“Oh God!” she cried with outstretched arms. “They’re dead! They’re both dead!”
Margaret crashed into his body with a force that rocked him back momentarily and she clung to him tightly. He folded his arms around her as she sobbed uncontrollably into his chest. It was at that moment he noticed Captain Jake Bilagody, who had emerged from behind his Suburban after making his way back from the fence line that had been strung up to keep drunken partiers from falling off the cliff edge and ending up as food for the canyon’s animal population. Bilagody was giving instructions into the shoulder microphone that pigtailed down to his belt radio. Arthur gently moved Margaret from his chest and held her a short distance away, noticing the tracks her tears had left on her face.
“They’re dead!” she wailed again. “They’re both dead!” She pushed into him again, this time her arms growing tighter around his torso, so much so that it made it difficult for Arthur to breathe. “I have no one now,” she sobbed. “Someone took my boys from me! My boys are gone, and I have no one!”
Arthur pushed her away from him again, his thumbs massaging her biceps gently. “What were they doing out here last night?”
“I don’t know,” Margaret said, calming slightly. “What all boys do at that age? I suppose drink and smoke, maybe play around a little with the at’éédké. You remember how it was.”
Of course he remembered how it had been. Arthur’s mind lapsed quickly back in time to when he and Margaret had slipped away from their friends during the summer of 1989 along the banks of Hunter Wash. The wash had been filled that afternoon by the rains from a high mountain runoff. Once there, they searched for the perfect spot upon which to unfold the soft blanket Margaret had brought. They quickly located a stretch of isolated grasses and spread the blanket out. They had no way of knowing at that time what a warm and fond memory it would become. Looking back, it had been a place to conquer the nervous anxieties of emerging youth while delving into the passions of adolescent love. He remembered the softness of her skin; he remembered the scent of her body; he remembered the taste of her lips, which had been forever mixed with his because, as a man, you never forget the sensation of your first kiss. It always seems to linger on the edge of your memory forever. He also remembered the unbridled hunger that coursed through his veins as they consummated their love on that blanket in the tall grasses of that hot afternoon so many years ago.
“Yes, I remember,” he said, allowing the curved fingers of his right hand to gently wipe away a tear tracking down her left cheek. “Were there any girls here last night?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Jake Bilagody had moved closer. Arthur knew he had seen his small show of affection. “Margaret,” Jake said, “I’ll have one of my officers take you home. If we need anything else, or have any more information, we’ll contact you.”
Margaret nodded and turned to leave, then turned back, her damp eyes pleading with Arthur. “Promise me you’ll find out who did this to my boys, Arthur Nakai. You promise me that.”
Arthur nodded. “Ádee hazhdidziih.” He promised.
Jake guided her to a female officer next to another Nation SUV and instructed the officer to escort her home. The officer nodded and helped Margaret Tabaaha into the back seat of Unit 7. Jake turned toward Arthur and wandered back over slowly, thinking.
Jake said, “What are you doing here?”
Arthur watched the white Explorer drive away with Margaret then gestured after it with his chin. “She called me. I was at another wake for a member of my military unit when she called. Another suicide.”
Jake shook his head and gave his condolences.
Arthur asked, “What can you tell me about this?”
Jake stood in a classic John Wayne pose with one hand on the butt of his .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol and the other hand resting on the black magazine pouches that carried four more clips for the Glock mounted on his hip. “I’m not sure I want to tell you anything,” he said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Arthur said. “After she called me, and I drove all the way out here?” Arthur looked toward the blue-and-red flashing lights on the shaded side of Flat Iron Rock. It seemed as if they had become the spirits of the dead boys, forever trapped in the sandstone like their blood of this now desecrated place. “Look, you know she and I go way back, right?”
“I got that sense when I walked up and saw you touching her face.”
“I felt for her loss, that’s all,” Arthur said. “She’s just lost both of her sons. I couldn’t just act like we had no history. Besides, I’m their godfather.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said, then focused on bringing the conversation back up. “How are you and Sharon doing with the family planning?”
“We’re good.” Arthur grinned. “She’s got us on a schedule.”
Jake chuckled. “That’s always fun.”
Arthur huffed. “Kinda takes all the fun out of it.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Kids are a blessing from the Creator.”
Arthur immediately thought of Jake’s son, Nathan. He remembered getting the call at the forward operating base in Kabul. He had been taken out by an IED on convoy. The rest of the team in the Hummer had survived with burns and broken bones, but Nathan had taken the brunt of the explosion as the truck had rolled over it.
Jake inhaled deeply and let it out through his nose. “Where’s the boys’ father? He needs to be informed about what happened.”
“Dead,” Arthur replied. “Five years after the boys were born. Iraq.”
Jake nodded and looked around at the area. Sweat ran down the back of his short-sleeved uniform shirt and built up in the thick hair on the top of his head underneath his brown Smokey the Bear hat. He studied the cliffs across the canyon and the ones below Camel Rock off in the distance.
“When I was a boy,” Jake said, “my grandfather told me stories about those cliffs over there. About how our people used to perform the eagle-catching-way ceremonies in those crevices. This was a sacred place.” The big man shook his head. “Now all these cliffs are used for is for our people to drink and forget their lives.”
Arthur looked up. “That’s a pretty regular thing here then?
“Oh, yeah,” Jake said regrettably, looking back at Arthur. “This whole area up here is made up of the teenagers and the forty-year-olds, and every age in between. Hell, we’ve even had people call in sayin’ someone got so drunk up here they ended up falling off the cliff.” Jake huffed. “Some of our people are very lost, Arthur. After they tie one on out here, they should have a sweat and clean themselves off.” He directed Arthur’s attention to the wire fencing running down the slope from Flat Iron near the edge of the cliff. “That’s why that’s here. But still, sometimes it doesn’t do any good.” Jake nodded toward the area where the bodies of Tsela and Tahoma Tabaaha had been found. “Looks like the boys were tossing back a few cold ones when they were murdered.”
Arthur looked around at the whole tragic mess. “Margaret asked me to help, Jake. You have to let me see if I can.”
Jake looked at Arthur wryly. “Since this was a murder in Indian Country, you know I’ll have to notify Agent Thorne at the FBI.”
Arthur grinned. “You ever noticed how much Washington loves their acronyms? The FBI is working with the BIA-OJS, with internal assistance from the ICCU, but related to the DOJ or DOD type crap.”
Jake belched a laugh. “Bureaucratical bullshit! Speaking of which—when are you going to apply for that PI license?”
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Why not? I think it could be beneficial if you’re going to keep getting involved in matters you really have no legal right being involved in.”
Arthur thought for a moment. “You mean I’ve been lucky so far, and I’m going to need to CYA?”
Jake nodded affirmatively. “Exactly. Cover your ass, my friend.”
“Hey, it’s not that I’m planning on doing this sort of thing for a living, you know? I already have the outfitting business.”
Jake said, “Look, all I’m telling you is that word is getting out around the rez that you’re someone who gets things done, someone our people can count on when the regular channels become useless. You saving Sharon spoke volumes, Arthur. Our people respect that. They trust you.”
Arthur looked at the big Navajo cop with a thoughtful gaze. “I left that kind of work behind years ago. I’ll think about it, but for now …”
“That’s all I ask,” Jake said with a small grin.
Arthur looked around and noticed several officers scattered about, walking with purpose through the junipers and sparse brush of the San Juan valley. “What’s with all the extra help walking around?”
“I had to call in a favor from the San Juan County Sheriff’s office. They sent over some people from the Farmington and Kirtland substations to help us look for any signs of the shooter, any evidence that might have been left behind.”
“Way out there?”
“This wasn’t a close-range killing,” Jake told him. “And it’s the worst of its kind that I’ve seen in a decade.” Jake removed his hat, pulled a handkerchief from his left hip pocket and dragged it over his head, then wiped his sweatband before sticking the hat back on his head and pocketing the kerchief. “Let’s take a walk.” Jake motioned with a hand in the direction of two blue tarps that looked to be separated by around fifty feet of sloping ground in front of them. “We got the FDMI for San Juan County on the phone right after I contacted the FBI.”
Arthur remembered from his days working with Homeland Security in the Shadow Wolves tactical patrol unit that any time there was a sudden or violent death in the state, a certified field deputy medical investigator would have to be notified. The OMI office was run out of the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine. The whole thing, he recalled, operated out of the university’s Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque.
The two men passed a small crowd of officers performing their assigned duties to where the FDMI was squatting, dictating her observations into a small digital recorder, being sure to keep herself out of the line of sight of the photographer taking crime scene photographs to document the carnage before the FBI started stepping all over everything.
Arthur couldn’t tell how old or tall she was because she was hunched over, focusing on one of the blue tarps covering one of the boys’ bodies. Arthur also couldn’t recognize which of the boys it was because she was blocking his view, but he could see her gray pantsuit and black shoes clear enough. At least she wore flats and not heels on this ground, he thought, laughing to himself that Sharon’s female knowledge was somehow seeping into his male vocabulary. Her blond hair was being tossed by the wind that stirred up tiny dust plumes around the Flat Iron. The tarp had been weighted down with heavy stones gathered from nearby to protect the body. She was holding up one corner of the tarp with a latex-gloved hand and fighting it from flapping in the wind.
Arthur looked at Jake. “Must be pretty bad. How much did Margaret see?”
Jake shook his head, remembering the horrific sight he had witnessed through his Ray Bans. “None of it. I wanted her to remember her boys the way they were.” He breathed a heavy sigh again. “It’s gonna be a closed casket for both of them.”
Jake pointed across a circle of rocks Tsela and Tahoma must have used as a firepit, past the carelessly scattered empty beer cans—some crushed and some not—laying on the ground, to another blue poly tarp being held down by more rocks farther up the slope at the western edge of Flat Iron. “Tahoma tried to get away. You can see where his footprints run from here up the hill toward the rock. He took one in the back of the head. Tsela’s was in the face.”
Arthur cringed, then remarked, “Looks like Tahoma was trying to get behind the rock to shield himself from the shooter.”
“Someone took them out quick,” a female voice said. “Two single gunshot wounds to the head. Best I can do right now on the time of death is between ten p.m. and one a.m., based on what I’m seeing here. Which isn’t very accurate because of this goddamn heat.” She wiped her forehead with the back of a gloved hand. “I’ve lived here for seven years already and still can’t get used to this fucking oven in the summer.”
Arthur and Jake both turned their heads from the second blue tarp and were met by the green eyes of the field deputy medical investigator. She stood about five eleven and looked like someone who worked out. Arthur could always tell the type. Intelligent women always had confidence and didn’t care whom they made uncomfortable. He also decided the blond hair came from a bottle. He felt proud of himself. Despite what Sharon often said, he could be quite observant.
The blond sized up Arthur and smiled.
“Seven years, huh?” Arthur said. “Where from?”
“Chicago,” the young woman said. “Thought by coming out here I’d get away from all the snow and the senseless killings. Guess I got half of that wish—the winters are pretty mild.”
“Arthur, this is Delores Mendoza,” Jake said. “Delores, this is Arthur Nakai. He’s here at the request of the boys’ mother.”
“I’d offer a handshake, but …” She held up her blood-smeared latex fingers. “Whoever took these shots was a professional. My guess is a high-powered rifle.” She looked around at the surrounding area, her blond hair still following the wind. “Probably a .300 or .338 Lapua round. We’ll know more if your men can find me a shell casing the size of my finger, but that’s what the slug we found in the sandstone indicates.”
“How can you be so sure?” Jake asked.
“You’ve seen the bodies, Captain,” Mendoza said. “What else do you think could have done that kind of damage from a distance?” She glanced around the crime scene, marked off by yellow tape that had been tied off or wrapped around the buckwheat and junipers. “No footprints means the killer wasn’t standing anywhere near this area when he took the shots.” She looked over her right shoulder and pointed north across the valley. “Shots that most likely came from that direction. Figuring the angle of the bullet that killed boy number one, which we dug out of the lower rock face over there, I would put it probably somewhere out on that rise there.”
Arthur and Jake’s eyes followed the trajectory from Mendoza’s right index finger to an outcropping of rock in the distance.
“That’s at least three hundred yards away,” Jake remarked.
Delores Mendoza’s green eyes were set smartly in a cinnamon face that wore no makeup, her looks having been artfully crafted by her parents’ genes. The beautiful slope of her nose ended above perfectly contoured lips, and her face left Arthur feeling as though he were cheating on Sharon by simply looking at her.
“More like four hundred, Captain. I’ve seen .338s hit a target over a thousand yards away,” Mendoza remarked. “I think it could handle a few hundred.”
Arthur sized up the distance. “She’s right,” he agreed. “From here I’d figure the flight time of the round being about four seconds. You’d better have your men check that outcrop.”
Bilagody nodded, keyed the microphone on his left shoulder, and instructed the officers to move toward the outcrop Mendoza’s finger had indicated. Mendoza gave Arthur a quick and intentional up-and-down look and smiled again, then glanced over to the other boy’s body. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to examine boy number two.”
“You know they have names, right?” Arthur said sharply.
Mendoza stopped walking, turned around.
“Tsela and Tahoma Tabaaha,” Arthur added, “if you’re interested.”
“I meant no disrespect, Mr. Nakai,” Mendoza responded. “I do apologize.” Her smile turned less bright as she continued her walk up the slope to the second blue plastic tar
p.
Jake leaned in close to Arthur after Delores Mendoza had moved out of earshot. “You think the carpet matches the drapes?”
Arthur turned his head and stared at Jake with a screwed-up face. “You didn’t just ask me that, did you?”
“What?”
Arthur continued to stare. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.”
Jake’s radio crackled. “Captain, we’ve found something. You’d better have a look.”
“Ten-four,” Jake said.
Arthur remembered Jake telling him how much he hated saying that phrase, that it always made him feel like he was on an episode of some seventies cop show.
Jake looked at Arthur. “I suppose you wanna come too?”
“Might as well,” Arthur shrugged, “before Thorne gets here and runs my ass off.”
It took about ten minutes for the two men to make their way down the road and navigate the harsh topography before reaching the outcropping of rock Mendoza had pointed to. Climbing up the ten feet of rock face left dark patches of sweat under their armpits as a result of the unforgiving dry heat. The county sheriff’s officer who had radioed was waiting on top of the rise and grabbed their hands to help pull them up, making sure to keep them from stepping on any of the evidence he had located. The officer waved a hand around.
“Looks like the killer was lying here.” He pointed to an almost imperceptible imprint of a prone body, barely visible in the loose dirt at their feet. “You can see where his boots laid here and where it looks like he set up his weapon.”
Arthur’s eyes scanned the area. The county officer had been correct in his assessment. The lack of any real wind in the hours after the shooting, coupled with the fact that it had not rained in six days, had done much to preserve the image where the shooter had laid. The visible sign he picked up had been smeared, which made it harder to cut—to search the land for clues—but Arthur could make out that the figure in the sand stood at least six feet tall and, judging by the size-eleven boot print which had been resting on its side, a man. Mendoza was right. This was definitely where the shots had come from. And Arthur hadn’t seen this kind of sign since Operation Enduring Freedom.
Death Waits in the Dark Page 3
