the trunk, her nose almost resting on the bark. They could have been broken by someone scrabbling for a foothold. Or they could have been broken by overweight squirrels. There's only one way to be sure. Settling her glasses more firmly on her face, she swung up onto the first branch.
Climbing wasn't as easy as it looked from the ground; a myriad of tiny branches poked and prodded and generally impeded progress and the whole damn thing moved. Vicki hadn't actually been up a tree since about 1972 and she was beginning to remember why.
If her nose hadn't scraped by an inch from the sneaker print, she probably wouldn't have seen it. Tucked tight up against the trunk on a flattened glob of pine resin, was almost a full square inch of tread signature. Not enough for a conviction, not with every man, woman, and child in the country owning at least one pair of running shoes, but it was a start. The stuff was so soft that removing it from the tree would destroy the print so she made a couple of quick sketches - balanced precariously on one trembling leg - then placed her foot as close to it as possible and heaved herself up.
Her head broke free into direct sunlight. She blinked and swore and when her vision cleared, swore again. "Jesus H. Christ on crutches... "
She'd come farther into the woods than she'd thought. About five hundred yards away, due north, was the spot where Ebon had been shot. A half turn and she could see the small pasture where Silver had been killed, a little closer but still an amazing distance away. If Barry Wu had pulled the trigger, he should have no trouble making the Olympic team or bringing home a gold. Vicki knew that some telescopic sights incorporated range finders but even they took both innate skill and years of practice to acquire the accuracy necessary. Throw in a moving target at five hundred yards...
She'd once heard that according to all the laws of physics, a human being should not be able to hit a major league fastball. By those same laws of physics, the assassin had hit not one, but two, and hit them out of the ballpark besides.
A quick search turned up rubs in the bark where he'd braced his weapon on the tree.
"Unfortunately," she sighed, leaning her head back against a convenient branch, "discovering how and where brings me no closer to finding the answers to why and who." Closing her eyes for a moment, the sun hot against the lids, she wondered if she'd actually go through with it; if when she found the killer, she'd actually turn him over to the wer for execution. She didn't have an answer. She didn't have an alternative either.
It was time to head back to the house and make some phone calls, although she had a sick feeling that a drive into town and a good look at Constable Barry Wu's sneakers would be more productive.
Climbing down the tree took less time than climbing up but only because gravity took a hand and dropped her seven feet before she landed on a branch thick enough to hold her weight. Heart pounding, she made it the rest of the way to the ground in a slightly less unorthodox fashion.
Had her Swiss army knife contained a saw, she would have attempted to remove that final branch, the one that lifted the climber out of the tree and into the light. Unfortunately, it didn't and whittling off a pine branch two inches in diameter didn't appeal to her. In fact, except for attempting to keep them out of those fields, there wasn't a damn thing she could do to prevent the tree from being used as a vantage point to shoot the wer.
"Never a beaver around when you need one," she muttered, wishing she'd brought an ax. She had, however, uncovered two facts about the murderer. He had to be at least five foot ten, her height - any shorter and his shoulder wouldn't be level with the place where the rifle barrel had rested - and the odds were good that his hair was short and straight. She dragged a handful of needles and a small branch out of her short, straight hair. Had her hair been long or curly, she'd never had made it out of the tree alive.
"Excuse me?"
The shriek was completely involuntary and as she caught it before it passed her