Turquoise Girl

by Thurlo, David

  “Are you looking for the chief?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Have you seen him?”

  She nodded. “He, Mr. Little, and Agent Blalock are down the hall in the high-tech computer room Mr. Little set up.”

  Ella hurried down the long corridor and found them crowded into the eight-by-ten room. Teeny was sitting in front of an extra-large LCD computer monitor, typing at breakneck speed.

  “Good, glad you’re here,” Teeny said, glancing up at her. “Turns out that the victim killed in L.A. and the one in Arizona both had children who were also killed later.”

  “How did they die and were their deaths staged as well?” Ella asked.

  “No staging,” Teeny answered. “Shot in the back of their heads, execution style.”

  “Were the kids the same sex?” Ella asked, searching for commonalities.

  “No. The Kayenta woman’s daughter was killed a month after her mom. The kid had been living in New Mexico with her grandmother. The woman in Los Angeles had two children who stayed with the victim’s sister during the day. Someone broke in one afternoon while the sister was at the store. The son was killed almost immediately, but the daughter survived. She ran and hid in the closet. Interesting thing is that, according to the report, the killer knew the kid was there. That murder took place in 1996, about five weeks after the mother was killed.”

  “Why was the daughter killed in one instance and spared in the other?” Ella mused.

  “You’re assuming the crimes are connected, and we don’t know that yet,” Big Ed said.

  “Sounds like the same killer, though. It would help if we could figure out how he chooses his victims. That could lead back to the motive—if there’s one that makes any sense,” Ella added.

  “The daughter who was spared and her father both live outside Shiprock now, northwest from the Hogback. Why don’t you pay them a visit and see what you can find out?” Big Ed said.

  “On my way,” Ella said, and jotted down the address and directions Teeny gave her.

  “Take backup,” Big Ed said.

  “Justine’s in the lab—”

  “Get backup. From now on you don’t travel solo.”

  Ella saw the expression on his face and knew no argument would change his mind.

  Twenty

  Twenty minutes later, Justine and Ella set out from the station.

  “Were you able to get anything from the evidence we picked up at the scene earlier?”

  “From the one footprint, I figure we’re looking for someone of medium height and about one hundred and fifty pounds. The jish looped around the cross looks to be nearly identical to the one left with the murder victim. Pollen and soil, nothing more.”

  “So there’s a high probability that this was the work of the same man who killed Valerie Tso…and who continues to try to misdirect and, basically, piss us off. If we’d only known back then that the guy wearing the sunglasses and baseball cap eating his lunch by Mrs. Barela’s pickup was the stuff nightmares are made of. The guy has got a lot of guts and, worse, he’s cold. It’ll take a lot to rattle this nut.”

  “So the footprint…you think there’s any way he might have just overlooked it?” Justine asked.

  “Not a chance. I think this is one of those instances where the perp wants to rub our noses in it to show how superior he is. He’s getting cocky,” Ella said. “That means he’ll do something else soon to prove how clever he is and how stupid we are. And maybe that’s how we’ll end up catching him.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “I want this guy, even if it turns out he’s just muddying the waters and has no connection to the killer—but, at this point, I’d say that’s pretty unlikely.”

  “When it comes to Valerie’s murder, I still say Brewster’s our man,” Justine said, her voice firm. “He likes having power over women and that often leads to trouble. I don’t really think he would have purposely set out to kill Valerie, but accidents happen. The rest of the staging could have just been window dressing to throw us off.”

  “But how could he have made the details of the crime scene at Valerie’s match L.A.’s and Kayenta’s—unless he’s somehow linked to those crimes, too?” She shook her head. “No, Justine. In my mind, that’s reaching.”

  They drove east, then north. None of the roads in this direction were paved, and they left a trail of dust behind them that rose into the air like a giant rooster tail. Houses were farther apart as they drove north, away from the river valley. To their right lay the northernmost section of the Hogback, and beyond that were the coal mines and a second power plant. When the nuclear facility went into operation, there would be no plume of particulates or the constant roar of drag lines. A helium-cooled reactor would also keep more precious water from going up in smoke. At least that was the plan.

  Finally, within view of Chimney Rock to the north, in a field dotted with natural gas wells, they saw a solitary gray, cinder block house with a peeled log corral that held two horses. The house, despite its isolation, had electricity, thanks to the relative proximity of two major sources of electricity.

  Jackrabbits darted away and disappeared over the crest as they drove up the twin ruts serving as a road. Ella had expected to see a traditionalist living there, and was surprised when a girl in her late teens or early twenties came out wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, a huge German shepherd–cross mutt at her side.

  She waved at them and came over to the vehicle. “Nothing but well roads out here. You lost?”

  Ella nearly answered, “No, are you?” but resisted the temptation. “I think we’re on the right track. We came here to speak with Roseann Yabeny,” Ella said, getting out of the car.

  “That’s me, all right” the woman answered. “What’s this all about?”

  “We need to ask you a few questions about your brother’s murder,” Ella said gently, holding up her badge. “We’re with the tribal police.”

  The young woman’s face suddenly tightened. “Whoever killed him—and my mother before that—got away with it. That’s all I know. What else could I possible tell you that isn’t already on record? I was just five years old.”

  “We just need to ask you a few more questions,” Ella pressed.

  Roseann gestured to the house and Ella followed her in. A laptop computer sat on a table along with a printer and stack of paper. A bookshelf above the desk held dictionaries and other reference materials. Ella wondered if she was a student at the college in Shiprock.

  “Look, Detective…” she said, then paused, searching Ella’s shirt for a name tag.

  “Clah. Ella Clah.”

  “Detective Clah, I don’t remember much of anything. I was way too young. All I know is what people have told me I said at the time. But that’s all on record back in Los Angeles with the police or sheriff’s department.”

  “I understand you were present when your brother was killed.”

  Roseann sighed and dropped down into the closest chair. “Yes, I was, but I ran into the closet and hid, so I didn’t see much of anything, apparently.” She paused. “But he knew I was in there. I was crying and he heard me. He banged on the door and told me to shut up. But that’s according to what my aunt says I told the police. It’s third- or fourthhand now.”

  “Think hard. Is there anything else at all you can recall about your brother’s death?”

  “You don’t get it. I haven’t had nightmares for years and that’s because I’ve refused to dwell on that anymore. I don’t want to remember. It’s too late to do anything about it now anyway,” she added in an unsteady voice.

  Ella picked up on the edge of fear that tainted her words. “It could be extremely important.”

  “You think it’s my fault that he wasn’t caught, that I held back on purpose?” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  Ella caught the last two words of her questions, and pressed, following her instincts. “As a child you did what you had to in order to protect yourself. But you’re an adult now and in no danger.”
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br />   Roseann’s eyes grew wide and a shudder ripped through her. She took a deep, unsteady breath. “I peeked through a gap in the door…and I’ve regretted doing that every single day of my life,” she added in a whisper thin voice.

  “What did you see?” Ella asked.

  “He was wearing a devil’s mask. And it wasn’t Halloween,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Henry, my brother, came wheeling around the corner on his trike and ran into the man in the mask. That’s when the man grabbed him,” she managed, choking back a sob. “I know I should have tried to pull Henry into the closet with me right then, but I was too scared.”

  A back door opened and closed and a Navajo man in his early sixties came into the room. As he looked at her, Ella brought out her badge and introduced herself.

  “None of you ever did a thing to catch the man who killed my wife and son,” he said angrily, glaring at Ella. “We’ve rebuilt our lives and gone on, but no thanks to the police. You’re not welcome here.”

  Ella heard the pain in his voice. He’d lived through the injustice and horrors of those murders as much as his daughter had. But his memory of those events would undoubtedly be much clearer than Roseann’s and much more useful to her.

  “I’m not investigating the past, but the present, uncle,” Ella said, using the term of respect. “We’ve had some trouble here on our land that may be linked to what happened to your family.”

  He sat down as Roseann hurried out to answer the phone in the kitchen.

  “If you have more questions, ask me now while she’s busy. My daughter deserves the chance to put the past behind her,” he said.

  “I’m trying to figure out how this killer thinks, uncle. For example, why would he kill your son and let your daughter live?” Ella replied, trying not to draw things out.

  “My daughter hid and he couldn’t get to her.”

  “If he’d really wanted her, he could have found a way to get the closet door open,” she answered.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what I can tell you. There was no difference between them,” he said firmly. “Not to their mother and not to me.”

  “But to other people?” Ella asked immediately, picking up on what he hadn’t said.

  He hesitated, then reluctantly answered. “Others were bothered by it a lot more than I ever was.”

  Ella waited, sensing he had more to tell her but he needed to do this at his own time.

  Justine, aware of the breakthrough Ella had just made, slipped silently out of the room. Moments later, Ella glanced out the open window and saw her partner walking to the horse corral with Roseann.

  “We’re alone now, uncle, so you can speak freely,” Ella encouraged.

  “It’s nothing she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t need to hear it again,” he said, gazing at her through the window.

  Ella waited, watching a moth caught on a spiderweb in the corner of the room struggle to get free. The more it struggled, the more entangled it became. A part of her brain registered the lesson it taught.

  “Dorothy and I had some trouble at the beginning of our marriage. I was barely making a living, running the movie projectors at the old Big Chief Drive-In. Then one night she caught me with one of her friends. But she never threw my stuff out of the house so I knew it wasn’t over between us.”

  Ella waited. When a woman threw a man’s possessions out of the house that signaled a divorce. Anything less than that meant that there was still hope.

  “A few months later, she began seeing someone else, just like I had. I didn’t like it much, but it’s our way. I knew that would put us both on the same footing again so I didn’t say anything. But then she got pregnant. I never knew for sure if Henry was mine or not, but I wanted to think he was, so I did,” he said without any resentment.

  To those raised Christian, affairs and children out of wedlock often carried severe social penalties. But things worked differently here. The People’s perspective was rooted in concepts like harmony, order, and symmetry.

  “Who did she have an affair with?” Ella asked.

  “I don’t know. I never tried to find out. Once it was over, we put it behind us. But there were other things we couldn’t work out. She wanted to leave the Rez and go to California—Hollywood—and see if she could break into movies or TV. But my home was here, on the Navajo Nation, so we split up,” he said. “At the time we both figured it would only be temporary. We didn’t divorce or anything.”

  Ella had no time to consider what she’d learned. A moment later, Roseann returned, leading Justine back into the room.

  They were underway in a matter of minutes, driving south toward the main highway. Ella called Teeny and told him what she’d learned. “Find out about the Kayenta woman’s daughter. I particularly want to know if there’s a father on record. We may be on to something.”

  “I can try, but to Navajo thinking, children belong to their mothers and that’s that. So there may not be anything on record about the father unless the mother chose to list his name.”

  “See what you can get,” Ella said. “Also ask Blalock to check VICAP and find out if there are any known felons who use masks, particularly ones of the devil, as part of their MO.”

  “I’ll pass it along.”

  “Have you got anything new for me?” Ella asked.

  “Just one thing. Leroy Atso—the name used by the part-time construction guy, and the social security number he listed—belong to a kid who died ten years ago in an auto accident. That kid was a member of your father’s church.”

  There was that connection again, but there was still nothing solid to tack onto it. It was like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Frustration tore at her.

  As Ella hung up, Justine glanced over at her. “Where to now?”

  “We know that Caleb Frank owned a business in Farmington some time ago. Let’s go talk to people who also have businesses in that area. Maybe someone will remember something. I know Teeny already covered this ground, but I think we might have better luck if we try a low-key, official, approach.”

  “It’s out of our jurisdiction. We should call Emily and bring in the sheriff’s department.”

  After getting clearance from her captain, Emily met with them at the Farmington strip mall where Caleb’s print shop had once been.

  Emily walked up and down the small mall with them, but it seemed no one remembered Caleb Frank. The clerical staffs were all more recent employees, and the owners were no help either. They were about to call it quits when a sign across the street caught Ella’s eye—LELAND’S ICE CREAM PARLOR. “That place looks like it’s been there forever,” Ella said. “The sign by the door says ‘family owned for twenty-five years.’ Maybe they’ll remember Caleb Frank.”

  “Let’s go,” Emily said.

  One glance at the girl behind the counter told them that ten years ago she would have been in grade school. Deciding to take a break, Ella ordered hand-packed pistachio with chocolate sprinkles. As the girl worked to fill the order, Ella spotted the manager, a woman in her thirties, coming out of the back.

  When Ella asked her about Caleb, the woman shook her head. “I’ve never heard of him, but you might have better luck talking to my mother, Fran Leland. She and Dad opened and closed up every day for twenty years, and she did it alone for another two years after Dad died. But after Mom’s stroke last year, she decided to retire. I manage the business now and she sticks close to home.”

  Emily glanced at the address the woman handed them and thanked her. “This isn’t far from here,” Emily told Ella as they stepped back out onto the sidewalk. “Just follow me in your car.”

  They arrived at a small split-level home in a residential area just five blocks north of Main Street. The Leland house was wood-framed with white sideboard, and had a huge locus tree in the center of a nearly perfect green lawn. The yard was well tended, and yellow daffodils grew in profusion in flower beds beneath the windows.

  Emily knocked, and moments later they were ushered in
by a well-proportioned woman in her late sixties wearing loose-fitting jeans and a long smock. “Sit down, officers, please,” she said in the halting speech of someone who’d had to relearn to speak.

  “Mrs. Leland, your daughter told us you might remember Caleb Frank, the man who owned the print shop across the way from the ice cream parlor.”

  She scowled and nodded. “That was years ago but, yes, I still remember him,” she said, looking over her thick glasses. “Caleb was a two-faced troublemaker.”

  “Why do you say that?” Ella pressed.

  “He was a good-looking man and, in public, he was very personable. Most people were taken in by him, but beneath all the charm, he was a violent man. I once saw him severely beating a kid who’d painted something on the outside wall of his shop. The second he saw me, he let the kid go, but I was never fooled by him after that.”

  “I know it’s been a long time, but he seems to have disappeared after his print shop closed down. Do you have any idea where he moved to, or where we might be able to find him now?”

  Mrs. Leland hesitated before answering. “I don’t know for sure where he went, but maybe I can help you find him. Will you give me a minute to remember a few things?”

  Ella smiled and nodded. Anglos often apologized when they didn’t have an instant answer or for allowing a pause in the conversation stretch out. Navajos, in contrast, believed it was extremely rude not to allow people time to think and reflect at leisure.

  “Back then my husband and I were having a problem with another merchant who kept tossing boxes and such into our Dumpster and leaving us with no place for our own trash. Bob, my late husband, and I took turns watching, hoping we’d catch whoever it was. Then one evening, just after dark, I saw someone who looked like Caleb come up and stuff two large trash bags into our bin. I wanted to be positive—my eyesight’s never been great—so I opened one of the bags, intending to wave some proof under his nose if I was right. But most of what I saw were copies of documents with the name Caleb Lujan on them. Several pages appeared to have been failed attempts to print out a phony New Mexico driver’s license. The picture was Caleb Frank’s, but the name was always Caleb Lujan. The name stuck with me because it’s my daughter-in-law’s maiden name.”