Death on a Pale Horse

by Douglass, Carl;

  She whimpers, “Under the tarp in the storeroom. Don’t shoot, we ain’t done nothing. He ain’t any kind of criminal.”

  Officers herd the family out.

  Dodge asks, “Chief, mind if I try and talk him out. I think he’ll respond to Navajo better than English.”

  “Okay, but you take care. No cop dies on my watch, understand? Any sign of violence on Squint-eyes’ part, and we will blow the store room and everything in it to pieces.”

  Dodge stands to the left side of the door to the storeroom, knocks, then speaks softly in the musical patois of the regional Navajo language as spoken in Monument Valley.

  “Mr. Squint-eyes, there are cops all over the place. We don’t want to hurt you, but we can’t have any officers hurt either. If you have any weapons, put them down and come out so we can talk. We are not even going to arrest you unless we have to. I’m a Diné just like you. I want to hear what you have to say. How about it?”

  While Dodge continues his pleas to the storeroom, unsure if Squint-eyes is even there, Chief Cartwright gets a call. He steps away from Dodge and listens.

  He replies to the message with, “I’ll tell him. That pretty much changes everything.”

  He moves Dodge away from the door and whispers, “We are going to arrest him. I just got a call from HQ in Blue Mesa. Seems a member of the Bitter Water Clan saw a man fitting Squint-eyes’ description run a lance through a man named Herb Eaglefeather who was running for a tribal council seat. Almost no question that it was our perp. Happened two nights ago, but the witness didn’t have a phone or a mobile, and she had to ride fifty miles to get the word out. There’s more: Jock Nakai—another council candidate—was found hanged in his barn this morning. The ME said it was a homicide. A neighbor saw a man on a white horse hanging around Nakai’s house. He’ll testify to it. Listen, Dodge, you got three minutes before we go in like the Marines storming Mt. Suribachi.”

  “Please open up. Your woman and children don’t want you to be hurt. Come out for them.”

  A muffled voice comes out from behind the closed door, “It’s open. Don’t shoot me. I don’t have a gun.”

  “You got a knife or a lance, Shilah?”

  “Yeah, but they’re on the floor. I don’t have any other weapons. You don’t need to shoot me. I’m innocent.”

  “Walk out, hands up and palms open so we can see them. Move very slowly and do not make any sudden moves. I can’t stress that enough, Shilah; there are a lot of itchy trigger fingers out here.”

  The door slowly opens, and a stately tall Indian man dressed in buckskin pants and knee-high moccasins steps out. His hair is pulled strongly back and hangs to his waist in a tight braid. He looks to be about thirty—muscular and fit. He is thoroughly cowed and keeps his eyes down. Shilah Squint-eyes’ appearance is more than remarkable. He is painted from head to toe with intense black on the right and white on the left. The affect is eerie—otherworldly in its step back in time to the ancestral spirit Anasazi.

  Sgt. Moon keeps a combat shotgun pointed at the head of the apparition. He is mildly unnerved, but his hands are steady. This guy is not going anywhere.

  “Kneel down and put your hands on top of your head with the fingers interlaced,” orders Dodge. “I’m going to put handcuffs on you now, Mr. Squint-eyes. Don’t make any sudden movements, all right?”

  “Okay, okay. But my name isn’t Squint-eyes anymore. I changed it.”

  “Haash yinishly [What’s your name] now?” Dodge asks.

  “Just have the one name. Haashkeneinii. You still Indian enough to know where that name comes from?”

  “Yes, Haashkeneinii is a hero of the Navajo people. When the US soldiers defeated the Navajo warriors and drove the people out into the winter and likely to die, some Navajos avoided the March of Death. Their leader was named Haashkeneinii. He helped a small group escape to the remote land around Navajo Mountain.”

  “Good for you. Haash yinishly?”

  “Dodge Maryboy—from the Bodeway People.”

  “I know them. Good sheepherders. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. I feel like Chief Joseph. I’ll fight no more forever.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The day is one of absolute frenzied activity for the NDIC. Beginning at two o’clock in the afternoon, there are two murder scenes to work. The chief of the NDIC, Sherwin Bear, does not hear about the first—the hanging of Jock Nakai—from his officers. Instead the call comes from Assistant Attorney General Douglas Stone. He calls from the scene bothered that the officers will not declare it a suicide since it is so obvious.

  “Too many issues this close to the election. This could give that problematical man of yours—Naalnish Begay—another bit of suggestion that this is a murder and add fuel to his cockamamie notion that there is some sort of conspiracy on the part of the 1491ers to kill off the Save the Minds bunch. Nakai was a moderate and had nothing to do one way or another with the 1941ers. I want you to get this thing out of the way. Call me when it’s done.”

  Sitting there in his long sought-for corner office in the Window Rock government center, Chief Bear carefully guards his prerogatives. He does not like it that his men have kowtowed to the arrogant assistant attorney general. How did Stone get to the site that fast? There must be a little birdie on the force that feeds info to Stone before he—the chief—gets it. That will have to come to a halt. The call brings up Chief Bear’s stubborn nature. He calls the lieutenant at the scene and orders him to do a very careful preliminary crime-scene examination and make sure nothing is disturbed until Sgt. Gaagii Soto from the Division of Public Safety crime scene investigators and Dr. Haloke Todachine, the medical examiner, can do a thorough evaluation, and he means thorough with a capital T.

  The important piece of information comes in less than an hour.

  “Chief Bear, this is Sgt. Soto. I’m here at the scene in Josh Nakai’s barn with Dr. Todachine. To cut to the chase, it is a murder. He was hanged, all right. But he was dead when he was hung by the rope. He has antemortem ligature marks on his wrists—actual cuts—and obvious small caliber ligature marks around his neck, also antemortem. The rope used to hang him is far too big around to have been the real cause of death. He was garroted. Doc. Todachine has a comment on her examination.

  “Hello, Chief, this is Haloke. It is preliminary, but I’m pretty sure that Mr. Nakai’s hyoid bone has been fractured. He has fingerprint bruising with thumbprints right at the location of the hyoid which can only have been made antemortem. He was not only garroted, but he was also throttled. If that were not enough, his head is not connected to his spine—a complete internal decapitation. That did not occur from this hanging which was intended to look like strangulation death. Whoever hung him did not know the difference between a complete hanging and an incomplete hanging. The phony scene was meant to look like a suicidal self-inflicted suffocation/strangulation. The fractured neck is the telltale finding that it was not a simple suffocation injury. There is no evidence of that—no facial or subconjunctival petechial hemorrhaging that one would expect. He was garroted and throttled, but he died of a transection of his spinal cord before the other assorted attacks could finish him off. I have a measure of personal interest here, Chief. I knew Jock Nakai. We were both from the Bitter Water Clan, and he was a good man. I liked him.”

  Now, why does AAG Stone so want this to be a suicide? Chief Bear wonders.

  Danny Tapahonso is a Bitter Water Clan neighbor of the unfortunate Jock Nakai. He is unaware of his untimely demise. It is a bad day for the clan. Danny is riding out to check on his Navajo Churro sheep. The sky looks like rain; it is early enough that there is still dew on the yucca, cactus, sage brush, grama grass, and a few weeds and wild flowers in the valleys and on the lower plateaus as he rides the nearly twenty miles between his place and that of his nearest neighbor, Herb Eaglefeather. In two hours, after he has checked out his sheep, the heat will return the country to its status as a barren waste with few running streams or springs—non
e on his route. It is pleasant now, in the early morning. Danny plans to stop by Herb’s barn on the way back to wish him luck in his run to keep his tribal council seat.

  He sees a light on in his neighbor’s barn. It is a little early even for such a hard worker as Herb, but not all that unusual. He continues to ride, but suddenly stops when he sees what he thinks at first is an apparition. There is no mistaking this as some kind of spirit. It is a bareback rider on a white horse loping towards Herb. Herb has fairly severe arthritis and is trying to run. This is difficult because it is apparent that Herb’s wrists are tied, and he is no match for the horse. Danny sees the “apparition”—in actuality, a man who looks like an Anasazi painted in the old-time half-black half-white war paint worn by warriors. He has a lance but throws it down, jumps off his horse, and pursues Herb into the barn. Danny is small and obviously no match for the horseman who is big and very strong-looking and fleet of foot. He watches in stunned horror as the painted man with the long braid wrestles Herb to the ground and begins choking him. He watches long enough to see the man make a sudden extremely forceful twisting motion of Herb’s head and neck. Then the “Anasazi” retrieves his spear and drives it into the defenseless victim. Herb lies motionless.

  Danny Tapahonso has never seen a dead man, never seen anyone die, let alone seen someone be murdered. He is struck with a sickening terror. He hides in the shadows until the “Anasazi” rides away towards the west. He makes sure that Herb is dead, sees an eagle feather beside the body, and then turns around and pushes his horse as hard as he can to report the crime.

  The NDIC sends Clarence Johns CSI and his team from the Division of Public Safety crime scene investigators to work the scene at the Squint-eyes/Haashkeneinii house. The examination of the scene takes place while Dodge, Ivory, and Cliff Moon interrogate Shilah.

  The three interrogators let Shilah sit alone in the interrogation room while they wait for a quick report from the CSI team.

  Dodge gets a call half an hour after the team enters the residence, “Dodge, this is Clarence. We have a pickup truckload of pertinent evidence. I am sending photos to your iPhone. What you’re going to see is a length of handmade rope which—if I were a betting man—I’d bet will match the rope used to hang Jock Nakai up there near Window Rock. There are two old lances—not just made to look old—with obsidian points that have suspicious brown-crusted material on them, and a wicked-looking Bowie knife. I’ll get DNA back by this evening. The lances have eagle feathers near the points which match the description of those seen by eyewitnesses. Looks like one lance is missing a feather. I found paints that match the colors he is still wearing during the interrogation. I trust you have good photos.”

  “Of course, Clarence. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.”

  “All right, we won’t be much longer here. We’ll fly this stuff up to Window Rock central headquarters for the full investigation.”

  “Thanks. See you back there tonight or tomorrow.

  A second call comes in from Caitlin to Ivory, “Hey, partner, I have some info that you might be able to use in your interrogation of the suspect you have there in West Podunk.”

  “Blanding.”

  “Whatever. Anyhow, I have a stream of financial, social, and phone connections between your perp, the assistant attorney general—of all people—Leland Biakeddy, and another candidate for the upcoming tribal election by the name of Jacoby GreyCohoe. He looks like a big player in all of this. He works for Desert Oil Drilling Corporation, and directly for the guy in charge of all drilling on the reservation. That one’s name is John David Carlsen. He’s a vice-president of the oil company and seems to be a big shot in reservation business—Navajo, Sioux, and the Native American Energy Group, headquarters on the Fort Peck reservation in Montana.

  “Oh, and I got a jingle from Gaagii Soto, the other CSI. They found an eagle feather at the Nakai crime scene and a broken obsidian spear point. That’s another couple of coffin nails for your perp down there.”

  “Looks like a done deal,” Ivory says. “Dodge and I will squeeze this Squint-eyes guy and get a written confession. I’ll scan in a copy to you, McGee, and Naalnish, but I think we have enough to nail the masterminds. My opinion is that you guys up there in Window Rock had better get on the people you’ve identified, or they’re going to be in the wind.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Ivory. I’ll get all of this back to McGee and get the ball rolling. See you back at the ranch, as they say out here in cowboy-and-Indian land.”

  With that evidence, Dodge and Ivory enter the interrogation room. Ivory sets up the video, and Dodge sits looking across the table at Shilah, who now looks very much the two-year-old caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

  “Shilah, it’s over for you. We have you for first-degree premeditated murder. We will probably be able to add the charge of felony-murder by this evening. Do you know what that is?”

  “No. I thought murder was a felony.”

  “Well, Shilah, felony murder is the crime of a death occurring during the commission of a felony, even if it was not intended. It includes all perpetrators of the crime, even if you were only driving the get-away car.”

  Shilah just nods. He keeps his eyes firmly on the ground, avoiding eye contact with Dodge.

  “So, Shilah. This is how it is going to go down. There will be a formal period of collecting evidence, then a trial that’ll be in all the papers and on TV. Everybody you know will get all the details of how you murdered your fellow tribe members in cold blood for money. You will have a very public trial which will be videotaped; so, your wife and kids and your clan members will be able to record it on their own TVs and to replay it for longer than your kids live. You will be sentenced to death by lethal injection. You’ll spend the next ten or twenty years in a cell on death row that is about the size of your bathroom at home. In the end—after your court-appointed lawyers do their best and fail—you’ll get an injection and die while the victims’ families and your wife and kids watch. You’ll probably be buried in a pine box in the prison cemetery.”

  There is a long pause.

  “What if I give you everything you need to know about the people behind all of this? Can I get immunity or something?”

  “Dream on about immunity, Shilah. You’re going to take the fall for this. Maybe—just maybe—if you confess to everything in writing today—name names, give good detail that we can use, then I’ll put in a word to the right people. We could probably get the death penalty taken off. You might be able to live out the rest of your life in the general prison population with three hots and a cot, the chance to watch TV, read books, and talk to people. You won’t have any of that nice stuff unless you really do a convincing job.”

  “I’ll say whatever you want.”

  “That is not what we’re after, Shilah. We need the truth and nothing but. You see this big nasty-looking black guy? He doesn’t like you. If you decide to take your chances with some chincy little kid just out of law school handling your case and don’t think you want to make our life easier, maybe I’ll just leave you in here alone with him with the recording devices turned off.”

  To Squint-eyes/Haashkeneinii, Ivory White looks like his worst nightmare, about what he looked like to his victims.

  “Give me the pen and paper,” he says.

  Two hours later, Dodge and Ivory scan in the fifty-page confession and send it to Lt. Begay in Window Rock. The only surprise is the addition of another actual killer, a Tobacco People Clan loser named, Gad Kee. Naalnish faxes back a plea bargain guaranteeing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole—no death penalty—in return for full allocution in court during the upcoming trials of his co-conspirators. Shilah signs it, and Dodge keeps a copy. They take their prisoner and his yellow legal pad handwritten confession with them back to Window Rock by helicopter. They are well satisfied with their day’s work.

  In Window Rock, the evidence is streaming in from the multiple sources invo
lved in the investigation almost faster than McGee, Naalnish, Chief Kevin Tall Hunter from the Blue Mesa office, chief of the NDIC; Sherwin Bear, chief of the Navajo Nation Police; Notah Jaquez, and the tribal chief prosecutor, Nivol Shirley, can handle it. Painted Desert Police Chief Ney, Captain Hootsohnii, and AAG Stone are conspicuously left out of the loop.

  “This nails Stone,” Naalnish says with serious satisfaction.

  “Probably,” says Shirley, “but not necessarily John David Carlsen. We need to get him to come to the res, and he is not likely to come here if we serve a warrant. He’ll lawyer-up and fight us for years.”

  That is a sobering realization for the entire police/prosecution group.

  “I have a devious plan,” offers McGee.

  Everyone smiles at his phraseology

  “So, out with it, partner,” says Naalnish.

  “Let’s send a phony e-mail to him that will make him want to come to meet with his criminal confederates. My partner, Caitlin, is an expert in that sort of chicanery.”

  With hardly a moment of pause, all of the law enforcement people nod their agreement.

  McGee calls Caitlin, and she responds, “Get right on it, boss.”

  Chief Jaquez says, “Don’t underestimate AAG Strong. He is both smart and cunning, and he is nearly perfectly self-interested. If he gets a hint that he is suspected, he will either disappear or bring in a legal team the likes of which we haven’t seen since O.J. Simpson’s dream team.”

  Nivol Shirley agrees.

  “He is also about the most arrogant fed we have had on the reservation since the corrupt gilded age days of the Fort Defiance Agency and the BIA in the mid-eighteen-hundreds when the agents sent Indians maggot-filled beef and sold off the good beef to line their own pockets. It is going to take a real authority to bring him to heel. Going through channels will take months, and we will lose the advantage we have at the moment.”

  “I know a guy,” says McGee.

  “Of course you do,” laughs Naalnish Begay, McGee’s old friend.