Head Wounds

by Michael McGarrity

  Within a few minutes, Clayton had copies of paperwork that included airport invoices to park and refuel the Gulfstream, store the Audi, and allow the trucking company to remove and transport the car. All the bills had been paid by a company named China Dolls, a Mexican limited partnership located in Piedras Negras.

  Clayton left pleased with the information but unsure exactly how it would help. Knowing more about Sammy Shen was interesting, but he still wasn’t convinced Harjo’s target was relevant to his investigation.

  His stop at High Country Boots added nothing to his growing storehouse of curious but unconnected facts. The ownership had changed and the new proprietor, a West Texas gal with blond highlights in her long, brown hair, didn’t recognize Carmella Schuster’s photo and had no knowledge of her as a customer. Clayton left his business card behind on the off chance Carmella’s—aka Celine Shepard’s—cowboy-boot-buying fetish might soon bring her back to Ruidoso and the store.

  With nothing substantial to grab on to, he was starting to believe in the possibilities of improbable coincidences. He laughed at the idea. People get murdered for a reason, rational or not. Stealing two hundred grand from a gangster’s lover may have been cause enough, but what if that wasn’t the only motive?

  Harjo had thrown a ghostly assassin Clayton’s way as the key to solving the crimes, but what about the victims? In homicides without a known perp or primary suspect, Clayton knew to always look to the dead for answers. He decided to put Harjo’s El Jefe on hold and take a closer look at Goggin and Nautzile.

  He made a U-turn on Sudderth and headed back to the office.

  His first day on the job at the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office, Frank Rodney showed up with his own personal office chair, an expensive ergonomic model in teal-gray that provided a multitude of adjustments designed for comfort, support, and improved posture. It got the unit detectives speculating, some with dismay, that their new boss was going to be a bureaucratic desk jockey. It didn’t take long for the dire prediction to circulate back to Rodney. He made no attempt to dispel it.

  What his troops didn’t know was that years ago, as a uniform patrol sergeant, Frank had ruined his back assisting fire department personnel move a six-hundred-pound male who had suffered a heart attack from a second-floor bedroom. It had nearly forced him into early retirement. Because it wasn’t a heroic in-the-line-of-duty injury, Rodney never spoke of it. In fact, it embarrassed him. But it had almost crippled him and taken months of intensive rehabilitation before he’d been allowed to return to work. Soon after, he’d been promoted to detective lieutenant.

  His ergonomic chair and a daily early morning exercise regimen kept him upright, physically mobile, and capable of doing the job. Now, if he could only stop smoking.

  He was thinking of stepping outside for a cigarette when Detective Istee knocked on his open office door.

  “Got a minute?” Clayton asked.

  Rodney nodded at an empty chair and tamped down his urge for a smoke. “Take a load off.”

  Clayton pulled a chair up to Rodney’s desk. “Harjo’s information on Sammy Shen and Carmella Schuster checks out. I was able to ID both as being at the casino. However, that doesn’t mean El Jefe is our killer.”

  “Have you got anything that tells us otherwise?”

  “Not yet,” Clayton replied. He quickly summarized his futile attempts to unearth anything useful from Goggin and Nautzile’s former work associates at the casino. “It appears that stealing the two hundred K was a one-off lark that surprised everyone. And nobody knows anything about Nautzile’s soon-to-be-rich story she told her mother. I’m waiting on the New Mexico Gaming Commission to fax me their pre-employment background investigation reports on Goggin and Nautzile.”

  “In the hopes of?” Rodney queried.

  “God only knows,” Clayton answered. “Anything I may have missed.”

  “You’ve got two days before you rendezvous with Special Agent Fallon,” Rodney noted.

  “Put Harjo and his pals off for a couple more days.”

  “Why should we do that?”

  “Because I don’t want him pulling all the strings. If he’s on the up-and-up, he’ll be flexible. If not, what’s the rush?”

  “You don’t trust him.”

  Clayton stood. “If I have to go in, I want to be fully prepared. If I can break this case without going, all the better.”

  “Understood. I’ll speak to the sheriff.”

  “Thanks.” Clayton glanced at the still mostly empty bookcase and pile of boxes stacked in a corner. He shook his head disapprovingly and cracked a grin. “You really should finish unpacking and settle in, Cap. That’s if you’re planning to stay here for the long haul.”

  Rodney repressed a smile. “I’ll think about it, Detective. Thanks for the interior decorating advice.”

  “Anytime.”

  Clayton left and Rodney sat back, surprised and delighted by the brief, friendly exchange. It had been the first bit of amicable banter he’d had with anybody on his staff since day one. Maybe he was starting to make some inroads with his people. Maybe he was starting to like this guy Istee. Maybe it was time to lighten up.

  He rose, cut open the shipping tape on a packing box with his pocketknife, and filled a shelf with framed family snapshots and a few of his more prestigious awards and service recognition plaques from his old job back East.

  On a lower shelf he arranged his important criminal investigation and law enforcement reference books, and a stack of FBI research bulletins he frequently consulted on matters of forensic and scientific methodologies and techniques.

  Pleased with himself, he stepped back and looked around. Putting stuff out did make the office look better. After he grabbed a smoke, he’d return and finish unpacking. Maybe he was here for the long haul.

  At his desk, Clayton found an additional research report on the Kickapoo Indians Captain Rodney had asked staff to compile. He put it aside in favor of the state gaming commission background investigations on Goggin and Nautzile that had just arrived as an email attachment. Both contained customary information about the applicant’s education, prior employment, credit history, criminal records check, motor vehicle reports, and personal references. Everything appeared to be in order.

  What caught Clayton’s eye in Lucy’s dossier was a summary of an interview conducted by the investigator with Houzinnie Yuzos, a registered nurse at the Gallup Indian Medical Center. He should have remembered her. Basketball teammates in high school, best friends since childhood, Lucy and Houzinnie had been selected to the all-state team their senior year, the first Mescalero Apache girls to be so recognized. Their achievement had been written up in the area newspapers and they’d been feted during a special ceremony at a tribal council meeting, which made them instant celebrities on the rez.

  If Lucy had confided in anyone about her get-rich plans it just might have been Houzinnie. Although their lives had gone in completely different directions, hopefully the two old friends had stayed in touch. He called Houzinnie’s home telephone number listed in the report and got an automated message saying the number was no longer in service. He tried the medical center, asked for the human resources department, and was told the office had closed for the day. He identified himself as a police officer and asked if Yuzos was on duty, only to be told that for security reasons that information could not be released over the phone.

  Clayton had moved his family from the rez to Las Cruces almost twelve years ago. It was only a two-hour drive back home and they returned to visit frequently, but with nearly four thousand tribal members living on the 463,000-acre homeland, it was impossible to know everyone. Clayton had no idea who in Houzinnie’s family still lived there. Isabel, his mother, a tribal elder and former council member, just might.

  He called, got her voice mail, left a message, tucked the Kickapoo report under his arm, and started for home.

  The house was empty when Clayton arrived home. On the refrigerator was a note from Grace s
aying she and Hannah had left to be with Blossom, the girls, and other family members who’d assembled on the rez for the arrival of Lucy’s body. They’d be gone overnight.

  Clayton understood. In the critical time between the passage from one world to the next, those who are newly dead must gather tracks and revisit places and people important during their lifetime. A proper ritual was required to make sure the dead transitioned from The Shadow World to The Land of Ever Summer.

  His absence would be noted. He felt a stab of guilt for not being there.

  There was a voice message on the landline phone from Isabel saying she, too, would be with Blossom and the family. She added that last year Houzinnie’s mother, Betty, had suffered a broken hip from a bad fall and now lived in Gallup with her daughter. She’d ask Elmer Yuzos, Houzinnie’s brother, to call Clayton with information on how to contact her.

  On his own for dinner, Clayton warmed up some leftover black bean soup, threw together a salad, sat at the kitchen table, and started in on the Kickapoo report. His cell phone buzzed before he finished reading page one.

  “Are you bailing out on me?” Special Agent Bernard Harjo demanded.

  “What’s your rush?” Clayton countered. “Is El Jefe going to vanish within the next two days?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “If you can’t chill while I do my job, I’m not the right guy for you.”

  Harjo sighed. “Tomorrow’s Friday. How about Tuesday? Will that do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why the pushback?”

  “You have to ask?” Clayton replied.

  “I’m not trying to set you up,” Harjo answered.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “I’ll have details for you on Monday.”

  Harjo disconnected before Clayton could reply. He put the phone down and returned to the Kickapoo report.

  Bernard Harjo plugged his phone into the charger at the base of a table lamp and settled into one of the two off-white leather easy chairs positioned in front of the picture window of the five-star, high-rise suite. Far below, the greater Los Angeles Basin sprawled, crisscrossed with clogged freeways, residential neighborhoods chopped up by major arterial streets and ringed by strip malls, and drought-thirsty brown hills that looked ready to burst into flame. In the hazy distance, a thin ribbon of blue hinted at the ocean.

  At the top of the DEA pay scale, Harjo earned a six-figure annual income augmented by a twenty-five percent special duty differential, and a generous expense account. With no dependents or ex-wives to support, he enjoyed an occasional indulgence, and today was one of those days. Especially rewarding, as it had been some time since he’d crawled out of the L.A. slums.

  He glanced at Agent Danny Fallon, who was busy cracking open an expensive bottle of single-malt scotch. “Istee thinks he’s bait.”

  “Well, isn’t he?” Fallon replied. He poured two neat shots into whiskey glasses. “Ice?”

  “It doesn’t have to work that way,” Harjo replied. “One cube, please.”

  Using tongs, Fallon plucked a cube out of the ice bucket, dropped it in Harjo’s glass, and handed it to him. He poured himself a water chaser, eased into the adjacent empty leather chair, and raised his glass. “Here’s to you.”

  “And to you,” Harjo replied, looking out the window. “Even from up here L.A. sucks.”

  “Explain yourself,” Fallon said.

  Harjo shot him a confused look. “About L.A.?”

  Fallon laughed. “No, about not playing Istee for a patsy.”

  Harjo smiled. “I’m still trying to work that out.” He’d been Danny’s rabbi ever since he graduated from the academy. Over the last five years, Fallon had become Bernard’s best friend.

  Fallon was tall for a Navajo, with a wide forehead, thick black hair, dark leathery skin, and deep-set eyes. He seemed to live inside himself better than anyone else on the planet Harjo had ever met, other than maybe an ancient Tibetan monk or two.

  Watching Harjo sip his scotch, Fallon stayed silent. He knew Harjo’s target wasn’t Sammy Shen, at least not this time. It was Juan Jose Garza’s uncle, the corrupt police commander and narco-trafficker in Piedras Negras. His name was Luis Lopez Lorenz, and he’d hired El Jefe to kill James Goggin and Lucy Nautzile. Not because they’d stolen Carmella Schuster’s gambling money from the Apache casino. But because they’d found and taken a million dollars of Lorenz’s money.

  Over a period of several weeks, Lorenz had moved several truckloads of his drug profits to an abandoned ranch house outside of Eagle Pass. With no close neighbors and facing a straight stretch of pavement, it was off a rural, seldom-traveled road. No overhead power lines crossed the highway, there were no bends or curves, no brush or trees bordering close to the shoulders, and only the slightest rise in elevation. A perfect landing strip for a Pilatus PC-24. With great range and speed, it was perfect for rugged takeoffs and landings.

  The money had been guarded day and night until the plane arrived. In a hurry to get it loaded and airborne quickly, one cash bundle of a million dollars had been inadvertently left behind by Lorenz’s men. At least that’s what Luis had been told after-the-fact. It hadn’t been missed until the middleman in Houston, an international commodity broker, called the following day to report the shortage to Sammy Shen. By then it was gone. But a remote battery-operated CCTV system Lorenz had installed caught Goggin and Nautzile exploring the old ranch house, finding the money, loading it in their vehicle, and driving away. The license plate on the SUV had been enough to ID them.

  After the men who’d botched the shipment had been brutally murdered in a safe house and disposed of, the ranch house was burned to the ground. Only then did Lorenz hire El Jefe to find and kill Goggin and Nautzile. He agreed to pay an extra bonus to have them scalped north of the border so that everyone in Piedras Negras and the state of Coahuila knew never to take anything that belonged to him upon penalty of death.

  However, one of the gang members Lorenz had killed for screwing up the money shipment had been Mark Villalobos, a young DEA undercover agent who’d infiltrated the cartel. He was also Harjo’s nephew, his sister’s oldest son.

  “If Istee doesn’t cooperate, I may go with you,” Harjo said, studying the remaining scotch in his glass. He stood to get another drink. “Shit, I am going with you.”

  Fallon held his tongue as Harjo refreshed his scotch and laid out the plan.

  Clayton’s phone rang. He had finished reading that the Mexican government in the nineteenth century had given the Kickapoos a remote reservation in the state of Coahuila.

  Clayton answered.

  “You need to talk to my sister?” Elmer Yuzos asked.

  “I do,” Clayton replied. “But while I’ve got you on the phone, did you recently see or talk to Blossom Magoosh’s daughter?”

  “No, but I heard she was seen driving around the Old Ladies Village with her boyfriend.”

  The Old Ladies Village, a century-old failed attempt by the government to separate the generations, now housed extended families, but the label persisted. “When was that?” Clayton asked.

  “Just before she got finished,” Elmer responded flatly. He gave Clayton Houzinnie’s phone number and hung up.

  Houzinnie answered Clayton’s call on the second ring.

  “Elmer said you needed to talk to me,” she said.

  “I do,” Clayton replied. “Was Blossom’s daughter in touch with you recently?”

  “All the time. I think I was her only friend. She’d call from Eagle Pass where they were living. I don’t think she was that happy there with James.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “Two days before she got finished. She knew I’d moved my mother here to live with me and she wanted to know if I’d rented her house. I told her no, there were too many things wrong with it that had to be fixed first, and I didn’t have the money.”

  “Did she want to rent it?”

  “I think so, but she didn’t say.”<
br />
  “What did she say?”

  “That she was homesick and wanted to have her girls with her again. Since no charges had been brought against her for stealing the money from the casino, she wondered if she could return and start over again.”

  “With Goggin?”

  “She didn’t say, but I assumed so.”

  “What did you think of the idea?” Clayton asked.

  Houzinnie paused. “Ever since we were little girls, she always thought she could fix things, no matter how bad she messed up. By the time we graduated from high school, basketball was the only thing we had in common.”

  “Did she mention anything about money?”

  “No. Except she did say something about making things right with the casino.”

  “Thanks,” Clayton said. “I may need to talk to you again.”

  “Anytime,” Houzinnie said. “Call my cell phone. That’s the best way to reach me.”

  She gave him the number.

  Clayton thanked her again, disconnected, and reached again for the Kickapoo report. He’d only just read that in the middle to late twentieth century some tribal members had lived under the international bridge separating Piedras Negras from Eagle Pass. They were mostly migrant workers living in squalor, dependent on wages earned on North American farms for their subsistence. There had been no Eagle Pass reservation with a Kickapoo casino back then. And when offered the chance to become U.S. citizens, not all of them took the federal government’s offer. Many chose dual citizenship, some turned it down flatly.

  Clayton found their independent spirit admirable. It was akin to the Apache way of keeping their traditions and culture separate from the world of the White Eyes.

  When he had the time, he promised himself to learn more about the Kickapoos, which meant in their language something akin to those “who move about.” They seemed to be much like the Apaches of old who’d ranged from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains and deep into the interior of Mexico.

  He left the report on the desk and readied for bed. It was much too quiet in the house. Wendell’s lively presence was now mostly gone for good, only occasionally rekindled when he came home on his short visits from medical school. And when Hannah finished college and left, taking her beautiful, fierce warrior spirit into the world, what would he and Grace do?