Free Innocents Lost by Michael McBride

of the petroglyphs across the province.
    The etching depicted the sun at the top, roughly twenty-five degrees to the right of the center of the design. The earth was represented by a straight line with a gap in the middle. There were small stick figures to either side of the break in the horizontal line, beneath which was a square pit. A larger stick figure stood at the bottom, and above his head, wavy lines connected him to a larger stick figure still, which hovered between the level of the ground and the sun. Dozens of spirals had been carved under the diminutive stick figures, all of them counterclockwise, a traditional motif among indigenous tribes, who often carved them along particularly treacherous trails or at the entrance to perilous canyons. It was the sign for danger. And coincidentally, it just happened to match the spiral orientation of the strange trees. There were several more smaller spirals in the sky amid a scattering of stars. The entire design was enclosed inside a circle with dots along its circumference like the outer ring of a medicine wheel.
    Les skimmed the article. It was all speculation without any substantiated fact. The author, a graduate student named Patricia Christensen, suspected the petroglyph represented a ritual that corresponded to the summer solstice, as evidenced by the angle of the sun to the horizon, twenty-six degrees to match that of the celestial orb, which reached its northernmost position relative to the earth over the Tropic of Cancer on that day. The stars were supposedly Aldebaran, Fomalhaut, Rigel, and Sirius, among others. But there was no mention of the possible significance of the smaller stick figures, whose size suggested they might be children, nor of the odd relationship between the man in the pit and the other in the sky.
    He clicked through a few more sites, which were all variations upon the same theme. While the order of the words changed, their substance and the picture never did.
    Les rubbed his weary eyes and glanced toward the curtains. The night had brightened considerably, but the sun had yet to breach the eastern horizon on this summer solstice. Who knew what this, the longest day of the year, would bring? All he knew with any kind of certainty was that whoever had built the medicine wheel and summoned him all the way out here into the Wind River Range had meant to mark this one day, but for what reason?
    He again looked at his laptop and gasped.
    The layer of ferromagnetic material under the ground.
    The larger stick figure in the pit on the petroglyph.
    Fumbling the business card the deputy had given him from his wallet, he reached for the phone.
    Jesus.
    He suddenly realized why he'd been drawn into this mess.
    He knew how to find the killer.

Chapter Three

    I
    22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

    Deputy Sean Miller walked to the western edge of the clearing. He heard what sounded like a distant scream echo off into the darkened valley. His mind was playing tricks on him now. The more he rehearsed the sound in his head, the more certain he became that it had just been the cry of a circling hawk. This crime scene was really starting to get to him. All of the death and the hideous manner in which the bodies had been staged was like something out of his worst nightmares. This definitely wasn’t what he’d signed on for. He needed to get away from the carnage, if only for a few minutes. Just take a quick break to get some fresh air and calm his nerves. He was already starting to feel as though the children they disinterred one by one were somehow watching him from the corners of their vacant eyes.
    He glanced over his shoulder to confirm that the others were still occupied by their various tasks, then ducked off into the forest. Once he was far enough away that he could no longer smell the worsening stench of decomposition, he stood on top of a rocky ledge and stared down into the canyon. The sky had begun to lighten by degrees overhead. A thin stream