Dark Reservations

by John Fortunato

  The trail ended in a small clearing, perhaps fifty feet at its widest. He parked next to Bluehorse’s unit, then got out. They shook hands.

  “The others are on their way,” Joe said. “Should be here by ten.”

  “I called the chief a few minutes ago. He said he was upset I didn’t know about this yesterday.”

  Joe had asked Bluehorse not to tell his chief the FBI would process the vehicle today. He hadn’t wanted any press showing up at the road. He’d suspected the chief was the one behind leaking the story about the bullet holes.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll have enough to update him on after we finish here.”

  “Did you tell your boss?” Bluehorse asked.

  “We don’t talk much.”

  SEPTEMBER 25

  SATURDAY, 9:30 A.M.

  THE CONSTITUTION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Kendall Holmes touched his lips to the gold-rimmed china cup and sipped the Earl Grey tea, letting it bathe his palate. The soft bergamot tang excited his mouth yet calmed his body. He relaxed into the oversized poppy-colored leather chair in the waiting lounge of the Constitution Room, an exclusive power dining spot in D.C. Anyone who was anyone kept this number on speed dial, and anyone who mattered had standing reservations. More legislation was finalized here than on the Senate and House floors combined. And, to be honest, the Constitution Room offered the proper atmosphere to run a country, rivaling the White House in elegance and grandeur—no, exceeding the White House. On his last visit to the home of the supposed most powerful man in the free world, he had noted how shabby the place looked. The radiators begging for paint, the plaster walls bulging and out of shape. Unacceptable. He might have an opportunity to do something about that in a couple of years. The Constitution Room, however, was flawless. Even the silver and crystal chandeliers hanging from the twenty-foot ceiling gleamed with a perpetual polish. Never a speck of dust or the taint of tarnish. More important, these dangling islands of light cast the perfect illumination. As with every decision inside the Beltway, it was likely the product of a three-hundred-page report prepared by a consultant who had studied the exact number of lumens required to attract venerated statesmen—as well as the reviled.

  Holmes looked over at the waiter, who stood off to the corner, visible to the eye yet distant to the ear. Eavesdropping does not attract politicians. Kendall held up his tea and nodded, indicating it was a fine cup. The young man returned the nod with a quick smile. The waiter was new. Holmes would develop him over time. Sources were important. A waiter at the Constitution Room was gold, maybe even platinum. A tidbit here, a morsel there. Holmes called it “mosaic intelligence.” Individually, the pieces were meaningless, but together, they made a picture. That was the purpose of his meeting this morning. To gather intelligence. But with caution.

  He checked his watch, a Blancpain. Nine-thirty-two. The roman numerals circling the face appeared blurry. He’d stayed up late last night, leaving in his contacts, something he rarely did because his eyes were sensitive. The Edgerton mess was not only disrupting his usual calm but also his sleep. His phone vibrated, a text from his head of security—and longtime bodyguard—who waited in the lobby. His guest had arrived.

  A minute later, Helena Newridge, a journalist for the Washington Post, waddled through the lounge, her head bobbling about, no doubt spying for gossip. The bulky jewelry around her neck and wrists gave off a rattle as she walked.

  Holmes hid his disgust. “Ms. Newridge, over here.”

  She sat down across from him. “I haven’t been here in a while. Budget cuts—unlike the government.”

  He gave her his win-over laugh, one he’d perfected for his community-outreach meetings with constituents. “Allow me to grant you an appropriation. This will be my treat.” He slipped on his D.C. smile.

  “You’re very smooth, Senator.”

  “I enjoy people.”

  She gave a smirk. “Uh-huh.”

  “But before we begin, we have to agree on the terms. Yes?”

  “We covered that on the phone.”

  “We did, but for my own peace of mind, I would like to confirm our arrangement. You’re new to certain circles, so I need to know if you can be trusted to keep a confidence.”

  “It’s my bread and butter.”

  “I’m sure.” He smiled, showing his laser-whitened dental work, and his slightly pointy canines. “So we agree to background only. No quotes and I am not to be mentioned in the piece, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And no recording.”

  She looked disappointed. “Fine, no recording.”

  “Okay, shall we eat now?”

  “Sure, as long as we talk, too.”

  SEPTEMBER 25

  SATURDAY, 9:56 A.M.

  JONES RANCH ROAD, CHI CHIL TAH (NAVAJO NATION), NEW MEXICO

  Two midnight blue Suburbans pushed through the tree line. The first parked beside Joe’s vehicle. Behind the wheel was Andi McBride. She burst from her vehicle and strode up to Joe like a hungry bear greeting a hiker.

  “What do you have, Joe? And I hope we aren’t parked in the scene.”

  “Hello to you, too, Andi. How have you been? How’s the family? Go anywhere interesting on vacation this year?”

  “Cut the crap. You know we’ve got all day to catch up. But if you want to know, I missed my jujitsu class this morning, so I haven’t relieved all my stress”—she looked Joe up and down and cracked a knuckle—“yet. I got food poisoning on my cruise and was sick for three days. And if I don’t get back to Albuquerque by six, my ex- is going to go apeshit, because I promised to take Pauly to the movies tonight. Other than that, I’m great.”

  Bluehorse, who was standing next to Joe, took a step back.

  “Happy to hear it—I mean that you’re great,” Joe said, trying to suppress a smile.

  “You doing all right?”

  “My boss is on my ass, the job is telling me to retire, and there’s a vehicle just over there”—he gestured to the east—“that’s probably going to be a giant hemorrhoid. And I have another tuition payment due in two weeks. Other than that, I’m great.”

  “Happy to hear it—about you being great, I mean.”

  They shook hands.

  “All right. Give me the nickel summary and skip the Edgerton part. I’ve been watching the news.” She held her pen and clipboard at the ready.

  Joe let Bluehorse tell about his find and the bullet holes. As he spoke, two more agents joined them, one male and one female. The female agent was reserved and stayed off to the side of the group, filling out what Joe guessed was a crime-scene form. He recognized the man.

  “It’s Joe, right?” said Mark Fisher, a young candlewick of a man constantly burning nervous energy. “We did the Lujan case together in Sandia.”

  Joe recalled the case. A fired railroad worker went home and lodged an ax in his son’s head because the teen had left a carton of milk on the counter to spoil. The drunken father had wanted a bowl of cereal.

  “It’s been a while, Mark.”

  “I read the father got seventeen years. Good job.”

  “Thanks,” Joe said. “We appreciated your help with it.”

  “Did they set a date for your retirement party?” Andi asked Joe.

  “Not yet. Stretch is on it, though.”

  Andi assigned Mark to evidence collection, and the other agent to photos and sketching.

  Before they started, Mark went back to the Suburban. He returned a few minutes later carrying a long black plastic case, a camera bag, a camo backpack, and a tripod. Then they all followed Bluehorse to the once-forgotten hunk of metal sitting a short distance in the woods.

  The milky white paint of the Lincoln glowed rather than radiated from the morning sunlight, giving its edges a fuzziness that seemed to ripple as though alive. The group circled the plundered vehicle. Criminologists suggest that stripping a vehicle is an act of vandalism, representing a breakdown of law and order, society’s failure at self-polic
ing. Joe saw it as a symptom of social cancer. The doers, like mutated cells, ate away at a neighborhood, spreading, infecting others, until the mass got so large that the community collapsed. He was sure some of these cancerous cells lived nearby. They had taken what they could from this vehicle over the years, rather than reporting it to the police so a proper investigation could have been completed back when the congressman went missing. Now Joe had to deal with it.

  Bluehorse showed them the bullet hole in the driver-side door and offered his theories.

  “Let’s see you work some magic, Mark,” Joe said. He didn’t feel hopeful, but he knew he had to cover every angle in order to uncover any possible clue.

  “That’s why I get paid the big bucks.” Mark passed out breathing masks and gloves to Joe and Bluehorse as the other agent took photographs of the vehicle and the surrounding area. Over the next hour, they shoveled out the rat droppings from inside the vehicle and ran metal detectors over the piles, looking for slugs or shells or anything else out of place that might potentially be a clue. They found nothing other than nuts and bolts, bottle caps, and metal brackets.

  When they finished, Mark climbed into the vehicle to examine the bullet holes in the windshield and door. He and the female agent photographed and measured them all. When they were done, Mark focused on the door, placing his left cheek to the hole. He peered through.

  “Oh yeah. This is going to be fun.”

  Joe could hear a slight giddiness in his voice. He knew evidence guys—and gals—got excited by challenges at a scene.

  “I feel pretty confident we can find this round,” Mark said. “No guarantee, of course. But definitely possible.”

  Mark went to work. He opened the long black case and extracted a small box, a long metal rod, and a tiny tripod, all of which he handed to Bluehorse.

  “Hold on to these until I get inside.”

  Mark slid back inside the vehicle.

  Bluehorse handed Mark the equipment.

  Mark placed it on the battered dashboard, opened it, and withdrew several small white plastic cones with holes running lengthwise through them. He held them to the bullet hole in the door, inserting each one gently, and then removing it to try the next, searching for a cone that fit snugly into the hole and was oriented in the direction the round would have traveled. He seemed to find the one he wanted and placed the others back in the box.

  He grabbed the long rod and pushed it through the bottom of the cone, sliding the small white plastic halfway down its length. Angling the rod, he inserted it through the bullet hole until the cone seated. He wiggled the rod assembly a few times until he appeared satisfied. He looked up. The rod pierced the driver’s door like a magician’s sword through a magic box.

  “Now for the angle finder,” Mark said, more to himself than to the others.

  Mark held a yellow plastic device at the back end of the rod. He read the dial and then made a notation on a small notepad he pulled from the cargo pocket of his pants.

  Joe was absorbed by the process. He’d seen this technique used only once before, in an accidental shooting involving elk hunters.

  Mark extended the legs of the tripod so they touched the now somewhat clean floorboard and then placed the rod in a small U-shaped clip at the tripod’s top. After making a few adjustments, he leaned back and appraised his work.

  “This is not going to be perfect, but it’ll give us a good search vector.”

  “You got my attention,” Joe said. “What’s next?”

  “Do you have any idea if the vehicle was moved over the last twenty years? Maybe pushed or towed? Even a few feet?”

  Because of the car parts under and around the vehicle, they didn’t believe it had been moved. It appeared to have been stripped in place.

  “There are three unknowns we’re dealing with here,” Mark began. “First, was this vehicle parked here when the shot was fired? Second, was there anything on the outside of this door that could have intercepted the round and subsequently changed its direction, like a person or a tree that’s been cut down since? And third, was the round an ice bullet and has it since melted away?”

  Bluehorse looked surprised.

  Joe laughed.

  “Okay, we only have two unknowns. But one of these days someone will try something tricky like that, and I’ll be ready.”

  “I pity the fool,” Joe said in a poor imitation of Mr. T.

  Mark and Bluehorse both looked at him, heads cocked.

  “The A-Team?” Joe waited for a response. Nothing. He shook his head. “Young’uns.”

  Mark went on: “So we could do an entire three-part mathematical equation to calculate the round’s time aloft, maximum height, and horizontal distance traveled, taking into account wind resistance and the Earth’s rotation, but…”

  Bluehorse bit. “But?”

  “But we don’t know the round’s velocity, and without that, I can’t do the calculations.”

  Dramatic pause.

  Bluehorse bit again. “Oh.”

  “So we’re left with one option. The string technique.”

  No one said anything.

  Mark continued, possibly a little disappointed by the lack of response. “I connect a laser to the rod and shoot out a beam for about two hundred yards or until something stops it—something that could have stopped a round. That’s our trajectory. Then we run a string from here to that point and use a metal detector along the string’s path. If the shot was fired from this vehicle while it was sitting here, and if my angle of travel is correct, the round should be within five to ten feet on either side of that string.”

  Bluehorse clapped his hands together. “I’m game.”

  “Let me make two disclaimers. First, the car is at a lower angle because the tires are gone. Second, if my angle of travel through the door is off, or if the car shifted to the side over the years, that round may not be in our search area.”

  “Fair enough,” Joe said.

  “Let’s find ourselves a bullet.” Mark rifled through the little black box on the dash and pulled out a small penlike tube. He placed it at the back end of the rod and screwed it to the tip, making slow, careful twists, as though he were assembling a bomb. When it was connected, he checked the angle finder again and made an adjustment to the tripod.

  “Bluehorse,” Mark said. “In my backpack you’ll find several sheets of white card stock. Grab a piece and hold it in front of the rod.”

  Bluehorse unzipped the bag.

  A gunshot shattered the relative quiet of the woods.

  SEPTEMBER 25

  SATURDAY, 11:43 A.M.

  RESIDENCE OF WILLIAM TOM, FORT DEFIANCE (NAVAJO NATION), ARIZONA

  William Tom dipped the last piece of wheat bread into the mixture of egg yolk and green chili. As he lifted the soaked morsel to his mouth, he felt the light patter of liquid on his shirt. He shoved what remained between his fingers into his mouth and used his forefinger to catch the runaways on his stretched and yellowed T-shirt, smearing them into a single large stain. He called out to his wife.

  “Chllarrr!” Swallowing, he tried again. “Char!”

  “Ha’átíí?” Charlene replied, annoyance apparent in her voice. She was sitting in the living room, watching cartoons.

  “I need a new shirt.”

  “Biniiyé?”

  “Because I got a stain on it.”

  “Biniiyé?”

  “Damn it! I need a new shirt.”

  “T’ah.”

  “Stop watching that shit and get me a shirt.”

  “T’ah.”

  “You’re a disgrace to your Navajo ancestors, woman. Don’t speak the language if you can’t live by the traditions.”

  “Go get it yourself, old man,” she said, switching to English.

  He pushed himself away from the kitchen table, his wheelchair sliding easily over the linoleum floor. He wheeled into the living room, looking at the back of Charlene’s head as he went. At forty-two, she was twenty-five years his ju
nior. Her liver was probably older than his, the way she drank, but that was probably all. She would surely outlive him.

  He never touched alcohol and always ate well, but that hadn’t made a difference. His whole body had given up on him a decade ago when he’d developed type 2 diabetes. He’d lost his right foot from a complication eight years ago. Then they took his lower leg. Last year, they took his thigh. Two months ago, a sharp tingling started to come and go in his left foot, but he kept that quiet. He’d lost most of the sight in his right eye and had been surprised that the doctors hadn’t offered to cut that out, too.

  In the bedroom, he maneuvered himself to the dresser and opened the middle drawer. The bottom three drawers were his, the top three hers. He pulled out a once-white T-shirt, now a sickly shade of piss.

  William had left the Navajo reservation at the age of ten to attend boarding school in Vermont. He stayed there until he was eighteen, with few trips back home during those years. He went on to study archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and only after graduation did he return to the reservation. He wanted to bring his education back to his people. He was appointed as director of Navajo Antiquities, a department of government that safeguarded the Navajo Nation’s cultural history, and a place where he tried to make a difference. But that position offered little opportunity. So, many years later, he ran for president of the Navajo Nation. One requirement for presidency was fluency in Navajo. Because he’d left the reservation so young, he’d never mastered the language. But when he wanted something, he did what was needed to attain it, so he’d studied hard for most of a year to gain fluency. He was elected in 1991, the same year he met Charlene, his third wife. His first two wives had become too traditional for him. Now, in his later, wiser years, he wished Charlene would become more traditional.

  He pulled off his stained shirt and placed it on his lap. It took him a little time, but he put on the new shirt and adjusted it down around his back. His body had grown weak these last few years and simple tasks like getting dressed tired him quickly. He wheeled over to the laundry basket. The clothes were piled high, overflowing onto the floor. The pile would grow much larger before Char got around to doing the wash. He rolled up the soiled shirt and was about to toss it on the mound, when he saw a pair of her panties on top.