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In a followup to SHUTTER (2022), Rita Todacheene once again picks up her camera to document a horrific crime for the Albuquerque police department. Every member of a police officer's family has been murdered, even the baby, with only the eldest son left alive. He had been apprehended at a nearby church, spattered with blood and holding a gun. As he is take into custody, Rita takes dozens of photographs of the carnage while one of the dead children guides her through the house.
That is Rita's gift – and burden. Those who died violently, who are stranded between worlds in an unresolved state, want her to seek justice for them, something that is especially difficult since the police with whom she works are corrupt and undermine her at every turn. They are certainly not receptive to what Rita has learned from her ghostly informant: The boy killed only his police officer father, who was the one who committed the mass murder. The police close ranks, committed to defending one of their own, even when Rita uncovers evidence of child pornography and abuse.
Increasingly overwhelmed by the demands of the dead, Rita is shut out of that investigation, but summoned to another. A number of homeless Navajos, living precariously on the streets of Gallup as the winter grows punishingly cold, have turned up frozen to death. While authorities assume the deaths are simply from exposure, they are puzzled when the racist owner of bar that sells liquor to natives is found with his throat cut, his body frozen to the street, just like his indigent customers. The murdered man wants his killer arrested and won't let Rita alone. Nor will the native detective who has recruited her to help with this difficult case and respects her strange gift.
Rita's story is only half of the book. The other, woven throughout the narrative, is in the voice of a religious outreach worker whose past includes a violent father, a stint in a harsh Catholic orphanage, and mentoring by a kind and decent priest. He now practices his faith by using injections to release long-suffering homeless natives from their difficult lives. He's convinced he's doing God's work, and will be rewarded when the wings he has been given finally burst through his shoulders so he can assume his angelic form. It's only when his anger causes him to murder a man who profits from the homeless that he descends deeper into madness.
Though the convention of leading us "into the mind of a serial killer" is hackneyed and often used to convey a clear-cut duel between good and evil, Emerson is doing something else. She has created a complex and even sympathetic character whose story is, in many ways, more compelling than Rita's. Both are tortured by their sense that they are uniquely called to serve justice, but as the killer's mind disintegrates, Rita begins to find her way out of a nightmare by returning to her Navajo community and with the help of ceremony.
This short, powerful book is far more original than its use of thriller tropes may suggest. The language Emerson uses to weave her story is striking, as is her examination of the intersection of Navajo tradition and contemporary life. At times, it's not easy to read, but it's well worth it to spend time with this sophomore entry in what one hopes will be the second in a long, distinguished series.
Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, September 2024
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