Death on a Pale Horse

by Douglass, Carl;

  Joseph McGee Private Investigator: Book Four

  DEATH ON A PALE HORSE

  McGee Investigates Murders on a Reservation

  Carl Douglass

  Neurosurgeon Turned Author Writes With Gripping Realism

  PO Box 221974 Anchorage, Alaska 99522-1974

  books@publicationconsultants.com—www.publicationconsultants.com

  ISBN 978-1-59433-586-0

  eISBN 978-1-59433-587-7

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2015955410

  Copyright 2015 Carl Douglass

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form, or by any mechanical or electronic means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, in whole or in part in any form, and in any case not without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Dedication

  To those who work to save children.

  Disclaimer

  All of the six novellas in the McGee Series are works of fiction and should not be construed as representing real persons, places, or events. Some names of real persons and places appear but only for the purpose of creating a setting in the real world or as a mention of historical circumstances. None of the real people or the real places were actually involved in the fictional portrayals found in these short books. All of the events described were created from the author’s imagination.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter One

  Bertha Yazzie is tired, frustrated, and at the end of another hot dusty Friday in June, she is ready to chuck it all. She knows that is not going to happen; she has had this feeling almost every day for the thirty years she has been a teacher or the principal of Painted Desert Valley High School, Arizona. Moreover, she knows that if she quits, it is altogether likely that the school itself will have to close. The students will fade away back onto the reservation, and the coyotes who want them to remain ignorant and without a chance of success will finally win. She gives a sigh, heaves herself out of her swivel chair, and makes one last check to be sure the doors are locked. In the past month, there have been three break-ins—all to find money or computers to steal in order to maintain one addiction or another. The computers, laptops, and iPads are all locked up in the safe in her office, and Bertha always takes the money home with her.

  She has put in a twelve-hour day getting ready for the monthly reports to the Diné [Navajo] Nation School District and prepping the students for their quarterly No Child Left Behind qualifying tests. A bad grade for the school—another bad grade—could force its closure. Bertha is sure she has done all she can do, but is less sure that her impoverished students will be able to eke out passing scores on the tests or if they will even show up. Sometimes she feels like crying. There has been a sandstorm during the day, but it has quieted down. The result is an absolutely gorgeous sunset that is tinted with reds, oranges, and yellows set against the lengthening shadows cast by the isolated and towering desert rock formations. Her arms are loaded with reports to check, her laptop, and the cash satchel as she turns and walks down the three steps from the main entrance of the school and walks through the nearly ankle-deep drifted pink sand towards her ten-year-old Toyota Tundra 4WD crew cab pickup.

  Patrolman Dodge Maryboy makes his last run along Highway 40 before driving back to the office to end his shift Monday morning. As the rookie, he draws the short end of the stick and has to pull the graveyard shift more often than is fair. It has been another boring night. Not much happens on the res, if you don’t count the DUIs and the drunk and disorderlies. Maryboy would have been glad even to write up a DUI just to have something to do. He drives back into Blue Mesa City, stops at the QuikTrip and buys a freshly ground steaming coffee refill, and drives by the Mormon church and the high school before getting to the Blue Mesa City Navajo Division of Public Safety substation.

  It clicks in his mind that something is out of place this early Monday morning: principal Yazzie’s truck is still parked in front of the school where it was parked the last time he saw it Friday night. Having been a student of Mrs. Yazzie for his six years of junior and senior high, Maryboy knows she is a workaholic, but this is over the top. She must have been camped out in her office for the entire weekend. He mutters a small complaint and stops by her Toyota Tundra. He will go and see if he can persuade her to go home and get some rest. He likes the hard-nosed woman because of her selfless devotion to helping the Painted Desert Navajo kids learn about their heritage and about the world outside the res. He credits her with making it possible for him to get up and out and to get into the University of Arizona. He has a BS in criminology and is determined to make something of himself back in Navajoland.

  As soon as he gets out of his dust-caked 4x4 Chevrolet Tahoe, his sense of something amiss kicks into overdrive. There is a powerful stench. He looks around—hopefully—for an open garbage can or a dead animal. That’s the smell—death. He follows his nose, and he does not have to go far: in the back of Mrs. Yazzie’s pick-up is her body. He does not need an ME to know that she is dead. Lying exposed in the oven-heat in the truck bed, the woman is bloated. At least it does not look like the animals or birds have gotten to her. There is a six-inch patch of blood—not just possibly or allegedly blood—on the left side of the fifty-eight-year-old educator’s chest. He comes to the easy conclusion that there is not enough blood on her or around her in the truck bed for the murder to have occurred there. He knows better than to contaminate the crime scene, even though this is his first actual murder; so, he retraces his steps back to his unit and puts in a call to the substation. He needs to talk to Lieutenant Begay; he will know what to do.

  Lieutenant Naalnish Begay—head of the field office of the Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations for the Painted Desert District headquartered in Blue Mesa—gets into his office early to check the overnight e-mails from all around the Navajo Reservation and especially to get the latest information coming in from around the huge desert area for which he is responsible. There are usually a couple of messages from Washington that he is obligated to acknowledge—mostly just bureaucratic busywork. He usually has time to leaf through the Navajo Times or to catch the six o’clock news on KTNN radio.

  Not this morning. His cell phone rings. Since it is too early for routine police business, and he has no family or friends who might call him, Naalnish is pretty sure this is not going to be good news. Most of the time, these calls are the telephonic equivalent of waking up face down on the concrete to start your day.

  “Begay,” he says.

  “Oh, good, Lieutenant! Glad you’re already in the office. I’ve got something you need to see. Better we don’t put it out on official communications. Come by the high school. I have something to show you.”

  “On my way,” Naalnish says.

  He trusts the good sense of the station’s rookie. He has a level head; although he is ambitious, he is objective and does not exaggerate. He possesses one of the real necessities in a Navajo police officer—good instincts.

  He drives his favorite 4x4 Jeep Liberty and takes pleasure in the sunrise lighting up the rich palette of colorful desert sands and the nearly barren Blue Mesa behind him. The high school being less than a mile away, Naalnish is there in a minute and a half.

  He parks by Maryboy’s vintage 4x4 Chevrolet Tahoe an
d gets out. Patrolman Maryboy is leaning on the side of his truck.

  “What do you have, Dodge?” he asks by way of greeting.

  He is a man who—like most Navajos—thinks that words are precious, and he is a thrifty guy.

  “Take a look in the back of Mrs. Yazzie’s truck, Naalnish. You will probably want to walk in my footprints until we have a chance to check the area out better.”

  A minute later, Lt. Begay has seen enough to get the basic idea.

  “I hate this,” he says. “That was one nice lady. I’ll call it in to Window Rock after we see if we can get a better idea of where the initial crime scene is. I’ll go right, and you go left to put out the yellow tape. Let’s tie the tape up on the corners of the school and leave it for the crime scene technicians from the NDCI [Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations].”

  Five minutes later, Naalnish finds it. Dodge is knotting his end of the crime scene tape to a bush at the corner of the sandstone school.

  “Hey, Dodge!” Naalnish calls out, “I think I’ve got it.”

  Together the two Navajo policemen look down at a wide and deep collection of dry red-brown discoloration in the sand just off the high school’s front steps.

  Chapter Two

  Gaagii Soto—considered to be one of the Navajo Nation’s best Division of Public Safety crime scene investigators—gets a call. The office dispatcher tells him it is from out in the Painted Desert. Gaagii is a full-blooded Navajo—CIB [Certificate of Indian Blood] 100 percent, and the first to work in the vaunted scientific division. He has been on the force for only two years.

  “Sergeant Soto speaking,” he says.

  “Gaagii, this is Naalnish Begay out in the hinterlands of Painted Desert. Our office is in Blue Mesa City.”

  “I remember you, Naalnish. We both got awards from the SAC last year.”

  “Yeah, mine was for putting in ten years, and yours was for twenty years of stellar service in the Gallup Resident Agency crime lab with special emphasis on crime in the Indian reservations,” says Naalnish. “You were an IOA [Investigators of America] on the ERT [Evidence Response Team] then as I recall. Don’t be too self-effacing.”

  “How can I help you, Naalnish?” Gaagii says, becoming uncomfortable with the unNavajo praise from a fellow Diné.

  “I have a case, here, Gaagii, a bad one. Our high school principal has been murdered—probably stabbed—but we have left the scene entirely alone and marked it off. It’s at the high school; so, we’ll have to close down the school until it can be cleared.”

  “Okay. I’ll get my team together and get out there this afternoon. Keep it posted. Nobody—but nobody—sets foot anywhere near the scene. Do your best to keep the press from knowing anything.”

  “It’s early in the day, but I presume the yellow tape will be something of a giveaway.”

  “Do your best.”

  “We’ll be taking the body back with us. No reflection on your office, Naalnish; but we have the state of the art; and we need to use it with her. I have a bad feeling about this case.”

  Naalnish turns to Dodge and says, “Dodge, how about you work with me on this? I’ll get Captain Tall Hunter to reassign you temporarily. Okay with you?”

  “You bet. Everybody knows I want to get into the NDCI [Navajo Department of Criminal Investigation]. I’ll do a good job and hope you’ll put in a good word.”

  “I’ll do that. But I have a few conditions you’ll get onto as we go. Right now, my first rule is keep the information about this case from getting noised around. I have a hunch where this may be going, and I don’t want to tip anybody off.”

  “Got it, boss; what do you want me to do first?”

  “Get into the school and secure her computer as first priority. Make sure the school is closed down as tight as a nun’s knees. I’m going out to her house and get a look around before Chapter Two her family, friends … or enemies … get to it, and before the crime scene techs from Window Rock take everything.”

  The two officers split up and start to get their first priority tasks taken care of. Dodge gets into Mrs. Yazzi’s computer with ease. She did not use password protection because she never considered she might need to do so. Dodge takes the initiative on his own to secure every computer in the school and sends for the subdivision’s IT specialists to get a quick overview of what the computers contain—everything they do requires wearing latex gloves. He posts guards all around the school perimeter—no one in or out without getting an okay from him or Lieutenant Begay.

  Naalnish drives out to Bertha Yazzi’s house in a tranquil arroyo just outside the Petrified Forest National Park. Interstate 40 passes directly through the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert, effectively dividing the park in two sections. Thick sand, silt, and gravel deposits laid down millions of years ago by an ancient river system reemerged as brilliantly colorful badland hills with layers of whites, greys, reds, beiges, and purples; broad mesas, distinctively shaped buttes, and remarkable hoodoos. Resulting from extensive erosion, layers of exposed bentonite and sandstone are interlaced with various minerals that stain the landscape in remarkable—almost otherworldly—shades of red, blue, purple, grey, green, and brown. The Bentonite clay of the rock formations is known to swell as much as six or seven times its size as it absorbs moisture, then shrinks and cracks and fissures as it dries. This constant movement of area soil over centuries discourages any type of plant growth, resulting in what would appear to be a multicolored moonscape.

  There are fewer than a hundred habitations in the vicinity of Mrs. Yazzi’s home; most of them are hogáns [Navajo for house], as are most of the homes in the vast Navajo reservation. These cone-shaped buildings are made of wooden poles, brush, and tree bark, and are covered in clay mud—lots of dirt, which is packed down carefully to achieve structural strength. The main door always faces east because the Navajo believe it will bring them good blessings. A hogán is built as a shelter for either a man or a woman. Male hogáns are square or conical with a distinct rectangular entrance, while a female hogán is eight-sided. Those who practice the Navajo religion—and even most of the Navajo Christians—regard the hogán as sacred.

  Naalnish parks his Jeep Liberty in Bertha Yazzi’s circular red-rock driveway. The high school principal’s house is definitely the exception to the rule in Navajoland. It is a sturdy two-story reddish brick, fire-retardant synthetic shingle place with large windows, a second floor veranda, several gables, and patios front and back. There is a lawn protected by large overhanging porches and a fringe of eucalyptus trees. It is nestled close to a deep red-rock cliff on the west that keeps down the afternoon heat that is usually bake-oven intense as it is today.

  Bertha lived with her good-natured husband who owns a long-haul trucking company that takes him away from the reservation for weeks at a time. He brings in a six-figure income that allowed his wife to pursue her educational pursuits without having to worry about money. They have three children who have long since flown the nest and the reservation to live as far away as they can—two in New York, and one in Vermont.

  Naalnish knocks three separate times; no one answers; so, he takes his prerogative as the lead investigator to enter without a warrant, considering the Yazzi home to be a crime scene. As his newly acquired partner, Dodge Maryboy, is doing back at the school, Naalnish quickly secures the family computers, which are located in their two separate offices. He wears latex gloves as soon as he touches the doorknob, and is scrupulously fastidious about not disturbing anything in the house. Separately—but almost simultaneously—the two partners find e-mails with threats from disgruntled family members of children who have not been passing tests, from angry former employees of the high school, and from an organization called, “The Navajos of 1491.”

  Those particular e-mails are passionate, recounting the histories of the Navajo legendary beginnings and abuses suffered at the hands of whites, with statements about tribal occult practices, arcane and confusing references to my
stical ceremonies, and criticisms of Mrs. Yazzi’s efforts to teach Navajo children under her tutelage science, American and world history beyond the confines of the reservation and the beliefs of the fundamentalist conservatives who reject virtually everything “not Navajo” to their way of thinking: other religions, English, Spanish, science, math, or American civics.

  What Naalnish finds that is different from what Dodge finds at this point is a series of e-mails apparently sent between the marital couple indicative of some considerable underlying marital discord—mutual accusations of marital infidelity, equally strongly worded criticisms of how and how much each spends from their shared bank accounts. One particularly telling and very recent e-mail has Bertha suggesting that her husband may be embezzling from the truck company.

  Naalnish adds a note to his murder book to sit Asdzáá Yazzie down to get an alibi for last night. He realizes the thought is trite and obvious; but indeed in his and most other experienced investigators’ minds, the husband is usually the perpetrator.

  Chapter Three

  The first thing the NDCI crime scene unit from Window Rock does is to expand the crime scene dimensions to take in the road in front of the Painted Desert High School and by ten feet on each side. They mark off one hundred feet in back of the school. Chief of the Division of Public Safety crime scene technicians, Sergeant Gaagii Soto, puts two of his techs to work as dumpster divers to sift through the two huge Dempsey Dumpsters in back, and two agents to clear out all computers and electronic devices—including those belonging to, or provided for, the students—and to load them into the DNCI crime scene van. The task of hauling off the massive volume of paper files proves to be more than two techs can handle; so, Soto gets Naalnish Begay to bring in six of his officers.