Defending Turquoise (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 5)

by John Ellsworth

  14

  The sun was high in the sky and Turquoise was hot. Then she chilled in the breeze and was cold. The area was at 5,000 feet and wind currents blew hot and cold almost by the minute. She paused and took a long drink of the half-cold Pepsi she had carried along. It felt good on her parched throat, and familiar. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked back behind. She was almost two hours into her walk and had covered maybe ten miles. The landscape looked vaguely familiar, but less so than it did at seventy miles an hour, her customary speed in her father’s truck as they drove west to Flagstaff. A rock in her right shoe was painful, so she balanced on her left foot, removed the troubling shoe, and dislodged the small pebble and a spoonful of sand. The grains gathered and blew away in a single puff as the wind rustled past. She replaced the shoe and bent to tie the lace. Blood rushed to her head. She blinked hard. For just a moment she was afraid she was going to faint, but kept her head down long enough that the spinning ceased and she regained her balance. Then she was fully upright and telling herself she could do this. Put one foot in front of the other, she commanded, and she stepped west. A second step followed and she was moving again.

  After ten steps she realized she needed to urinate. Even out here in this sunshine, she thought. She stepped off the road and slid down into a dry arroyo, where she relieved herself. She could hear a vehicle thunder past on the highway and hoped she hadn’t just missed her ride. “Damn,” she swore at the sand, the dirt banks of the arroyo, the sun and the sky. “Damn, damn, damn!”

  15

  The girl was nowhere to be seen. She had thought she might catch sight of her outside, maybe along the road, as she drove in from the west, but there had been no sighting.

  Inside the trailer, the woman paused and listened. There—she tilted her head. Again—clearly the soft rasp of Randy Begay snoring. She crept down the hallway and peered inside the back bedroom. It was a mess; newspapers stacked three feet high, Truck Traders everywhere, a Winchester .30-.30 leaning in the corner, and two neon Budweiser signs adorning the south wall. Clothes were piled in great lumps, a pair of Nikes on their side and almost beneath the bed, and there, stretched out full length, fully dressed, lay Randy Begay. He was on his back, mouth wide open, his right arm draped across his forehead. His rimless eyeglasses lay folded on his chest, focused on the white plastic ceiling of the trailer. For some odd reason his left hand was shoved down inside the waistband of his Wrangler’s, all the way to the crotch.

  Must have been playing with himself, the woman thought.

  She watched and listened for several minutes. She worked to fight down the hatred she felt for the child rapist, but could not. It even came up in her throat as a hot, sour foam and she swallowed hard to make it go away, but it would not.

  A thought came to mind and she was immediately grateful. The Winchester .30-.30. Was it loaded? There was one way to find out. She retrieved the rifle and retreated back down the hallway. In the living room she worked the lever action. A long, fat .30 caliber bullet was visible in the chamber. She worked the lever up and closed the action. Was there a safety on the thing? Then she remembered. She found the stop/safety and saw the “S” indicating the safety was on. She pushed the safety forward until the red dot appeared. Now it was off. Now the gun would fire. The gun was an exact replica of the .30-.30 she had carried when guarding the animals. It felt very familiar in her hands.

  She crept back down the hallway. At the door to the back bedroom she paused and raised the rifle to eye level, placing and holding it against the doorframe to steady her shaking hands. She pointed the muzzle at Randy Begay’s head and squinted down the barrel. The rear sight lined up with the front sight and she drew a shallow breath and held it. She suddenly wanted to turn her head and look away and run from the trailer, but she caught herself and planted her feet again. Sighting down the rifle, taking and holding one last breath, she slowly squeezed the trigger. “Blam!” The gun exploded inside the closed space and her ears were instantly ringing. Randy Begay never moved but now had a hole the size of a quarter leaking dark blood out the side of his head, just forward of the left ear, exactly where she had been aiming.

  She reentered the bedroom and took a black T-shirt from the nearest pile. She replaced the gun where it had been leaning in the corner and, without touching it with any part of her skin, began wiping it down. It wasn’t easy, the gun flopping one way and then the other as she worked the T-shirt up and down on its metal and wood parts. But in the end she was satisfied. She had left no prints and no DNA. She stuffed the T-shirt inside her Wrangler’s and headed for the hallway.

  She made it halfway when the vomit came up in her throat. She was shaking and diving for the toilet, just off the hallway. She threw up from her mouth and from her nose and then had a sudden urge to move her bowels. She sat on the toilet and felt the defecation leave her body and flow out of her in a long stream. Then she was shaking and holding her head between her hands at what she had done. She had killed living things before, but never a human being. She went to wipe herself. Nothing. No toilet paper.

  “Son of a bit—” she muttered, and then stood upright without wiping and began looking under the sink for tissue paper. Nothing there, so she began opening drawers. Third drawer down on the side of the vanity nearest the toilet stool, she found napkins. Small white dinner napkins such as a fast food restaurant might dispense. She grabbed several and resumed her seat on the toilet. She wiped. Then she flushed, wiped the toilet ring with napkins wet from the sink faucet to rinse away all traces of DNA, and flushed again, this time with the aid of the black T-shirt. “Damn Indians,” she muttered.

  She hurried into the living room where she let herself out through the metal door and paused on the porch. Again with the T-shirt, this time wiping the door handle. She was positive the handle was all she had touched with her skin.

  “You have the right to remain silent, Mr. Begay,” she said to the trailer and the window where she knew the less threatening, newly improved Randy Begay lay dozing in his own blood. Oh, that’s right, he wasn’t dozing. He was dead, exercising his right to remain silent.

  And damn good riddance.

  16

  She thought she heard the report of a gun bouncing around the mountains, but she wasn’t sure. The young girl shielded her eyes with her hands, even though the sun was behind her, and squinted back toward her home. She couldn’t see the trailer, thanks to the groundswell as she made her way west, but she was almost certain she had heard a gun. It sounded like the gun she sometimes fired to scare critters away from her sheep.

  Then she ducked her head and moved toward the sun again, one foot in front of the other. Someone would pick her up soon. She was sure of it.

  * * *

  The leather gloves protected her hands against the rush of the wind and would save acres of skin if the bike went down with her on it, as would the denim coat.

  The guy was clearly dead, half his head blown away.

  Angelina Steinmar closed the front door and stepped from the stoop and strode quickly out to the motorcycle. She twisted the key and hit the starter. It immediately roared to life and she left it running as she bent and studied the ground around her feet.

  She located her tread marks in the sand where she had turned off the road coming in, and began walking backwards on her path, returning the sand to a smooth state with the Harley bandana she had been wearing on her head, wiping it left and right across the tread and her footprints. She reclaimed the bike and kicked it through the gears up to eighty-five and eastbound. She absolutely couldn’t be seen in the area.

  She meant to retrace her earlier path coming in to the trailer. No one had seen her; no one saw her now—not that she could see. Wait, there might be a truck far, far behind. She watched it disappear in her rearview as she crested a hill and dropped away onto a long flat plain. Once again she was alone.

  Miles east of the trailer she stopped to use the pay phone at the New-Nav Trading Post. Sh
e kept her back to the windows of the store and kept the call short. Navajo Family Services answered and she told them where they would find Turquoise. She told them the girl had been raped and a medical exam was necessary. They agreed to go out and pick her up and find a foster home until her dependency could be taken up in court.

  She then jumped back on the bike and drove home without stopping. She shut down the engine a block away from her back fence. The sun was going down and no one was about. She pushed the bike up the alley. Back inside the yard, she bolted the gate and returned the bike to storage beneath the awning and tarpaulin. The cooling engine popped and hissed metallically as it began contracting in the cool air.

  She changed clothes and went back downstairs. She asked the press, “Would anyone like to use the bathroom?” She had three takers. “I saw it was almost eight o’clock,” she told them, “and I thought, now someone out there might need to go potty.”

  They thanked her, she declined to give a statement, and they returned outside, though for what purpose she wasn’t sure. Evidently neither were they, because one by one, over the next three hours, they all pulled away and left until she was again alone on her street.

  She fired up the 1971 Bonnie Raitt debut album and danced around the kitchen. Her ethereal dance partner was a cross between Shep Aberdeen and Thaddeus Murfee. Then she danced with each of them separately. Randy Begay asked if he might cut in, but she turned away and ignored him. She poured wine and toasted the air. It was a stirring dance and there were many partners, none of them John Steinmar.

  At long last, the man she had come with to the dance was gone.

  17

  Katy hadn’t found Turquoise. So she had stopped at the clinic and called the Navajo PD. The girl had been found walking along the highway after someone called it in.

  As she was driving back from the reservation, she called Thaddeus.

  He was dozing on the couch. His eyes came open and he lay there, disoriented and wondering—there, he heard it again. Cell phone.

  “Hey,” she said, “is Sarai okay?”

  “Fast asleep. Curled up with Jack the T-bear.”

  “You got her from the sitter’s after work?”

  “Done.”

  “I had to run back out to the reservation and I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  “And?”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m staying in Flagstaff.”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I want to help a kid out here. I’m going to withdraw from school tomorrow. I’ll still graduate in June because all I’m taking right now are electives.”

  “Fantastic. What do you want to do?”

  “Counsel her. Take her wherever she needs to go. She needs a surrogate right now. It could make all the difference in her life. She’s me, Thaddeus, ten years ago.”

  They talked some more, envisioned the girl as a foster child and wondered whether they could make that happen.

  Katy determined she would try.

  18

  News of the Turquoise STD had made the rounds.

  Indian Health Services had notified the father, Garcia Begay, of course, and Mr. Begay called his great-grandfather and family patriarch Henry Landers. Henry was in Window Rock when he received the call. He listened and asked several questions about his great-great-granddaughter’s plight. He was terribly concerned and, as usual, on the front lines where his family was concerned. He heard the whole story. He told Mr. Begay that he would look into it. Mr. Begay pursued the issue. He asked Henry what should be done about his brother, Randy Begay, the rapist. Again, Henry replied vaguely that he would look into it. He did ask the father not to take any action—yet. He asked the father to act as if nothing had changed. He wanted to come and talk to Randy Begay himself and he would prefer to find him at home, unaware that his crimes had been uncovered. Henry said he wanted to catch him off-guard. Henry was like that, the father understood. He preferred to catch people off-guard.

  The day Randy was shot, Henry had driven in from the east. When he neared the trailer, a motorcycle was just pulling out of the drive.

  From two miles east, he thought he saw the rider first park the bike on the highway and then stoop down. It looked as if the gravel drive were being swept, back and forth, back and forth, the rider apparently retracing his bike tracks. Henry thought that odd, so he swung around in the trailer driveway and followed, lagging a half-mile behind the biker.

  At the New-Nav Trading Post the rider pulled up to a pay phone. He removed his helmet and Henry, who had pulled in at the gas pumps, saw that the rider wasn’t a “he” at all. It was a she, a woman in her forties, Henry guessed. She spoke briefly, hung up, and remounted the Harley. Henry allowed the bike to distance itself and then he unnoticeably fell in behind once again.

  Ninety minutes later, winding through the east side of Flagstaff, he spied the rider dismounting the bike at an alley. The engine shut down and she began pushing. Fifty yards up, she opened a redwood gate and shoved the bike through. The gate was closed and Henry followed into the alley. With his cell phone he took a picture of the gate where the bike had entered. He peeked over and took a shot of the bike under its tarp, cooling and popping. He drove out the other end of the alley.

  He circled around front. A news van and other media vehicles were parked out front and the house’s curtains were drawn. Henry wondered what the press was about? And why was the woman hiding from them? She—or someone inside—was being extra careful in her comings and goings so as to keep the press unaware. Henry snapped a picture of the media vehicles as he passed by. Then he returned to the reservation.

  Arriving back at the trailer, he found it surrounded by Navajo PD vehicles. He wasn’t allowed to enter the driveway and was told to move along. He did as instructed, heading into Kayenta, where he drank coffee for an hour. Returning to the trailer, he again asked to check up on his great-great-granddaughter. Again the police blocked his entry and told him stay away. He followed their orders and returned to his hogan in the high desert.

  He followed up with Garcia Begay the next morning by phone and learned the police had taken his great-grandson’s daughter away. Uncle Randy had been shot to death.

  That’s all anyone knew so far.

  19

  Monday morning dawned humid and overcast. Across the meadow and up 12,000 feet, the summit of the San Francisco Peaks was hidden away by low, sliding cumulus clouds gray on the undersides and wet-looking. Angelina Steinmar had shot District Attorney John Steinmar to death the week before. She was still out on bail and, as Shep relayed to Thaddeus, didn’t seem to be suffering all that much.

  Judge H. Ivan Trautman had summoned Thaddeus. It was just beginning to sprinkle when he dodged across Aspen Street to the Coconino County Courthouse. He cooled his heels in the waiting room of the judge’s chambers, feeling uncomfortably damp under his arms. He knew he was sweating profusely, and he knew there was more to his distress than simple humidity. Fact was, he had managed to avoid Judge Trautman’s court since pleading guilty and taking a year off. Now he felt as if he were returning to the scene of the crime. Why would that judge be sending for him now? As far as he knew, he had been totally circumspect and had in no way violated any rule or law, whether criminal or ethical. He had learned that lesson and it would not be repeated. Alcohol gave the cops access to your life, so it was verboten. Ethical violations gave moral midgets like Judge Trautman access to your law license, so they were verboten, too. He would fight like hell for his clients in court, but he would never again give a court access to his license to practice law. Those days were over.

  Thaddeus wore his newest three-piece navy pinstripe suit, and he had touched up his shoes after checking his messages and finding the judge wanted to see him at ten. He watched Nancy Jo Evans, the judge’s court coordinator in charge of his chief judge duties. She toiled at the flat-screen computer, presumably scheduling new cases for the six judges of the Superi
or Court. Nancy Jo decided which cases went to which judge; to the attorneys she was a god, as her preference of judge for a case could mean the difference between doing probation and doing time. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as Thaddeus absently observed her progress. While he was sitting perfectly erect and seeming to appear inflated with confidence, he knew, deep down, that he was really terrified of this mean, spiteful son of a bitch who had demanded to see him. Truth be told, Thaddeus had once been full of confidence and the swagger of youth. Then alcohol had taken him way down and the confidence had evaporated. Now he was scared and frightened, trying to remember how to again feel strong and nervy, but failing. In fact, he felt like a criminal again as he sat and waited, the sweat rolling down his back and soaking through his shirt to the suit fabric.

  Finally the court coordinator seemed to acknowledge he was alive. She looked up from her screen and gave him her best phony smile. He smiled back at her. “Nancy Jo,” he muttered in acknowledgment.

  “Judge thinks you can help us today, Mr. Murfee,” she said in a voice laced with a definitely southern drawl. She placed a finger on her screen. “He’s looking to appoint you to a case. Defendant’s name is Turquoise Begay. A Navajo. Capital murder, case number—write this down—2014 CF-11453. Would you be able to help with that?”

  Thaddeus was shocked. Judge Trautman? A court appointment for Thaddeus Murfee? He felt like he had stepped into a parallel universe where he operated without a criminal history. Something had changed for the court to appoint him to anything. He jotted the case number on his tablet.

  Capital murder paid more than any other appointment. Better yet, a capital murder case always meant your name in the newspaper and at least two stories on the local TV news. But why him? A hundred doubts plagued him as he felt for an answer to her question. Could he help them with the case?