He pulled open the top left-hand drawer of his desk and removed a small jar of arthritis cream, twisted off the lid, and set it top down on his blotter. Dipping the index and middle finger of his right hand into the container, he removed a daub of cream and set the jar on the desk next to the lid. Massaging the cream into the joints of his left hand, he focused on the night ahead of him. Currently it was the Tuba City district captain’s task to fill the vacant seat left by the abdicating chief in Window Rock. Another year of this round-robin crap, and he’d have to think of abdicating himself. This was the second year without an actual leader, and the division captains were still taking up the slack. The first year had been rough. But now, after the long commutes, the late nights, and the early mornings, he was somewhat used to it, even at his age. The teenage horse thief had been apprehended and was now resting in a cell, awaiting arraignment. The transport driver had taken up residence in one of the local motels until the horse could be loaded up, and he could be on his way. Outside of that, it had been a slow day, and Jake was glad of it.
A knock on the doorjamb of his office rattled the captain’s concentration. He lifted his head to see Officer Brandon Descheene standing in his doorway, grinning sheepishly.
“What are you looking at?” Jake barked at the twenty-seven-year-old. “I’ve even got a plastic pill container at home with the days of the week on it.” Jake massaged the white cream into the tissue of his left hand until it vanished. “Wait till you get old, kid. It’s all fun and games now, but you just wait.”
Officer Descheene stepped into the office and stood in front of the desk. “I just came back from patrol with a DUI,” he said, hesitating. “I put her in holding until you decided what you wanted to do with her.”
Bilagody screwed the lid back on the jar and returned it to the upper left-hand drawer. “Did you file any paperwork?”
“No, sir. I literally just got back about ten minutes ago. As I said, I wanted to see what you wanted to do first.”
Jake’s face twisted in confusion at the statement. “And why is that? Don’t tell me it’s that singer from the Dancing Water Casino again?” He shook his head. “That woman couldn’t hold her liquor if you glued the glass to her hand.”
Officer Brandon Descheene looked embarrassed, although not for himself, and glanced at his shoes again so his eyes wouldn’t meet with his captain’s. “No, sir,” he said. “It’s Margaret Tabaaha.”
* * *
Captain Jake Bilagody opened the door of Interrogation Room One. He had removed his sidearm and given it to Descheene even though he knew there was no real threat. It was procedure to do so, and what type of example would he be to his officers if he ignored procedure. Margaret Tabaaha sat slumped over and sleeping on the bare table in front of the mirrored two-way glass, her head resting on her crossed arms like a kindergartener at nap time. Her hair, a black unwashed mess, lay covering most of her back and her left arm like a large Chinese paper fan that had been opened before she had fallen asleep.
Bilagody noticed her dingy white shirt, dirty jeans, and the equally soiled gym shoes that offset the sanitized feel of the small room. And judging by the aroma wafting from her pores, she hadn’t bathed or changed her clothes since he had last seen her at Flat Iron Rock. He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped over to her. Her breathing was relaxed by sleep and her breaths were being doled out in long, evenly measured doses by her drunken state.
Jake reached out a cautious hand and gently jostled her left shoulder. “Margaret?”
No response.
He jostled her again. “Atsiʼ,” he said softly, calling her daughter in their Native language, as most elders would, even if the person they were speaking to was not directly related to them.
Again, there was no real response, just a soft sigh and a slight movement of a foot. Jake nudged her shoulder with the back of his large hand this time and raised his baritone voice. “Hey! Wake up!”
“Fuck you!” she grunted, slapping his hand away as she pushed herself into a lazy sitting position. “What you doing? Leave me alone, hágoshį́į́ʼ?”
Jake smiled because she had used a Navajo word at the end of an English sentence. “At least you have not forgotten how to speak Diné, drunk or not.”
Jake could tell she was having trouble focusing her glazed eyes because it was taking her too long to respond. “I can remember a lot more words that just okay in Diné,” she chided. “Téliichoʼí!”
Jake laughed, and when he did—which seemed to be only on rare occasions these days—his belly shook noticeably. “I’ve been called a lot worse than jackass in my time,” he said as he reached out and tugged a metal chair away from the other side of the table. He sat his large frame down in front of her. “Margaret,” he began sympathetically. “Do you know why you were brought here?”
Her head tilted back and wobbled a bit as she focused on the question. “Cause your boy picked me up.”
“That’s right.”
“I was jus’ going home, eh? I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.” Margaret’s head leaned forward as if to doze off, then snapped back. “You can’t keep me here, ya know?” A drunken thumb pointed at her chest. “I have rights.”
Jake rubbed his face and took a breath, four fingers covering his mouth, thumb resting against his cheekbone. His lips tasted the lingering arthritis cream, and he quickly pulled his hand away from his face and wiped his lips on his shirt sleeve.
By the way she was slurring and her condition of dress, Jake knew her blood alcohol level was surely above the .08 percent limit for operating a motor vehicle. Of that there was no question. But there were extenuating circumstances here, ones that some, if not most people with a conscience and a moral compass would understand. But would they understand what he was about to do? It was a good thing he was one of the acting chiefs of police with the Navajo Department of Public Safety. He closed his eyes briefly and wished he had his ceremonial pipe. He could offer his prayers in the smoke and let the smoke take his prayers to the Creator. Hódzą́ shiih nilé. Give me wisdom.
“Actually, Margaret, I can hold you here … and for as long as I need to.” He watched her stare at him through inebriated eyes, then added, “I think that for tonight, I’m going to keep you safe.”
She scoffed and belched an invisible cloud that almost gagged him, then paused for a moment as if to let her dull eyes settle on a distant memory. “My boys are dead,” she mumbled. “They won’ be comin’ home no more. My husband’s dead, too.” She exhaled sorrowfully. “I have nothing.”
“Listen to me, Margaret. Margaret, listen to me,” he repeated calmly. “I’m going to keep you here until tomorrow so you can sober up. And when your head is clear, I’ll have them bring you in some food and coffee, and we’re going to have a little talk.” He nodded his head for her to see. “Wouldn’t that be nice? After that, you can go home.” He held her face up with his half-curled fingers. “Okay?”
Before she could muster an answer, her eyes fell shut and her body went limp. Jake was in the process of catching her as Officer Descheene entered the interrogation room. He rushed forward and took her dead weight from Jake.
“Let’s get her to a quiet place to sleep it off.”
Officer Descheene nodded.
“You were right,” Jake said. “Forget about that report. And have her car towed to the station so she can get back home tomorrow. I’ll pay for it. And make sure she gets breakfast in the morning.”
Officer Brandon Descheene nodded again. Jake instructed him to lift her feet and open the door. He put his big arms under hers and carried most of her weight, and the three of them left the room quietly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jake had been right. The weathered single-wide trailer of Rosheen Notah sat on the left side of the road across from the spectacle that was the Black Mounds of the Navajo Nation. Its robin-egg-blue color had faded ove
r the years into an almost white, which contrasted well against the remarkable layers of sandstone, shale, and coal that had been so artfully and precisely fashioned over the past sixty-five million years. The tops of the rounded mounds were covered by a thick layer of caprock that gave the badlands-designated wilderness area an eerie blackish-gray lunar landscape that reminded him of the Lybrook formations farther south, only on a smaller scale.
The pregnant banana on wheels took the rutted dirt exit that veered off to the left at a forty-five-degree angle from the graded road. It bounced along the uneven stretch that led to the trailer and quickly rolled to a stop. Sharon and Arthur both noticed the bank of angled solar panels lining the rooftop, soaking up the sun’s energy as it moved across Father Sky. They glanced at each other before getting out and feeling the heat of the late afternoon baking them in their clothes. The slight breeze that blew across the barren land did little to cool their skin. Arthur could tell by the rain clouds moving in from the southwest that at least the rain held the promise of cooler temperatures, however briefly they might last. The winds would blow, the loose sands would shift, and the ancestors would visit in the form of the water that would fall from the sky and fill the dry creek beds and washes. Arthur had always envisioned them as persistent evolutionary craftsman that continued to carve their way through the landscape like an army of woodworkers’ chisels, each one further deepening the grooves and crevices already created by the ancient ones.
Sharon said, “Well, we didn’t get shot at, so that’s a plus.”
“Looks like no one’s home.”
“Jake said he had a woman, right?”
“Yeah,” Arthur replied. “Maybe she’s at work. I don’t see a vehicle.” He looked down at the crisscrossing tracks in the sand at his feet and on the ground around them then squatted down for a closer look. “I make out two vehicles from the tread patterns. One’s a wide-lug off-road tire and the other is a regular light-truck all-terrain tire. Both of them head off the way we came.”
“I love it when you talk rubber,” Sharon quipped.
Arthur laughed as he walked up to the door of the trailer and tried the knob. Locked. Sharon walked up to a middle window. With the trailer resting on wheels and cinder blocks for stability, the window was just out of reach.
“Lift me up so I can see in,” she said.
Arthur walked over and squatted down, wrapped his aching arms around her thighs, and lifted her into the air on throbbing legs. The pain of his bruised thighs and battered shins telegraphed they couldn’t hold their position for long, even as she alternated from hand to hand like a shovel-snouted lizard on the hot aluminum facade and peered into the trailer. Arthur felt the weight of his wife in his biceps as he nuzzled the left side of his face comfortably against her behind.
“Don’t see anyone inside,” Sharon reported, “and nothing out of the ordinary either—living room-kitchen combo with, I’m guessing, a master bedroom in the back and a smaller one up front. You can put me down now.”
“Not sure I want to,” Arthur said confidently. “I kinda like where my head is right now. Feels all nice and cozy.”
Sharon slapped the top of his head playfully. “Put me down, you fool. My hands can’t take much more of this aluminum.”
Reluctantly, Arthur squatted and placed her gently back on the ground. She spun quickly, lazily wrapping her arms around his neck. “You liked that, huh?”
“Very much so,” he grinned.
Sharon kissed his mouth briefly. “Ha! Bet you did!”
As they separated, the growling engine of a vehicle could be heard approaching from behind. They turned as a faded mint-green 1980s Ford pickup came charging up the small incline toward the ridge where the trailer was stationed. Arthur couldn’t tell who the driver was; however, the law of probabilities dictated it was most likely Rosheen Notah.
They both watched the truck skid to a dusty stop about twenty feet from them. Arthur made note of the N8VGAL front license plate. The woman behind the wheel stared at them suspiciously, possibly determining whether she should take the risk of getting out or cranking the wheel hard to the right and punching the gas. She made her decision and, to Arthur’s surprise, turned off the engine.
When she climbed out of the truck, Arthur noticed the tight jeans and a light-blue tank top that showed off the tattoos on both of her arms, while a pair of well-worn cowboy boots seemed at home wearing the soil of the Land of Enchantment. Her hair was ebony and almost as long as Sharon’s. It seemed as though she had paid heed to her elders when she was a little girl about not cutting her hair. It was told, Arthur remembered, that the heavy rains that came across the parched land represented one’s hair. And if one didn’t cut one’s hair then one would always have rain for their crops and animals. But if you disobeyed and cut your hair, the rain’s blessings would vanish along with your locks and your animals and crops would starve.
“Who the hell are you two?” the woman asked.
“I’m Arthur Nakai, and this is my wife, Sharon. Are you Rosheen Notah?”
The woman nodded. “Nakai?” Rosheen said. “John often spoke of you. He always called you a friend.” She noticed his bruised hands and lacerated face. “What happened to you?”
“Can we go inside?” he suggested. “We need to talk about John.”
“Sure. I figured you’d be around some time.”
She walked between them, keys in hand, and took the few steps up to the locked door of the trailer. Once unlocked, they followed her inside. The inside was just as hot as the outside. It felt like they had walked into an oven. Rosheen moved to a window-unit air conditioner and switched it on high. Arthur could feel the unit working hard as it geared up to fill the room and then the trailer with refrigerated air.
Rosheen Notah said, “Solar panels can only do so much. John bought us a 5000 BTU unit, so it would cool this place down quickly. I can’t leave the AC on all day while I’m gone or I’ll have no power in the cells for anything else. You two want something to drink?”
“Water would be good,” Sharon said. Arthur agreed.
Rosheen opened the small fridge in the kitchen, pulled out two bottles of water and doled them out, then pulled one for herself and sat on the tattered sofa against the wall opposite of the living room. She propped her feet up on the secondhand coffee table, boots and all. Sharon and Arthur sat in two armchairs that matched the sofa’s dull cloth pattern and faced it at right and left angles. Arthur’s eyes ran over the cluster of photographs on the wall above the sofa where Rosheen sat. They ranged from happy pictures of her and John Sykes to what appeared to be family photos to photos of John looking proud at the back of his Dodge pickup, an array of rifles laid out on the gray bedrug, to photos of his Marine unit back in the day. Arthur also noticed there was no TV in the main room, just a radio on the kitchen counter. Out here you either had satellite, if you could afford it, or nothing at all. And knowing John, Arthur figured, there wasn’t any need for it.
There was an awkward silence among the three of them until Rosheen Notah asked about Arthur’s face again.
“Your boyfriend shot at my husband,” Sharon stated flatly. “He almost killed him.”
“Bullshit!” Rosheen said. “You two were like brothers. He told me so. He would never have done that.”
Arthur said, “So John wasn’t here last night?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he was three nights ago?” Arthur asked calmly, unscrewing the cap on his bottle before taking a drink.
“I don’t know,” Rosheen said. “When I got home from work, he wasn’t here. But that’s not unusual. Oftentimes he gets home after I do, so I didn’t think anything of it. But when he didn’t get home by ten o’clock, I called him.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t answer. Phone went straight to voicemail. I got tired of waiting, so I put a plate of foo
d in the fridge for him and went to bed. He woke me up when he got home—”
“What time was that?” Arthur interrupted.
“Around two or three, I think. I asked him where he’d been. He said he was out night shooting. He’d just bought a new scope or something and was trying it out. Yesterday I came home from work and noticed that some of his stuff was gone. I haven’t heard from him since. But I still don’t believe John took a shot at you.”
“The police seem pretty sure,” Arthur countered. “The bullets they dug out of my truck match the ones used to the kill two boys at Flat Iron Rock three nights ago.” He waited for her reaction. Nothing. “And they found his fingerprints at the murder scene.” Arthur watched her eyes widen slightly at that revelation, her mind tumbling through thoughts he could only imagine.
“I don’t want to believe you, but it’s looking like I have no other choice.”
Rosheen Notah got up and removed a framed photograph from the wall that Arthur had been staring at, walked across the floor to Arthur and handed it to him. Arthur took the photograph and looked at it.
“I remember the day this was taken,” he said. “Opening weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom.”
“I bet there’s a story,” Sharon said.
“Our base camp had been set up in an airport southwest of Mosul in Iraq. We had a Fobbit take this pic of us before we went to the mess tent.”
“Fobbit?” Sharon said.
“A soldier that never leaves the forward operating base,” Rosheen blurted out.
Arthur smiled. Sharon looked at her.
Arthur’s eyes never left the photograph, remembering every detail of that day. “Twenty minutes after this was taken, some Haji blew himself up with a suicide bomb he’d smuggled into the tent in a cooler and everything turned to shit.” He sighed. “It sucks when no one outside the gate wants you there.”
Death Waits in the Dark Page 14
