Apache Country

by Frederick H. Christian

  “My father believed the old ways were best, and he had taught us children those ways. He came to the jail to see me. He told me I was a liar, a thief, a criminal. He said, nashaa bits’á’yé’, I walk away. You know what that means?”

  Easton guessed. “He disowned you.”

  Another deeply indrawn breath, released slowly, full of regret.

  “It was like the end of my world, that and being in jail. When they let me out, my sister let me stay with her if I promised there would be no more drinking and gambling. That was tough, but finding work was even tougher. They took me on as a probationary firefighter, but that only paid peanuts. Then Kuruk came after me. He called my name, Ironheel. You still owe me. He wanted me to do a few jobs, pay off the debt.”

  “You refused?”

  Ironheel nodded. “After all, what could he do? For me, that was the end of it.”

  “But not for him.”

  Again the grave nod. “Remember we spoke about the old man, the one who taught us t’lo kah’dinadi aha’eh?”

  “I remember. Horse Holder.”

  “He was very proud of that name. It was given to him by Geronimo when he was a boy. Aren’t you going to eat those beans?”

  “Take them,” Easton said. “What about Horse Holder?”

  “It was the time of Ghost Face. Winter. He was found dead in his cabin, murdered. The place had been ransacked. The Tribal Police came and searched my place, said they’d had a tip-off. They found a little buckskin bag with twenty eight dollars in it that belonged to the old man. They arrested me and handed me over to the Las Cruces cops. A baby in a cradle could have seen it was a frame-up, but nobody was interested in hearing my side of it. You know what they said? ‘Long as we got a result, who cares which fucking Apache goes to jail.’.”

  “What did you do?”

  “My sister got me a lawyer, a good one. When he threatened to subpoena Kuruk as a witness, the Doña Ana County DA decided he didn’t have enough for a conviction and they let me go. You’re one lucky Indian, they said. That should have been the end of it.”

  “But?”

  Ironheel nodded to acknowledge the insight. “But … awhile later someone asked me to deliver a package to Kuruk’s place, the one we went to, up in the canyon. He was out in the yard and he told me to leave it inside. I saw a bow lying on a chair and recognized it as one Horse Holder had showed me. He made it just a few days before he was killed.”

  Making a hunting bow took many hours of careful work. A three-foot branch of oak or mulberry was cut and split, carved down and scraped smooth. Then the ends were tied together with yucca to give the bow its curve, after which it was hung up to season. When the wood was ready it was greased with fat, worked until it was pliable, then laid in hot ashes to harden the wood, taking care not to scorch it. It would be buried for perhaps ten days to fully shape it, and then it was decorated. Two or three sinew strips from the loin of a deer, soaked and rolled together, would make the bowstring. No Apache would make a bow like that to sell to tourists.

  “If Kuruk had Horse Holder’s bow, there was only one way he could have got it,” Ironheel said. “Which meant he had been the one who framed me. My lawyer talked to someone he knew in the Las Cruces PD. Turned out Kuruk was playing both sides of the street. He was a police snitch, had been for years, selling the cops information to work off his own felonies.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  Ironheel shook his head. “His having the bow wasn’t exactly proof. And by that time he had gotten rid of it, anyway. But knowing about it got me off his hook. My sister told him if he didn’t let go, she would take the story to the Tribal Council. It would mean banishment. He couldn’t risk that.”

  “Knowledge is power,” Easton said. “Bigo’dih’ingó.”

  Again he saw that quick flash of surprise in the dark eyes. Ironheel nodded.

  “Bigo’dih’ingó. Now we had power over him. And ever since then Kuruk has hated me because of it. That’s why he got into this, so he could kill me, end it.”

  “So when you saw the bow in that cabin ...”

  “It was bigo’dih’ingó be’ígózini. A sign. Telling me the time had come. I must kill Kuruk using the bow he stole,” Ironheel said, harshly. “And close the circle.”

  He lapsed into silence and this time Easton did not prompt him to say more. That Ironheel had told him this much meant that, somewhere along the way, he had come to trust him, perhaps to accept him as an equal. And maybe even a friend. It was a good feeling.

  After a while Ironheel stood up and stretched.

  “N’zhoo,” he said. “Enough talk. Time to move on.”

  “You’re right,” Easton said, conscious of the slight awkwardness of the moment. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “Not far,” Ironheel said. “Maybe two hours.”

  “I mean until this is over. Apodaca and McKittrick aren’t going to quit. When they find out Kuruk is dead, it’s going to get worse.”

  Ironheel looked thoughtful. “Didn’t you say you had a plan?” he said.

  “I do,” Easton said. “But this part of it still needs work.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Casey ranch stood on a low rise overlooking the river, a wall of cottonwoods and aspens screening it completely from the highway half a mile away. Standing on the site of a four room adobe dating back to the Civil War, it was an imposing two-storey hacienda of great charm. Adjacent to the house was a two-bedroom guest cottage, a four-car garage, and stabling for eighteen horses.

  From the main house a paved path ran diagonally between paired magnolia trees across immaculately maintained lawns to the river bank, where Robert Casey had built a summer house, a simple wooden structure, its peaked roof decorated with gingerbread woodwork, a latched door, rattan chairs and a little table inside. It was there that Easton had asked Ellen Casey to meet him.

  Bypassing the main entrance, an ornate, electrically-operated wrought iron gate, he led the way across the Hondo bridge, negotiated a fence and turned east. Here the river ran shallow across long flats of smoothed stone, making it easy to ford. To Easton’s surprise it was not Ellen, but Kit Twitchell who was waiting in the summer house. Seeing her sitting there kindled memories of long ago. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.

  She looked up as they came toward her and he was saddened by the way grief had marked her face. She was still slim, her once shoulder-length bright blonde hair now dull gold, cut Cameron Diaz style. The same person, but somehow much more vulnerable, with lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth he had never seen before.

  “Oh, David, David,” she said, embracing him and laying her head against his chest. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Her hair smelled of shampoo and he felt acutely conscious of his own sweaty body and grimy clothes, but after a moment she stepped back, drying her eyes with a tiny handkerchief.

  “This is James Ironheel, Kit,” he said.

  “Ma’am,” Ironheel said.

  “We’ve been so worried,” she said. “It was on the news that you shot down a helicopter,” she said, looking directly at him as she spoke. “And that you murdered one of the trackers in cold blood.”

  Ironheel made an angry sound. Easton laid a hand on his arm.

  “It wasn’t like that at all, Kit,” Easton said. “We’ll tell you what happened later. Where’s Ellen? How is she?”

  Kit shook her head. “You’ll see a difference.”

  “And you?”

  She gave a rueful little smile and spread her hands, look at me. “I don’t know how I am,” she said. “Trying to get past all this … to understand.”

  “I know that feeling,” he said. “Look, you go on back inside. Tell Ellen we’re here. Give her a few minutes to get ready.”

  As she walked back up to the house, Easton glanced at Ironheel. His face was expressionless, but his empathy was almost tangible.

  “Ask you something?” Ironheel said.
/>
  “Sure.”

  “What happened? Between you and her?”

  “You really want to know?”

  Ironheel waited. Up to you, his silence said.

  “We were just kids,” Easton told him. “Probably would have died its own death, but Casey said she could do better. And I thought at first he meant better than marrying a young cop. But it wasn’t that.”

  “Because of your Mexican blood.”

  He didn’t dress it up with political correctness, Easton noted. Grita would approve.

  “My grandfather was married to a Mexican woman. Everyone called her Doña Clara. She was hidalga, beautiful.”

  “But still a Mexican, right?” Ironheel said. “When was that, 1880s?”

  “1890s.”

  “Lot of white people thought Mexicans didn’t qualify as human back then.”

  “Your people, too,” Easton said. “Even today.”

  Ironheel nodded, looking right into his eyes. “I had that problem when I first talked to you.”

  “That why you were so hostile?”

  “One of the jailors told me you were okay … for a half breed – Basso, is that his name?”

  It would be Basso, Easton thought. “There are still plenty like him,” he said. “But not as many as when I was a kid.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty eight,” Easton said. Ironheel nodded.

  “So you’d have been in grade school in the early Eighties. Not much political correctness back then, right? Being even a quarter Mexican can’t have been easy.”

  “There was always ... something,” Easton replied. “But it was insidious. Things people said, jokes. But by the time I was twenty I could put it out of my mind. Until Casey … reminded me.”

  Ironheel’s face remained impassive. “Sometimes it’s easier not to fight. Apache do that, let the pinda’ lick’ oye exploit our fear that somehow our race makes us inferior.”

  “You think that’s how I felt?”

  “You tell me,” Ironheel said.

  It came out reluctantly, but it came out. “I don’t think I ever hated anyone the way I hated Robert Casey that day,” Easton said. “For trying to make me ashamed of what I was.”

  Ironheel nodded thoughtfully. The silence lengthened. It wasn’t uncomfortable.

  “You trust her?” Ironheel asked. The question took Easton by surprise.

  “Kit?” he said. “Yes, I do. Why?”

  Ironheel made no answer but it wasn’t difficult to guess what he was thinking. She sold you out once before.

  “Answer me this,” Easton said. “Who else have we got?”

  Ironheel shrugged. “Your call,” he said.

  They walked up the path to the house. It reminded Easton again of happy times he had shared here. But the past was another country and his visa had expired.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The room in the guest cottage was silent except for the thin hum of the DVD player. Easton switched it off, leaned back in his chair and let out his breath in a long slow sigh, the obscenities and degradation they had seen still flickered in his brain like old silent movies. He felt like he needed another bath.

  “You’re sure?” he said.

  Ironheel nodded. “Ázhúo. Certain. The big man in the film is the one who killed the boy.”

  “All this time we’ve been chasing a ghost,” Easton said. “We were trying to figure out why they killed Casey, and it was Adam they wanted.”

  “Why?”

  “He must have watched the DVD, recognized the big man. Then told someone what he had seen. That’s why he was killed.”

  “Where would a kid like Adam get hold of a thing like that?”

  Easton shrugged. “That’s a good question and I don’t know the answer. Maybe Kit and Ellen will have some ideas.”

  “Who would he have told? Who would he have trusted?”

  “Another good question, and I don’t know the answer to that one, either. Adam was a bright kid, but he was only eleven years old. The fact he hid the DVD away, didn’t say a word to anyone, shows how conflicted he must have been.”

  “Probably didn’t know what to do.”

  “Right. But he talked to someone. And it got him killed.”

  “Madre,” Ironheel breathed. Easton had long since realized the word was the nearest he ever got to profanity.

  “I’m beginning to understand what this thing is all about,” Easton continued. “Pornography is big money.”

  “Dachizhá,” Ironheel grunted. “Filth.”

  “But lucrative,” Easton said. “Which leads to the next question. Who’s producing it? Where? They’d need a studio or a safe house, cameras and film processing equipment, top of the range distribution. If Apodaca and McKittrick are involved, my bet is it’s somewhere between here and the Texas state line. They’re probably getting some kind of payoff for protection, a guarantee the law won’t interfere.”

  “You think the big man is making the payoffs?” Ironheel said.

  Easton nodded thoughtfully. “And I just remembered, that chopper pilot said his name was Carl.” He stood up. “Come on. Time’s running out.”

  They walked back to the house where the two women were sitting beside the stone fireplace. The room, dominated by a huge smart-TV unit, had floor-to-ceiling picture windows that opened out on to an internal patio. Opposite them stood a shining black Yamaha grand piano that also played piano rolls: Du-Art or Ampico, Paderewski or Fats Waller. Easton remembered how eerie it was to hear George Gershwin playing the Rhapsody in Blue, hands long dead moving the keys.

  It had shocked him to see Ellen Casey looking so hurt, so sad, her usual assurance so visibly affected. She looked elegant, but lined, tired, older.

  “You okay to talk, Ellen?” he said softly. She nodded, yes.

  “Then tell me how you found the DVD,” he said.

  “It was quiet accidental.” Her voice was barely a whisper, her face paper white. “I was ... thinking about Adam. I went into his room, sat on the bed. Touched things to … to remember him. The closet door was open, I got up to close it and saw his tennis racket was on a shelf, the handle sticking out. I reached up to straighten it and everything ... fell down. And there it was.”

  “Why did you play it?”

  “It had no title, no sleeve. I thought maybe it was something he’d brought home from school that might have to be taken back. And then … and then, when I played it and saw … those men, the things they were doing ...”

  She shuddered visibly and made a distracted gesture with her hand. It made Easton realize how close to the edge she was.

  “Do you have any idea how Adam could have gotten hold of it?”

  Kit intervened angrily. “Adam would never have brought something like that into this house,” she said. “Never!”

  “If you’re right, and I think you are,” Easton said, “that leaves us with only two persons who could have.”

  “You’re not … you can’t mean Daddy? Or Ralph?” she whispered.

  “David, stop!” Ellen said angrily. “You mustn’t say such things. I won’t listen! I won’t!”

  “You must, Ellen,” he said softly. “Because that DVD got Adam killed. He recognized something, someone.”

  He told them about Carl, the man on the DVD, and what he thought that might mean.

  “And… you think Joe Apodaca is involved in it, too? Joe Apodaca?”

  “Tell them,” he said to Ironheel. “As gently as you can.”

  For a moment, Ironheel looked uncertain, then he squatted on his haunches in front of Kit. He gently took her hands in his and held them, looking into her eyes.

  “Doo baa shil gozhóó da,” he said softly. “My heart is full of sadness, lady. But you have to know. I was there. I saw Sheriff Apodaca kill your father. The big man in the film killed your son.”

  The two women nodded in unison, their eyes fixed on Ironheel as if he had hypnotized them. Kit’s lips moved but at first no sound c
ame out. When it did it was like the dry rustle of autumn leaves blowing along a sidewalk.

  “How?” she whispered. “Tell me, please. How did they …?”

  Ironheel turned to glance questioningly at Easton. “N’diih doleel,” he said. “It will cause pain.”

  “I know,” Easton nodded, “but go on.”

  Ironheel hesitated for a moment, then turned back to face the two women.

  “They were arguing,” he continued. “I think the hastiin – the old man – realized they were going to kill the boy and tried to stop them, Apodaca shot him.”

  “And ... Adam?”

  Kit’s voice was little more than a murmur, as though she was afraid if she spoke too loudly, something would shatter.

  “He ran away,” Ironheel said, pushing his hand forward, thumb up. “Dáhále. Fast, like a rabbit. The big man went after him. And …”

  He lifted a shoulder, leaving it unspoken.

  “Dear God,” Kit said softly.

  She looked at Ironheel through eyes drowning in grief. Then her head came up and she let go of his hands. He stood up and stepped aside as she rose and faced Easton.

  “Tell us the rest of it now, David,” she said firmly. “I want to know everything.”

  Beginning with the mid-morning call from Bert Bonnell, Easton briefly recounted the events of the day that ended with the murder of Jerry Weddle.

  “When Weddle came to the jail, Ironheel told him what he had seen up at Garcia Flat,” he said. “A couple of hours later Weddle was murdered in his motel room. It looked like a walk-in robbery that went wrong. But it wasn’t.”

  “Are you saying they killed him to protect Apodaca?” Ellen asked.

  “Has to be that,” Easton said. “Weddle made two calls, one to his boss and one to Olin McKittrick, by the book routine procedure. But by calling McKittrick, he signed his own death warrant.”

  “McKittrick … killed him?” Kit said.

  “No,” Easton said. “Whoever killed Weddle was a pro. When I went down to the jail to tell Ironheel what had happened, he told me what he’d told Weddle.”