When a skeleton is found wedged in the apex of a 1,700 foot high Navajo holy place, the team of Leaphorn and Chee recall a ten-year-old missing persons case that had never turned up the body of Hal Breedlove -- until now. But before the pair can celebrate, an old Navajo guide, the last person to have seen Breedlove alive, is seriously wounded by a sniper. Now Chee and Leaphorn begin to suspect that Breedlove's death was murder, and begin an investigation that takes them through a tangled web of intrigue and deceit and prompts a rash of violence in the high desert.