by Joseph Lewis
They were an odd team: he sullen, rumpled and gray; she trim and proper, dressed like a model out of Vogue. Except for today, fighting jet lag, both looked rumpled. They were also very good at what they did.
Pete began as a beat cop in Baltimore and quietly rose through the ranks and ended up with a gold shield in the Homicide division. He had a knack for closing cases, and in Baltimore, there were plenty to close. The FBI recruited him, and he jumped at the opportunity. He was single, but married to his badge and gun, so changing jobs, especially for one with the FBI was a no brainer.
Summer was plucked out of law school at Louisville. She had a Pollyanna personality, definitely the glass half full type who laughed easily and had a great mind for details- names, dates, the little things that Pete seemed to slam over in order to get to the end, the close. Neither had married. Too busy with the job. No time. The team was family. The partnership was marriage enough.
“Which kid?” she asked without raising her head or opening her eyes.
“Um . . . the Tokay kid. The Indian boy.”
“Pretty remarkable, huh?”
Kelliher nodded. In the three years since the formation of the Crimes Against Children’s Task Force—The Kiddie Corps, as it was referred to inside the Bureau, they had never had a break such as this, and this one came by way of a fourteen year old boy, who had happened to be out tending sheep when he witnessed the shooting, the perps, and the vehicle used by them.
“Is the area secure?” he asked frowning at the report.
Summer glanced over at the driver, a young, tall, gangly, dark-haired agent out of Albuquerque.
He shrugged and said, “We followed your orders.”
“How far away are we?” she asked with a yawn.
“About an hour,” the agent said, glancing at the digital clock in the dash.
They had flown into Albuquerque from D.C. spending five hours on a plane and another hour in the car with more to go. Evidently, the FBI office in Albuquerque didn’t believe in helicopters. Summer put her head back down and tried to get some sleep, knowing that once they arrived, sleep would be hard to get.
Kelliher reached into his breast pocket and grabbed his cellular phone, located the numbers from the crime report, punched in the numbers and spoke to a Window Rock Police Station dispatcher making sure the boy was still close by.
“He’s there,” the officer at the other end said.
“And I’d like two horses, one for the boy and one for me,” Kelliher added.
The officer started to say something like, “No Problem,” but Pete had already shut the cell phone off.
“What are you thinking?” Summer asked, turning towards the backseat to look at him.
Her short, natural blond hair looked as though it had been combed with an eggbeater. Her gray-green eyes had dark circles, and Pete wondered when she had last had a good meal.
“If this kid can ID these guys, we’ve caught a break. A big break.”
“You still believe its child trafficking?” she asked knowing his answer before he said it, knowing it because they had discussed it over and over again.
“At least a dozen kids found murdered the same way . . . two shots to the back of the head from a .38, each kid missing at least a year, three missing more than two years. Each kid eleven or twelve at the time of the abduction. Yeah, it smells like it.”
“Why not just three perverts picking up kids and getting rid of ‘em?” the dark-haired driver asked.
Pete leaned forward between the two front seats and said, “Because other than the death scene, the boys were different. Three kids had brands . . . an upside down cross on the inside of the left ankle. The same three had scars on their backs as if they had been beaten with a whip.”
He paused, sat back and looked out the window and then said more to himself than to the driver, “If there were only three guys picking up kids, all the kids would have the same.” Perhaps feeling hope because the cased finally shifted to their favor for once, Pete slapped the report across his knee and said, “We don’t know what else it could be.”
Summer bit her lip, worried that he might be right. Actually, knew he was right. But three perverts snatching kids were hard to find. A bunch of assholes taking and using kids would be even harder to find, unless they got a big, big break. She wondered if this Indian boy might be the break they needed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The car pulled up in a cloud of reddish dust. The three of them sat in the car until it had settled and until they could actually see out the windows again. The problem was that when it settled, it covered the windows in a fine sheen.
Three Tribal Policemen were gathered around a patrol car. One officer sat on the hood with the other two leaning against the front bumper. Two of the three chewed gum, while the other spat brown tobacco juice over the side of the car away from the crime scene.
Pete opened the door and whatever cool air there was inside the car vanished in seconds. Air, the consistency of oatmeal was hard to breathe. In fact the heat seemed to suck all the air out of his lungs. A freakin’ furnace, he thought. Fuck dry heat!
He pulled his tie off and threw it along with his sport coat in the backseat. He tucked the manila folder containing the crime report under his arm, while he rolled up first one sleeve and then the other.
Summer threw her suit jacket on the front seat and surveyed the scene with her hands on her hips. The county ME knelt down beside the body of the boy. An agent snapped photos of foot prints and tire treads. Little yellow plastic tent tags with large black numbers sat alongside the stakes set up by the Indian boy. A couple of agents stood around not doing much of anything. In fact, they didn’t even bother to try to look like they weren’t doing anything.
Pete squatted down at the first stake and studied the tire tracks left by the van, marveling at how thorough the kid was. From a distance, the kid looked older than fourteen and not all that remarkable. A dirty white, beat up straw cowboy hat sat on his head. He had his arms folded over his chest, bare except for a leather vest and some sort of necklace around his neck. Medium height, maybe on the taller side, but Pete couldn’t tell because he didn’t know kids that well, at least, ones who were alive. The boy seemed skinny and lanky, yet showed the strength and agility of a basketball player. Skin the color of copper, darkened by the Arizona sun, with dark eyes and long black hair, neatly kept.
Pete scratched his head and motioned for the boy to come nearer. Still wearing his moccasins, the boy stepped lightly to Pete’s side.
“Walk me through all this.”
George nodded and pointed at the tire tracks.
“This is where they parked. You can tell by the depth of the track, compared to those over there.”
Pete walked backward looking at the track, tilting his head at an angle to get a better look. George knelt down and pointed at the ground.
“I think this is blood. If it is, then they hurt him in the van,” George said. “It could be that they pulled him from the van and his head hit an edge before hitting the ground.”
Pete glanced at the boy and then frowned.
“When you look at the body, you’ll see sand on his back. There’s no other way that would have happened.”
“You didn’t see him fall?” Pete asked.
George shook his head, pointed and continued.
“Here is where the guy wearing the baseball cap stood.”
Pete glanced at the report and said, “It says here that you didn’t get a good look at him, but you described him as medium height with longish dark hair.” He looked up at the boy and said, “How can you be sure?”
George shrugged, slipped his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans and answered, “I saw enough of him to be able to say that.” George squinted at the man and added, “I judged his height by the van.”
Pete nodded and fanned himself with the report.
They stared at each other and then George said, “These are the boy’s footprints. The s
and was hot and he was kind of hopping.”
“And these?” Pete asked, indicating what looked like tennis shoe prints.
“The tall man with the beard.”
“How can you tell?”
“Longer distance between steps and not as deep, compared to those,” gesturing to the boot marks. “Those are deeper and closer together. Those belong to the fat man.”
Pete nodded, smiling at George. The boy smiled shyly, knowing the older man had been testing him.
“The skinny man led, then came the boy, and then the fat man.”
George walked lightly, but quickly up the road and pointed at the stake marking the cigarette butt.
“You said he smoked Marlboro. How did you know?”
“I thought I saw the red and white pack, but it wasn’t until I saw this that I knew for sure.”
“You touched it?” Pete asked.
“I used a blade of grass to roll it over,” George answered.
Pete grunted.
“The fat man walks heal to toe . . . heavy. The skinny man walks on the front of his feet, like Cal Ripken.”
“Like Cal Ripken?”
“Yes,” George answered simply.
“Like Ripken,” Pete said shaking his head.
Summer stood to one side, hands on her hips watching the photographer snap pictures. Pete motioned to her and she joined him and the boy.
“Any ID on the vic yet?” Pete asked.
Summer sighed, brushed some hair off her forehead and glanced back at the dead boy.
“We sent a photo to the Center and a preliminary ID came back.”
The team worked closely with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The Center identified each of the boys they had found. Pete looked at her closely.
“There are so many of them,” she said, glancing back at the boy and then turning away. “I wonder when it’ll end.”
“It’ll end when we put these guys behind bars.”
“Do you remember the Hart kid from Cincinnati?”
Pete frowned trying to remember specifics, but with so many missing kids, he didn’t really know one from another. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, he just couldn’t remember. Besides, Summer had always been better at that part of it.
“Paperboy, taken on a Sunday morning, they found his bike, the papers and one of his shoes.”
Pete nodded, not really remembering, but letting Summer fill in the rest of the details.
“He was taken one month to the day before his thirteenth birthday and was missing eighteen months.”
Summer sighed again, glanced back at the body and then at the three Indian officers about twenty yards or so away. The one sitting on the hood of the car was short and fat, barely fitting into his uniform, and it wasn’t because of a bullet-proof vest. One was short and thin, leaning on the left side of the car. The third was the tallest of the three and had on the cleanest of the greenish-brown uniforms. Their uniforms sort of reminded her of Park Service uniforms.
“What’s with them?” she asked.
“I dunno,” Pete answered.
“Um...” George started, waiting for permission to speak.
Both adults turned towards him and waited.
“I think they’re worried about the boy’s chindi.”
“The boy’s what?” Pete asked.
“The boy’s spirit.”
Pete squinted at the boy; Summer folded her arms impatiently.
George explained the Navajo belief.
“What do you mean finished?” Summer asked.
“The chindi will want justice, to know that the killer will be caught and that the body will be taken care of . . . finished.”
“They believe in ghosts?” Pete asked skeptically.
George didn’t answer but stared at him impassively, annoyed that he had failed to take the Dine’ belief seriously.
“You knelt down right next to the body. Don’t you believe in this . . . chindi thing?” Summer asked.
“I asked the chindi’s permission, so I could help find the killers and bring the boy help.”
Pete and Summer exchanged a glance, shrugged and then looked back at the deputies.
“I suppose if they don’t feel comfortable, they can leave,” Summer suggested.
“They won’t,” George said looking at his cousin Leonard - the short one standing on the left. “This is reservation land. They’re responsible for it.”
“This is a federal crime,” Pete said. “They don’t have jurisdiction.”
“This is Navajo land,” George said.
Summer and Pete shrugged at each other and then Pete walked over to the boy’s body, looking closely at the wound. Small entries, fitting those of a .38 and similar to the wounds they found on the other boys. He glanced at the report he held in his hand.
Pete ran his finger through the report and asked, “George, where did they piss?”
“Over here,” he said as he squatted near the foot of the dead boy. “Right here and over there.”
“Did you guys get samples for testing?” Pete asked the gangly agent who had driven them to the crime scene.
The driver looked over at the other agents, and one nodded as he scribbled in a notebook.
“What about the blood sample back where the van was?”
“Just like you asked,” the agent said impatiently.
Pete turned to the photographer.
“You get enough pictures?”
“I got everything you asked for. I got the body, the hands with cuffs, the wound, everything.”
Pete gently turned over the body, almost reverently. Thankfully, the boy’s eyes were closed, as was the boy’s mouth. Sand covered his face.
“Take several more. I want close-ups of the face. Then send them to the Center, so we can confirm the boy’s name.”
“We already have a preliminary ID,” one of the agents said.
“I want a firm ID,” Pete said angrily.
George knelt down, placed his hand gently on the boy’s chest and seemed to mumble something. He took a long look, then stood up and turned away to watch dust devils dance on the desert horizon. Pete and Summer noted the care and concern the Indian boy expressed in that gentle, simple gesture and took an immediate liking to him. Then Summer called over the Medical Examiner and asked him to give her a verbal report.
“Just what the kid said. Two shots, one exiting the left cheek indicating a back and right side angle, up from the vic’s head. No exit on the other. Death within seconds if not instantaneously.”
“Time of death?”
“I have no reason to doubt the kid’s report,” he stated rubbing his eyes.
“Summer, we need to make sure there are pictures of every footprint staked by George,” Pete said, brushing sand off the dead boy’s face.
Then he turned to the three other FBI agents and said, “And measure the distance between each of the footsteps as well as the boy’s. I want a height and weight on them all.”
One of them asked, “Why the kid’s? The ME will do an autopsy.”
“By guessing at the boy’s weight and height, we can tell how accurate you are,” Summer explained impatiently.
She was less than impressed with the Albuquerque office. She squatted down next to Pete and stared at the boy.
After a bit of silence she said, “I’m going to have casts made of the footprints and tire treads. They might come in handy somewhere down the road.”
Pete got up and then lent a hand to Summer.
“George, let’s take a horsy ride up to the spot you watched all of this from.”
CHAPTER SIX
George politely offered the canteen to Pete before taking a drink himself. With a nod of thanks, Pete took a long drink and then gave it back to the boy who did the same. Pete rubbed his lower back, twisted and turned to work out the kinks. He hadn’t been on a horse since he was a kid, and to be honest, he didn’t like it much back then either.
“Do you have thos
e binoculars?”
George pulled them from one of his saddlebags and handed them to the agent.
“Okay, now show me exactly where you were.”
George led both horses away and tied them loosely to a Joshua tree and pointed to a rock just below the crest of the hill.
“See that rock, the one that looks like a chair? I sit there when I eat my lunch or take a break. I can sort of lean against the other rock, like a chair.”
Pete smiled. The two rocks almost formed a chair, not quite at a slight recline. He sat down heavily, took out his walkie-talkie and binoculars and stared far below at the crime scene. He could see people move, but other than Summer, not well enough to make out who was who, much less what each brand of cigarette was used. Then he brought up the binoculars and suddenly, what was far away, became arm’s length.
“Christ! How could they not see you?”
“The sun was in their eyes.”
“Summer, come in,” Pete said in the walkie-talkie.
“Here. How’re you doing?”
“Sore as hell. Happy I’m not trying to have any children.”
He actually saw her smiling, shielding her eyes to try to see him.
“I have to admit it’s not often someone goes horseback riding in a white shirt, slacks and wingtips. You realize you’re going to get a raft of shit from the rest of the team when I tell them,” she said with a laugh.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah... very funny.”
“What can you see, Pete?”
“Everything. I’m right on top of you.”
“It’ll hold up in court?”
“Right down to the last detail,” Pete said smiling.
“Come on in, and we’ll wrap it up.”
“I’ll be down soon. I have a couple of things I want to go over with George first.” Then
Pete added with a smile, “And I want to build up my courage for the ride down.”
* * *
George and Pete sat side by side thinking their own thoughts and chewing jerky that George had taken out of one of the saddlebags. George had gone over the whole thing again and then once more.