Death on a Pale Horse

by Douglass, Carl;

  Chapter Five

  Once the seemingly interminable Enemy Way ceremony is completed, and Dr. Todachine finishes her autopsy in Window Rock, not much new is added to the murder books being compiled by Patrolman Maryboy and Lt. Begay on their three victims. Naalnish submits his first report to his immediate superior in the NDCI, Captain Yaz Hootsohnii.

  “Not much evidence, Naalnish, and not much to go on. What does your gut tell you?”

  “You know that I’m not much into ‘gut’ feelings or tradition or religion, Captain. The evidence points to somebody—or more than one somebody—connected with the Navajos of 1491 movement. That connection applies to all of our victims.”

  There is a pregnant pause, and Naalnish feels as if he is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Uh … Naalnish, you know I’m not really one to tell you how to do your job. You are a good cop. And you know that I almost never pull rank … but this is kind of a special case,” Captain Hootsohnii gets out finally.

  The faltering and the stammering alert Naalnish to something being out of kilter in Window Rock. Usually when he gets that feeling, the something out of kilter relates to politics. He finds that he is holding his breath.

  “So, what are you doing, Captain? Telling me how to do my job down here in the Painted Desert from your office there in Window Rock? Or are you pulling rank … sir?

  “Better you should mind that tongue of yours, Lieutenant. It has gotten you in trouble before, as you recall. But—since you ask—I am going to do both. Here it is: get the husband in and grill him. He probably did it. Find out who did the other killings and work them as separate and distinct cases that are not connected to each other. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  “I think I do. Somebody of importance—an hidalgo [son of somebody important] as they say down south of the border—wants you to tell me to avoid getting the leaders of the Nation riled up. Maybe there’s even some nudging from the bwanas on the left coast,” Naalnish says, knowing he is getting close to the edge.

  “I’ll ignore that. You have been under some pressure lately. Don’t forget my orders; consider them a warning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Naalnish says, trying to sound sincere.

  His motto is: “Always be sincere whether you mean it or not.”

  Evidently, his sincerity does not shine through adequately. In the afternoon, he gets a call from the secretary to the National Council executive officer.

  “Lt. Begay, the assistant US attorney requests that you report to him tomorrow at 0800.”

  “Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “Don’t know. I probably misspoke or you misheard. If I said ‘requests,’ that would be wrong. This is an order, Lieutenant. 0800 tomorrow. Wear your Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.”

  Naalnish and Dodge drive all the way up to Window Rock and stay overnight in a Choice Hotel with a two-star rating. Dodge thinks he has stayed in better hogáns. They get into the In-and-Out Burger just in time to get a protein burger off the ‘hidden menu,’ because that is all that is left. The burger place has run out of buns; so, they get to have their meat and cheese rolled up in lettuce. They are on time and dressed in their dress uniforms—all spit and polish—when they check in with the secretary at ten minutes to eight the next morning.

  She keeps them cooling their heels for an hour before she announces, “The attorney general will see you now.”

  She favors them with a glacial smile.

  “Our visit will be brief, Officers; so, it won’t be necessary for you to sit down.”

  Assistant US Attorney Douglas Stone is Ichabod Crane in a precisely tailored three-piece pin stripe suit—it is nearly 110º F outside. He is tall—head and shoulders taller than Naalnish—at six feet eight inches. His eyes are set too close together; and he does not have lips, just a cut where his mouth opens. His ex-wife—who once worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Albuquerque—once told Naalnish that her former husband was uncomfortable to be around until you got to know him, then … he was unbearable.

  “I am not in a good mood,” Stone says. “I just got off an American Airlines flight. Their merger efforts are not working. It would have been easier to have a monkey run my boarding pass to me than what I had to go through to get my papers from either American or US Air. We were an hour late. My seatmate told me that they are the world’s largest unscheduled airline.”

  Naalnish and Dodge make a sincere effort to show in their faces that they care.

  Stone is oblivious to subtleties.

  “But I digress. I looked into your report about your three murder cases. Let me say that again: your three separate and distinct murder cases which are entirely unrelated in any way to each other. The report did not make that clear and is to be rewritten. The next thing is that you will not do further investigation into the remote possibility that there could be some sort of a conspiracy going on in the Nation where older fundamentalists are considering doing harm to others in the tribe with whom they disagree.

  “People occupying lofty positions have made it abundantly clear to me—and I am doing the same thing for you—that the Diyin Bitsąądęę Beenahaz’áanii [Diné—Navajo—Traditional Law] and Diyin Dine’é Bitsąądęę Beenahaz’áanii [Diné Customary Law] are to rule the day in this case just as the Tribal Council of Elders rules the council to achieve what is best for the Nation. Others in Washington are unequivocal in their efforts to stress one thing about this case: our Native-American people will determine the nature of the investigation and its outcome. You will provide them with the evidence they need.”

  “Yes, sir,” both Naalnish and Dodge say like dutiful sycophants.

  “I do have a couple of questions,” Naalnish says with his most beatific face. “You, Captain Hootsohnii, and I all know that the evidence we now have points to an anti-change in Navajo education group. What if we keep bumping into that kind of bump in the road?”

  “I am going to be honest with you,” Stone says.

  From past experience, Naalnish believes that anything that follows an introductory, ‘I am going to be honest with you,’ will be a lie. He does a good job of holding his face in an expression like a soda cracker.

  “You have a lifelong experience of being a Navajo and know the culture better than I do. You also have a solid career in law enforcement with the FBI and the Navajo Nation Police; so, you cannot be naïve about the world of the reservation. You also know where the bear sleeps; Washington holds the purse strings and has a severe anxiety disorder about political correctness. The tribal council and the WOMs [Wise Old Men] in Washington do not want to rock the boat. You are getting dangerously close to doing just that, and Captain Hootsohnii, or Chief Ney, or I will put a stop to that danger. You are missing the big picture, Lieutenant. It is time for you to function in the real world—the big world.”

  “I do seem to be missing something. I see three murders, and I see a link that I—as a police officer sworn to uphold the law—am obligated to pursue. Tell me, please, sir, what you see, with all due respect.”

  “One time, Lieutenant. I will deny we had this conversation; and you should not speak of what you learn today, if you know what will do your career the most good. Here it is in plain talk. There is a fragile peace between Washington and the Navajo Nation. This is beautiful country for which Diné Bikéyah [Navajoland] is justifiably famous, but it is also notorious for crime and substance abuse. The FBI—in conjunction with the tribal police—faces a huge problem of violent crime. The Navajo Nation is one of the most violent reservations in the country. According to FBI reports, in the last five years more rapes were reported on the Navajo Nation than in San Diego, Detroit, and several other more populous US cities. The tribe just opened one of four new jails in Tuba City. But there’s not enough funding to staff them.

  “Navajo tribal officials blame their meager economy and rampant substance abuse. There is no reason to doubt those core issues. But they also lack the resources to fight crime
adequately or the funding to provide the special needs for education to prevent the conditions that foster crime. The FBI tries to take on the most violent crimes but would prefer that the tribe handle as many of them as possible, and that takes cooperation. That is where you come in. The cooperation is a difficult balance, and nobody in the chain of command wants you to upset the balance—to be an incendiary. Wake up and get that concept straight in your head.

  “The list of needs of policing and the judicial system in the Diné Bikéyah seems without end. For example, currently the maximum tribal court sentence is only a year. The Navajo chief prosecutor tells me that if the tribe would mandate state-bar-certified judges and attorneys, it could impose tougher sentences with the blessing of Washington. But the Nation won’t do that, and the WOMs in Washington are strongly disinclined to pump in more money into a losing proposition. They regard the issue as one of stuffing sand down a rat hole.”

  Suitably chastened and fully informed, Begay and Maryboy salute and leave Assistant U.S. Attorney Stone to sweat in his incongruous three-piece suit while they go back to the Painted Desert to flail around in an investigation going nowhere. At least that is how Dodge Maryboy sees it.

  “How’re we going to work this thing, Naalnish?” he asks. “Do we just go out and round up a few nonmembers of the tribe and grill them and send in reports and string this out forever, or do we fabricate a case against Asdzáá Yazzie and somebody in Sialea-lea Biakeddy’s family to pin this on?”

  Naalnish’s answer is a silently raised eyebrow.

  “Dodge, we are at a Y in the road here. You can bow out of the case if you want and likely save your career. I, however, have a plan. Choose now, my friend, are you in or out?”

  “I’m young and naïve. I still think there is a line between good and evil. And, besides, I can get another job, maybe even get into the FBI. I am also a Navajo, and by all that is holy to my Nation, I am going to see this through. I’m in.”

  “You are a good man, Dodge. Crazy, but a good man.”

  As soon as the two tribal police officers get back to the Blue Mesa City Navajo Division of Public Safety substation, Patrolman Maryboy grabs some lunch then packs up three days of food, water, and fresh uniforms and sets out to round up the remaining fifteen members of the ad hoc committee that has been petitioning the tribal school board, the Arizona legislature, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and their congressman to effect changes in the school system on the reservation so that the Indian children have a better chance to be literate in English, Spanish, US history, computers, and job skills and to be able to compete in the modern American world. It is not particularly difficult to locate them. Most of them are holding a mass meeting at the Blue Mesa town hall that evening to push their agenda. The three not attending live in far-flung locations out in the desert of the reservation and will require some diligence. The difficulty will be in keeping his investigation under the Tribal Council and federal radar long enough to protect these possible potential victims and to build a case.

  Naalnish knows he is treading a minefield and has to appear to be diligently investigating the three separate murders while actually finding out what is happening. The first thing he does is to make a call to an old friend from their days together as special agents of the FBI working in banking fraud in Albuquerque. The second call he makes is to Asdzáá Yazzie, the slain high school principal’s husband; and the third call is to Utah State Trooper Sgt. Cliff Moon in Navajo Lake, Utah.

  Chapter Six

  P.A.M.J. McGee receives a phone call from out of his past. “Naalnish, to what do I owe this honor?” he answers with a grin in his voice.

  “I just wanted to touch base with an old friend from our days in the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude.”

  “Sure you do, my noble savage friend. It’s good to hear from you; but you were never any good at hiding your motives, and you’ve always had a one-track mind. Tell me what’s up, and how I can help.”

  “I have a delicate problem … an Indian problem,” Naalnish says.

  “All Indian problems are delicate, especially the police kind. I’ll listen.

  Naalnish is calling McGee—as everyone knows him—because he is a genius private investigator, scrupulously honest, and knows how to keep a secret; and he and McGee are real friends. McGee’s cumbersome full name is Joseph Patrick Aloysius Michael John McGee, a burden placed on him as a gift by his late mother, who was more Irish than the Fenians and more Catholic than the pope. Having such a peculiar name guaranteed that McGee would grow up tough—something on the order of being named “Sue” like the Johnny Cash song. He learned to fight in the first grade and earned a crooked nose and the right to be known only as McGee to everyone but his mother thereafter.

  McGee is a private investigator who came by his profession in an unlikely way. Most PIs are former cops who either became unfit for further NYPD service or retired with a nice letter, a nice plaque, and a meager pension and chose being a PI [Private Investigator] over being a security guard. He—on the other hand—knew what he wanted to be from his mid-teens on. He got a degree in criminology at CUNY, graduating with honors after three years, and a law degree from Columbia. His first job was as a CSI for NYPD. That lasted three years. He quit because the pay was too low and the promotions too slow. McGee then worked as a criminalist for the FBI specializing in ballistics and then banking fraud for a total of five years, where rookie FBI Special Agent Naalnish Begay first met him. McGee quit the FBI because he could no longer stomach the bureaucracy. Begay lasted two years longer before he joined the other FBI—the Full Blooded Indian variety.

  PI work is not all that lucrative for most people, probably because they are just not suited for high-end work. McGee’s firm—McGee & Associates—does its share of nasty divorce dirt digging and embezzlement work, but their real money comes from surveillance in corporate espionage cases, forensic accountancy, and in-depth investigations for the defense in high-profile criminal cases—usually murders.

  The office of McGee & Associates Investigations is in mid-town Manhattan, is clean and presentable with chrome and glass fixtures, and no handpainted signs by the proprietor—another set of differences between McGee and the lower class of PIs whom the real cops refer to as “bottom feeders.” McGee’s doesn’t advertise on TV or on billboards. His clients are largely rich, have serious issues with opponents; or, in criminal cases, they have vices to hide and important secrets to keep. The reason Naalnish needs McGee at this critical juncture in his investigation is because of McGee’s adherence to the firm’s policy to provide the truth, and the clients who pay the bills are informed up front that McGee will not lie for them in or out of court. McGee and his partners agree to give the clients all of what they discover and to let them be the judge of how to use the information. They never take bribes; anyone who does such a thing will be kicking rocks down the road half a minute after McGee learns that he or she does. Sometimes the clients balk at such pristine morality, but it has paid off over the two decades they have been in business. The other compelling reason for Naalnish to call his old friend is that no one connected with McGee & Associates is intimidated by the federal government or its law enforcement minions.

  McGee has two partners: Caitlin O’Brian, who has been with him for three years. Her former occupation was as one of New York’s finest, a homicide detective in the Central Investigation and Resource Division, Homicide Analysis Unit, who ran afoul of her precinct captain. It seems there had been a disagreement about who had the right to do what with which and to whom, and she decked him. To avoid unpleasantness of separation with its attendant negative publicity, Catlin accepted a full pension and a nice letter of recommendation. She is a tough black Irish girl from the Bronx who has four brothers—a condition that lends itself to an early and continuing education in fighting. After finishing the academy and doing her rookie year, she obtained an associate degree in criminology specializing in bank fraud and handwriting analysis. That proved to be boring, s
o the feisty colleen moved to the homicide division of midtown Manhattan where McGee first met her.

  The other partner of McGee & Associates is Ivory White, an unlikely name for the blackest man you will ever meet. He has something of a murky past about which McGee knows everything, and no one else knows anything. He is—in the vernacular—the muscle of the organization. He is tall, athletic, bald, arrogant, and mean, if needs be—and that is often the case in his line of work, perhaps best known by its euphemism—” special investigations.” He does all of the firm’s personal security for high profile clients.

  For all of his martial arts and other physical skill sets, Ivory is extremely intelligent. He is a remarkable linguist who speaks six of the most useful languages of the 800 used by the citizens of the most densely populated city in the country if not the world. Unfortunately, for Naalnish’s present needs, Navajo is not one of them.

  Naalnish then gives McGee a concise but lengthy full history of the Navajo reservation case to the present date.

  McGee says, “I can easily read between the lines. The feds and the tribal elders do not want this to be a ‘Navajo’ problem—just a ‘crime’ problem. Your hands are officially tied, and you need help. Also, let me guess … you can’t pay me. Am I pretty much on your same wavelength, Naalnish?”

  “Pretty much. It’s a lot to ask, I know, but I have to have an investigation team that can poke around and help get to the bottom of this that is not government, not police, and most importantly, not Indian. I can steer you in the right directions, but I can’t be seen to do so overtly. I will not be able to take credit; it’s probably best for your firm to get any accolades if—or better, when—we make arrests. That may be moot; it’s likely that the Fat Boys Incorporated will sweep in at the last minute and have a photo-op while putting the cuffs on the perps.”