by Aimée
“Sheriff Taylor and I need to ask you and Leonard a few questions about an employee from LabKote,” Ella said.
“Oh, you mean the one who killed himself?” She didn’t wait, but continued. “I heard that you were looking into that.”
Ella didn’t bother to ask for more of an explanation. “Can we speak to Leonard, too?”
“I can help you now, but you’ll have to wait to talk to my husband. He went to the store.”
“Okay. That’s not a problem,” Ella said, taking out a notepad from her jacket pocket. “I already know you worked the same shift, but how well did you know the deceased?”
“Better than Leonard did, I’d bet, but we weren’t really friends or anything. I was his secretary. I compiled and bound his reports, placed orders for shipping supplies, kept expense accounts, and stuff like that. He wasn’t easy to get along with, but he liked talking to a woman, I think, because we tend to be more sympathetic.”
“What did you two talk about?” Ella asked, “aside from business matters, that is.”
“We spoke about his wife a lot. He loved her very much. I didn’t mention Leonard too often to him, though, because it just reminded him that his own marriage had broken up. He also wasn’t too happy with his work, and sometimes he’d let off some steam.”
“What was wrong with his job?” Taylor asked. “I understood he had a pretty important position.”
“He did, and he was well paid. But he was always finding things wrong.”
“Like what?” Taylor pressed.
“Oh, the processing machines that sterilized the labware didn’t operate at the level he wanted, or shipping was taking too long for something, or not long enough. With him, it was always something. That was just his nature, you know.”
Ella nodded. “How was his overall job performance?”
She considered it for a long time before answering. “Good, I’d say, but I know that Doctor Landreth and him had some problems getting along, mostly because Doctor Landreth wouldn’t let Mister Hansen breathe without looking over his shoulder.”
“Why do you think he was doing that?” Taylor asked.
Just then the door opened and Leonard came in. “I thought I recognized your Jeep, Ella. Are you investigating Hansen’s death? I’d heard that the police didn’t believe it was suicide.”
Taylor glanced at Ella, then back at Leonard. “Does everyone know about that?”
“Pretty much everyone at work, anyway,” Leonard said, sitting next to his wife. “Poor Hansen was a nice enough guy. And he drove a great little sports car, too.”
“Do you think Doctor Landreth had a reason to be looking over Hansen’s shoulder all the time?” Taylor asked.
“Nah, that’s just Doctor Landreth’s management style,” Leonard answered. “He’s always a bit nervous, or insecure. He tells you to do something, then watches like a hawk to make sure you do it just the way he said. And he’s almost as paranoid about security as Morgan is.”
“He’s not that bad,” Bertha said, then stopped. “Come to think of it, he is.”
“So would you two say that Landreth was victimizing Hansen?” Taylor asked.
Leonard shook his head. “No man, I’m telling you, he was like that to everyone. Well, except for Mister Morgan.”
“But the thing is that it bothered Kyle more than it did other people,” Bertha said. “He was very precise about everything he did, and it really annoyed him to have Doctor Landreth constantly second-guessing him on everything. Kyle—Mister Hansen, liked having the final word and Landreth never let him have it.”
Taylor looked at Leonard. “You work on the assembly line?”
“Yeah, mostly boxing up the sterilized packs when they reach the end of the line. I’m a shipping clerk, and I fill and box up orders from customers. The critical stuff’s all automated.”
“Have you ever had any kind of run-in with Landreth?”
Leonard laughed. “Me? I doubt he even knows my name. Heck, the only reason Hansen ever spoke to me was because my wife was his secretary.”
Leonard looked at the cuckoo clock up on the wall. “I’ve got to get going. I’m on the evening shift.”
Ella stood and walked with Taylor to the door. “Thanks for your help. Both of you.”
“Don’t discuss what we spoke about here today with anyone else, will you?” Taylor asked. “It could slow down our investigation.”
“People will know you were here. They saw you drive up,” Leonard said. “But we’ll say that you asked us a couple of questions, and then Ella wanted to visit. They won’t believe it, but they won’t make a big deal out of it either.”
They were underway a few minutes later. “They sure gave us a new perspective on these people,” Ella said.
“Yeah, but I still don’t have a clear grasp on what we’re dealing with here. Office politics can generate rivalries, but I just can’t see Landreth plotting to kill one of his subordinates,” Taylor said. “He’d rather lord over them.”
“What kind of background did you get on the victim?” Ella asked. “Anything interesting on his life away from work?”
“Near as I can figure, he didn’t have one. I’ve spoken to his neighbors, checked church and social organizations, but it all came down to the same thing. After his marriage broke up, Hansen became a loner.”
“He must have had some friends,” Ella said, unable to imagine what it would be like to be that alone. On the Rez, between family and friends, people always had someone to count on.
“I think he was a very lonely man because he cut off most of the ties he had with his past after his divorce. He apparently would go to the small park near his home to watch the kids play baseball on a regular basis, but no one spoke to him and he didn’t speak to anyone.”
She shuddered. She couldn’t imagine living that way.
“Tell me about this Wilma Francisco we’re going to next,” Taylor said. “What do you know about her?”
“She’s young, in her early twenties I guess. Her parents are traditionalists and she lives with them in one of our outlying areas.”
“You mean in a hogan and that type of thing?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s usually a path only the real old ones prefer. This is a house the tribe probably helped fund, but they have a ceremonial hogan in the back. If they’re like other families in that area, they probably live off their garden patches and alfalfa field, a few fruit trees, and a small herd of sheep they graze up in the hills. Some work with arts and crafts as well, too.”
“It’s probably different for a young woman from a family like that to work for an ultra tech company like LabKote.”
“That depends,” Ella said hesitantly. “Our traditionalists are usually very poor people, money wise. When things like the need for a new wood stove comes up, they do what they have to in order to survive.”
“Don’t we all.”
It took twenty minutes of hard driving. Unfortunately, by the time they got there, the small, cinder-block house seemed deserted.
“You think we wasted our time?” Taylor asked.
“No, they’re here. See the trace of smoke coming from the wood stove? They’re just trying to make up their minds about us.” She gestured past the sheep corral. A loom was set up in the shade of a cottonwood branch arbor. “They’ve been weaving.”
Minutes passed by slowly, but eventually an elderly woman came to the door and waved for them to approach.
Ella could sense Taylor’s uneasiness as they approached. This had to be a jolt from everything he was used to, and she sympathized. Fitting in, even for her, wasn’t always easy.
Emily Francisco stood in the porch, her eyes filled with distrust, as Ella greeted her. “What has brought you here, Policewoman?” she asked.
Direct and to the point. There’d be no chitchat here today. Ella explained that they needed to talk to Wilma, and felt the temperature drop ten degrees.
“Why do you want to talk to my daughter?
Is it about that place where she works?”
“In a way. It’s about one of the employees. Can we talk to her?”
She pursed her lips and gestured Navajo style at a young woman walking back toward the house in the twilight with a scraggly looking dog. “There she is.” She regarded Ella with open suspicion. “You’re keeping secrets from me, Policewoman, but it’s not necessary. We all know about that company. It brings money, but it’s not a good thing for the tribe. It’s the start of the end, you know.”
She’d heard it all before but, although she disagreed, this was not the time to argue about such matters. “Thanks for your time,” she said, then walked over to meet Wilma, Taylor at her side.
Wilma’s smile faded the second she recognized Ella. Taylor noticed and muttered, “I think she’ll be trouble.”
“No, give her some slack. She knows that we were at the plant, and is probably worried about what we’ll ask her.”
Wilma came up to them rather than continuing toward the house. She stopped when she reached a large, crumbling sandstone boulder, and sat down. “What brings you here, Officers. Is it about the dead man?”
Ella nodded, nothing that Wilma had refrained from using the name of the dead. It was a custom among the traditionalists not to mention the recently deceased by their names. Otherwise, their chindi might come. The chindi was worse than a ghost. It was pure evil. The good in a man went on to merge with Universal Harmony, but it’s counter was said to remain forever earthbound.
“What can you tell us about him?”
Wilma shrugged, not looking directly at either of them. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever comes to your mind,” Ella replied.
“I barely knew him. Most of the men flirt with me or ask me out, even some of the married ones, but he never did.”
Taylor checked down at his list. “You’re the quality control manager?”
She smiled. “It’s a fancy title, but all I do is randomly select sterilized packs of labware coming off the line and send them on to quality control. There, the lab techs conduct tests to make sure the petri dishes and such meet LabKote specs. That’s it.”
“And when they don’t?” Ella asked.
“They’re cleaned up, and those that can be reprocessed go back through the system. Nobody gets into trouble, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Ella watched her. Wilma was uneasy about something, but it wasn’t the lack of eye contact that gave out signals. In contrast of the way things were off the Rez, here, a younger person from a traditional background never made eye contact with an older one. It was a sign of disrespect. But the feeling that Wilma was holding something back still niggled at the back of her mind.
“Was Hansen difficult to work with?” Taylor asked.
She saw Wilma stiffen as if she’d been slapped, then with effort she relaxed. “No. At least he tried to remember our customs,” she said pointedly.
Ella saw Taylor’s eyes narrow slightly and knew he had no idea what he’d just done. She would make it a point to explain it to him later. He’d gotten off lucky that Wilma was a young woman working in a nontraditional profession. The older ones would have terminated the interview immediately.
“Try to remember,” Ella persisted. “Was he considered a good employee, or did he get into trouble often?”
“He was hard to work with. He did get into trouble a lot, but it was only because he demanded so much of others—including the big bosses. He was the most precise person I’ve ever known. I can tell you that he was always making me do things over. If the quality control report had even one misspelled word, I’d have to do it again. He seemed to know and notice absolutely everything.”
“How did he get along with his supervisor?” Taylor asked. “Did they argue a lot?”
Ella smiled, realizing that this time he’d avoided mentioning names. The sheriff was a fast study.
“The dead man had his own way of doing things and his Anglo supervisor was the same way. They clashed a lot because of that.”
“Do you like working at the plant?” Ella asked, still sensing that something wasn’t being said. When Wilma gave her a startled look and hesitated, she knew she’d hit the target.
“I like the pay,” Wilma said cautiously. “But I get nervous when I can’t figure people out and that place…” She shook her head. “I guess I’ve just been listening too much to my mother. Don’t mind me.”
“No, stay on that. Tell us why you’re uneasy.”
She took a deep breath then let it out again. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Maybe it’s the competition thing, you know?”
Ella nodded, but Taylor gave her a puzzled look. “I don’t get it.”
Wilma looked at the ground, gathering her thoughts, then finally spoke. “Outside the Rez everyone works and works and works and they never have enough. Here, we work only until we have enough to pay for what we need. Then we go back to our sheep, or our land. When I look at the Anglo workers, I see that they’re always busy trying to get ahead, but even when they get a promotion, they’re still not happy for long. Whatever it is that they’re looking for, is never where they look. Do you understand?”
Taylor nodded, but didn’t comment. “Was the dead man,” he asked, using her own term, “ambitious like that?”
She nodded. “He liked being upper level and feeling important. He often bragged to others that the plant would shut down without him. But it hasn’t.”
“Did he have any enemies?” Taylor asked.
“Not that I know about. But it’s hard to say because, sometimes, competition crosses the line and gets into some really nasty stuff.”
As they reached the small-frame house, Ella said good-bye to Wilma then walked back to the vehicle. “She opened an avenue of investigation for us, but I’m not sure you caught it.”
Taylor smiled. “You mean when she said that Hansen believed the plant would shut down without him?” He saw Ella nod and smiled. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing you were. I wonder if someone actually believed that.”
“I know traditionalists don’t want the plant here. Most of them aren’t militant, but there’s the Fierce Ones, and they make up their own rules.” Ella considered the matter carefully. “You better let me tackle that group alone. I’ll have better luck than you.”
“Amen to that.”
Ella dropped Taylor back off at the station. “I’ll keep you updated, particularly if I learn anything new.”
“Your brother is one of the Fierce Ones, isn’t he?” Taylor asked.
“Yes, but he’s strictly nonviolent. He’s a hataalii, one of our healers.” Seeing the expression on his face, she knew what he was thinking. “I won’t cut the group any slack just because my brother chooses to align himself with them,” she said answering his unspoken question. “Don’t worry about that.”
“At least you have a connection who may be able to give you some reliable information,” he said, still unconvinced.
“Give me some time to see what I can turn up.”
Ella watched him walk back to his unit, parked across the lot. She couldn’t blame him for suspecting her objectivity. There was something to guilt by association, and that was one of the many reasons she wanted Clifford to stay away from the Fierce Ones. Yet, instinct told her that he never would. He had chosen his path and, because he believed it, would follow it through with loyalty and courage.
SEPTEMBER 12TH
The following morning, as usual, Ella arrived at work early. As she walked into her office, Justine came in right behind her. Ella sat down at her desk, silently noted a message to call Sheriff Taylor after noon, then looked up at her assistant. “What’s happening on the cases?”
“Nothing on the break-in. I’m still tracking down people and talking to employees at the clinic, but so far I’ve got nothing. I haven’t been able to crack Hansen’s files yet, either.”
“What about the van that ran Kevin and me off the road?”
“Who would have known enough about police work to do that? Do you have a theory yet?” Ella asked.
“Sorta,” Justine said slowly. “We know the van was stolen, and that it wasn’t joyriding teens or a drunk. I’ve been wondering if perhaps it might have been the Fierce Ones settling a score with you. They weren’t happy when you stood against them at the protest, or when you arrested Clifford.”
Ella leaned back in her chair and silently weighed Justine’s theory. When she’d reasoned that she hadn’t made any enemies recently, she hadn’t considered them.
At long last, Ella shook her head. “No, I doubt it could have been the Fierce Ones. Clifford would have known and, if anyone tried to come after me, he would have had their heads. He’s really something to see when anyone attacks his family.”
“What if they kept it from Clifford?”
She smiled. “Trying to keep anything from my brother is nearly impossible. Believe me.”
“Okay. It was just something for you to think about.”
Ella nodded once. “I’m going to drive out to the college. I’m going to see if there’s some information I can pick up around campus about the break-in at the clinic.”
Ella called Wilson and arranged to meet him, then drove over. The time alone on the road, which followed the river valley to the northwest, gave her a chance to think. Too many leads seemed to be pointing back to the Fierce Ones, and when an answer seemed that clear, it was either the unqualified truth, or the results of someone’s conscious effort to mislead her. The problem was that her usually sharp instincts were fuzzy on this. What she needed was more information.
By the time she arrived at the college, Ella couldn’t quiet the uneasiness that gnawed at her. She was missing something important, she just knew it.
Ella walked to Wilson’s office, which was located along the perimeter of the massive, stylized hogan. It was early September and the semester had just started. Students clustered below trees, reading quietly, doing homework, or talking about their schedules. Everyone walked with purpose here, as if they had too many things on their mind which, of course, they did.