Coyote's Regret

by Rich Curtin

  “Where was the family place, do you remember?”

  “No idea. Like I said, I was asleep during the drive. But it was somewhere within a couple of hours of the bus station in Blanding, I’d say.”

  “Okay, thank you, Ms. Yardley. I’ll call you back if I think of any additional questions.”

  “Deputy, I’m kind of worried now. As an attorney, I know I’m protected by the statute of limitations. But I would never want my young grandchildren to learn about this.”

  “I don’t foresee the need for any publicity. When I learned about Woody and located the place where he was buried, I wanted to be sure his family knew where the grave was. That’s all. But since that had already been taken care of by Michael Bennett, no further action on my part will be necessary.”

  “Can you tell me about the case you’re working on and how it relates to Woody’s grave?”

  “Wilma Green and Matthew Mason got married after that trip you were on. They spent their lives in San Francisco.”

  “Oh, how wonderful.”

  “They were on a grand tour of the national parks and decided to visit Woody’s grave. While they were there, someone shot them dead.” Rivera heard a gasp.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “They were planning to visit Virginia Stolte in Taos as part of the trip. They had recently reconnected on Facebook after all those years. Unfortunately…” He let that trail off.

  “You know, I wish I’d never embarked on that trip. I was a typical rebellious teenager and ignored the pleadings of my father to stay away from drugs and the hippie lifestyle. Someday you’ll regret it, he would always tell me. And, of course, he was right. Luckily, I got my life back on track before I ruined it. If it weren’t for the Woody incident, I’d probably have continued on to the Summer of Love and done just that.”

  Rivera thanked her for her time and clicked off. He was relieved that he no longer felt an obligation to find Woody’s family and inform them of what had happened to Woody. As far as he was concerned, the exhumation question would remain a family matter.

  All he had to do now was solve the Mason and Nez murder cases. Only then would he be able to drive to Abiquiu and propose to his beloved Gloria.

  24

  BACK AT THE OFFICE the next morning, Rivera had updated his report and was still waiting for a call from the state police lab about the bullet which had killed the Churro. His telephone rang. The lady at the front desk told him he had a visitor. He walked to the lobby and saw Dibé Nez’s son Raymond standing there.

  “Yá’ át’ ééh, Deputy Rivera,” he said. He extended his hand.

  Rivera smiled and shook his hand, receiving the softest, gentlest handshake he’d ever experienced. Their hands barely touched. Another lesson in Navajo culture, Rivera figured. Much friendlier than the handshake he’d gotten when he first met Nick Latham. “How are you, Raymond?” Rivera hoped the young man wasn’t going to blurt out his family’s thanks for the window left unlocked.

  “I’m on my way to Moab to visit my cousins who are helping to build some new condos up there.” He looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “My mother asked me to stop by to see if you were here, and if you were, to thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

  Rivera’s stomach tightened. He was eager to change the subject. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “We will all miss him. Especially my grandfather—the two of them were very close.”

  Rivera nodded. Then stopped and replayed that last sentence in his mind. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘especially your grandfather?’ Wasn’t your grandfather the one who was killed?”

  “No. The one who was killed was my grandfather’s brother. My great-uncle Klah.”

  Rivera shook his head. “Just a minute. I’m confused. I thought…” He let that trail off, his mind working through his past assumptions and processing this new information. Now he wondered which brother was at the spring when the Masons were killed. “Who was the man who said a coyote had killed one of his Churros?”

  “That was my grandfather. I can see why you’re confused. They were brothers, separated in age by less than a year. They looked alike. People were always mistaking one for the other. The family had no trouble telling them apart because we saw them every day. They were both sheepherders and each of them took the flock out to graze on alternating days. It’s over ten miles out to the spring and back but the grazing is good. Because of their ages, each one rested every other day.”

  Rivera digested that. “Just to be sure I’ve got it straight—was your grandfather or your great-uncle with the flock on the day the Churro was killed?”

  “That was my grandfather.”

  So the shooter had killed the wrong Nez, thought Rivera. “Then your grandfather might be able to identify the one who shot at him.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. He’s said nothing to me about it.”

  “I’ve got to go back to the Rez and somehow get him to talk to me. Beg him if necessary.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to beg. You have become very popular with the Nez family.”

  Rivera hopped into his vehicle and headed for the Nez sheep camp, hopeful Dibé Nez’s father would be willing to talk, despite centuries of transgressions by the white man. As he neared Aneth, his cell phone buzzed. It was the San Juan County sheriff’s dispatcher.

  “I’ve got two messages for you, Manny. First, the State Crime Lab called. The bullet you brought them yesterday is definitely a match for the bullets removed from the Masons’ bodies. All three came from the handgun found in Matthew Mason’s hand.”

  “No surprise, I guess. What’s the second message?”

  “The FBI got back to us on the partial prints found on the two remaining cartridges in the gun. There’s a ninety-five percent probability they belong to Bobby Dryden. His fingerprints were on file from a DWI arrest in 2009 in Farmington and a narcotics possession arrest in 2014 in Salt Lake City. He beat both charges on technicalities. I guess his daddy could afford the best lawyers.”

  “Okay, thanks.” He clicked off, stunned at the news. What in the world would Bobby Dryden have against the Masons? Was he into the drug running business? And if so, why? He was heir to a fortune in oil-rich land.

  25

  RIVERA WOUND HIS way through the maze of back roads on the northern end of the Navajo Reservation. The route, challenging to navigate the first time he’d driven it, now seemed familiar and comfortable. He pulled up to the Nez camp and stopped a polite distance from the buildings. Dibé Nez was working at her loom.

  She smiled when she saw him. She stood up and walked to Rivera’s pickup. The stoicism was gone and her expression was relaxed and friendly. It was the first time Rivera noticed how pretty she was. He got out of the truck.

  “Yá’ át’ ééh, Deputy Rivera.”

  “Yá’ át’ ééh, he said, hoping he hadn’t butchered the Navajo greeting.

  Dibé laughed, her teeth bright white against her brown skin. “Your Navajo is coming along nicely.”

  “I came to see if your father will talk to me. It’s important.”

  “He’s here today. He’s afraid to go back to the spring—afraid he’ll be shot. He thinks his brother was killed because he was grazing our Churros on the white man’s grazing lease. I will ask him if he will talk to you.”

  She left Rivera standing there and disappeared into the double-wide trailer. A minute later, she returned with her father in tow.

  He nodded at Rivera and waited, his face expressionless.

  “I am still trying to find the coyote who shot your Churro. He’s probably the same one who killed your brother.” He hoped using the term ‘coyote’ would begin to build some kind of a bridge between himself and the old man. “Did you get a look at the person who killed your Churro?”

  Dibé translated and the old man nodded.

  “Can you tell me what he looked like?’

  There was no answer. Only a shrug.

  Riv
era turned to Dibé. “Could you ask him again? Tell him it’s important.”

  Dibé relayed the message to her father, and his response was brief. She smiled.

  “What did he say?” asked Rivera.

  “He said all bilagáana men look the same to him. He doesn’t know the words to use to describe him.”

  Rivera wished he had a picture of Bobby Dryden with him. Then he remembered that he did. He returned to his pickup, opened his briefcase, and thumbed through the files that Emmett Mitchell had given him. He extracted the one titled Dryden Ranch and removed the newspaper article which included photographs of Bobby Dryden, his father Sam, and his grandfather Jared. Rivera spread the page across the fender of his vehicle and pointed to Bobby’s picture.

  “Was that the man you saw?”

  The old Navajo moved closer and studied the image for a long time. He shook his head. Spoke to his daughter in Navajo.

  “He said that’s not the man he saw.”

  Then Mr. Nez stabbed a gnarled forefinger at another picture on the page. He spoke again in Navajo, this time with a trace of emotion in his voice.

  Rivera looked at Dibé for a translation.

  “He said, ‘That’s the coyote who killed my Churro.’”

  Rivera looked at the image the old man was pointing to. It was a picture of Sam Dryden, not his stepson Bobby. Rivera was taken aback. It made no sense for Sam Dryden to kill the Masons. He was a pillar of the community and wealthy beyond most people’s dreams. The old Navajo had to be wrong, thought Rivera. Now he wondered if the man’s eyesight could be trusted.

  “Did you also see him shoot those two white people—a man and a woman?”

  Mr. Nez turned to Dibé and spoke for a full two minutes. Then he stopped and looked at Rivera.

  “He said he was out there near the spring, watering his sheep,” said Dibé. “Normally he doesn’t see anyone there except sometimes he sees the man who lives there in the wickiup.”

  “Wickiup?”

  “A hut made of logs and sealed with mud.”

  “Oh.” Rivera translated that into Herman’s dwelling.

  “He said he didn’t see the man who lives in the wickiup that morning, but he did see three people at the crest of the hill that runs up from the spring. All he could see were their heads. Two men and a woman. One of the men was wearing a cowboy hat. He said he didn’t think much about it and returned to his work, making sure each of the animals got enough to drink before he took the flock back home. Then he heard two shots from up on the hilltop. He looked up and all he could see was the back of the man’s head who was wearing the cowboy hat. He couldn’t see the other two people anymore. Then Cowboy Hat turned and looked down at him. Cowboy Hat walked closer, and half his body was now visible over the top of the hill. He stared at my father for a while. Then he raised his pistol and fired. The bullet hit the dirt about twenty feet short of where my father stood. He said it made a dust cloud where the bullet hit the ground. He said he got scared and started to run away. The sheep were startled and began running too. Cowboy Hat fired a second shot. My father looked back as he was running and saw one of his Churros go down. Those Churros are like family to us, Deputy Rivera, so you know how that must’ve made my father feel. He said he kept running for a while, and the flock followed. Then he looked back and couldn’t see Cowboy Hat anymore. My father said he came straight back to the Rez.”

  Rivera thought about that. The distance from the spring to the hilltop where Woody was buried and where the Masons’ bodies were found was about sixty yards. Too far for the average person to shoot a handgun with any accuracy. And maybe too far for Nez to get a reliable look at the shooter’s face—especially a face partially obscured by a cowboy hat. And Bobby Dryden’s face resembled his stepfather’s, despite their not being blood relatives. Making an accurate comparison with a photograph in an old newspaper would be doubly challenging. He looked at Dibé. “Could you ask him if he’s sure the one he pointed to in the newspaper was the coyote who killed his Churro? It’s very important.”

  She turned to her father and spoke. The question took much longer in Navajo than it would have in English. Rivera figured she was making sure the old man understood the importance of the question.

  Nez responded in an irritated tone of voice.

  Dibé’s translation was brief. “He said he may be old but there’s nothing wrong with his eyes.”

  “One last question. Could you ask him if he’s ever seen or heard any aircraft landing or taking off from that airstrip near the spring?”

  Dibé asked the question and her father answered.

  “He said he hasn’t seen a plane use that airstrip in a couple of years.”

  26

  AS RIVERA CLIMBED into his pickup, he tried to picture Mr. Nez in a court of law testifying against Sam Dryden, a pillar of the community. There would be a translator of course. Rivera envisioned an expensive defense attorney questioning Mr. Nez and pressing him on several points. First of all, the distance from the spring to the top of the hill was sixty yards, hardly close enough for certain identification by anyone. Secondly, Mr. Nez was in his seventies. How good was his eyesight? Third, the shooter’s face was partially obscured with a cowboy hat. Could the man in the cowboy hat have been someone else? The defense attorney’s questioning would cast significant doubt on Nez’s testimony. Rivera started the engine and shuddered at the image of Nez on the witness stand.

  He shifted the truck into drive and headed out of the Nez camp, his mind buzzing with questions. If Cowboy Hat really was Sam Dryden, what possible motive did he have for shooting the Masons? Rivera could think of nothing that made any sense.

  Could Nez have mistaken Bobby Dryden for his stepfather Sam? It could be. Bobby looked somewhat like a younger version of his stepfather, and Bobby’s fingerprints were found on the two remaining cartridges in the revolver. Suppose Bobby was the shooter. Why would he, heir to the Dryden fortune, kill two innocent strangers? Bobby’s father seemed to give his son everything he wanted, so Bobby wasn’t hurting for money. Possibly what his stepfather gave him wasn’t enough to satisfy him. It would be years before he inherited the ranch, so maybe he had become impatient and the curse of greed had taken hold. Maybe he’d gotten involved with the wrong people and was now enmeshed in the drug-running trade.

  Rivera shook his head. There was a big problem with that theory. Not a single person in the area had seen or heard a plane using the airstrip. Could Rivera once and for all rule out drug running as a motive? He had to face facts. Despite the thoughts tumbling around in his suspicious mind, there wasn’t a shred of evidence that the murders were dope related.

  He navigated the dirt roads leading from the Nez place to the outside world. If not dope, then what? He reviewed everything he’d learned in the case, sticking only to known facts and avoiding conjecture. The Masons were shot early in the morning. The crime scene was staged in a ham-handed attempt to make it look like a murder-suicide. Then, the killer tried to shoot Nez to eliminate him as a witness. He kills a Churro instead. A few days later, he kills Nez with a rifle shot, not realizing that his look-alike brother was with the Churros that morning.

  Rivera thought about that a long while. It implied the killer wasn’t just passing through when he killed the Masons. If that were the case, there would be no reason to return and kill Nez. So the shooter had to be a local. Maybe the key thing about the location of the Mason killings wasn’t the airstrip. If a dope deal could be ruled out, then so could the airstrip. If not the airstrip, then what? There wasn’t much else there. Just the road. And the grave. Could it be the grave?

  Rivera crossed the last arroyo on his way back to civilization. Mr. Nez had seemed certain the man he saw was Sam Dryden. Setting aside for the moment the question of Nez’s eyesight at sixty yards, suppose the old sheepherder was right. Suppose Sam Dryden was the killer. If that were so, what on earth was his motive? Rivera considered that for a very long time and came up with nothing. Yet, as his m
ind churned through the possibilities, some inchoate idea, some pertinent inconsistency, seemed to be tickling the back of his brain, vying for his attention. It seemed to be something he already knew but was unable to pinpoint. Something that had become relevant as soon as he made the assumption that Sam Dryden was the killer. Something someone had said to him. He kept trying to extract it from the dark recesses of his subconscious but was having no luck.

  He slammed the palm of his hand on the steering wheel. What the hell was it? He thought it might have something to do with the VW van he’d seen in Sam Dryden’s garage or his telephone conversation with Ellen Yardley.

  Frustrated, he bounced along the rutted dirt road and pulled to a stop fifty feet in front of the L-shaped maroon house rented to the Honani family by the Navajo Housing Authority. A small, yellow, dust-covered school bus with flashing red lights was dropping off a young boy. He ran from the bus up to his smiling mother who was waiting at the door. Rivera watched as she gave the boy a big hug.

  At that instant, the thought that was buried in the back of his mind came to the fore in a flash. It was something that Ellen Yardley had said. When Michael Bennett arrived at Woody’s grandfather’s residence, the old man gave Michael a big smile and embraced him. That had struck Rivera as a little odd when he’d first heard it because Michael had been a complete stranger, but the deputy had failed to consider it further. Now that small fact loomed large and suggested a possible motive for the Mason murders. Rivera had missed it at the time because his mind was fixated on drug running—a preconceived motive—which was exactly the kind of mental error he had warned Nick Latham about.

  27

  THE BUS PULLED away and Rivera sat there, considering what he thought might be the motive for the killings. It was related to something that had happened a long time ago. Back in the sixties. He shifted his pickup into gear and resumed driving down the dusty track. As he did, his mind stepped through a possible sequence of events, testing each for plausibility.