Tracking Bear

by Thurlo, David

  There was a pause on the line. “Jason once told me that he and his dad had found a great place. I remember he said that it was very quiet because no one went there anymore.” Belinda paused again, then sighed. “I don’t remember the location, though. I’m sorry.”

  “Think about that conversation and see if you can remember. It’s very important. We believe that Kee may be in danger, which is why we need to speak with him.”

  “What kind of danger?” Belinda’s voice grew louder and more focused.

  “I can’t discuss any specifics right now, but we’d like to help him. If you remember anything at all, please give us a call.”

  “I will, and I’ll try asking around. Maybe father or son told someone else about the place.”

  “Do that. Just call me if you get the slightest hint of where to look,” Ella said good-bye and ended the call.

  Leaning back in her chair, Ella opened the case folder, looking through it for clues, but didn’t see anything that triggered a possible location to look. Somehow she had to find Kee and get some answers from him. Nothing was more pressing than that, but she wasn’t even sure where to start.

  She considered making a request for officers to stop and detain Franklin if anyone spotted him, then decided that was a bad idea. She wanted—needed his cooperation. Finally, she walked down the hall and into the communications center, where the dispatcher was at her radio console. Ella instructed the young woman to put out a call for a Code Five—instructions for officers spotting Kee’s vehicle to keep it under surveillance but not attempt to make contact with the occupant. If any of the units saw him, she’d be notified immediately, hopefully without him knowing.

  When she entered her office again Ella had a visitor waiting. Dwayne Blalock, the resident FBI agent, had made himself comfortable in one of the chairs and was leafing through an FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

  “I just stepped out a few minutes ago. What brings you here?” Ella asked.

  FB-Eyes sat the magazine aside. “I heard that you’re searching for Professor Kee Franklin.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that Blalock knew. Blalock had his own way of working things, but he always knew what was going on around him and had worked with Sheriff Taylor frequently. He also monitored police calls.

  “I’ve been told he’s somewhere camping, and the evidence from his home supports that, but I can’t pin down his location.”

  “I want in on this case.”

  “What’s your interest in this all of a sudden?”

  Blalock hesitated, then sighed. “What I’m about to tell you goes under the category of ‘professional courtesy,’ so keep it to yourself. Professor—Doctor Franklin—is a very important scientist despite his modest lifestyle and the fact that he quit his work at Los Alamos. His work with lasers at the labs, apparently, was ground-breaking. Dr. Franklin was a man ahead of his time. He came up with concepts and processes that are just now being used industrywide. Near as I can tell, he’s the only one who understood certain key aspects of some highly technical and classified research that goes way beyond today’s technology. The Bureau’s kept an eye on him since he left Los Alamos, on behalf of the DOE and the DOD. Our government has always hoped he’d return to work at the labs.”

  “Now that his son has been murdered, and shots were fired at a break-in at his residence—not to mention the fact that the man can’t be found—the Bureau is officially worried?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Finally. I can use your help. I want to go to Los Alamos, and you’re going to get me in.”

  “Pushy, aren’t you?” He smiled.

  “Yeah. It’s one of my most endearing qualities.”

  Twenty-One

  Ella set out with Blalock the following morning after picking him up in her tribal unit. The trip to Los Alamos, going southeast through Bloomfield and Cuba all the way to the village of San Ysidro, then northeast through Jemez Springs on State Road 4, would take them around three and a half hours. The last section was on mountain roads, which would require them to reduce speed.

  “This case is turning out to have a lot more ramifications than either of us suspected at first,” Blalock commented once they were under way.

  Ella nodded. “Yeah, but the bottom line for me is that a tribal cop was killed, then a councilman, and finally another member of the tribe, all by the same shooter using a .380 semiauto. One way or another, I’m catching the person who did all this. Kee Franklin has been holding back on me from the very beginning, and that’s going to stop.”

  “If Professor Franklin’s the type of scientist I’ve been told he is, keeping secrets may come as naturally to him as breathing. He never violated any security procedures in his years at the labs.”

  “But he’s vulnerable now. We need to find out once and for all if his work can provide us with a motive for all the crimes that have been committed within the past several days. The more time passes, the farther away the killer gets from my grasp. I can’t let that continue.”

  “You could also use a win on this for practical reasons. Closing the case will prove to the tribe that your PD is top-notch, and deserves better funding. Right?”

  “Yeah, but it goes beyond that.” She was quiet for a long time, but he never interrupted her, having learned a lot about dealing with Navajos the past few years. “It’s the reason Jason died that bothers me most, you know? His equipment failed him, and he couldn’t get the help he needed. Now the department has to come through for him. It won’t even begin to balance the scales, but it’s the only thing we can give him.”

  Blalock shook his head. “You’re too personally involved in your job, Ella, and you worry about the tribe like it’s your family. You’d make your own life easier if you would ease up a bit.”

  “I know, but I’m not programmed that way. My clan, and the tribe, is my family.”

  “I hear you. Dedication is what keeps most good officers going at times like this. I coasted for a while after I got the post I have now. Then people like you reminded me of a part of myself I’d all but forgotten. I can tell you this much from experience, Ella. The day you stop doing what’s right and giving one hundred percent, you will lose the part of yourself you respect the most.”

  “Yeah,” Ella said quietly. “I guess I better enroll in overachievers anonymous.”

  “I can see it now. A twelve-step program.”

  “Nah. Overachievers can do it in six.”

  When they finally arrived at the labs in Los Alamos, which was still recovering from the devastating forest fire a few years earlier, they reported to the Public Information Office. They were given visitors’ badges on lanyards to be worn around their necks, then led through a breezeway to a section of an administration building filled with offices. The brick-and-metal buildings could have been found anywhere in the country, but the clear, crisp air of the high mesa was refreshing and invigorating this time of year.

  They were asked to wait in a small lobby, but they were there only a few minutes before a door opened leading to an inner office. “I’m Jonathan Frawley,” the public information officer introduced himself, ushering them inside the first doorway to their left. “Sit down, please,” he said, waving them to the chairs. “How can we help you?”

  “We need to know about former employee Dr. Kee Franklin’s work,” Blalock said, “and about any problems he may have had with contacts and associates while he worked here at the labs.”

  As FB-Eyes made their request, Ella watched Frawley. He was in his late fifties, with gray-green eyes that seemed as focused as the lasers associated with high-tech research.

  “I’m sorry. Unless you can produce evidence that proves his work here at the labs has something to do with his son’s murder, his recent absence, or any crimes committed, no one here can help you.”

  So he knew about Kee’s disappearance. Ella wasn’t surprised. “We can’t make those connections until we have more information about his work and associations,�
�� Ella said.

  The man leaned back in his chair and gave her a slow, penetrating look. “I can give you a general overview of the work he did for our country here, but my guess is that you know that already.”

  She nodded. “Answer this for me,” she pressed, leaning forward in her chair. “Who would want the results of that research now, and be willing to pressure Dr. Franklin for his skills or expertise?”

  Frawley considered the question for a long time, drumming his fingers absently on the desk. “I can’t answer that,” he said at last. “Even if I knew, all it would be is speculation, and you need more than that. The best I can do is share generalities with you dealing with uranium research and the enrichment process. I have several press releases we’ve worked up in the past that you’re welcome to have.”

  Ella was sensing a snow job, and could see Blalock’s frustration as well. When someone was lying to FB-Eyes or trying to con him, he usually crossed his arms or put his hands in his pockets. She wondered if, not too many years ago, he’d grabbed a suspect and tried to shake the truth out of him, then later regretted it.

  “Could we at least talk to some of his former colleagues?” Ella asked, hoping to salvage their journey. “Our questions will focus on Dr. Franklin’s behavior and attitude while he was working here.”

  Frawley considered it for a moment, then finally nodded. “I can introduce you to one person he worked with who’s still here, but I’ll have to be present, and if the conversation strays to anything even remotely classified, that’ll be the end of the interview. Are we clear on this?”

  “Perfectly.”

  Their host led them down the hall and out the side door, then down a sidewalk to another, smaller building. Finally, they were ushered into a large office. The sign on the door read, “Dr. Fred Ellison.”

  Ellison was in his midsixties and seemed to have his mind on several things at once. He nodded absently as they came in, but his light blue eyes kept darting to a computer screen filled with symbols and numbers and the dry erase board against the wall that held more of the same in black marker.

  Frawley introduced them, then turned things over to Ella while he sat to one side.

  “How closely did you work with Dr. Franklin?” she asked.

  “We were colleagues, and worked together often because our work converged or overlapped at certain points. But we each handled our own projects with our respective teams.”

  “How well did you get to know Dr. Franklin?”

  “I held him in high regard, and he made strong contributions to our project missions, but we weren’t friends on a personal level. Neither one of us had a lot of time to socialize back in those days. There was a lot of competition between the research teams, and we were all trying to build our reputations and make the breakthroughs that led to special project funding. But I think the games we all have to play in order to get what we need to complete our research was really a thorn in Kee’s side. He was totally immersed in his work and didn’t like to get sidetracked. I think the idea of competition for resources went against his Navajo cultural beliefs.”

  “I’ve heard that he lost heart in his work after he realized the plight of the uranium miners, especially those on the Navajo Nation.”

  “We all were shocked when we learned how deplorable the working conditions were for those people, but it affected Kee much more,” he said, meeting her gaze for the first time. “Kee loved his work, but he wanted to maintain control of what happened to his research, and how it was used. That, unfortunately, is a luxury none of us have. We’re just links in a long chain, and policy decisions belong to the bureaucrats and politicians.”

  “Did Dr. Franklin become a close friend to anyone here in particular? Maybe someone on his team?”

  Ellison thought about it a moment, then spoke. “The only person he ever worked closely with was a young chemist named Delbert Shives, who was a subcontractor employee and more or less Kee’s assistant. Shives’s former employer is no longer connected with the research here, and I believe the man now works at the tribal power plant near Shiprock.”

  “Can you tell me a little about Shives?” Ella asked, wishing she’d learned more about this relationship long ago. If she’d only known enough to ask the right question!

  “Shives was Dr. Franklin’s right-hand man, and did a lot of the hands-on work. He was really enthusiastic, annoyingly so, and wanted the doctor to continue his work here. Shives felt that the dead end Dr. Franklin had reached in his research could be surmounted. But by then, Kee had already made up his mind to quit.”

  “Before you ask,” Frawley said, “the nature of the research, and of the ‘dead end,’ is classified.”

  Ellison spoke again. “We might have been able to hold on to Dr. Franklin longer if he’d worked with someone other than Shives. That man was an opportunist, and not to be trusted. He tried to appropriate one of my processes at one time and get it patented, claiming he’d developed it independently. But his notes paraphrased my own.”

  “So was Shives fired?”

  Frawley interrupted. “His security clearance was downgraded, but we didn’t have strong enough evidence to make sure he got fired. The company he worked for just reassigned him to a coal-gassification project in another area of our facility.”

  “But no one trusted him after that, not even in his own company,” Ellison said, “and Shives knew he’d blown his credibility. Eventually, he resigned and moved out of state for a while. Texas, I think.”

  Blalock and Ella left the lab a short time later after getting everything the lab could provide them on laser research and uranium processing and refinement.

  “That wasn’t as big a waste of time as I thought it might be,” Blalock muttered, once they were under way. Ella didn’t look over, keeping her eyes on the twisting forest highway.

  “That’s interesting news about Shives. He never mentioned that he worked with Kee. He and I are going to have a long talk real soon,” Ella said.

  Instead of eating in Los Alamos, they drove about a third of the way back to the Rez, then stopped in the small community of Cuba, located in a mountain valley surrounded by pines and junipers. While Blalock went inside and ordered for them, Ella stepped out of the car into the parking lot beside the highway and called Justine.

  “There’s a connection between the work Franklin did and Delbert Shives. See what you can get me on him,” she said, and told her what she’d learned. “I want to know what else is in Shives’s background that we don’t know about.”

  “I’ll get on it right away.”

  Ella dialed home next, and Dawn picked up the phone. For some reason she always whispered a tiny “hello.” “Hi, short stuff,” Ella said.

  “Shimá!” Dawn’s voice rose slightly as she recognized Ella’s voice. “I helped fill up the pony’s water tank with the hose. And I gave him a carrot after he ate his hay. But when I gave him a cookie, shimasání got angry.”

  “Your grandmother made those especially for you, not for the pony. Have you decided what to name him?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Okay. You think about it. Now let me talk to your grandmother.”

  Ella heard the phone thunk as Dawn set it down.

  Rose got on the phone a moment later. “That horse is all she thinks about. I had to make her come inside before she froze out there. But you don’t need to hear this now. Tell me why you called. Is something wrong?”

  “Mom, I need to ask you about Delbert Shives. I’ve met him at the station, and he’s taken officers for tours of the power plant and mines. But I don’t know much about him. Didn’t you tell me you’d contacted him about uranium mining?”

  “Yes and no. It took me forever to get in touch with him and then, after all that, he wasn’t much help. Mr. Chavez at the power plant had told me Mr. Shives would be very knowledgeable about the impact uranium mining had on the land. But when I spoke to the man, he was very rude.”

  “What happened, exactly.” Ella h
ad always known Shives to be outgoing and friendly to the department.

  “I waited for over an hour for him to come out of his office. Then, when I told him who I was and what I wanted, he said that everything I wanted to know was a matter of public record, and I’d have to do my own homework. Without even so much as saying good-bye, he turned around and went right back into his office. His secretary tried to apologize for him, saying he’d had a very hard day, and maybe he had. Even though his door was shut, I’d heard him arguing with some woman in his office, both before and after I spoke with him. But I don’t know what that was all about.”

  “Okay, Mom, thanks.”

  Ella went inside and joined Blalock for dinner. He’d ordered stuffed chicken sopaipillas. The fare wasn’t fancy, but it was surprisingly good, and the green chile was just the right temperature.

  Blalock didn’t seem in a mood to talk much, so she allowed the silence to stretch.

  Finally, he met her gaze. “I gather you think Kee Franklin is in some kind of trouble?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t think he really understands what he’s gotten himself into. He’s smart, academically, but he’s out of his league on this. When it comes to street smarts, his opponent is holding all the cards.”

  When they started out again, silence fell between them. About ten miles from Shiprock and just inside the Rez by Hogback, Ella began to feel uneasy. The badger fetish began to feel warm against her throat.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said, glancing back in the rearview mirror.

  Blalock who’d been leaning back with his eyes closed, sat up. “What’s going on?” he asked, instantly alert.

  She glanced in her rearview mirror again. “There’s a sand-colored pickup quickly closing in on us.”

  He glanced in the side mirror. “It’s one of those hot six-wheelers with the big V-8 engines, but so what? He doesn’t know this is a cop car. You can wait until he passes, then pull him over if you want.”