Abducted Innocence (Emily Etcitty)

by Sandra Bolton

  Despite the rule about no talking, Emily could not remain silent. She wanted some answers. Maybe someone would be humane enough to tell her something. “Where are the other girls? Why are we being held prisoner here?”

  “Shh,” hissed a woman with salt-and-pepper hair. “Someone will punish you if you speak out of turn.”

  “Those Navajo girls—they’ve done nothing wrong. Their parents are brokenhearted. Are you a mother? Think about how it feels to lose your child. Let them go, and I’ll stay and do whatever you say,” Emily said. “I lost my son. I know how it feels.”

  A woman with a thin face and sad eyes whispered, “Quiet, or we will have to report you to the matron. We are performing the will of God as written in the Scriptures and proclaimed by our Prophet. Your gift will please our Lord. Now do not speak again.”

  Emily held her tongue, but she thought she had detected a glimmer of pity or pain in the woman’s downcast eyes when she had mentioned losing a child.

  Abe followed Will’s motorcycle, with Bertha’s Honda bringing up the rear. The little caravan made its way to Shiprock, where Highway 64 intersected with Route 666. They continued traveling north until reaching Tom Crow’s shanty near the Colorado border. Abe saw Will pull over, so he followed suit. Bertha was right behind him.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Bertha asked. “I don’t want to waste any more time talking. We need to find Emily.”

  “Let’s see what Tom has to say,” Will said. “Maybe he noticed something, or he can tell us who owns land out this way.”

  “It won’t hurt,” Abe said.

  Tom must have heard the commotion of the three vehicles and wondered what was going on. He stumbled out of his shack, bleary-eyed and stubble-chinned. Clenched in his right hand was a half-empty bottle of MD 20/20.

  “I don’t remember sayin’ anything about there bein’ a party at my place,” he said, squinting at the faces of his guests. “I’ll be damned. If it ain’t Wilbur Etcitty,” he said, his eyes stopping on Will’s features. “Heard you got burned pretty bad. Want a drink, Will?”

  Will grimaced. “No, Tom. We’re looking for my sister and two young Navajo girls. We think those men in the white Chevy van with Colorado plates took them.”

  “Holy shit,” said Tom, shaking his head. “Your sister is a lady cop, right? She was just here the other day asking me about a van.” Tom took a draw on the bottle of rotgut red wine. “Son of a bitch.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I knew those white men were no good.” Crow blinked and seemed to notice the two other people. “Who’s this with you?”

  “This is my mother, Bertha, and my friend Abe Freeman. We need your help, Tom.”

  The mangy old dog Abe had noticed the first time he visited sauntered out of the open door of the shack and let out two halfhearted barks before curling in a circle near Tom’s feet. Seeing him made Abe think about Patch, and the loyalty dogs had for their owners, no matter the conditions.

  “Do you spend much time in Cortez?” Will said.

  “I go there now and then,” Tom said. “Got a couple drinkin’ buddies.”

  “When you go, ask your friends if they’ve heard anything about a religious cult out on 666,” said Will. “And, just keep watching the highway, Tom. You got a telephone?”

  “Nah, never had a need for one. But write down a number, and if I see or hear somethin’, I’ll get word to you.”

  “Thank you, Tom Crow,” said Bertha. She reached into the pocket of her blue jeans and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, but Tom waved her off when she tried to hand it to him.

  “I’m not takin’ your money, Bertha Etcitty. I worked with your husband, Sam, for fifteen years in the uranium mines. I seen what it done—ruined a whole bunch of us workers, and them mine owners didn’t give a hoot. You gotta get your girl back—them other girls, too. Dirty scum sumbitches—takin’ little Navajo girls. Shit.”

  Abe wrote Hosteen’s telephone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Tom. “If something suspicious turns up, call this number.”

  When the threesome left, Tom Crow was still standing on his stoop, shaking his head, and cursing “the filthy pigs that took them girls.” Abe drove to Cortez and the tax assessor’s office while Will and Bertha began their individual investigations of the side roads bordering the Ute Mountain Reservation.

  After Emily made her bed and cleaned the room to the women’s strict specifications, they escorted her down a long corridor. Emily remained quiet, as they had admonished her she would have to be put back in “restrainers” and locked in her room if she did not. But she remained stealthily observant of her surroundings, memorizing each door, noting every window, looking for any possible means of escape. Her prison, as she thought of it, was at the end of the long hallway. As they walked, she counted six doors on her right and six on the left, which she assumed must be living quarters for the women. They were numbered, as in a hotel or dormitory. Other doors had signs painted on the wood above their frames—LAUNDRY, KITCHEN, and DINING ROOM on the right; SEWING ROOM, CHAPEL, and WAITING ROOM on the left. On each door, a portrait of a narrow-faced man with gray hair and piercing eyes stared back at her. Looking at him sent a chill through Emily. She wondered where the girls were, and if they were all right. The women stopped at the door to the chapel and hustled her inside. Emily heard the lock click behind her.

  The room, painted entirely in white, lacked any adornment on the walls. Narrow windows, again too high to look out or in, lined the back. The only pieces of furniture in the room appeared to be a small altar and pulpit near the back. A banner hanging above the pulpit read:

  FOR BEHOLD, I REVEAL UNTO YOU A NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT: AND IF YE ABIDE NOT THAT COVENANT, YE ARE DAMNED, FOR NO ONE CAN REJECT THIS COVENANT AND BE PERMITTED TO ENTER INTO MY GLORY.

  The woman she assumed was the leader of the group stood behind the pulpit. Emily scanned the chamber for the girls but saw nothing except what appeared to be lines of puffy clouds on the floor—some in hues of pale pastel pink and blue, but the majority white. After a moment, it became apparent she was looking at prostrate young women, their heads bowed on the floor. She wondered which, if any, could be Lina or Darcy, but was suddenly ordered to assume the same posture. Emily raised her head as a soft sound, like muffled sobs, broke the eerie quietness of the room, but the strident voice of the matron in charge soon obliterated all else.

  17

  Thursday, April 12, 1990

  Cortez, Colorado

  Concentrating on his destination, Abe sped through the Ute Mountain Reservation, past Sleeping Ute Range and the village of Towaoc, Colorado, ten miles south of Cortez. Abe was so engrossed in his desire to find Emily, not only was he oblivious to the sweeping, rugged terrain of Southwest Colorado, but also to the Colorado State Patrol officer parked just beyond the reservation border—until he heard the wail of a siren and saw the flashing blue-and-red light.

  Abe pulled over, cursing to himself for the delay.

  “Officer, I can explain,” he said to the lawman, who was clad in blue pants and shirt, his head topped with a navy-blue hard hat bearing the emblem of a winged wheel and the letters “CSP.”

  “Go ahead and tell me all about why you were doing seventy-five in a sixty-miles-per-hour zone, mister,” the officer said as he pulled out his citation book. “I need to see your license and registration, sir.”

  Abe reached for his papers and handed them to the cop. “It’s an emergency, officer. I’m trying to find two missing Navajo girls and my girlfriend, Emily Etcitty, a Navajo police officer. You must have heard about the kidnapping. One of the girls needs her daily shot of insulin. It’s urgent.” He retrieved his insurance and registration from the glove compartment and gave them to the cop.

  The Colorado State Patrol officer, iron-jawed and unsmiling, scrutinized Abe’s New Jersey driver’s license and his documents. He handed them back, an unreadable look on his face. “Where are you headed in such a hurry right now, Mr. Freeman?”


  When Abe finished with a rapid explanation, the officer scratched his head, frowned, and said, “Okay. I may be crazy, but I’m buying your story. Follow me.” Led by the flashing lights of the patrol car, Abe was escorted to the front door of the Montezuma County Court House, more than making up for lost time.

  After thanking the officer, Abe bounded up the steps and into the foyer of the unremarkable, three-story rectangular building. A directory on the wall told him the assessor’s office was on the third floor. He took the steps two at a time, intent on his mission—until the sound of his name thundering through the hall stopped him in his tracks.

  “Freeman!”

  Turning around, Abe found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with Joe Hosteen.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Hosteen asked.

  “No law against me being here, is there, Hosteen?”

  “Seems kind of coincidental is all. Headed for the assessor’s office?”

  “Yeah, just so happens I am. You?”

  “Never mind me. Thought I told you to let the law handle this.”

  Abe sighed. Maybe he could reason with the guy. “Joe, listen. We both want the same thing—to find Emily and the girls, and the sooner, the better. Emily’s mom and brother are out there now, scouting the back roads in southern Montezuma County. We think the girls are being held somewhere in that area. I came in here to check property records. For Christ’s sake, I have to do something.”

  Hosteen studied Abe with unflinching black eyes. He rubbed his chin and finally spoke. “I’ll save you some trouble. I already looked at the records. Let’s get out of here, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  When Emily and all the girls left the chapel, they were not sent to the dining hall for breakfast, as the schedule indicated. Instead, they were marched into the corridor, where they were told to line up and wait for the appearance of the Prophet. They stood in two lines, facing one another from opposite sides of the hallway, the girls in white on the left, the women in pink and blue on the right. Emily, in her pink dress, tried to make eye contact with Lina, who was standing nearly across from her, but Lina’s swollen, tear-stained eyes were downcast, her face devoid of color.

  The women trustees, as Emily mentally referred to them, walked up and down, admonishing the young girls to stand up straight, smile—and some of them did, their young, innocent faces beaming.

  The east-facing front door flew open, and the long shadow of a tall, thin man filled the hallway. She heard the intake of air from the women, and for a few moments, a looming shadow was all Emily could see. It filled her with a sense of dread. Two men followed the tall one. The door closed, and before one of the women hissed in her ear to keep her eyes straight ahead, Emily was able to discern the features of the one called the Prophet. The man appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties. His face was cadaverous, and his hair was thin and turning gray. A nervous tic caused the left side of his mouth to twitch, but his eyes burned with fearsome intensity. They were daggers, black as her own, sunken under thick brows. He locked his eyes on her, and his stare was so piercing she felt as if he were plunging knives into her soul. The Prophet wore a tailored, Western-cut black suit; his longish hair was slicked straight back. He stopped and studied each girl, sometimes caressing their hair and face, before moving on to the next. Emily seethed when he tilted Lina’s chin up. The child shuddered and shrank away as if a rattlesnake had made a strike. The man continued looking at her, the left side of his mouth twitching spasmodically, and then he whispered in the ear of one of the other men before moving on.

  The way some of the other young girls’ faces glowed when the Prophet approached them made Emily cringe and wonder how such an evil person could have so much power. He stood in front of her now, appraising her body, sneering, joking with the two men.

  “Looks like the Lord sent us another Injun to tame. He must not think we do enough good work to please him. Got our hands full with this one, I’ll bet.”

  “She’s tainted,” the man with a Texas twang said. “But, I wouldn’t mind puttin’ up with her. She’d be praisin’ Jesus in no time.”

  The men snickered while the Prophet continued to appraise her face and body.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  The African slaves must have felt this same sense of degradation when they were being examined by rich, white buyers, Emily thought.

  She felt as if he were mentally undressing her and swore under her breath, regretting she could not curse in the language of the Diné. She looked at the other two men and recognized them as the ones who had kidnapped Lina and her. They were explaining the reason she had been taken along with the girl, speaking in front of her as if she were not a fully functioning human being with a mind and life of her own. She turned around and faced him once again, biting her tongue to keep from lashing out at all three.

  “She’ll make a good worker—looks healthy enough. Maybe a good breeder, too, if it pleases our Lord. Don’t let her out of your sight,” the Prophet said to the matron, who nodded her acquiescence.

  He moved along the line of older women at a much quicker pace, his mouth sometimes split into a crooked smile. But it appeared his interest was mainly in the young girls dressed in white. Emily spotted Darcy standing several spaces away from Lina, and her heart lurched. She could see anger burning in the young Navajo’s eyes. With her chin jutted in defiance and brow furrowed, Darcy glowered at the men.

  Good, Emily thought. She has a fighting spirit.

  She gave the girl a quick nod of approval and mouthed in Navajo, “Be brave. I will get us out of here.” She wished Lina would show some spirit as well. Quiet defiance had been Emily’s key to survival through the tumultuous years of boarding school, and she believed it was still a necessary skill for the young. She tried to make eye contact with Lina Nez, but the girl kept her head down, silent tears rolling down her face and falling on the cumbersome boots.

  No one had mentioned a name for the one they called the Prophet, but Emily had plenty for him: creep, sick bastard, child rapist. She watched as he stopped in front of a fresh-faced blond of about fifteen. He put his hands on her shoulders.

  “This one will be my new wife.” His voice boomed, carrying the weight of complete authority. The girl smiled, blushed, and stepped out of the line, ecstasy lighting her pale-blue eyes. “Phillip and Wayne. As a reward for your courage and dedication in rescuing these two young women from a life of sin, I will choose another wife for you.”

  The faces of the two men who had kidnapped Emily and Lina—and most likely Darcy—stretched into smug grins, though they quickly faded when the Prophet turned his attention to the line of ladies in pink. He evidently had the last word on who would marry whom.

  The filthy pigs want a virgin, Emily thought. That’s what the girls in white are, and the head creep is saving them for himself.

  The women in pink were middle-aged, not nearly as attractive a prize as the young girls, but the men didn’t protest when the Prophet passed by Emily and laid his hands on the shoulders of two women, who stepped out of the line, obviously having nothing to say about the matches. When he had completed the selection of wives, the Prophet approached the matron.

  “You are doing the Lord’s work and will receive your reward in heaven. Continue.” He turned and led his procession out the door, leaving behind a smell akin to decay in a basement full of dead mice.

  Emily contained a sigh of relief—she and her girls had been spared. But she wondered how long it would last. Lina looked sickly and weak.

  What was it I overheard the men in the van saying?

  She couldn’t remember. The drugs had muddled her mind, but she knew, somehow, they didn’t have much time.

  After the entourage of men and their new wives left, the remaining women marched into the dining room for a generous serving of oatmeal and a glass of water. Coffee was evidently not an option in this prison camp. A long prayer session followed, extolling the virtues and wisdom of
the Prophet, after which they were assigned to their chores for the day. Emily was sent, with a group of six other women, to work in the garden. It would be her first opportunity to see anything other than the inside of her prison enclosure, and she welcomed the chance.

  When she stepped out the front door, blinded by bright sunshine, Emily had to blink before she could focus on her surroundings. After a moment, she was able to make out an eight-foot wall, topped with spirals of razor wire, surrounding the women’s building. A tall iron gate remained closed—and apparently locked. She could see no familiar landmarks, mountains, or anything identifiable beyond the high walls except the gleaming white steeple. But the soil under her feet was pale and rocky, not so different from the land of the Diné, and she felt comforted by the thought that she might not be far from home.

  Large plots of land inside of the enclosure were cultivated and prepared for seeding, and some already sprouted young plants. The women led Emily to a shed filled with an assortment of garden tools, bagged manure, fertilizer, compost, and chicken feed. One of them handed her a shovel and hoe and sent her to work planting potato eyes on a newly plowed plot. While Emily pretended to be engrossed in her work, she surveyed the lay of the land, the dimensions of the wall and its distance from the building, rock projections, guard posts—anything that caught her eye. The only other buildings inside the closed compound were the tool shed, what appeared to be a pump house, and a chicken coop with a fenced pen. She knew there had to be more structures on the other side, but she had no way of determining what or how many.

  Emily worked alongside a woman of about forty, whose dull brown hair was streaked with strands of gray, her weary eyes cast down. It was the same woman she had noticed in her room, the one she had asked whether she was a mother. After the woman had dug a six-inch hole in the soil, Emily dropped in a potato eye from the hefty sack fastened around her shoulder and covered it with dirt. They worked without speaking for two hours, but there was something about the way the woman looked when Emily had asked about a child that made her think she could break through the barrier of silence.