Death Waits in the Dark

by Mark Edward Langley

  “They tell you what kind it was? Get a license number?”

  “Like I said, Arthur, they’re teenage girls. You’d have a better chance finding out what brand of eye shadow Katy Perry wears than finding out what kind of vehicle it was.”

  Arthur let out of muffled laugh, which led to a cough that caused his body and head to ache.

  “What?” Jake said. “You’re surprised I know who Katy Perry is?”

  “No,” Arthur grinned, shaking his head. “I’m surprised you know anything about eye shadow.”

  Jake chuckled and said, “Good one,” then looked at Arthur more seriously. “They did say the reason the boys may have been targeted was because of what they had seen.”

  “And what was that?”

  “You remember I told you about the guy who was beaten up by a bunch of roughnecks at a gas station?”

  Arthur nodded.

  “Apparently, the boys not only saw the beating but saw them toss his body into the back of their pickup—you know, the ones they all drive around in with those pennant flags on them. Anyway, the boys had Margaret’s old Dodge Diplomat that night and followed the truck from the station. They followed from a safe distance behind, and when they saw the truck pull off onto a dirt road, they killed their lights and used the moonlight to drive by. I checked with the weather service and there was a full moon that night.” Jake exhaled. “Long story short, Tsela and Tahoma saw the crew dump the guy’s body into a canyon and drive away. I’m guessing, or rather hoping, he was already dead before they threw him over the edge. According to Jennifer and Tiffany, the boys couldn’t tell. The boys thought no one had seen them, but someone must have, or they wouldn’t be dead now.”

  Arthur shook his head. The pains in his body had begun to be suppressed by whatever was dripping from the IV, but the aching in his head continued to linger. He reminded himself not to shake it again.

  “Could the girls tell you which canyon it was?” Arthur asked.

  “Antelope,” Jake replied.

  “You find the body yet?”

  “Nope. But we’re still navigating it. It’s pretty steep and craggy through there, and the girls couldn’t tell us exactly where the body was dumped. I reached out to New Mexico Search and Rescue, and they’ve got a team moving through the canyon now.”

  Arthur nodded, then said, “I had a talk with Elias Dayton yesterday afternoon.”

  Jake’s eyes widened a bit and his brow rose slightly.

  “No shit?”

  “Yes, shit. And then I get mysteriously shot at last night on my way home. That tells you right there I’m onto something.”

  “Could be just a coincidence,” Jake said.

  “Coincidence, my ass!”

  “Calm down, now,” Jake warned. “You don’t want your heart monitor to start spiking.”

  “He must have called the shooter after I left,” Arthur said. “Someone who knew how to find me.” He paused, thinking. “Hell, maybe whoever it was tailed me from the compound?”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t see that happening. You’re a pretty intuitive fellow. You would have spotted someone on your tail. But, hell, even if it was Dayton, you don’t have any proof.”

  Arthur quickly ran his conversation with Elias Dayton through his battered mind and located something clinging to his scrambled brain tissue.

  “Jake,” he said, “whoever you have on it, make sure they go over every inch of my truck. Don’t leave anything unchecked.”

  Jake’s face screwed up. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “The only way someone could have known where I was, is if they were tracking me.”

  “Tracking you?” Jake snorted. “This isn’t Europe, and you’re sure as hell not Jason Bourne.”

  “When I was in Dayton’s office, he got a call.” The hospital room door opened, and Sharon walked back in minus John Sykes in time to hear the last of the conversation. The door closed quietly behind her as she returned to her seat next to her husband’s bed. “It sounded like nothing at the time, but after last night, I’d bet he had someone tagging my truck while I was talking with him.” Arthur looked at Sharon and smiled, took her hand. “He’s running security for NMX, so I bet they have all sorts of high-tech crap they use. Hell, even I could buy a tracking device on the internet for about eighty bucks and track someone using my cell phone.”

  Arthur noticed Jake glance over at Sharon and smile then stand up and turn his attention back to him. “I’ll make sure they loosen every bolt and check behind every piece of insulation. If something’s there, we’ll find it.” Jake frowned and half laughed. “But right now, I’ve got to get going and deal with a world-class horse thief.”

  The muscles of Arthur’s face pulled up into a smile that made his head throb. “World class, huh?”

  “Well, at least decent enough to take off with a fifteen-­thousand-dollar quarter horse at the Quick Stop right there on 64. The guy who was transporting the horse pulled in to take a leak and grab some pizza, so he let the horse out to kinda stretch his legs and tied him to the trailer.” Jake rested his hands on the bed rails. “Well, while the guy was inside, this kid walks up—we’ve got him on surveillance video. He unties the horse, and as sweet as you please, starts walking off with him. The guy comes out still gnawing at his pizza slice, sees the kid, drops the pizza, and chases after him. The kid hops on the horse and takes off heading west. He just about knocks over the transport guy as he gallops off, and before you know it, the kid’s taking the far turn by the Chat & Chew like Secretariat in the final leg at the Belmont Stakes.”

  “You get an ID on the kid?” Sharon asked.

  “Yeah,” Jake answered. “He’s a kid named Billy Begay. Because of the video camera at the Quick Stop we got a good look at him. We ran him through the system and found an address.” Jake stood up and stretched out his lower back, flexed his hands against the building arthritis pain. “We sent an officer to the house, but the kid’s grandmother didn’t know anything and claimed she hadn’t seen him since the day before. We spoke with some other people in the area who said they saw a kid riding the horse, but no one had any idea where he might have gone.” Jake nodded. “We’ll find him.”

  Sharon smiled. “Thanks for everything, Jake.”

  Jake smiled thoughtfully and walked toward the door of the hospital room, then turned to look back at Arthur. “Let’s not make getting shot at a habit, huh?”

  Arthur smiled as Jake left the room, leaving Arthur alone with Sharon.

  “So, when the hell am I getting out of here?” Arthur said. “Please tell me it’s soon.”

  “I spoke with the doctor while your buddy Sykes and I were having coffee and discussing your military career.” She paused to cock her head slightly. “I never knew you were such a player back in the day.”

  Arthur looked at her from under his bruised brow. “I plead the fifth.”

  Sharon grinned.

  “What other lies did he tell you about me, Chʼil bilátah hózhóón.”

  Arthur saw his wife’s face light up instantly. “You haven’t called me flower in forever.”

  “Not since we first started dating,” Arthur reminded her, holding her hand as firmly as his bruised and aching body would let him.

  Sharon stood up and leaned over him, hovering briefly before kissing him passionately. Arthur winced at first, but her lips and tongue quickly sent a message to his brain that seemed to override the pain in his body. His eyes closed momentarily then opened and watched the green line of his heart rate hop across the screen of the monitor stationed above him. Below it he observed the yellow line representing his blood pressure as it peaked and dove smoothly along the other screen. When Sharon’s kiss ended, she sat back down and licked her lips as if she were savoring a forbidden delicacy.

  “Damn, you taste good.”

  “It’s t
he medication. Now, where are my clothes? I want to get the hell out of here.”

  “Not so fast, Super Indian. Since you have no broken bones, and they’ve run all their tests for traumatic brain injury and found nothing, you’re supposed to be released by three o’clock, which means probably closer to four or five. You’re not going anywhere for a few more hours, and then you’re going straight home to rest.”

  “Somebody tried to kill me,” Arthur said. “And I’ll take all bets at the Northern Edge Casino as to who it was. All I have to do is prove it.”

  “You’re not proving anything to anyone today,” Sharon scolded. “You’re going home to rest tonight, and that’s that.” She stood and crossed her arms, a look of determination across her face. “Or do I have to break something to keep you here?”

  Sometimes the better part of valor is knowing when to pick your battles, Arthur thought. But he also knew she was right, and given the degree of pain he was feeling, although tempered by the medication, he decided to acquiesce. Even though he had felt far worse in November 2001 when he had been part of the first Marine forces to strike al-Qaeda after the Twin Towers had fallen. This? This pain was nothing compared to what he had dealt with when that IED had exploded outside Kandahar. This he could shake off, unlike the ringing in his ears and the shock to his body that day on patrol when others hadn’t been so lucky.

  Besides, he figured, if the slug that was pulled from the Bronco matched the ones that killed the boys, it meant two things: they were fired by the same person, and whoever it was had missed him intentionally. But why? A shooter with that kind of skill could certainly miss if they wanted to, but the chances of missing by accident were extremely slim. They would have had to calculate elevation, windage, humidity, the length of distance, the vehicle’s rate of speed, and how far ahead of the target they would have to be to hit the target.

  It takes a skilled shooter to miss on purpose.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Arthur woke slowly but sensed instantly he was not in bed alone. The unmistakable smell of wolf-dog hung in the air, and the heavy extra weight that caused the mattress to sink told him that Ak’is had been keeping a watchful eye on overnight.

  Arthur reached out a shaky hand and raked it over the big dog’s head, down his thick neck, and over his muscular, furry shoulder. He often found it worked as a tranquilizer for him, the way they say therapy dogs work for seniors and kids in hospitals. He managed to lift his head enough to see Ak’is’ golden eyes staring back at him with what appeared to be a worried look. Arthur told him in Diné not to worry. That he was strong. The wolf-dog expelled a deep breath and turned his head into Arthur’s petting hand.

  Arthur’s eyes moved toward the windows of his and Sharon’s bedroom, noticing that they had been opened to allow the high-desert breeze to carry in the healing scent of the sage that surrounded their home. He watched as the Creator’s breath played with the lace curtains and made them dance. The docking station where his phone charged showed 9:56 a.m. floating in its ocean of incandescent blue. As he cradled his throbbing head back into the pillow, all he could remember was that they had arrived home around six the night before after spending most of the previous day in the hospital after being shot at and surviving the accident the night before that. He remembered Sharon helping him upstairs and her putting him to bed while Ak’is had followed carefully behind. Now it was two hours from noon, almost two days later. Man, he thought, time really flies when you’re comatose.

  Ak’is licked his lips twice and continued to watch Arthur from under a thick brow that moved with each new eye position. Arthur could hear the big dog’s deep, steady breathing, and it added to the calming effect washing over him. Both of them had just closed their eyes when Sharon entered the bedroom carrying a tray of food and a mug of coffee. Arthur looked at her and smiled. “Wow. Breakfast in bed? I should get hurt more often.”

  “Ha ha,” Sharon remarked playfully. “I suggest you don’t, or I’ll have to tie you to this bed and keep you as my prisoner.”

  Arthur struggled to sit himself up and propped his back against the headboard. The pain in his body was definitely still there. His legs hurt, his back ached, and his head still had a residual fog blowing through it that rivaled a London night back when Jack the Ripper ruled.

  “As I recall,” Arthur joked, “that didn’t end well for James Caan.”

  Ak’is raised his head just enough to sniff the aroma wafting from the tray. Sharon set it on Arthur’s nightstand. Not sensing anything appetizing, Ak’is rested his big head back on the bed. Sharon stood with her arms crossed in front of her.

  “Don’t worry,” Sharon said, “I don’t know where you keep the sledgehammer.” Her grin suddenly took a devious turn. “Although I would have you all to myself …” She sat on the edge of the bed and slid a soft hand down his smooth, muscular chest and under the single sheet that covered him. He could feel her fingers searching slowly, the tips of them gently brushing his skin. “I could do whatever I wanted to you for as long as I wanted …”

  “Do tell,” Arthur said. Groggy or not, he wanted to see where this attempt at morning seduction went.

  Suddenly, and to his great dismay, she pulled her hand away and readjusted the sheet. “But that’s only if I were in the mood. Which I’m not, because you need your rest. I wouldn’t want to take advantage of an injured man.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Arthur said. “Take as much advantage as you like.”

  Sharon laughed, picked up the tray and placed it on his lap, took one of the napkins and opened it, laid it over his chest. “Just eat your breakfast and shut up. And by the way, mister, why is it I’m always the one cooking for you and you’re never cooking for me?”

  “That’s because I let my fingers do the dialing.” Arthur picked up his fork and ate some of the eggs still hot on the plate.

  “Well, there are times when a girl likes to be taken care of, you know?”

  “I’ll make a note.” He sipped some coffee.

  Sharon feigned frustration and said, “I’ve got some news for you.”

  “What kind of news?”

  “I had my assistant at the station do some checking on Margaret today, had her go through public records and whatever else she could find.”

  Arthur swallowed the coffee and replaced it with two bites of thick bacon. “Checking out my old girlfriend, are you?”

  Sharon grinned and gave Arthur a wrinkled look. “Not hardly. I just thought I’d follow up with her while you were sleeping.” She sucked on the tip of her middle finger and tapped it against the corner of her husband’s mouth, rescuing a crumb of bacon that had clung there. “You don’t mind a little help, do you?”

  He watched her lips close around the finger and suck off the bacon crumb. He was starting to enjoy breakfast in bed.

  “Not at all,” he said, still savoring the taste of bacon. Which ranked right up there with his taste for mutton, but not even Sharon could prepare mutton the way his maternal grandmother could, back when she was alive. “What were you hoping to find?”

  Sharon slowly, seductively withdrew her finger from her mouth and said, “I wasn’t sure, but what she did turn up surprised me.”

  Arthur ate some more bacon with his eye on the orange juice sitting in the frosted glass. “And what was that?”

  Sharon wiped her finger on his napkin. “Did you know that Margaret owns land off of 550?”

  Arthur stopped midsip and swallowed. “She never men­tioned that to me. Not even when we were kids.”

  Sharon looked at him quizzically. “Really? Hm. Well, somewhere back around 1874 the allotment processes the government put in motion divided our land and gave Margaret’s family forty acres east of Huerfano and south of Angel Peak badlands.”

  “That seems like a lot of land for the white man to have given an Indian in those days. Are you sure about that?”

/>   “Didn’t pay attention much in rez public school, did you?”

  Arthur ate some eggs as she explained.

  “The provisions of the Dawes Act of 1870 granted the head of a family one hundred and sixty acres, an orphan or person over eighteen years of age eighty acres, and a person under the age of eighteen forty acres. I’m guessing Margaret’s family member—probably a male—was under the age of eighteen.”

  “Like I said, she never mentioned it to me,” Arthur said, adding hot sauce to his eggs.

  “Probably slipped her foggy memory. Didn’t you say she was a glonnie?”

  “What? No!” Arthur glared at her. “Her life’s been ripped apart, Sharon, and she looked for solace in a bottle. Big deal! She’s no drunkard. Never has been.”

  Sharon hesitated, realizing an invisible line had just been crossed, before testing her next question. “You sure you’re not looking through the skewed lens of adolescent love?”

  Arthur shook his head absently, the thoughts of Margaret and that morning three days ago playing out briefly in his mind. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” Sharon said. “I understand what you mean.”

  “Do you think there’s a way to tie her property to the killings of Tsela and Tahoma? Could NMX have wanted her land badly enough to kill for it?”

  “I don’t know. But I could do some more digging and see what I come up with.”

  Arthur drank some coffee. “If we go down that rabbit hole, my guess would be they probably tried to buy her out, or made her an offer to lease, and she refused. Or, if we want to get archaic, they could have seen her as an obstacle and decided to revert back to the tried-and-true Colonial way of acquiring Native lands: by taking away her reasons for not selling.”

  Sharon said, “That’s a wild stretch in today’s world.”

  Arthur’s phone broke up the conversation from atop the docking station. Sharon reached over quickly and grabbed it while it continued to ramble through the agonizing xylophone scale. Recognizing the familiar name and number, she tapped the big Accept button.