by Aimée
“You’ve got it, boss. I’ll give it my best shot.”
“Now let’s go see my brother.”
They arrived at Clifford’s hogan a half hour later after a quick drive south and found him outside, chopping wood. Recognizing their vehicle, he waved, then set down his axe and walked over to meet them.
“What brings you both here?” he asked.
“Do you have a minute?” Ella said. “I need more information about the deceased’s brother. Can you help?” she asked, knowing not to mention people by name here if at all possible.
“Not much. I’ve met him a few times, but that’s about it.”
“I heard that he and his brother were competing for a woman named Juanita. I don’t have a last name, but I heard that she left the one who died while he was still overseas and took up with his brother. I’d like to track her down so I can question her.”
“Jealousy can tear up families,” he said with a slow nod. “I don’t know who this woman is, but I’m sure there was a lot of gossip at the time among those who knew both men. I’ll find out what I can.”
“Anything that’ll give me a lead will help.”
He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Knowing how many people Clifford saw as part of his profession, his help was often invaluable. Her brother was a trusted member of the tribe and doors opened to him that would forever remain closed to her.
“Something else is bothering you,” he added, walking with Ella to where he’d been chopping wood, while Justine remained behind on the telephone.
“I’ve been trying to piece together where the deceased went and what he did after he got back to our land. But some things just don’t add up for me.”
“Like what?” he asked, picking up an armful of split wood.
“According to the medical examiner he took a dunk someplace just before he died, but there was no soap residue on his skin. We checked motels—but got zip. I considered the river, but it would have been really cold this time of year. . . .”
“He’d just come home from war, so he probably stopped at his family’s sweat lodge for a cleansing, then washed himself in the river before drying off. That’s what our warriors do—even the ones who barely remember the old ways often cling to that custom. Find his family’s sweat house. It’s probably not far away—a good run maybe—from the river.”
“Good thinking, big brother. I’m just surprised that I didn’t think of that first,” she answered with a trace of a smile.
“Remember to stay attuned to the Way. This awareness has helped you before,” he said.
“You’re right,” Ella admitted. “Thanks for reminding me.” Nodding good-bye, she headed back to the cruiser where Justine was waiting. The fastest way to find the Blacksheep family’s sweat hogan would be to contact Samuel. Once they were underway, Ella filled Justine in.
“Shall I contact the Farmington PD and track him down?” Justine asked.
“I’ll do it while you drive. I want to talk to him ASAP.”
It took fifteen minutes, but Samuel finally contacted them just as they reached Shiprock. Ella asked him for directions to his family’s sweat lodge, but Samuel insisted on meeting them at the highway, at a location they’d already driven past several minutes ago, to lead them in.
In a foul mood, Ella gave Justine the highlights, then added, “I want to make sure he doesn’t tamper with any evidence. Don’t let him touch anything. In fact, keep him back with you while I go ahead and take a look first. If he doesn’t stay put, threaten to cuff him.”
“Oh, that’ll go over real well when his PD hears about it.”
“I don’t care,” Ella said firmly. “There’s something not right about Samuel. He says he cares about his brother, yet he had a relationship with his brother’s girl while Jimmy was overseas in a combat zone. Now Samuel’s investigating the crime on the sly, and isn’t sharing any information with us. The whole thing just smells.”
Justine didn’t answer right away. “Part of the problem may be that he feels guilty about what happened between him and his brother and now it’s too late to make amends—except by bringing in his brother’s killer or killers. In the most basic of all ways, he may need to find whoever killed his brother—not for revenge necessarily, but to balance the scales again.”
“Without balance, there’s no harmony or walking in beauty,” Ella replied thoughtfully. Anywhere else that wouldn’t have made as much sense as it did here on the Diné Tah. Yet there was an inescapable rightness about it . . . if Samuel was innocent. “That’s the problem with Samuel in a nutshell. He’s a wild card. Make sure you keep an eye on him. If he’s responsible for his brother’s death, directly or indirectly, he could be a danger to us as well.”
They headed back toward Shiprock’s southwest quadrant, which was across the river, and on the way passed slowly through the traffic in Shiprock’s tiny downtown area just east of the bridges. A fender bender had occurred just in front of a gas station, and Officer Lujan had stopped traffic while a wrecker was hooking up one of the damaged vehicles. They crept along slowly, then stopped, waiting for their turn to advance.
“How’s Dawn doing these days? I haven’t had a chance to visit with her. Is she still into riding?” Justine asked.
“Very much so, and though she adores Wind, it won’t be long before she’ll want to get a full-size quarter horse, too, and start competition riding of one kind or another. But for now, she’s happy with the pony, which is good because keeping three animals in alfalfa and feed would be very expensive. Unfortunately for me, once my daughter gets a pet, it’s for life. There’s no way she’ll ever let me sell Wind, even if I get her a horse.”
“What about your horse, Chieftain? Can you two share him?”
“No way. He’s too much horse for Dawn,” Ella replied. “Too much for me, sometimes. I try to get up early on weekends and take him for a run, but he’s hard to control and has almost gotten away from me a few times. Whenever he acts up, I run him uphill or in a tight circle until he gets tired.”
“Good strategy,” Justine said.
“It works, but his Saturday-morning workouts can be like a roller-coaster ride.”
Finally, traffic opened up again as the wrecker pulled away with its load. As they crossed the old steel bridge, heading west, Ella’s thoughts returned to the case at hand. “When we get back to the office I want you to try and do some more digging into Ford’s background.”
“Reverend Tome?”
Seeing the mischievous gleam in Justine’s eyes, Ella continued before her partner could comment. “I still don’t like unanswered questions about someone who’s helping me with a case.”
“In my limited experience, when you run into government firewalls and screens that practically yell ‘Access Denied’ or ‘Restricted Access,’ the sensible option is to back off. Otherwise remember to smile when you look up ’cause there’ll be a satellite watching you. Or they’ll go cheap and just hack software onto your computer to record every keystroke from now on.”
Ella considered it then shook her head. “No, I don’t think that’s how it’s going to play out. In this case, if my hunch is right, the silence will be deafening.”
They met with Samuel a short distance west of the junction of Highways 64 and 491, within sight of Shiprock High School. Samuel, who was in FPD uniform and in his departmental vehicle, had pulled off the road at the terminus of a narrow track leading north between alfalfa fields. She could see the edge of the bluff farther ahead and, beyond and below that, the bosque, the forest of willows, brush, and large and small cottonwoods that occupied the shoulders of the cold San Juan River.
Seeing them pulling off the shoulder of the highway, Samuel started his car and led the way. They bounced along on what optimists would call a road, over recent sets of tracks, for about five minutes before he finally pulled over. The dirt track they’d followed abruptly ended at the edge of the bluff.
Climbing out of their SUV, Ell
a glanced around. Behind them in both directions were fields, still dry and covered with the remnants of last year’s alfalfa. In front of them, at the bottom of the low cliff, lay a strip of wooded area filled with willows that paralleled the river beyond both banks where the water table was close to the surface.
“We walk the rest of the way,” Samuel said, pointing. The path down was narrow and rough, filled with rocks, roots, tumbleweeds, and deep arroyos large enough to swallow a person.
The hike itself wasn’t long, however, and they were soon at the river. Willows in clumps often ten feet high or more grew all around. They looked like leaf-covered fishing poles and were great for roasting marshmallows, Ella recalled with a smile. The scent and ripple of water not far away took Ella back to her childhood and her father’s many baptisms.
“Up ahead’s where my brother went,” Samuel said, cutting into Ella’s thoughts. “It’s halfway between the cliff and the water, right between those big willows, next to the uprooted salt cedar.”
They hiked the rest of the way double-time. Then, at the outside edge of the bosque, Ella saw an old, traditional Navajo structure. Sweat houses, different from dwellings, were made to resemble a tripod at first. Then other sticks were added until the structure became airtight. Ella noted that the blanket that covered the front was tattered. Her best guess was that the small hogan had been standing since the mid 1900s.
“My great-grandfather built this. It was here for the ones who came back from World War Two, Korea, then Vietnam—and now Iraq. Blacksheeps have fought in all the wars. Our clan’s returning soldiers would first come here, build a fire outside, then put heated rocks in the center and purify themselves before meeting their families,” he said. “But unless Jimmy added several more blankets to that entrance, I’m not sure how much of a sweat bath he had the other day.”
“Plunging into that cold river afterward must have been an exercise in willpower,” Justine said and shuddered.
Samuel laughed. “Agreed, but it’s a tradition with the warriors in our family.”
He sang one of the verses of their sweat bath song, and it took Ella a while to understand his Navajo, which wasn’t very good. But she got the last part which ended with, “An everlasting, peaceful world.”
Ella still felt the power of the song—power that came from tradition as much as belief. She smiled, remembering her mother telling her once that the heart of a traditionalist often beat inside the most adamant modernist.
“Those look like Jimmy’s tracks,” Samuel said, pointing down as they reached softer ground. The tiny hogan was about thirty yards ahead now, just past a low ridge. The river was about fifty feet away, down a bank, and wouldn’t rise even close to the hogan except at flood stage, which was rare.
Ella caught Justine’s eye, and motioned toward Samuel, reminding her partner to stick close to him. They continued on, Ella leading the way when, without any warning, a sudden burst of gunfire erupted, kicking up tufts of sand all around them.
Ella dove into a thicket and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Justine and Samuel duck beneath the overhang of the bluff, into the shadows. Hidden among the brush, mounded by sand that provided some actual protection in addition to cover, she tried to determine the location of the sniper. But every time she raised her head, more shots whistled past her.
NINE
Ella had her pistol out now, but from the sound, the sniper was using a semiauto rifle or assault weapon. They were outgunned. “Anyone spot him?” she called out, scrunching up against a fallen cottonwood for more protection.
Several rounds hit the sand just beyond, kicking dust up. Ella twisted around, watching for the sniper as she felt for her radio, then cell phone. Neither was working from their current location. “I can’t get a call through,” Ella hollered.
“Me, neither,” Samuel yelled back. More gunfire erupted, breaking off chunks of hardened mud above where he and Justine had sought cover, but too high to do any damage.
“Either he’s at the wrong angle to hit us, or he’s just trying to pin us down,” Ella yelled. “If we can zero in on his position, I want you two to cover me while I make a move.”
Ella strained her neck, trying to peer from behind cover. Either their assailant was a bad shot, or he was just playing with them.
Four more shots struck, two in the sand between her and the two others, then two more into the overhang where they’d hit before. More chunks of dirt fell. “I think he’s . . .” Samuel yelled but his voice was drowned out by an enormous thump that shook the ground like an earthquake.
Ella could feel the sudden rush of air strike her chest like a hand, then debris and dust dropped from the sky like an urban hailstorm. She kept her face down, covering her head with her arms as various objects bounced off of her and rattled all around. The air was hot and choked with dust, and she started to cough.
After about ten seconds, the shower of dust and debris finally stopped. Spitting dust, pieces of wood, and leaves from her mouth, Ella raised her head slightly, brushing away the long shreds of cottonwood fibers that had been ripped away by the force of the blast. Now that the dust was settling, she saw a small crater on the other side of the ridge. All that was left of the sweat hogan was rubble.
Aware that they were no longer being fired upon, Ella rose to her knees. Acrid white smoke was beginning to billow from the log fragments, now splintered and shattered, wood ablaze from the heat of whatever had just detonated inside the hogan.
As she stood, her phone signal reappeared. “I’m going to call it in,” Ella said. “Samuel, Justine, keep an eye out for the sniper in case he reappears.”
“Cover me so I can go back to my unit,” Samuel said. “I’ve got a tactical radio that’ll reach halfway across the state. I’ve also got some serious firepower stored in the trunk.”
“Go,” Ella said, then glancing at Justine as her partner came out of cover just enough to get a better field of view, she added, “Stay sharp.”
Both remained low and among the brush, watching for movement around them as Samuel sprinted back up the trail toward their vehicles. “As soon as we can move freely, I want this area processed with a fine-toothed comb,” Ella said. “I can still see Jimmy’s footprints in places, though the explosion took care of everything close to the sweat house. But maybe we’ll get lucky and some things were blown clear.”
“The sniper’s tracks will be obscured,” Justine said.
“For the most part, yes, but some of his tracks should still remain,” Ella answered. “It’s unlikely that he managed to obliterate all of them. But we’ll have to work hard.”
Samuel came back up the trail carrying an assault rifle resembling an M-16. He positioned himself in a covering position, then signalled Ella. “I can cover both of you from here, but I don’t see any movement in or around where the sweat lodge used to be.”
“Just keep watch,” Ella called back, “and every once in a while take a look behind yourself as well. We’re going in from the flanks.”
With Justine circling to the right, slightly, Ella edged to the left, then made her way over the low ridge that had shielded them from the main force of the blast and the flying debris. “I think the shooter’s long gone,” Ella said. “There are tracks leading west. His goal was to keep us from getting to the hogan—and he succeeded.”
“This wasn’t the kind of thing a nut job does for fun, so maybe there was evidence in there he didn’t want us to see,” Justine said.
They passed beyond the remnants of the smoldering hogan, and were able to see the ground clearly on the far side. Ella nodded as Justine crouched down and pointed to the ground.
“Three men were here,” Ella noted.
“That explains the high rate of fire keeping us pinned, even when the charge was being set. What the heck are we dealing with?” Justine muttered, not expecting an answer.
Ella waved at Samuel. “Anyone around?”
“No. All clear. I’m coming in.”
The call for emergency backup was quickly canceled, but soon Tache, Justine, and Neskahi, the tribe’s crime scene team, were there processing the evidence.
Leaving them to their work, Ella motioned for Samuel to join her over by the river. “The presence of these three people, along with their weapons and explosives, wasn’t coincidental. They made it here just ahead of us, obviously, or the sweat house would have been destroyed hours, maybe days, earlier. So my question is why now? Someone—maybe you—has been watching and monitoring us. Are you certain that you have no idea what we’re dealing with?”
“No one outside my family knew about this place. And I haven’t discussed it with anyone. I don’t know why the perps struck now. And, for the record, I’m not holding out on you,” he said firmly. “I want whoever killed my brother—more than you do.”
“Did you tell anyone you were coming here?” Ella asked.
“Just Dispatch. And my sergeant,” Samuel added. “Had to because it’s out of my jurisdiction and I’m on duty.”
“Include directions to this place?”
“In general, yes. But someone could have just followed us,” Samuel pointed out.
Ella bent down, picked up a pebble, then threw it out into the river, watching the splash. Then she glanced over at him. “Tell me something—did your brother send you packages from Iraq, or once back in the States? Mail, boxes, luggage, clothes? Anything at all, even a postcard,” she pressed, wondering, even hoping, that Jimmy had sent him a duplicate of the story he’d mailed her or the rest of it. That knowledge would go a long ways in establishing trust between them.
“No, there’s been nothing,” he said firmly. “Not even a damn postcard. Just a few e-mails or quick phone calls at the beginning, then the one I already told you about when he returned.” He gazed at her, studying her expression, then added, “My brother’s death is not just the result of some punk carjackers screwing up, is it?”
