Red Mesa

by Aimée

  “Maybe her vehicle broke down and she’s having radio problems. Or perhaps she stayed with a friend, overslept, and is on her way to the station right now. She didn’t call because she was hoping that no one would notice she was late.”

  “I don’t buy it. That doesn’t sound like Justine,” Ella said.

  “I hear what you’re saying, but lately Justine hasn’t been acting like Justine,” Joseph pointed out.

  Ella shook her head. “There’s more going on.”

  “Your intuition?”

  She knew what he was thinking. Her intuition, a part of the “gift” many attributed to her family’s legacy, was legendary at the station. The inescapable fact was that her hunches usually paid off. “All I can tell you is that something’s very wrong. I can just feel it.”

  They finally arrived at Beautiful Mesa, and she turned off the road at the same place she and Justine had been last night. The muscles in her stomach were so tense they ached. She left the unit wordlessly, and Joseph followed. Though he hadn’t spoken, she could sense the same tension in him.

  “Look over there,” he said, breaking the silence.

  Ella saw him purse his lips and cock his head to the side, pointing Navajo style. For a moment her breath froze in the back of her throat. The sergeant had found what appeared to be a shallow grave. The ground around the mound was disturbed, probably by a shovel, and was darker, filled with what looked like ash and burned plant debris.

  “Was that here yesterday when you were around?”

  “It was evening and I didn’t notice. All I saw was a small campfire about thirty yards ahead. I’d just put out the burning branches by smothering them with dirt when Justine drove up. I could smell gasoline or some similar accelerant on the wood, probably used to start the fire.”

  “Let’s go take a closer look at the place where the fire was, then we can check out the mound,” Joseph said, walking ahead slowly.

  She recognized his reluctance to go poking around a possible grave site. Despite being modernists, they’d been taught the same thing—stay away from the dead. And according to tradition, until four days had passed after the death, the chindi—the evil in a person that remained behind—would not have departed yet. They weren’t even supposed to say the dead person’s name during that time period, or touch something that belonged to the person. If you did, the chindi would come after you. You’d get sick for sure, and other terrible things would happen to you.

  That belief had protected the Dineh from contagion and disease at times, but for a law enforcement officer, it only served to make an unpleasant duty even more difficult.

  The burned juniper branches she’d smothered with shovel-loads of sand were easily uncovered. Neskahi poked around the branches gingerly with his boot, but it was pretty obvious what was there.

  “I guess we need to check out that mound now. It could be an animal someone buried. It looks shallow,” Joseph said as they walked back toward the disturbed ground, stopping ten feet away.

  “Maybe.” Ella’s voice was taut as she tried to estimate the length of the mound, hoping it was too short to be a human body. Even the possibility that Justine could be lying beneath there terrified her.

  Knowing that as the ranking officer, it fell to her to set the example, she took a few steps closer to the apparent grave and studied it closely, trying to remain objective. “We’ll have to use our hands only. We don’t want to disturb or lose any evidence. Keep an eye out for footprints or marks around the mound, too. We have to preserve the site in case it turns out to be a crime scene.”

  They looked around carefully, but there were no tracks other than their own within twenty feet of the site.

  “Except for a few of what look like shovel or digging-tool scrapes, the tracks have been obliterated. Sand has been thrown over them, and a branch was used lightly, wiping out any marks on the sand,” Neskahi pointed out, putting on one pair of latex gloves, then another pair over them. This prevented touching something that had touched the dead, and was accepted procedure by Navajo cops.

  Ella did the same, extracting the gloves from her jacket pocket and putting them on as she spoke. “I suspect that whatever’s there isn’t someone’s pet. This is something else, and whatever it is has been burned. Smell the gasoline still in the soil, along with all the ashes and burned debris?”

  Even as she said the words, dread pried into her. She’d confronted death and loss before. Yet nothing, not even her father’s murder, had prepared her for what this might be. She’d been here less than half a day ago, and her cousin had been with her. Now Justine was gone, and there was this one solitary grave. She needed to keep a cool head, but the iciness in her stomach and the prickling sensation all over her body fought against that resolve.

  Joseph took a deep breath, holding his hands down at his sides as if they were already contaminated. “Maybe we should call in the coroner first.”

  She smiled hesitantly at him. “Dr. Roanhorse isn’t about to dig, my friend, especially until we’ve confirmed that a body is here.”

  He nodded, then following her lead, crouched and began moving the sand aside with gloved hands.

  She wondered if the sergeant would have an Enemy Way done, the Sing to remove contamination. She didn’t really believe in that, but she felt dirty as she moved the sand, ashes, and dark debris particles aside, working to uncover what lay beneath. She would shower for a long time before she touched her daughter tonight.

  Ella worked quickly, wanting to make up for Joseph’s slow pace. Fear drove her. The possibility that she’d find Justine buried there filled her with dread so intense she could scarcely breathe. Then, slowly, the ground became warm enough to feel the heat through her double layer of gloves. It was obvious whatever was burned here had become very hot, and the residual heat was still present in the soil.

  The debris began to look more like fragments of cloth. She wanted to stop, but somehow willed herself to continue, swallowing the bile at the back of her throat. A heartbeat later, she uncovered a charred piece of bone big enough to be part of an arm or leg. It was still smoking, and she had to drop it to avoid melting a hole in her gloves.

  As she brushed the ash-laden dirt aside, the heated remnants of a shattered, badly burned human skull emerged. She wanted to vomit, but feeling Joseph’s disgust and knowing he was watching her, she stood up slowly and took a deep breath.

  “We have to stop now until the rest of the remains cool off. Whoever did this was almost successful in destroying the skeleton. The ME is going to have a hard time with this.” Ella took off her first pair of gloves, put them in an evidence bag, sealed it, then took off the other pair.

  “There’s certainly no way to tell who that is,” he said slowly, standing up and taking a step back.

  What he really meant was that there was no way to tell if that was Justine.

  “There was only that one fire when you were here last night?”

  A shudder ripped through Ella. “Just the one you poked through over there. It had been left burning. I assumed that someone had stopped to get warm and set fire to some fallen branches with a little gasoline.”

  “Justine saw it, too?”

  She nodded. But she had been the only one to see Justine, except for whoever was in that pickup. And as far as her cousin Angela knew, Justine had come here to meet her and never returned home. The possibility that she was being framed hit her suddenly.

  She pushed back the thought. She had no evidence to indicate that it was Justine who lay buried in the fire pit before her. She was jumping to conclusions. Her cousin could show up at any moment. Ella held on to that bit of logic and hope, knowing that to think anything else now would render her useless.

  “I’ll call Dr. Roanhorse,” she said. “You call Big Ed and let him know we’ve found a body, and get Ralph Tache over here with the crime scene van.”

  “That will only make it you, me, and Tache working the scene. We’re going to need some more help,” Neskahi sa
id.

  She thought of Harry, but he was undercover, and no longer part of the department, though she might be able to get his help one way or the other. But if Samuel Begaye was behind this, she wanted Harry out there tracking the dirtbag. “There’s FB-Eyes and Paycheck. They’ll need to be part of this anyway.”

  “You want to call them or should I?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Ella grimly pulled out her cell phone.

  * * *

  Blalock and Payestewa arrived in the senior agent’s vehicle a few hundred yards behind Dr. Carolyn Roanhorse’s ME van and Ralph Tache in the crime scene vehicle. Ella waited for them by her own Jeep.

  Carolyn reached her first, the ME’s expression showing more emotion than usual. “You look like hell, Ella. Don’t you think you should get out of here?” she asked quietly.

  “I can’t. I have to know if that’s Justine.”

  “That type of ID is going to take some time. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she admitted. “It’s going to be hell waiting,” she said. “But in the meantime, I have a job to do. I’m just finding it hard to stay focused. The possibility that it might be Justine’s body over there scares the daylights out of me.”

  “I’ll do the lab work as quickly as I can. But let me get started with the preliminary examination. I just hope we have enough of the remains to make a positive ID.”

  Carolyn slipped under the yellow crime scene tape Ella and the sergeant had erected and walked over to the grave. Neskahi and Tache followed, along with Ella. The partial skull was visible, along with the long bone that Ella had unearthed. “I hope you all don’t think I’m going to dig up the rest of what’s there. That’s not my job.” Carolyn stared at Joseph, who looked as pale as the sand-colored shirt Blalock was wearing.

  Ella looked at the agents as they all put on their latex gloves. Payestewa was dressed up like a Hollywood version of an Indian-turned-cowboy. He was wearing a Stetson, a new pin-striped western-style suit, and shiny new boots.

  Ella started to pick up the shovel, but Blalock beat her to it. “You shouldn’t have to do this. Not this time, at least. We’ll handle it.” Blalock handed Payestewa the tool. “This is a job for younger men.”

  Payestewa scowled, but didn’t argue. As he worked, Tache continued to take photos, recording everything. A short time later, a half dozen large fragments of bone and many smaller pieces had been uncovered from the fire pit that served as a grave. All of the soft tissue was destroyed, and most of the bones were charcoal. With only the upper portion of the skull and what Carolyn identified as a femur, there was scant evidence to work with, though the remains were human. From the size of the skull, Carolyn could only conclude that the skeleton belonged to a small woman or large child.

  By now the bones were cool enough to touch, but the hideous smell—a combination of the sweet stench of burned tissue and gasoline—was revolting enough to make Joseph take off in a jog.

  Carolyn studied the few pieces of bone intact enough to identify, setting them into a large plastic container once she’d looked them over. “It looks like the body was chopped up with an axe and a large knife, and maybe a saw. The pieces were then placed in a shallow pit and burned with gasoline or something similar. When the fire died down, the remains were probably stirred up and more fuel was added. This must have gone on for a few hours, but it wouldn’t have been seen easily from the highway because of that ridge. The way I figure it, the fire must have burned very hot. That’s the only way I can explain why so much of the skeleton is missing and why what’s here is so charred.”

  “It had to have happened sometime after I left, about ten P.M.,” Ella said, remembering. “Chopping up a body and then destroying it like this would have taken a lot of time. Of course, it’s entirely possible that whoever did this had help.” As she mentally reviewed the events, she had another disturbing thought. Perhaps the small fire she’d seen had all been part of a plan to lure her in and get her to leave her tracks at the crime scene.

  “Identification will be tricky, maybe impossible,” Carolyn warned. “The few fragments of teeth on the upper jaw may not do me any good, and the lower jaw is missing. We’ll have to screen all the dirt around here and see what else we can find. Whoever cut up the body took special care to smash the teeth, probably against a rock. The teeth fragments that remain are unusable for dental records comparisons.”

  “What about DNA?” Ella asked, her voice so strained it sounded odd even in her own ears.

  “These bones have been virtually destroyed. I doubt I’ll be able to extract any DNA from their interior. I need fluids or some kind of tissue, and I doubt any still exists on or within the bones.” Carolyn shook her head. “It’s been vaporized.”

  “Maybe we can find something the victim was wearing, a ring or metal button, that will give us a clue,” Ella said, looking at Neskahi, Tache, and the agents. “This all took place in the dark, so maybe the killer overlooked something.”

  Blalock nodded, and everyone at the scene except Carolyn began to search the ground on their hands and knees. Ella searched every square inch of the section that had been assigned to her, not overlooking a single blade of grass or pebble. Yet all the while she desperately hoped that someone else would make the discovery, if there was one to be made.

  “I’ve got something,” Neskahi said, pointing at something on the ground about six feet from the edge of the grave. “Doctor, you’d better get this yourself.”

  Carolyn walked over, squatted down next to an ant bed, then pulled a plastic bag out of her lab coat pocket. Ralph Tache walked over, carefully took a photograph, and stood again, pale as a ghost.

  Carolyn picked something up with a pair of tweezers, brushed off the ants with her gloved hand, then put the small object into the bag. “I’ll be able to identify the victim now. Count on it.”

  She looked at Ella, but didn’t show her the bag. “It’s a phalange, the end of a human finger, probably a Navajo’s, that’s been cut off at the last joint by a sharp knife or saw. It didn’t make it into the fire.” Carolyn walked back toward her van, muttering something about getting it on ice.

  Ella felt everything spinning, but she managed to remain standing. Suddenly realizing that she was going to be sick, she took off running. Ella barely made it past the crime scene tape before emptying the contents of her stomach.

  It took her several minutes before she felt controlled enough to return. Blalock was pale, and Payestewa was hunched over fifty yards away, his back to them. Those remaining were back on the ground, searching for more misplaced body parts. Blalock had lit up a cigar, and together with Tache was sifting through the soil, using a wire screen taken from the crime scene van. Carolyn was looking at something she’d placed in a large plastic refrigerator-type container.

  Ella considered asking Blalock for a cigar, but suspected that one puff would make her vomit all over again. “Can you tell us anything about the cause of death from what you have?” she asked Carolyn in the strongest voice she could muster.

  “The victim was shot right through the head, execution style. That part of the skull remains, so it was easy making the call. I can’t do any toxicology reports, obviously, except on the fingertip, and that probably won’t tell us much at all. So far the officers have managed to sift out a few traces of charred cloth and one relatively intact earring. I’ll have the lab work done up on them.”

  “I saw the earring, but can’t say for sure that I recognize it.” Ella’s voice was only a whisper. “Anything that looks like a badge?”

  Carolyn shook her head. “Not yet, but they’re still sifting through the surface dirt.”

  Ella turned away from the small artifacts that had once belonged to whoever died here last night. Unable to look at them one moment longer, she walked over to Joseph, who was still searching the ground in a widening spiral away from the grave.

  “Badge?” she repeated unsteadily.

  “No.”

  Ella turned a
nd saw Agent Payestewa removing a metal detector from the tribal crime scene vehicle. They weren’t going to miss anything, and that was another sign that good cops were at work here. She had to put her personal feelings aside, join them again, and do her part.

  Ella returned to where Tache and Blalock were sifting through the dirt from around the grave, placing shovelfuls of sand onto the wire screen, slowly filtering the sand. Everything remaining on the screen was carefully examined, and anything not a rock or plant debris was collected, labeled, and placed in containers.

  She had to start thinking of the deceased as merely “the victim,” and of her and the others here as professionals just doing their jobs. It didn’t serve anyone if she continued to assume the worst for Justine. Her cousin was probably somewhere else, safe and very much alive. Holding to that thought, she helped the others collect, label, and sort potential evidence.

  Finally Ella walked over to where Carolyn was packing up her tape recorder and instruments.

  While Payestewa circled farther away, checking for anything outside the crime scene tape that they might have overlooked, Ella joined Carolyn. “I’ve been thinking about this. I really don’t believe the body belongs to my cousin. She left before I did and had no reason to come back here.”

  Yet even as she said it, she realized she was clinging to the Navajo belief that words had power and uttering them could make it so. It was entirely possible that the person who’d brought them together in the first place might have tricked Justine into returning. Or maybe she’d been kidnapped on the way home.

  As if reading her thoughts, Carolyn shook her head. “You’ve got a personal stake in this and that’s skewing your outlook. Let the case develop and the facts speak for themselves. Even your intuition is bound to fail you when you’re scared. And you are. That’s easy for me to see.”

  Hearing Blalock whistle shrilly, calling out to them from beyond the designated crime scene perimeter, she looked up and saw Payestewa running to meet him, as well as Neskahi.

  “Now what?” Ella muttered, torn between fear and a heaviness of spirit that bordered on mental exhaustion.