Path of the Dead

by Mark Edward Langley

  “I know a lawyer,” Sanchez offered. “I could call him and—”

  “That’s great, baby,” Kanesewah interrupted in a calm voice. “Just listen. I’ll be there in a couple of hours or less, so be ready to move. You got all the stuff I told you to get?”

  “Yeah, I got it all,” Sanchez said. “Everything you told me—all packed and ready.” Her voice brightened. “It’s gonna be good, huh? You and me gettin’ outta here and starting a life together—”

  Kanesewah ended the call and cleared the number from the recent-calls list before resting his wrists on top of the steering wheel. He gripped the phone with both hands and twisted violently, snapping it in half. Seeing no traffic ahead or behind, he gave the bottom half of the phone a hard fling out the driver’s side window. He watched as it flew across the highway and vanished into the desert scrub. He knew that the FBI would be trying to ping the car owner’s phone, which was why he had turned it off the moment he found it in the glove compartment. That was also why he kept the call’s length to a minimum. He let another mile pass before flinging the top half of the phone out the passenger-side window.

  * * *

  Arthur Nakai sat staring at the same empty beer bottle that had been sitting on his kitchen table since Jake Bilagody showed himself out over half an hour ago. On the screen of Arthur’s mind, bits of memories were already playing themselves out like film shorts. He remembered first meeting Sharon as he walked through the massive D-shaped ruins of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. He felt again the heat of that July day, contrasted with the cool in one of the lower rooms, where Sharon had stopped to study a mosaic of ancient fingerprints left by builders over nine hundred years earlier. She was startled when Arthur entered the room through the narrow passageway, then gave a bashful smile, realizing how silly she must have looked. Arthur politely smiled back, mesmerized by this vision in khaki shorts, whose raven-black hair fell in a long ponytail against the back of her white tank top. He followed her smooth, firm legs down to the brown leather Keen hiking boots with the dark coral laces and turned-down socks before winding his way back up to her face, unable to help noticing on the way how well she filled out every inch of the tank top. He knew instantly that she was Navajo, and his mind swirled as he tried to figure out whether she could be from the Towering House clan, the One-Walks-Around clan, the Bitter Water clan, or the Mud clan. Or maybe she was from one of the many adopted clans. If she happened to be from Towering House, his own clan, then this meeting was meant to be. He smiled apologetically and said he was sorry if he had frightened her.

  The air that day had seemed charged with an awkward anticipation that Arthur had not felt in years. He feverishly groped about for something to dazzle her with. But, finding nothing that wouldn’t make him seem a complete idiot, he began by speaking of the ruins and the fingerprints she had been looking at. From there, they wandered the ancient pathways of rooms, walked the narrow foot-wide ledge between two of the smaller kivas, and talked of their reasons for being there that day. As they walked toward the visitors’ center parking lot, they discussed having dinner together at the Anasazi Inn in Farmington. Sharon was staying there for a couple of days while making a personal discovery trip to the canyon and several other Anasazi archeological sites.

  Over steaks and a bottle of wine, he listened to her speak of the canyon and her reasons for exploring it. Her next jaunt, and the reason for her stay in Farmington, was to visit the ruins at Aztec. She had heard of the large reconstructed kiva there: how you could enter it and be transported back in time with the touch of a button that would fill the ceremonial chamber with the rhythmic sounds of beating drums and the haunting voices singing songs that would echo hypnotically around you as you stepped down to the dirt floor. How you could sit on the narrow ledge that circled the inner wall and feel its coolness as your mind and body drifted into thoughts of witnessing sacred tribal rituals.

  As Arthur listened to her stories, his heart began to unlock with the softness of her voice, which became the key that released his soul. And the more she spoke, the more he fell into the mesmerizing depth of her eyes as she slowly began to weave her álííl, her magic, into his being. Then, at a moment known only to him, he began to fall in love.

  That image soon dissolved into a starry autumn night as he sat stretched out across the rustic porch swing outside their bedroom window on the mesa, his boot heels resting on the far wooden arm of the swing, between the chains that held it suspended from the ceiling. The night was clear, and he could pick out the constellations easily. Sharon’s wind chimes danced softly on the sage-filled breeze and sang a soothing tune as she lay in bed under their quilted comforter, watching satellite television. Arthur could neither hear the sound nor see the picture. He simply watched quietly as Sharon, with the comforter drawn up under her chin, gazed intently at the changing images on the screen. He watched how her hair transformed into different shades of black as the images flickered across the thirty-seven-inch flat panel. As soon as Sharon noticed him peering through the window, a small hand appeared from under the covers to wave playfully at him. He smiled back and waved just as Billy Yazzie’s voice jerked him back into reality.

  “Anything you need me to do before I leave, boss?”

  Billy stood six feet tall and had one of those skinny mustaches it seemed every Navajo man tried to grow at some point just to see if he could. He was a muscular kid with a short black mop, and the youthful face behind the mustache had served him well with the at’ééké during his twenty-eight years on the rez. Girls always seemed to have a way of losing their wits around him. When he wasn’t taking care of Arthur’s horses, mending tack, and confirming reservations for vacationing guests, Billy spent his time filling the driver’s seat of a big rig when there was work to be had. And that meant he worked for Arthur much more than he drove, because not a lot of driving work got doled out to young men like him. Seniority had always been the coin of the realm in the trucking industry, but for Native American drivers in the white-run firms, it was a catch-as-catch-can existence. You took what routes you were given and didn’t complain—not if you wanted to keep driving.

  “Sorry,” Arthur said. “What did you say, Billy?”

  “I said, is there anything you need me to do before I leave, boss?”

  Arthur shook his head absently, not shifting his attention from the beer bottle. “No. That’s all.”

  “You all right?” Billy’s concern was genuine. It was all he knew how to be. “You need anything?”

  “No.” Arthur paused, then glanced up at the young man. “Go home.”

  Billy nodded and turned to leave.

  “I won’t need you for a while, Billy,” Arthur added. “Something’s come up.”

  Billy stopped at the kitchen door and turned. “I thought so,” he said. “Captain B. wouldn’t tell me why he was waiting for you. I asked him enough times. But that’s cool. I’ve gotta run a load of steel up to Moab before pulling a Rocky Mountain double on to Coeur d’Alene. I was going to tell you when you got back today.” He grinned. “I couldn’t pass up two loads. Maybe one back, if I’m lucky. Man, I hate deadheadin’.”

  Arthur began to drift off again. Billy noticed. “You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

  Arthur looked up again from his slumped position in the chair. The beer bottle wasn’t going anywhere. “You drive carefully, huh?”

  Billy opened the kitchen door. “Sure, boss,” he said, and closed it softly behind him.

  The only noise now that gave life to the quiet house was the low hum of the refrigerator’s motor while the tick-tock of the regulator clock measured time’s never-ending spiral into tomorrow. Arthur watched a fly land on the lip of his dark-brown bottle. He watched it circle the rim before darting inside the neck of the bottle and then reappearing. It paused on the rim, almost as if studying him, and then buzzed away.

  With a deep breath, Arthur forced himself up fro
m the chair and wandered into the living room with no real thought to why. He sank into the sofa, picked up the remote that he had left on the adjacent seat cushion the night before, and thumbed it on. After the satellite was located and the usual prompt appeared, he pressed the select button and found himself in the middle of an Eyewitness News 4 report. He listened as the story unfolded about three brothers who were thought to be missing in the Carson National Forest since Friday. They had driven into Carson on a hunting trip, leaving nebulous plans with relatives. The morning rains had swelled into a storm that grew into a torrential downpour by Saturday night, and no one had heard from them in three days.

  Three and a half million acres of forest, and a pickup truck lost somewhere in the middle of it. If the hunters had even a little bit of sense, they hadn’t wandered too far from the pickup and would stay dry until someone found them. Surely, they had provisioned food and a few blankets. Then again, recalling some of the would-be hunters he had known in the past, he supposed not. The next image to appear on the LCD screen was a mug shot of Leonard Kanesewah over the left shoulder of anchorman Brett Parker.

  Arthur stared at the photo as all sound fell away from the TV. To hell with this waiting, he told himself. If Sharon was going to be found, he was going to be the one to do it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  News anchor Brett Parker appeared visibly shaken. He paused briefly to regain his composure before continuing as Kanesewah’s picture was replaced with a file picture of Oscar Hirada. “Police and the FBI also suspect Kanesewah in the kidnapping of our own Sharon Keonie Nakai, who was in Belen covering a story, and have now added aggravated kidnapping charges to Kanesewah’s growing list of offenses.” Sharon’s head shot now replaced Oscar’s. “Police located the Eyewitness News Four van around two o’clock this afternoon in the small town of Polvadera, about thirty-three miles south of Belen, with Oscar Hirada’s lifeless body inside. FBI Special Agent in Charge Frederick Thorne has issued a statewide manhunt.”

  Gloria Sanchez sat on the stained and sagging couch, staring at the television from across the dingy room. Her legs were crossed beneath her, her left hand holding her right elbow as she chewed the tip of her right thumb. If they were lucky, they would soon be in Canada relaxing by a lake somewhere, drinking wine in a hot tub, because Leonard had to be innocent. He as much as said he was. This was just another way for the government to persecute Native people and keep them down as they always did.

  Her thought vanished as she heard a car roll up the dirt driveway from the dirt street and come to a stop behind the small cinder-block house. Jumping to her feet, she punched off the television and stood in tense silence as the engine turned off. A car door opened and closed. Her eyes moved around the now darkened room, frantically searching for the duffel bag on the floor, by the pile of supplies Kanesewah had instructed her to collect. She ran to it and squatted down beside it. Zipping it open, she rummaged through it for the Smith and Wesson .38-caliber revolver she had stashed inside. Her fingers wrapped around it, and she crept to the rear of the three-room house. Flattening against the wall just left of the back door, she could feel her nostrils flare and contract with every nervous breath. Over her accelerating heartbeat, she heard the soft noises of internal tumblers as they rolled inside the twisting doorknob. Her eyes followed its counterclockwise rotation. Thumbing back the hammer of the .38, she could feel the moisture from her sweating palm on the knurled wooden grip. Relax, she told herself. Breathe. The door swung open to reveal a human shape moving in the doorway. When Leonard Kanesewah stepped into the small room, Gloria Sanchez thumbed the hammer down carefully.

  Kanesewah spun at the click of the revolver’s mechanism, and his big hand engulfed the weapon, jerking it from her grip as his other arm cocked to deliver a powerful blow.

  “It’s me, baby!” Sanchez shouted though her upraised hands. “It’s me!”

  Kanesewah’s instinct for self-preservation seemed to relax as the voice and the face before him synchronized in his memory. Gloria Sanchez leaped into his arms and kissed him passionately, her hands gripping the back of his head and bringing his lips against hers. Kanesewah pushed the door to and locked it, then let his hands roam her body until she felt them grasp her firm buttocks and squeeze them roughly. Her breasts heaved against his chest with every hungry breath as their tongues met and Kanesewah lifted her from the floor and carried her to the bedroom.

  * * *

  Sharon awoke from her restless sleep the moment the car turned off the smooth pavement of Highway 191 onto what must have been a dirt road, judging by the bits of debris that rattled in the fender wells as the car moved slowly forward. There wasn’t the washboard ripple she would have noticed on a graded dirt road, just the normal dips and bumps of an almost flat dirt surface. Knocking around in a dark trunk that reeked of oily rags and tire rubber, it was impossible to find a comfortable position on the ragged bit of filthy carpeting. She tried moving, but the stiff coax cable bit into her wrists and ankles, reawakening the pain that had abated earlier while she drifted off into fractured sleep.

  Sharon remembered the man being in the van. And she remembered seeing Oscar’s body sitting amid the recording equipment, his throat ringed with reddish bruising, the tiny petechial dots scattered across his eyes, the white cord of his earbuds still dangling from his ears, and the coax cable that had strangled him hanging loosely from his neck. He sat with his head angled to the left, arms loose at his sides, and legs outstretched before him in a V, as if he were only sleeping.

  Sharon also recalled the man binding her wrists and ankles and throwing her into the trunk of a car where she heard the news report through the rear speakers. The name Leonard Kanesewah didn’t ring any bells, but what did that matter now? She was here, and all that mattered was finding some way to extricate herself from this situation and get to safety.

  She suddenly began to hyperventilate as fear and grief and rage churned inside her. Control yourself, she repeated over and over in her head. You must maintain control. Whatever was coming would come, so to keep herself alive, she must play the waiting game. And not knowing for how long this Kanesewah had stopped the car or where it had stopped, she would have to be ready to seize her chance to escape if that chance should present itself. Swallowing her thoughts, she conjured Arthur’s face in her mind’s eye. Had he been told by now? If so, it had to be Jake Bilagody who told him. And it would be all Jake could do to keep him from coming after her. And he would come after her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Arthur Nakai killed the images coming from the flat-panel screen above the thick burl mantel of the river-rock fireplace. He tossed the remote onto the coffee table and watched it skid across the epoxied slab of redwood and off the opposite edge, where it bounced with a muffled thud on the woven rug. Hell with it, he thought.

  Suddenly, the realization hit him that his wife had just become another two-minute story in the never-ending chain of two-minute stories that the Fourth Estate spoon-fed the viewing public each day. He sighed. Maybe Sharon should quit and leave it all behind. Perhaps it was too late for that? He shook off the feeling and looked around at the house that surrounded him. He felt incongruous in this place now filled with silence. And it wasn’t the kind of relaxing silence that he welcomed at the end of a long day, but the inescapable, crushing kind he dreaded now that the world he took for granted had been so violently ripped apart. But now an awkward alone feeling began to settle in. Vanished were the smiles and laughter that had always given this sanctuary its life and its warmth. Gone the familiar things that meant she was here: the quiet breathing while she sat at the opposite end of the sofa reading; lying together under a blanket before a crackling fire and feeling her body close to his. It was as if a part of his soul had been ripped away, leaving nothing but emptiness and a newfound regret.

  He stood up and began to walk around the empty house, giving no conscious thought to where his feet led him. He found himself
in their bedroom on the second floor, staring into the bathroom where Sharon’s toiletries sat just as she had left them. And her smell was there. He didn’t know how, but the whispering hint of her perfume had managed to linger all these hours later, as if solely to torture him. He turned away and stared into their bedroom. The bed was made, as it always had been when left to her attention, the sheets smooth and precise and the pillows positioned as if some high-end designer had arranged them.

  Leaving the bedroom, he walked down the short hallway, past the nursery door they had locked those few years ago. He paused briefly to let the moment pass, then stepped away from the door and moved back downstairs, through the living room, to the kitchen. He stared at their breakfast dishes languishing in the sink, rinsed but not yet washed. He opened the kitchen door, closed his eyes, and inhaled the cleansing aroma of sage, savoring its rejuvenating essence. Exhaling, he felt as though the harmony he spent years of his life achieving had now abandoned him. Without Sharon, he felt as lost as an asteroid tumbling aimlessly through the vastness of space.

  Leaving the kitchen door open, he returned to the living room and lifted the chocolate suede leather pouch from its stand on the mantel. He cradled it carefully in his hands as he walked back into the kitchen, studying its almost two-foot length of ancient beadwork and bison fur, and the fringed leather end flap tied with two long, softened leather ribbons, each decorated with one blue and one turquoise bead and tied delicately at the ends. The flap’s fringe sang with the gentle ching of small cone-shaped silver bells as he walked. Pushing open the screen door, he stepped out onto the long back porch and into the cooling late-afternoon air.