Gloria Sanchez pushed the rearview mirror back to where it belonged as her thoughts centered on the nagging bladder she had been ignoring for the past three quarters of an hour. She would have stopped at the Phillips 66 in Pinedale if she hadn’t feared Kanesewah’s wrath for taking a chance on being recognized by anyone who had read a newspaper or watched a TV in the past couple of days. She reached over and poked him in the left arm. “Hey. Wake up!”
When he didn’t stir from his slumber, she poked him harder.
“Hey!” she said. “Wake the fuck up!”
“What the fuck, woman!” he growled. “Stop poking my ass.”
“I’ve gotta pee.”
“Well, sucks to be you.”
“We’re gonna have to stop,” she said. “I’ve been holding it for almost an hour.”
Kanesewah’s face grimaced as he sat up in the passenger seat, rubbed his face with both hands, and then looked around. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Wyoming,” Sanchez informed him. “We just left Pinedale. We’re making good time.”
Kanesewah stretched, inhaled deeply, and let out a long, leisurely groan. “Wait till we get a little farther out of town first and find a place off the highway. There’s gotta be a turnoff somewhere.”
Gloria Sanchez agreed and hoped her bladder would understand.
They passed a scattering of houses out by Route 352 and continued past the point where 191 merged with 189 and continued north. The dry grass of the gently rolling landscape had turned a dormant brown, and the morning sun that now filled the robin’s-egg sky made her pull the visor down. The road dipped and then curved around the knob of a small hill, revealing a large green-roofed log home and barn that were overshadowed by a bigger hill behind the first. Leonard Kanesewah studied the terrain intently as Sanchez maneuvered the car. Neither spoke. After they crossed Forty Rod Creek, a dirt road appeared off to the right.
“Pull off up here on the right,” he said, breaking the silence. “See where that goes.”
Sanchez slowed and made the turn. They bumped over the cattle guard, then down the winding dirt road that led eastward before crossing the creek again and heading into the open range beyond Forty Rod Reservoir. Sanchez continued to follow the tire-worn double track, its every bump and dip reminding her of her bladder’s plight. A few more miles went by before the road became little more than a wagon trail that angled abruptly north by a thick stand of cottonwoods.
“Follow the tree line,” Kanesewah said. “There’ll be water close by.”
“I just hope there’s a place for a girl to take a piss,” Sanchez replied, following the cottonwoods.
The line of trees came to an end near another creek that cut across the open land like a vein of icy clarity. Kanesewah said, “Find a place to pull into the trees. Feds could have a bird in the air.”
Sanchez maneuvered the car among the trees, turned off the ignition, and looked around. “Where the fuck you suppose I’m gonna take a leak?”
“I don’t give much of a shit where you go,” Kanesewah said. “You’re the one who’s gotta piss. Go squat behind a tree or something. It isn’t like someone’s gonna see your bare ass out here.”
Gloria Sanchez grabbed the door handle angrily and got out with a parting “Fuck you.”
* * *
Leonard Kanesewah felt the car shake as the door slammed. He watched as she walked in front of the car with her middle finger extended and headed deeper into the stand of trees. He pushed in the dash lighter, took the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, and tapped one out. He had a good two-day lead on the Federal Bureau of Incompetence. While the feds were spending all their time pissing in the New Mexican wind, he would be pushing well into Montana. All they had to do now was keep moving by night and lie low during the day, like those smugglers running drugs or illegals out of Mexico.
The lighter popped, and he pressed the glowing rings against the tip of his cigarette and took a long drag. If they could make it through Montana, then all they had to do was get across the Canadian border.
* * *
When the cigarette smoke reached Sharon Nakai, she held her breath as long as she could, hoping her captor would roll down a window. He didn’t, and when at last she had to breathe again, her lungs rebelled. The duct tape over her mouth redirected the spate of coughing through her nose, stinging her sinuses with smoke and saliva.
Kanesewah laughed as he turned in the front seat, smoldering cigarette dangling from the left corner of his mouth. “Smoke bothering you?”
Sharon nodded, eyes watering.
“Thought so,” he said, and turned back in his seat just as his woman crossed in front of the car again.
She yanked open the door, climbed in, and slammed it even louder than before. “Thanks a lot,” she snapped. “I could have got snakebit or something out there!”
“Well,” he said, grinning, “if you had gotten bit on that sweet ass of yours, you know I would have enjoyed sucking out the poison.”
The woman’s anger transformed instantly into a sickeningly adolescent giggle. Leaning over, she removed Kanesewah’s cigarette from his lips and kissed his mouth. Sharon listened as the kiss devolved into a chorus of moans that ended in the woman replacing the cigarette in his mouth.
The two stared at each other, and the woman licked her lips and, with a playful grin, leaned forward. Sharon heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper and watched the woman’s head disappear below the seat back. The thought of what she was about to hear made her both revolted and uncomfortable. She saw Kanesewah’s head relax against the bench seat’s headrest and saw the slowly twisting tendril of smoke hit the tan roof liner and roll outward like a miniature mushroom cloud. The front passenger window went blessedly down, and he rested his right arm on the door and began breathing in short, shuddering gasps. Amid impassioned sighs and moans from both of them, the woman sped up the movements that would bring about a groaning, writhing end to this voyeuristic nightmare.
When the woman’s head rose above the seat back, she turned and smiled at Sharon. Then, adjusting the driver’s sun visor, she opened the vanity mirror, patted her lips with a tissue, and applied a fresh coat of red lipstick.
Kanesewah contentedly tucked himself away and yanked up his zipper. “Where’s the map?” he said.
“In the glove box, like you told me,” she replied.
Sharon heard the latch pop and the glove box door fall open, then some rummaging through loose papers. The glove box door slammed shut.
“Why don’t you see if our insurance needs to piss. You two can do some female bonding while she’s squatting.”
The woman slapped the sun visor back into place and gave him an annoyed look. “Let’s go, honey,” she snapped, and got out. Jerking open the door behind the driver’s seat, she studied Kanesewah’s handiwork for a moment. “I’ll have to untie your fucking straitjacket,” she said. “She can’t just bunny-hop over to a tree, you know.”
Kanesewah stopped flipping through the narrow pages of the American Highway Digest Atlas and said over his left shoulder, “Then, just flip her over and fucking untie it.”
Sharon squirmed to turn around on the back seat so the woman could untie her ankles. As she struggled to sit up, her feet and ankles rejoiced at the freedom of unrestricted blood flow. Sharon raised her hands, but the woman just grabbed her left arm and yanked her out of the car.
“Okay, chica, here’s the deal,” the woman said, leading her through the stand of cottonwoods. “I’m gonna drop your pants and undies so you can take a piss. I’ll keep you right side up, but I’m not putting my hand between your legs. You piss on your pants, it’s gonna suck to be you.”
“You’re not going to untie my hands?”
“Fuck no!” she snapped, and pulled Sharon’s slacks and panties to her ankles. “Now, get to it.”
Sharon
nodded and squatted down, with the woman’s hands on her shoulders for balance. Without appearing interested, she tried to take in as much information from their surroundings as she could. The mountains rising to the northwest must be the Absaroka Range—too far west for the Bighorns. For the past few hours, she had been taking quick glances out the back-seat window, looking for a road sign, the orientation of a distant mountain range, a name on a small-town storefront—something to give her some notion of where she was. But the angle of her head had made identifying anything all but impossible. All she knew for certain was that based on the morning sun, they were heading north, in a different car from the one Kanesewah had driven to the small house. They were still in Wyoming, but soon enough they would be in Montana. And on its far side, Glacier Park and the border—and, one way or another, the end of her journey. But Arthur would find her first. He had to.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Arthur sat at the intersection of Highways 491 and 64, staring through the windshield into the now bustling Begaye Flea Market parking lot. While the traffic light glared a harsh red, he looked over the patchwork of advertising banners that decorated the chain-link fence separating the parking lot from the intersection. One seemed to speak his language. The Nataani Nez Restaurant was offering a lunch buffet and drink for eight dollars. If it were any other day, he would take them up on it, but not today.
Off to his right, standing like a proud sail in the vacant corner lot, a large wooden sign announced the upcoming Northern Navajo Nation Fair, scheduled to begin in a few days. It was the oldest of the nation’s fairs, and the most traditional. Sharon had always made a point of attending each year and bringing home something handmade to grace a wall or shelf. Smiling at the memory as the light changed to green, Arthur swung the Bronco into an arcing left turn that took it onto 64, toward Farmington. Behind him, he heard a diesel engine straining against its heavy load. He was noticing how the truck’s cab rocked in the mirror when his cell phone broke into its annoying factory ringtone. He had always meant to change it but hadn’t been able to pick a tone he could tolerate from the lame list that the manufacturer provided. And the thought of paying actual money for a few seconds of ringtone seemed ridiculous. He pulled the phone from his jacket pocket and tapped accept with his thumb. “Yá’át’ééh, Billy!” he answered.
“Hey, boss,” Billy began excitedly, “I was on my way up to Moab, you know, like I told you, and I saw the car!”
“What car?”
“From the news this morning. At least, I think it might be. I couldn’t actually see the license plate, but it’s the right make and color.”
Arthur’s thoughts of ringtones vanished. He checked all three mirrors to make sure none of Shiprock’s finest were lurking nearby. Then he angled the Bronco over the sand-filled curb, across the empty sidewalk, and down onto the gravel road in front of the small red-and-white trailer that was the Injury Law Center. Throwing the truck into park, he said, “Where are you?”
“Across the border in Utah,” Billy said. “About five miles north of the Mexican Water Chapter House, there’s a handful of older NHA houses on the east side of 191. I just happened to glance over to check out this girl washing a car, and that’s when I saw it. It’s behind the third house. The back end is all you can see, but like I said, boss, it’s the right make and color.” Billy’s signal faded briefly. “You want me to go back and check it out?”
“No, don’t,” Arthur said. “Too dangerous. And you could be wrong. I know where you’re talking about, but it’ll take me about an hour to get there. You just keep driving and make your run. I’ll check it out.”
“Gotcha, boss.” Billy paused. “I’m worried about Mrs. Nakai. I hope they find her before anything …” He let his words trail off.
“Did you call the police?” Arthur asked.
“No way, boss. First person I called was you.”
* * *
The drive took a little longer than the hour Arthur had calculated. Driving up 191, he passed several tired-looking oil pumpjacks, rocking like big green drinking birds in the Ute land that flanked the highway. Much less of an eyesore were the three hundred photovoltaic pumps that the Utes had put in to replace the windmills pulling water from the ground. Beyond the faithfully bobbing pumpjacks, he came across a Navajo man, an elder, in a tattered wool coat with the collar turned up against the wind, walking a string of six cattle along the roadside. The cattle maintained a straight line, as if plodding to whatever tune the old man was singing, and neither they nor the old man paid him any attention as his truck roared by.
After leaving behind the Mexican Water Chapter House turnoff four and a half miles earlier, Arthur could pick out the small cluster of Navajo Housing Authority houses Billy Yazzie had mentioned. Ak’is had his snout thrust out the cracked passenger-side window, his olfactory sense surely overloaded by the exciting array of new smells. Arthur slowed as he approached the beige houses of uniform design, and studied them as he drove by. Sure enough, half hidden behind the third house was the gray eighties Chevy, just as Billy had described. He continued down the road another mile or so before turning around and heading back.
It was a small group of cinder-block structures, five on each side of the hard-packed dirt street, all of them painted to match the sere beige landscape and reflect the heat of the desert summer. Arthur drove up the dirt entrance, turned right, and parked by the farthest house, where smoke belched from the stack of a woodstove. He turned off the engine and told Ak’is to stay, then got out.
Looking at the vastness of the desolation surrounding him, he had to wonder how this spot came to be chosen over infinite others he had driven past since crossing the Arizona-Utah line. He noticed the large, still-muddy area where the car-washing girl had caught Billy’s eye. Scanning the small tract of homes, he figured either no one had noticed his presence or no one cared, because no one had made themselves known as he walked up the dirt street toward the third house. Stepping closer, he noticed that all the house’s windows were covered with aluminum foil. That recalled two possibilities from his Border Patrol days: either the residents were protecting their brains against alien or governmentally aimed microwaves, or it was a house used for making and/or stashing drugs. And he knew which one was more likely.
After flattening himself against the southern wall of the third house, he drew the compensated Glock 19C from his shoulder holster and thumbed the safety off. Pulling back the hammer, he crouched to pass beneath one of the foil-shrouded windows. After approaching the corner cautiously, he peered around it and saw the gray Chevy with Socorro County plates. The twin streaks of a jet pushed across the sky, disappearing as it passed above the wall of heavy rain he had seen marching in from the west. The wind managed to stir up some dust that swirled past him, chased by the faint rumblings of distant thunder rolling across the open land. But there was still no sound from the house. No radio, no TV, no voices. Just silence. He turned the corner, stepped up to the car, and placed the palm of his left hand on the hood. Cold. Inside it, he saw nothing interesting. Just a bundle of keys left in the ignition, and an open ashtray full of cigarette butts. Both front windows had been left down.
Arthur stepped to the back door of the small house and wrapped his hand around the tarnished brass knob. It turned freely. He heard the latch mechanism shift and cautiously opened the door. The first thing that hit him was the rank smell of stale food and the buzzing of flies. He moved cautiously through the house. In the kitchen, he found a pile of enough unwashed dishes in the cheap stainless-steel sink for what looked like three people, and a dozen roaches scurried that about when he disturbed them. The bathroom wastebasket held a used tampon, along with the wrapper from a new one. Sharon had stopped using those years ago as a result of a story concerning toxic shock she had done, so he knew who it didn’t belong to. A small crumb of beef jerky lay on the floor by a dilapidated couch in the living room. He slipped the Glock back under his l
eft arm. The house was empty.
The tampon meant Kanesewah now had another woman with him. Where did she come from? How did she fit into all this? Outside again, Arthur started his methodical search by carefully stepping around the stolen car. He cut three signs that assured him of Sharon’s continued existence. The first was a male footprint, probably a size twelve or thirteen, that made a tire tread pattern with a crescent cut in the heel. That would be Kanesewah. The second was a smaller footprint that could be a size seven or eight. This track was clearly a pair of cowboy boots, with three sweeping lines that ran across the Justin Gypsy logo on the ball of the foot and had a protruding crescent line, evident from the indentation in the dirt that ran from the outside forward edge of the heel toward its curving rear edge. That would be Kanesewah’s woman, because the third track was unmistakable. It was the small D-shaped heel and large teardrop ball, both showing the minuscule horizontal lines of Sharon’s Michael Kors Elisa pumps. He had been with her when she bought them. He squatted to get a better look at its depth and pattern. The prints weren’t what he would expect to see if she were walking—more as if she was hopping and then being dragged after a brief pause. He was sure she had been bound at the ankles so she wouldn’t run, which would mean her wrists were probably bound as well. But the set of tracks leaving the house meant she was alive and had been put into another car—probably one that Kanesewah’s woman drove.
The other car had been facing the opposite direction from the Chevy, judging from the dirt kicked up in its wake as it sped away. From the aggressive directional tread pattern and the siped tread blocks, the car likely had fresh Firestone Winterforce tires. Funny the things one remembered from tracking on the border. He could tell a Goodyear from a Goodrich, though not a burgundy from a maroon, as Sharon was always quick to remind him. He followed Kanesewah’s size twelves to the rear driver’s-side door of the missing car, where Sharon’s tracks ended, then trailed them around what would have been the back of the car to the front passenger door, ending at the tread marks left by the missing car. This new woman was driving, with Kanesewah riding shotgun. He followed the tire tracks around the north side of the house and watched them trail off toward the blacktop of Highway 191. Then he walked past the front of the house and stood there. Judging by the drying mud left by the girl washing the car, and the look of these Firestone tracks running through it, they had at least eight or nine hours on him. He sighed and walked back to the Bronco.
Path of the Dead Page 7
