by Aimée Thurlo
“Did you confront him about the dry painting before he left?” Valerie asked.
“Not exactly. I just told him that leaving me souvenirs like those wouldn’t get him what he wanted. Skinwalker practices can engender fear, but only if you believe in that sort of thing.”
“And you don’t?”
He hesitated. “I’ve never seen real supernatural power. If I did, I might fear it. But until I do…” he said, then shrugged.
“I’ll need the student’s address and a description,” Valerie said.
Becenti handed her a small piece of paper from a notepad that was under the paperweight on his desk. It contained the student’s social security number, student number and his physical description. “That’s everything I’ve got on Frank Willie. There’s no phone number written down because he never gave us one, and records doesn’t have a valid address.”
“Thanks, Professor,” Valerie said.
As they headed back across campus, Valerie glanced at Luca. “We’ve tried to track down Frank Willie before but his last address didn’t pan out.”
Luca nodded. “If I remember correctly, he lived with the second victim for some time.”
“Maybe her friend Mae can give us a lead now that she’s had time to think about things,” Valerie said. “I should have the contact number for her here somewhere,” she added, searching her PDA.
Valerie made the call and was lucky enough to catch Mae. A few minutes later, as they reached her vehicle, she hung up.
“I got some of that,” Luca said, “including the fact that we now have an address on Frank Willie. Fill me in on the rest.”
Valerie nodded. “It appears that Frank called Mae just before she and her father left home yesterday—not long after we left. According to Mae, Frank was upset and wanted to know where Lea was going to be buried so he could pay his respects. Mae didn’t want to talk about it and told Frank to contact Lea’s family directly. Frank said he’d tried but they’d hung up on him twice already.”
“No surprise. No one would be eager to talk about the dead—particularly to an old boyfriend they undoubtedly hadn’t approved of,” Luca said.
“According to Mae, he’d seemed genuinely upset by the news of her death,” Valerie said, climbing in and unlocking his door from the inside.
“If he’d cared for the woman at one time, and I’m assuming that’s the case, news of her death could have affected him deeply. Something like that can blast a hole through a man no matter how strong he is.”
“You’re not just speaking about him, are you?” Valerie asked in a gentle voice as she started the engine. “You had to deal with the death of a woman you cared about, too.”
“Yes.” Luca glanced at her, not surprised by how accurately she’d learned to read him. Wanting her to know—and maybe understand—why there was no place for love in his life, he continued. “She was helping my dad deliver hay to stranded livestock following an unexpected snowstorm. Normally that would have been my job, but I was halfway across the Rez working on a case, so she decided to help me out.” He paused for several seconds. “Early that morning her truck slid off an icy road and overturned. By the time my dad found her, she was dead.”
“I’m so sorry.” Although her heart went out to him, she could sense he didn’t want her sympathy. She waited, trying to understand what he was really trying to tell her.
“When she needed me most, I wasn’t there. After that, I sank into darkness that poisoned me from the inside out.” He grew silent for several moments. “The one thing I learned as I worked my way out of that hellhole is that some of us aren’t meant for relationships.
“Police work carries a high price, but just as you have, I’ve accepted the demands of the job. As officers our duty’s clear. Relationships—those are much more complicated.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
A trace of sadness wound through her. They were perfect for each other. If anyone could understand Luca’s passion for the work they did, it was her. But he’d closed the doors between them, just as she’d done, though for different reasons.
Growing up moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, school to school, never having anyone to call a friend—at least not for long—had taught her never to count on tomorrow. She’d lived life moment by moment and asked for nothing else. Then Luca had stepped into her life and made her question her most cherished beliefs. But to fall head over heels in love—to surrender to that volatile emotion—meant trusting in hope, the kind that defied the odds, and she’d seen too much of life to do that.
“Believing in long-term relationships is as hard for me as believing in fairies with wings and wands,” she admitted softly. Yet one thing had changed. Since she’d met Luca she’d found herself wishing she could.
“So, love is for others, not you?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Love is expectations coupled with imagination, and that never fails to get people in trouble.” Valerie told him about her mother’s great quest to find her one true love.
“Fantasies and reality don’t mix,” he said. “Life is far more than that.”
Valerie glanced over at him. As illogical as it was, Luca was precisely the kind of man she’d always dreamed about deep in the night when darkness kept caution at bay. She’d wanted a warrior, a man who’d stand by her no matter what the danger, and someone confident enough to be capable of exquisite tenderness.
Angry with herself for allowing her thoughts to stray, she swept those feelings aside. Luca was her partner and he’d be leaving just as soon as they’d made an arrest. She wouldn’t spend another second wishing for something that could never be. Besides, she wasn’t cut out for domesticity. Her life was fine just the way it was.
Valerie kept her eyes on the road, and, following the output from the navigation system display, reached Frank Willie’s new address. Sticking to her training, Valerie parked down the street. The old twenties-era brick building was a few miles north of downtown Albuquerque. Most of the former family homes here had been converted to businesses and now housed bail bondsmen operations, offices or realty firms. The few that still survived as residences had been turned into apartments or duplexes.
Frank Willie’s front door opened as they climbed out of the car. A man who fit his description walked to the sidewalk carrying a black plastic trash bag and dropped it into the waste bin at the curb. As he turned, he looked directly at them then casually began walking in the opposite direction.
“Stop where you are. I’m Detective Valerie Jonas of the Sheriff’s Department,” she called out.
Willie took off like a shot.
“We’ve got a runner,” Valerie said to Luca. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Nineteen
Willie cut across a legal firm’s front lawn and raced into the alley behind the building, disappearing from view. Luca pursued, quickly outdistancing Valerie.
Willie soon reached the end of the block and sprinted alongside a big wooden fence at the back of an apartment. Seeing Luca behind him, he ran out into the cross street, forcing oncoming cars to brake hard or swerve to avoid hitting him.
Luca was forced to stop for oncoming cars as he reached the end of the alley, and Valerie caught up to him. “More officers are closing in to back us up. He’s not going anywhere,” she said, crossing the street with him.
Resuming the chase down the sidewalk, they could see Willie running half a block ahead, now approaching a tall, old brick building, probably a warehouse. A crowd of people filled the sidewalk, then split into two lines leading up the steps to the building. A tall fabric sign hung above the door advertised job interviews at the nationally known electronics firm.
Willie plunged into the crowd of mostly young people, shoving and pushing his way through until he disappeared from view.
Luca and Valerie tried to follow, but found their way blocked by a crowd that had been angered by Willie’s aggressive intrusion.
“Back of the line,” one woman yelled.
Sidestepping her, Luca jumped up onto the concrete railing of the stairway. From that vantage point he could see the top of Frank Willie’s head as he shoved his way along the crowded sidewalk. It was like swimming upstream through a debris-filled creek.
Luca watched people react to him, then saw the top of Willie’s head as it disappeared to the left, around the corner of the building.
Luca yelled to Valerie, who was inching her way along, holding her badge in front of her like a cattle prod. “He turned left at the corner,” he called out. “I’m circling around to the east.”
Luca jumped down then ran around the side of the building and entered the alley at the rear of the structure. Except for the parked cars he had the route to himself and he reached the next cross street within seconds.
Luca stopped, wondering how far Willie had gone. He couldn’t use footprints to track a suspect on a city street or sidewalk, but there were other signs—if you knew how to read them.
Brakes suddenly squealed about half a block east and he heard a crash. Betting that was a sign, Luca raced down the sidewalk. When he reached the corner, he saw a yellow taxi up on the sidewalk and a bent-over parking meter wedged beneath the vehicle’s heavy front bumper.
“Which way did he go?” Luca asked the cab driver, who was still cursing as he stared down at the damage to his vehicle. Cabs were a rare sight to Luca, who couldn’t recall ever having seen one on the West Virginia–sized Navajo Nation.
“Wild-eyed fool cut right out in front of me. He ran down that alley!” The cabbie pointed. “You a cop?”
“Yeah, call it in for me while I go catch the guy,” Luca said, then took off across the street. The light had changed, and cars were stalled with the cab now blocking a lane. Luca was halfway down the block when he spotted Willie, who was still running as if he had a bear on his heels.
Studying the direction he was traveling, Luca smiled slowly. “I’ve got you now, Mr. Willie,” he muttered, taking out the cell phone. Punching in Valerie’s number, he reached her instantly.
“What’s your twenty?” she asked, wanting his location.
He turned and looked at the street signs. “Second and Commerce, but I’ve just figured out where he’s going. He’s headed back home via the alley between Second and Third. I’ll follow on the west side of Second. You can head north, then just wait by the side of his house until he shows up.”
“Meet you at the north end of his house,” she said, then ended the call.
Luca jogged up the sidewalk, passing dozens of people along the way. Most didn’t make eye contact—the way of the city and, strangely enough, the way of the Navajos.
Five minutes later, coming up the alley, he spotted Valerie in the shadows, barely visible, standing against the side of the building opposite Willie’s home. Seeing him, she stepped out into his line of sight and shrugged.
Luca walked in her direction, checking the back doors of the buildings as he passed. Reaching an old garage, he noted a padlock on the ground just below where the two doors were joined. An empty hasp was open. He gestured, pointing to his eyes then at the lock, showing her where to look.
Valerie saw the lock, which had been opened with a key, and understood what he was suggesting. She took a position beside one door and brought out her pistol, ready to back him up.
Luca jerked open the door by the handle. Willie, who’d been holding the door from the inside, was suddenly yanked out into the alley, a wrecking bar in his hand. In a panic, he took a swipe at Valerie’s pistol, but she just stepped back, easily avoiding the clumsy attempt.
“Drop it, Willie!” she ordered.
Willie took another swing anyway, forcing her to step back again.
“I don’t want to have to shoot, but one more swing and I’ll do it. Now drop the weapon,” she ordered.
Luca came in from the side and knocked Willie’s feet out from beneath him with a leg sweep. The man fell down hard, dropping the wrecking bar.
Still refusing to give up, Frank made a desperate grab for the big tool. Valerie stepped down hard on his wrist and held her fist against his windpipe. “Give it up,” she said. “Roll over, facedown.”
“Okay, okay,” he managed, completely out of breath.
After Valerie took her foot off Willie’s wrist and moved her hand away, Frank rolled over onto his stomach and Luca applied handcuffs.
“You’re under arrest for murder, Frank Willie,” Valerie said.
“Murder? You’re out of your mind.”
Luca opened the garage door and looked inside. “I’ll be willing to bet most, if not all, of this stuff’s hot,” he said, glancing back at Willie.
“Yeah, yeah, and it has my prints. So you’ve got me for burglary. But no way you’re pinning any murder on me. I’d never hurt Lea or that other woman.”
“Convince me,” Valerie snapped.
“I’ve heard the news. When the first woman was killed, I was cooling my heels in jail. I’d had a disagreement with another guy playing blackjack at the casino.”
“We’ll check it out, so you better not be lying to me. I really dislike people who waste my time,” Valerie said, purposely biting off every word.
As another officer came up to take custody of Willie, a call came over Valerie’s radio. Hearing the code for a ten-twenty-seven-one, a homicide, Valerie moved away from Luca and the police officer.
After getting all the pertinent information, she joined Luca. “We’ve got to move. Another body’s been discovered, and it looks like the same M.O.”
As they hurried back to her unit, Valerie filled him in on what she knew. “Some hikers came across the body of a Navajo woman in her early twenties. The body’s near a campground in the Manzanos about ten miles south of Tijeras. According to the deputy on the scene, her fingers have been cut off. The rest of the M.O. also matches our perp’s work. But there’s something new this time.” She swallowed, determined to keep her voice steady. “A photo of you and me was left by the body.”
“Where was the photo taken?”
“I don’t know yet. I figured we’d see for ourselves once we got there,” Valerie said.
They reached I-25 via Central Avenue, drove north to the Big I then raced east out of the city on I-40. With emergency lights flashing they made very good time, and twenty-five minutes later they were in what locals called the Canyon. From there, they turned south, taking the same route at first that they’d followed to the Nez home.
Ten minutes later they arrived on the scene, a small meadow within a hundred yards of a camping-area picnic table. Three Sheriff’s Department cruisers were already there, along with the mobile crime lab, and the scene had been cordoned off with yellow tape.
As she got out, one of the older, more experienced deputies greeted her with a grim nod. “Hold on to your stomach, Jonas. It ain’t pretty,” he muttered.
“Do you have an ID?”
“Yeah, I recognized her…name’s Elaine Bowman.”
“Navajo?” Valerie asked.
“Yeah.”
“How do you know her?” Valerie asked, curious why the vic had been recognized.
“I’m taking an afternoon class at the U. She operates a hot dog stand on the north side of Central right in front of old Johnson Gym. She’s got—had—the best hot dogs in the city.”
Valerie nodded, having seen the cart a few times while on campus. There were not that many sidewalk hot dog vendors in their city, and the university area was a good place for her kind of business. She was an original.
Putting on their latex gloves, they approached the scene and ducked under the yellow tape. She’d seen the two other bodies but this one was worse. She swallowed. Blood completely covered the victim who had multiple stab wounds on her chest.
“She put up a fight,” Valerie said.
“That might have made things worse for her,” Luca said in a quiet voice.
“Worse than dead? I would have done the same thing in her shoes—do my best to take a piece of
him with me,” she said.
He nodded in approval. It was Valerie’s fighting spirit that drew him most. Merilyn had needed, and wanted, to be taken care of, but Valerie demanded something different from a man—the right to coexist in his world. That didn’t make her less of a woman, just one whose needs he understood.
“Once she stopped struggling, the killer took his time with her,” he said. Crouching next to the victim, he studied the intricacy of the ash painting beside her. He then gazed at her bloody forearms, immediately recognizing the insignia carved into her flesh—flames bounded by a circle—the sign of the Brotherhood.
“Here’s the photo,” Valerie said, interrupting his thoughts. “It’s attached with some kind of weird arrowhead to the rubber sole of her right shoe.”
He came up behind Valerie. “That’s a bone arrowhead.”
“Piercing my head in the photo,” she muttered, remembering their talk with Dr. Becenti. “This photo of us was taken after we came back from the mountains and went to the station. We took a break and went across the street for some coffee while we waited for the fingerprint check on the tracker, remember?”
“Yeah,” he answered, still focused on the arrowhead. “We’ll need to know where the bone used for the arrowhead came from—an animal or human,” he clarified, then pushed open the victim’s purse. It lay beside the body, the catch un-fastened. “Look at what I just found.”
“Steve Browning’s business card,” Valerie noted. “You and I should go pay him a visit. Curiously enough, he didn’t beat us to this crime scene.”
“Do you think he’s the killer and has been playing us all along?” Luca asked.
Valerie shook her head. “He wouldn’t have left his card for us to find if he were. He’s not stupid. Either way, we’re going to bring him in for questioning. I want to sweat some answers from him. He’s been holding out on us all along and that’s got to stop.”
“The press…”
“Yeah, I know. We’ll tread carefully. But this woman had rights, too.”
