"You mean, you're going to take custody after I do all the work. You might have saved me the trouble before I did the autopsy and had Weston do it instead. Pretty sneaky way to make sure that the ex-FBI agent did it for you. You can have her, Weston can finish up. Nothing unusual about this girl, except that she was murdered."

"The tribe's going to want her back, you know, even if we can't figure out right away who her family is. I hope you leave her here for convenience's sake. I don't want her buried if there's a chance that she can be claimed." She put out her cigarette and headed back into the morgue. There was something about this Wyoming cowboy that she didn't like, but didn't care to find out.