In the suburbs of Duluth, the middle class and upper class neighborhoods are reading about the numerous killings that have been taking place in their city. The victims are the pimps and drug lords that control the streets of the waterfront.

The men working the ships that come into port aren't leaving their ships for a night of vice anymore. Pimps and drug dealers are worried that their business is being destroyed or that they are next in the line of death. The ''girls'' are leaving and Dee is seeing them come to her in ever increasing numbers, wanting, begging to help them get out of the ''life''.

The police have no leads on the killings, not that they were trying very hard to solve the crimes but now the pressure from the Mayor and citizens is being felt. The killings are making headlines across the country and the Mayor doesn't want the reputation of his fine city spoiled. The citizens are worried that the killing may extend to the ''good'' citizens, the same ones that for years knew of the sex trade, the lost children and drugs. But this might intrude into their neighborhoods so it was time to sound the alarm.

Dee sits in her office. She feels like finally something is being done to help the girls and she knows that the man that visited her is responsible. Is he responsible for the killings she asks herself. She knows the answer but doesn't want to admit it. After all, the girls are being helped, some of them are actually giving up the life and to her that is what counts, not the killing of the predator's.

Dee is sitting in her office late one night when a man walks in, an old man with long braided silver hair. He sits in front of Dee saying nothing. Dee looks at him, studies his face, his hands. He must be a hundred years old she thinks to herself, but his eyes are bright, missing nothing and knowing all.

He looks at her for a very long time, Dee says nothing, she doesn't know what to say. Finally the old man speaks to her. My name is Richard Fire I am an elder of the Ojibwe tribe and I have come to tell you that ''he has returned''...Returned! He! what in the world are you talking about old man. Dee is getting irritated, she is tired and not in any mood to listen to stories from an old man.

You know what I'm talking about says the old man. He is the one, the one that is killing and he will not stop. That shocked Dee, she was stunned to think that this old man knew that she knew who the killer might be.

He began to tell her a story, the story of Stone Hand who for hundreds of years had been the protector of the the Ojibwe people. Dee laughs at the story, how could the killer be hundreds of years old she asked the old man.

He is of the ''Spirit World'' he is not one of us he tells her. He has seen what is happening to the girls and women of the Ojibwe and to the others that are not of our tribe. The police cannot stop him, no one can stop him. The killing will only stop when he wants it to and not before.

Shaken, Dee sits there unable to say anything, her thoughts are jumbled and her mind is telling her this cannot be true. Damn these Indians and their crazy stories. Spirit worlds, protectors what nonsense.

Blocks away a man stands in the shadow of a doorway watching as a young girl is plying her trade, not a trade that she wants to be in but one that she was forced into. Her pimp sitting in a car watching to be sure that she is making money for him.

Dee shakes her head, as if to clear cobwebs from it, the old man is gone. Was he really there at all she thinks, no, it was only a dream. Then she feels a chill run through her body. Another pimp is dead and another ''lost'' girl is free to return home.

To be contintued

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