The Ties That Bind

by Andi Marquette

  Sage turned left off 491 and slowed down for a dog trotting across the road. "Fifth house on the left," she said as she maneuvered around a mudhole along the right side of the road carved by the last monsoon storms. It'd be days before the sun baked the moisture out of it. The desert held onto that as long as it could.

  "And...five." Sage pulled into a driveway that was little more than a hard-packed dirt area that served as a parking lot, front yard, and basketball court. A teenaged boy wearing baggy black mesh shorts and matching tank was engaged in that pursuit as we pulled in. The basketball hit the netless rim of the portable basket that sat near the house and he went to retrieve it, keeping a wary eye on us as he did so. He stood, passing the ball back and forth from hand to hand, as Sage parked and we all got out.

  "Hi," Sage said to him. He nodded once, suspicion in his body language. "We're here to see Nestor. I'm Sage." She propped her sunglasses on top of her head.

  The boy relaxed. "Hold on," he said and he walked over to the small deck just off the double-wide's front door. He took the three steps up, though I noticed a ramp on the other side of the deck. Probably for Nestor, if he was in a wheelchair or had to use a walker.

  The boy opened the front door and leaned in, maybe saying something to whomever was inside. I looked around, uneasy. Two older model pickup trucks sat in the drive, one with the hood up. A faded yellow Ford Fiesta was parked a few yards from the pickups, listing to the right. Beyond that I saw a charred pile of dirt, where the family must have burned its trash.

  Sage brushed my forearm with her fingertips. I looked over at her and managed a smile. "What's on your mind?" she asked.

  "Everything and nothing."

  "We'll talk after this," she said, and I saw worry in her eyes.

  "It's okay. I'm just a little stressed."

  "I know. Which is why we should talk about it. That way it doesn't pile up."

  She was right. I nodded just as the boy turned from the front door and beckoned to us. Sage led the way up the stairs to the door and the boy stood aside, holding it open. A lingering odor of roasted chiles and cooked meat hung in the trailer as we entered. Rust-colored carpet covered the floor and a variety of mismatched furniture--a couch, three armchairs, and four kitchen chairs--stood in a semicircle. Nestor had family and friends over quite a bit, I guessed. The place seemed homey enough.

  A little girl I estimated to be four or five stood looking up at us as we entered, a grave expression on her face until she saw River, at which point she smiled. I glanced over at him and he was smiling back at her. He gave her a little wave and she giggled and raced over to a man I presumed was Nestor Bodie because he was sitting in a wheelchair, his back to a television in the corner of this, the living room. He wore his glossy dark hair short, cut over his ears. Had he been able to stand, he would've been just over my height, broad across the shoulders and chest. He still had both legs, but from how he was sitting, I doubted they worked very well.

  "Mr. Bodie?" Sage inquired.

  He nodded once at her.

  "I'm Sage Crandall. This is my brother River, my partner K.C. and her sister Kara."

  I held my breath, wondering what he'd say, if anything, about Sage calling me her "partner." Best to get that whole relationship to Sage thing out in the open. Otherwise, people we needed information from might not want to talk to just some "friend of the family." But if Nestor Bodie was a big ol' homophobe, then I had just ruined the interview.

  He nodded once more and I relaxed. "Ellen Tsosie told me," he said in a low, gravelly voice. And then he smiled. "Welcome. Find a seat."

  River dubiously eyed the nearby sagging couch, but opted to go that route anyway. He sat as close to the left-hand arm as he could and Kara sat next to him, on his right, sinking a little into the cushions. Sage moved one of the kitchen chairs close to the couch and I did the same. Nestor waited for us to settle in and then he wheeled his chair closer, the little girl following, her hand on one of the handles. He turned to look at her and she gave him a quick hug then skipped out the front door, closing it behind her.

  "I knew you'd come," Nestor said. He braced his elbows on the armrests of his wheelchair and clasped his hands in front of him. "The police were here last week. I decided it was a matter of time before you found me." He spoke in the lilting accent of a man whose first language was Navajo.

  "Police?" Sage glanced over at me and I took my notepad and pen out of the cargo pocket of my shorts. "Who?"

  "A woman and a man," Nestor said, thinking. "She was the detective and he was the agent. I think their names were...Simmons and Martin. Her, I trust."

  I glanced at him at the remark, and wrote it down, relieved that Simmons had already been here. I'd tell Chris and maybe she wouldn't be as pissed at me about this as she was earlier.

  "They asked some questions," Nestor continued. "But maybe not the right ones." He looked at Sage for a moment then went back to studying his hands.

  "Mr. Bodie--" Sage started.

  "I was Nestor to your father," he interrupted. "I'm Nestor to you, as well." And he smiled again, the motion etching deep laugh lines near his eyes.

  "Nestor," she corrected herself, smiling back. "I was hoping maybe you could help us figure out what happened to my father and why someone would want to kill him."

  He nodded, thoughtful, and adjusted his position in the chair. "You were not close to him." He looked first at River and then at Sage.

  "We weren't," she stated. "But who he was as a man wasn't necessarily who he was as a father. I'm here for the man."

  I looked up from my notepad to see how Nestor would react to Sage's honesty.

  "He told me he was not the father he should have been," Nestor said before the silence became too uncomfortable. He shrugged, a nonjudgmental gesture. "But as a man, I had respect for him." He lapsed into another silence. Kara moved, trying to get comfortable on the sagging couch.

  "He died because of Ridge Star," Nestor said after a while. "But not because he was who he was. Ridge Star pressures anybody who questions their safety practices. It just happened that it was him who pressured the hardest and the loudest."

  I noticed that Nestor wasn't using Bill's name and I wondered if Navajo tradition about not saying the names of the dead extended to everyone--whether Navajo or not--in someone's circle who died. I'd ask Sage about it later.

  "Can you tell us who might have gone after him?" Sage was a little out of her element here. Maybe talking about her father with someone who knew him better than she ever did weirded her out a bit. She seemed stiff and uncertain. I moved my chair a teeny bit closer to hers.

  "I think maybe I'll tell you some things about him as a person first," Nestor said. "And maybe you can find some answers there." He looked at each of us in turn then settled into himself. "He worked for Ridge Star for a couple of years. He stayed around because of Tonya, and because he decided he liked Farmington. I think he wanted to make better of himself, because otherwise he would've left for a different company. But then something happened to him." The hint of a smile hung at the corners of him mouth.

  "He started to believe in something greater than himself."

  Please don't tell me he found God. I tapped the tip of my pen against the paper and waited for the revelation.

  "He liked how it felt, to fight for people other than himself. And he liked that for the first time in his life, he felt that he had a place in the world." Nestor unclasped his hands and rubbed his palms on his jeans. "The guys at Ridge Star were like family. You work rigs long enough, it's like being in the Army. There's a bond there between guys, and we look out for each other. For the most part." He shrugged again. "And maybe he wanted to make good for the guys because of his failings as a father. I don't know. But I think that was part of it."

  River shifted his position then. I glanced over at him and he had sat back, arms folded across his chest.

  "I know you didn't know him as either a father or a man," Nestor continued, directing his wor
ds at Sage. "But in his time at Ridge Star, he was a good man. He took it personally, whenever somebody was hurt on the job." Nestor looked at River then. "Your father was good at what he did. He had a lot of seniority, a lot of skill, and a lot of the guys looked up to him. And if he thought something wasn't right on the rig, it wasn't. He had a lot of intuition about that kind of thing. I used to tease him about it." He smiled. "I'd tell him maybe he had medicine in him, and he should start doing ceremonies."

  Interesting, though I knew Sage probably wasn't thrilled to learn that Bill might've been more in tune with some things than others, like she was. Sure enough, she was bouncing her left leg a bit, something she did when she wasn't comfortable with a situation.

  "How long did you know him?" she asked.

  "I'd been at Ridge Star five months when he was hired on. I'm a contract worker, but the money was good there and close to home. So I stuck around. He tried to get me hired on permanently, but Ridge Star always had an excuse for why they wouldn't."

  "Money?" River interjected. "Or because you're Navajo?"

  Nestor regarded him, considering. "Maybe both, but more the first. I can't say for sure. He said it came down to money when he talked to the company men. But he always suspected it was because I'm Indian. Ridge Star had a lot of Indian guys working the sites. But I can't name one who was permanent."

  "Did my father start investigating Ridge Star because of what happened to you in January?" Sage asked, and her leg stopped bouncing as much.

  I wrote the question down and then in parentheses, added "Tonya," because she had said that Bill was pissed at the company after that.

  Nestor laughed, a soft rumbling that sounded like wind in a canyon. "He took what happened to me personally. He didn't tell me what he was up to after I got injured, but he hinted that he was going to make Ridge Star own its part. That's how he phrased it. 'Own its part'."

  "If I may," I said as I wrote the phrase down, "could you please tell us what happened to you? If it's not too difficult." I hoped he understood my meaning.

  He intertwined his fingers in his lap and studied them for a while before speaking and I thought for sure I'd offended him. Shit. But then he started talking again. "I don't remember much about that day. I do remember that something wasn't right."

  "In what sense?" I asked.

  "All," he said, as if that was the most logical thing in the world. "Sometimes you can't explain things that aren't right. This was one of those things. The energy was off. I had a bad feeling all day. I told him to be careful on the rig because of it."

  "What did he say?" I was writing so fast my hand hurt.

  "He took it seriously. He always did. He was the kind of bilagaana that respected that kind of warning. So he checked all the equipment again and told me that the cable was dangerous. He was angry about that, because he'd told Monroe--Clint Monroe, the company man--that it needed to be changed out. He went to talk to the guy on duty that day. It wasn't Monroe. It was somebody else..." he trailed off, trying to remember. "Surano. Jimmy Surano that day." Nestor scratched his neck then looked down at his feet. His left was positioned in such a way that it could fall off the footrest. He reached down with both hands, grabbed the fabric of his jeans on either side of his calf, and picked his leg up to adjust it, wincing.

  "Jimmy's heart is in the right place," he continued. "But his head isn't. Your father told me Jimmy put a call into the main office in Farmington about the cable while he was standing there. Jimmy told him they'd fix it in the next couple of days." He sighed. "Two days too late for me."

  "Could Jimmy have stopped the drilling on that shift to replace the cable?" I continued with my line of questioning, trying to get a feel for what happened.

  "Oh, sure. But he would have been fired. And Jimmy was scared of that. He had a couple of priors on his record and it was hard for him to find work."

  I'd have Chris run a check on him. "Does he live in Farmington?"

  Nestor nodded confirmation. "He's still with Ridge Star. So my sources say." He grinned, then continued. "So--" he looked at Sage. "Your father came back from talking to Jimmy and said we'd get no help that day from the higher-ups and he asked me if I thought we should walk off the site."

  I looked over at Sage and she turned at that moment toward me, expression unreadable, before she looked back at Nestor.

  "I asked him in return how he felt about running the string. He said it made him nervous, because of the cable, and he didn't want to put any guys at risk. So he asked all the guys working on or near the rig how they felt and they all said to just be careful, and they'd be on extra alert." He sat up straighter and glanced over at River again. "We made it almost the whole shift. And then I remember we were pulling the string up to change out the drill bit and something went wrong. He yelled at me to move. And when he said that, the cable must've snapped and all I remember is waking up in the hospital. He said later that they airlifted me. I don't remember any of what happened after the cable broke. I lost about a week."

  "Did he tell you what happened?" River, this time.

  "He asked me if I wanted to know and I did so he told me that the cable snapped and a section of pipe swung loose and knocked me onto my back on the drill pad. Then another section fell on my legs. Here." He pointed to about mid-thigh. "It rolled down past my knees. I almost wish the pipe crushed my spinal cord. At least then I wouldn't feel anything."

  "What did Ridge Star do after the accident?" River again.

  "Monroe came to the hospital to 'interview' me. He said tox screens showed I'd been drinking, so the accident was my fault."

  Bastards. I checked on Sage. Her leg had stopped bouncing.

  "It wasn't true. I haven't had alcohol in twelve years. My family and I hired a lawyer, and the hospital provided the tox screen, proving I hadn't had anything. But Ridge Star had its own lawyers and that OSHA group only fined them six thousand bucks. Compared to what the company makes in a month, that's nothing. But that's how it is in this industry. OSHA tells state employment agencies what to do and they don't fine too stiff. Maybe because of the money that comes in from production. Maybe there's not enough people to enforce. I don't know." He rubbed his palms on his thighs again. "I don't have the kind of money it'll take to sue Ridge Star. And not many attorneys around here are willing to work with me. Ridge Star employs a lot of people, so a lot of times locals just look the other way at safety problems." He looked at me, then. "Especially if you're Indian."

  I didn't doubt him. "And after that, B--he started his own investigation?" I corrected.

  Nestor pursed his lips and looked at the front door just as it opened. A woman entered, broad frame filling a gray T-shirt and jeans. She was holding a paper bag full of what looked like groceries. She wore her long black hair in a braid down her back and sunglasses hid her eyes.

  "His kids," Nestor said to her, gesturing at Sage and River. "And other family." To us, he said, "My wife, Angie."

  We all stood, uttering greetings. Angie smiled in return. "Let me put this stuff down." She turned right, into what I surmised was the kitchen, then returned to the living room and went right to Sage. "I never thought we'd meet you," she said, still smiling as she faced Sage. "He said it was his fault, what happened in the family, but he wasn't sure how to make it right."

  The muscles in Sage's jaw clenched as Angie looked past her at River. "You look like a younger version of him," she said, and she stood studying his features. "Welcome." She turned to me, then, and I opened my mouth but Sage beat me to the punch.

  "This is my partner, K.C. And that's Kara, her sister."

  "Welcome to you both." She nodded at us each in turn. To Nestor, she said, "I'll be right back."

  He smiled at her and she started toward the kitchen. "His notebook," he called to her and I jerked my gaze back to him. "Would you get it?" he asked Angie.

  "Be right back," she affirmed, turning away from the kitchen and heading down the narrow hallway in the opposite direction.

&
nbsp; "Notebook?" Sage asked.

  "He mailed it to me," Nestor said by way of explanation. "I got it the day before that Friday he disappeared."

  "Why didn't--"

  "I give it to the police?" he finished my question. "Because I

  think he wanted all of you to see it first."

  "Did the police ask about it?" Sage caught my eye then turned her attention to Nestor.

  "No. They just asked about the last time I had talked to him and who I thought might have caused him trouble at Ridge Star." A wicked little grin pulled at his lips. "They didn't ask about it, so I didn't tell."

  River sat down on the couch again, Kara following suit. Sage and I took our seats again, as well.

  "Is this his investigation record?" I asked.

  Nestor nodded just as Angie reappeared, holding a black composition book. He gestured with his lips at Sage and Angie handed it to her. After doing so, Angie returned to the kitchen. Sage handed the notebook to me and I opened it, flipping through to get a sense of what it was about. A journal and log, from what I could tell. He'd dated every entry and included times on most of them. Lists of people he'd talked to. Alleged safety violations at Ridge Star, with descriptions of what he'd found and what he'd done to address the situation. A record of phone calls he'd made and received, including the notations "threat" next to several of the calls. And slipped into the back were folded copies of letters he'd apparently sent to Ridge Star headquarters in Farmington, listing potential problems with equipment, and requesting more inspections. He had handwritten the date he mailed them at the bottom of each, along with "Farmington main branch," which I assumed was the post office he'd used.