Tracking Bear

by Thurlo, David

  “Why?”

  “Because I changed my mind about gambling on the Rez and limited the casino to one location only, on a trial basis. For that reason alone, that half-Navajo nitwit accused me of having no principles and turning my back on my political supporters and the tribe.” He paused. “It’s true that I altered my position on the gambling issue, but I had a very good reason to do that, and you know I’ve never turned my back on the tribe.”

  Ella nodded, and waited.

  “After that broadcast aired the trouble began. I started getting phone calls at two or three in the morning, and when I’d pick up the phone, whoever it was hung up. The calls came from public phones all over the county, according to my caller ID system. Then I decided to leave my phone off the hook at night. The day after that, I found my new car vandalized—the windshield was broken and the headlights were busted.” He paused and took a breath. “I want the police to look into this.”

  “The only thing we could do is contact the phone company and start monitoring your calls. But that means we’d tap your line and you’d have absolutely no privacy. Make sure you realize all the implications of what you’re asking us to do.”

  “Tracing the calls is not going to work. He doesn’t call from a private number, and your chances of catching him at whatever public phone he uses are slim.” He leaned back in the chair and regarded her thoughtfully. “What I want is for the police to come and take fingerprints next time my property is vandalized. I’ll make sure someone is there to meet the officer if I can’t be there for some reason.”

  “If there’s anything we can lift prints from, we’ll do it. But listen, Kevin, until the person who’s after you is caught, I don’t want you to pick up Dawn and take her out with you. Come visit her at my mother’s house, okay? I won’t have her exposed to any more potentially dangerous situations. I know you haven’t forgotten how close she came to being kidnapped just last year.”

  “How could I? Don’t worry, I’ve already made the decision to stay away altogether for a while. Neither one of us wants a repeat of what happened before,” he said. “Does she still have nightmares about the gunshots and hiding down in the cellar?”

  “No, she’s adjusted remarkably well.”

  “I’m glad. I wish mine would go away.” Kevin glanced at his watch. “Since I’m not going to be seeing Dawn for a while, I bought her a present. I’d appreciate it if you could stop by the house and pick it up for her. I’ll be there after three. I’m going to work mostly from home the rest of the day.”

  “All right. I’ll come by before I go home. Just remember, Kevin, if the vandal strikes again, it may take us a while to respond. We are dangerously low on manpower and funds to maintain our routine patrols. That’s what led to Officer Franklin’s death. His radio malfunctioned. He had submitted repair orders on it before, but no money was available, and he had to use what he had. When Kee Franklin finds out, he’s probably going to sue the department and the tribe, and my guess is he’ll win.”

  “I hope the officer’s father doesn’t do that. We’re insured, but I don’t think the tribe could afford any higher liability rates,” he said quietly. “I’ll bring the police funding issue up again before the appropriate committees. The tribal government is doing their best with practically no funds beyond a skeleton budget.”

  Ella held up her hand. “Spare me.” She told him about Bruno. “The tribe spent money on that, but not on manpower or equipment maintenance? Where are your priorities?”

  “They have to be a little different from those of line officers, you know that. We have to look at everything at once. We also know how important training is, so at least a small amount had to be budgeted for that purpose. We certainly couldn’t afford the continuing funding a new officer would require, and this was much less expensive. Besides, the way the budget is set up, we can’t take training money and move it to another category.” He pursed his lips. “Things are pretty crazy right now, Ella, even in Window Rock.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. At least give Dawn a call or two if you can.”

  He nodded, then stood up. “I’ll miss her, you know.” Without waiting for an answer, Kevin strode out of her office.

  Ella sighed. She knew how hard it would be for him to stay away from his daughter. He doted on her, and in the past several months had visited Dawn regularly. But their little girl’s safety came first.

  Getting back to business, Ella settled down in front of her computer monitor. A lot of the initial leg work in an investigation was done this way now. Cop shows that existed primarily on a fare of car chases and shoot-outs were far removed from the reality of the job. The truth of it was that police work was hours and hours of boring, mind-numbing work, endless interviews, with minutes of sheer terror randomly applied.

  Ella spent hours going over the details of the crime and double-checking everything that could possibly become a lead. She was so engrossed in what she was doing that she wasn’t aware Justine had come in until her partner cleared her throat. Ella jumped.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Justine said quickly.

  “No problem. I just go into a mild semitrance whenever I’m chasing leads on the computer. Do you have something for me?”

  “I’ve checked Officer Franklin’s current finances—but he was as clean as a whistle. I’ve also spoken to several officers, and nobody has anything bad to say about him. Of course no one wants to say something bad about someone who just died—whether they believe in the chindi or not.”

  “Everything in life has two sides, and that includes people,” Ella answered, echoing the Navajo beliefs Rose had taught her. “We need to find the darker side of this officer if he had one. Did he have any bad relationships? Secrets that he kept from his fellow officers and friends? Exploring things like that could lead us to his killer.”

  “If it wasn’t just a burglar who decided to go homicidal,” Justine countered.

  Ella stood up and reached for her keys on top of the file cabinet. “I’m going to take off now to take care of some business.”

  “Should I come with you?”

  “Not this time.” She told her partner about Rose’s encounter with Vera Jim at the college. “I want to talk to Samuel Nakai and find out more about Vera for personal reasons—but while I’m there, I’ll make it a point to learn more about NEED.”

  “Are you thinking that someone in NEED wanted to silence Officer Franklin? He was a critic, I know.”

  “It’s a possibility I want to check into, though I can’t find any reason yet for his being singled out. There are a lot of other critics, including my mother, that have certainly gotten attention. I’ll let you know if I find out anything useful.” Ella waved good-bye.

  As she headed out the station door to the parking lot, Ella checked the address she’d written down from police records. Four months ago, Samuel Nakai had been arrested and charged for driving while intoxicated. Although no liquor was allowed on the Rez, it always found its way within its borders.

  Forty minutes later, Ella arrived at Samuel Nakai’s home. He lived in a modern housing section recently built by the tribe on the west side of town, across the river and north of the high school. The single-story houses with carports looked identical to each other, and similar to another, older development on the east end of Shiprock.

  As she pulled up beside the curb, a middle-aged Navajo man in a blue flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots came out and waved, inviting her to come inside. It was Samuel, apparently.

  He leaned against a support beam on the porch and waited for her to approach. “Yáat’ééh,” he greeted.

  “Hello, uncle,” she said, surprised that someone living in this modernist setting would greet her in Navajo.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked, suspecting that he already did, though she hadn’t identified herself to him yet.

  “The policewoman, sister to the hataalii.”

  Ella noted immediately that he hadn’t used proper names
. Maybe he was a New Traditionalist or a recent convert to traditionalist ways despite his age. “I need to ask you a few questions about a woman I met at the community college today and about the NEED project.”

  He nodded. “I already heard about that from my niece, who’s a student at the college. I suspected you’d come.” He showed her into his home.

  Inside the furnishings were simple. There was a computer on a desk placed against one wall of the living room, and against the other was a well-worn fabric couch.

  “Please sit,” he said.

  Samuel turned the wooden chair by the desk around and faced Ella as she sat down on the couch.

  “I need to know about…” She hesitated, trying to figure out how to avoid using Vera Jim’s name.

  “You can use names. I have no qualms about that when it’s necessary. Nothing has to be carried out to an extreme.”

  His answer told her he was a New Traditionalist and that her guess had been right. “Tell me about the Jims, Vera and her husband. I understand that they’ve invested a lot of their financial resources in the NEED project.”

  He nodded slowly. “If everything goes as planned, they’ll be prosperous. If not…” He shrugged. “They funded a large part of the radio and newspaper ads NEED has taken out, and also spent their own money to hire a consultant—an Anglo expert on power plants and the sciences involved with that—to explain things to the council. That’s what gave the council the idea to hire the same man to attend the Chapter House meetings and explain things to the People objectively without taking sides.”

  Ella realized that Samuel was referring to Delbert Shives. Neskahi had mentioned the man’s participation in Chapter House business. “But you haven’t chosen to get involved with NEED. Is that right?”

  “I don’t believe this is the right thing for us as a tribe. ’Eyónís, outsiders, promised us much the same thing before. We were supposed to have all the money we needed. Well, we don’t, and look at how things turned out. I lived my entire life on land the tribe had allotted to my family, but the sheep died, and the vegetables we grew came out tasting funny. My parents and my brother died of cancer, but the government people told us it was just a coincidence and that it had nothing to do with the uranium mines—less than five hundred yards away.”

  “So you moved because you were afraid of the risks,” Ella said, nodding. She didn’t blame him.

  “I didn’t feel safe living there anymore, so I gave the land back to the tribe and moved to Shiprock. Now the tribe will give that land to another family, and they’ll suffer, but I can’t keep it from happening.” He grew quiet for a long time, then finally spoke again.

  “Now, some of our own people tell us that we should build a new, even better power plant that will use uranium taken from our own ground.” He shook his head slowly. “People like the Jims are convinced this will benefit the tribe. But I don’t believe we can afford to take another chance. I asked one of the physicists how long it would be before the Rio Puerco was safe again. He told me that the water contained something called thorium and that had a life of eighty thousand years.” He gazed at her through sad eyes. “The land is our life and our legacy. We can’t afford another mistake like that one.”

  “How far are the ones who support NEED prepared to go to get this project approved? And how do they treat their opposition?”

  “You’re worried about your mother, aren’t you?” he asked, then continued, not really expecting an answer. “Mrs. Destea is an opposition leader with a lot of visibility and credibility, so she’s a threat to them. But although NEED will fight hard, it’ll be a fair fight. They’re good Navajos and businessmen, not hoods.”

  “Vera Jim nearly shoved my mother to the ground recently.”

  “She’s young—much younger than her husband, and her temper gets the better of her sometimes. But I wouldn’t worry about Vera. She would back down before she ever really hurt anyone.”

  “And there’s the death of the police officer…he was against NEED.”

  Silence stretched out between them. Finally, he spoke. “I don’t know any of the details, but I really doubt that had anything to do with NEED. Either way, I guess we’ll both find out soon enough how they deal with those who stand in their way. I intend to make things as difficult as possible for them by reminding people of the past, and what could happen if we let the promise of wealth and easy money cloud our thinking.”

  Unfortunately, no matter how dangerous, Ella knew that Rose would be right there with him. And there was nothing she could do to stop her. Her mom, Dawn, Clifford and his family, and maybe even Kevin could be considered enemies of NEED, and she didn’t know for sure how far these people would go when confronting those they perceived to be standing in their way.

  Ella stopped by home at around two to spend a little time with her daughter, who was just home from day school. She’d have to work late tonight, so this would potentially be the only time she got to spend with Dawn today. She’d call it a late lunch if anyone asked.

  Her mother wasn’t in sight when Ella came in the door, but Dawn looked up from where she was playing with the toy farm.

  “Shimá!” Dawn yelled, and ran into her arms.

  Dawn gave Ella a hug and a kiss.

  Seeing the tiny animals on the floor, Ella suddenly remembered that she hadn’t stopped by Kevin’s. She’d have to do that right after the memorial service.

  Ella set her daughter down, and Dawn resumed her play. As Ella gazed at her daughter, she heard Rose in the kitchen, cooking something. Judging by the sound of pans rattling, it wasn’t a soufflé.

  A moment later, Rose came out, looked at Dawn then at Ella. “When she plays her ‘pretendly’ games, she’s off in her own world. She never knew I left the room. To be honest, she reminds me of you at that age,” Rose said smiling. “Your father would come home and you’d give him a kiss, then go right back to whatever you were doing.”

  Dawn picked up a toy horse and looked up at Ella. “I want a horse. Then I can ride like my friend.”

  “Her little friend’s mother puts the child on the saddle in front of her and then takes her for a short ride every afternoon,” Rose explained.

  Ella looked at Rose, alarmed. “My daughter hasn’t been out on the horse, has she?”

  “No, I wouldn’t allow it. She’s still too young, and horses are unpredictable animals at times, even with an experienced rider. I don’t care how safe her friend’s mother says it is.”

  “Good,” Ella said, relieved, then looked at Dawn. “When you get a little older, you can learn how to ride.”

  “You teach me?”

  Rose laughed.

  Ella glared at her mother, then looked back at Dawn. “I’m not very good with horses, Pumpkin.” If she excelled at anything, it was at getting thrown.

  “She’s better with police cars, little one.” Laughing, Rose returned to the kitchen.

  Ella sighed. “I’ll find you a good teacher. But you’ll have to get bigger first.”

  “How big first?”

  “Tall, like Big Bird,” Ella said, and began to tickle her.

  Dawn shrieked, but pulled away. “Shimá, read me story about the farmer. Please?”

  It was Dawn’s favorite book, and by now, they both knew the story by heart, but the request was repeated daily. “You’ll hear the story at bedtime tonight, okay?”

  “Okay.” Dawn turned her attention back to her game, taking a small wagon out of a red-and-yellow plastic barn, and “hitching” up a horse to pull it.

  Ella watched her daughter for a moment longer, then went into the kitchen.

  “Are you going to that memorial service for the officer tonight?” Rose asked quietly.

  Ella nodded. “I have to.”

  “Have you been able to find out who killed him yet? Or why he had to die?”

  “Answers rarely come that fast—at least not on my cases.”

  Rose placed a bowl of mutton stew before her. “Here. Eat now. I ha
ve a feeling you haven’t had anything since breakfast.” Rose brought over a piece of warm fry bread she’d been keeping in a basket beneath a dish towel.

  “You’re right. I’m starving.”

  The wind had begun to build up outside, and Ella could hear it rattling a loose windowpane. The temperature had gone down by ten degrees in the last hour, but inside the kitchen it was still warm and comfortable. “Mom, I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’ve made this house a real home for all of us. It welcomes anyone who walks in, and it seems like there’s always something good cooking.”

  She smiled. “Daughter, you can stop with the compliments. I’ve known you too long. What you really mean is that you wish I would go back to being the way I was…someone who was always here at home waiting for you, or your father, or your brother. But that can’t be. That time is gone.”

  “But you were happy all those years, weren’t you?” Seeing Rose nod, she added, “Then why change?”

  “Because life did. You and your brother grew up, your father passed away, and it was a time for me to begin anew. To not grow, to not change—that is death,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Ella understood, but nothing would ever make her stop missing the old days. She ate quickly, knowing she had to return to work, but enjoying every bit of her food. When she swallowed the last spoonful of stew, she swabbed the bowl with a piece of fry bread to get every last drop of broth.

  “Bizaadii is coming over tonight,” Rose said, using the nickname she’d given Herman Cloud as a joke. She called him “the gabby one” though he seldom had much to say. “He and I will watch your daughter.”

  At least she wouldn’t have to worry about her mother tonight. There was a limited amount of trouble she could get into here at home. “Mom, I’d like you to be very careful around people who are pro-NEED. I’m not sure how far they’re willing to go to fight those who don’t agree with them.”

  “I don’t think they present a threat to anyone. They’re hoping to sway public opinion, not turn it against themselves by using tactics and dirty tricks no Navajo would condone. That young girl was just being childish, as one might expect.”