Yellow
The Chinaman's face looked like a crushed-in watermelon, all pulp and juice and seeds. Sheriff Blake Stephens dropped the reins to his dappled gelding and knelt by the body. Snow melt seeped through the knee of his denim trousers. His gaze followed a spatter of pink and baby blue prom dresses red through the windswept snow to the tips of his son Jimmy's black leather boots.

"It wasn't his fault, Sheriff," Tom Elliot said in his nasal drone. At twenty-three, he was six years older than Blake'...