Cave of Bones

by Anne Hillerman

  As he jabbered on, Bernie gathered her thoughts. She didn’t understand why Franklin needed to speak to her, but she knew that hostage situations often turned out badly for both the hostage taker and the hostage. She didn’t want either of them to get hurt.

  Johnson finally interrupted the rookie. “Officer Sam, the girl is a hostage because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our mutual goal is to resolve the situation as quickly and safely as possible.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  She cut him off. “Go back to your unit. We don’t want any civilians here who could get hurt, so make sure no one comes in unless it’s law enforcement or an ambulance.”

  “I’ll watch the back of the building,” Manzanares said, and walked away. Johnson motioned to a pair of other agents, and they headed that way, too.

  Agent Johnson handed Bernie a bullhorn. “Tell Franklin you’re here. Ask him what he wants. Don’t promise him anything. I’ll coach you.”

  Bernie couldn’t help herself. “How many hostage situations have you dealt with? I heard that this is your first posting.”

  She watched Johnson’s eyes go hard. “I trained at the academy with hostage negotiation as one of my specialties.”

  “Well, welcome to Navajo, where incidents like this are probably different than what you learned. More personal, usually involving alcohol. Family matters that escalate out of control.”

  Johnson tapped the speaker. “You know how to turn this on?”

  Bernie flipped the switch and walked out from the group to face the house.

  “Mr. Franklin, it’s me, Bernie.”

  She had never talked through a bullhorn before, and it made her voice sound tinny and too loud. “They said you wanted to talk to me. Why don’t you come outside so I can hear what you have to say?”

  The front door opened. “I’m staying in here with Annie,” Franklin yelled. “Put that noisy thing down, and come on over and talk to me. Bring Cooper and the FBI woman, too.” The door closed.

  “Tell him nothing happens until he frees the girl,” Johnson said. “Tell him taking a hostage is a federal offense. The backups here are ready to go in after him.”

  Bernie put the bullhorn down and pulled her phone from her backpack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling Annie.”

  “What?” Johnson shoved the megaphone toward her.

  Bernie pushed in the numbers.

  “You’re . . . oh . . . Put her on speaker.”

  “I did.”

  The girl’s voice sounded small and scared.

  “Annie, it’s Officer Bernie. Could Mr. Franklin please use your phone to talk to me?”

  Silence and then a businesslike “Hello.”

  “Mr. Franklin, I’m worried about you. I have you on speakerphone so the FBI can hear too. What’s going on?”

  “I tried to tell that FBI woman, but she couldn’t even get Dom’s name right. That’s why I wanted you. You understand.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. Just coffee. Too much, I guess.”

  “Mr. Franklin, FBI agent Johnson is here, and she asked me to figure out what the problem is and why you have that gun in there with Annie. She sounds terrified. You aren’t the kind of man who makes a young girl afraid.”

  “Oh, Bernie, it got messed up, like when I shot at you this morning. All I wanted was to talk to Mrs. Cooper, to clear Dom’s name if she thinks he was stealing money from the program or something, and to tell her that his photos were just photos and had nothing to do with those looted caves. But Cooper wasn’t here, only this volunteer girl, and . . . and . . .”

  She heard his voice crack. “Take a breath, Mr. Franklin. There’s no hurry. I’ve got all the time you need.”

  “It’s freezing out here,” Johnson said. “What’s he talking about?”

  Bernie muffled the phone against her jacket. “Give him a minute.”

  When Franklin spoke again, he sounded more composed. “Here’s what I want. I want somebody to look at the agency’s financial records and clear Dom’s name. I want the FBI, or whoever does this, to make sure everyone knows that Dom wasn’t involved in any funny stuff with the old pottery sites, with the Internet, with diverting tribal funds. I want everyone to understand he’s a good guy. That’s it. They can take me to jail as long as they promise to tell me when Dom comes back. Even, you know, even if it’s bad news.”

  Johnson grabbed Bernie’s hand with the phone. “Agent Sage Johnson here,” The agent’s voice rose to a shout. “Before I agree to anything, I need to make sure the girl is safe. You admitted shooting at someone already this morning. Send your hostage out now.”

  “Annie doesn’t want to leave. She thinks she’s the reason Dom is probably dead.”

  “Tom, Tom, Tom! Tom who?”

  Bernie cringed, and Franklin was silent.

  They heard Annie’s voice. “Dom Cruz. Mr. Domingo Cruz. Don’t you know anything?”

  Bernie pulled the phone free from Johnson’s grip. “Mr. Franklin, I’m going to explain to the FBI agent who Dom is. I think that will help her understand what you want.”

  Johnson scowled and gave her a double thumbs-down.

  “Go ahead, Bernie.” She could hear Franklin, or maybe it was Annie, weeping. “Do it over the phone so we can hear you, too.”

  “Go ahead, for God’s sake,” Johnson whispered. “Let’s get this done.”

  But Bernie took her time. She knew words had power, and Franklin’s Navajo parents, and surely his grandparents, had taught him that, too. She said a silent prayer and hoped that adrenaline would buoy her if the words ran low.

  “The first thing I have to say is that Domingo Cruz is a good man, a valuable man whom I hope to meet one day. From what they say, he spends his life helping to make Wings and Roots a strong organization to give girls and boys who need some extra guidance tools they can use to grow up to be people who honor their relatives and make a good difference in the world. From what people tell me, he would never do anything to harm the program, his relatives, or the young people who hold him in high regard.”

  She talked on, intermixing English with Navajo for those ideas in which only Navajo captured the complexity of the concepts, such as kinship and the duty that came with being Navajo. She talked about how warmly Mrs. Cooper and the girls in the camp spoke of Mr. Cruz, how much they valued his leadership and his generosity. She talked about how his sister and Franklin honored and respected him.

  As she spoke, Bernie realized that, except for some comments that the man sometimes seemed preoccupied, the only person she had ever heard speak against Cruz was Mayfair. She filed that bit of information away.

  When she finished, she asked Franklin if he had something to add.

  “Agent Johnson, do you understand?”

  Johnson put the megaphone to her mouth. “Yes. I think you should let Annie come on out right now. Mr. Cruz devoted his life to helping young people like her. What would he have said about you holding her hostage?”

  Bernie frowned at Johnson’s use of the past tense.

  Franklin’s voice had more energy now, and more anger. “Annie is fine. Dom would be pleased that I am trying to clear his name, whether he returns or not.” He stopped talking and then said, “What the—”

  They heard Franklin yell something else and the phone clattered away, about the same time as Bernie heard the gunshot.

  Things happened fast after that. The shot was followed by a scream and then another shot. The door of the Wings and Roots office swung open, and Annie raced into the road, her dark hair flowing behind her. Cooper appeared from somewhere behind Bernie and Johnson, running toward Annie, catching her in a fierce embrace and then pulling her farther away from the place where the shots had come from.

  Bernie ran toward the house, Johnson keeping pace beside her, followed by another agent. By the time they got there, one of the two agents whom Bernie had seen moving toward the rear entra
nce was standing next to Manzanares, who held his hands over his left knee. Blood oozed between his fingers, and his gun lay on the floor in front of him. He looked up at Johnson and then at Bernie with questions in his eyes.

  Before he could speak, Johnson said, “Cristóbal Manzanares, should I arrest you now, or wait until you’re indicted? Either way, you can kiss that juicy retirement good-bye.”

  Manzanares uttered an obscenity.

  Bernie saw the agent smile.

  Johnson put her gun in her holster. “You made our job a whole lot easier today by adding attempted murder to your résumé.”

  Manzanares turned his head to the left. “Attempted? You mean I didn’t kill that rat bastard over there?”

  “You’re a lousy cop and a lousy shot.”

  The agent who was attending to Franklin radioed for an ambulance. “. . . leg wound,” Bernie heard him say. “A second victim shot in the shoulder. Both conscious . . .”

  She walked up to the agent. “I can keep an eye on Franklin while you deal with Manzanares. I know Franklin.”

  The agent nodded once and walked to the other side of the room. Bernie squatted down next to Franklin. “Just stay still.”

  “Where’s Annie? Is the girl hurt?”

  “She ran outside. She didn’t get shot.”

  “Thank God. Where’s Manzanares?”

  Bernie explained, all the while applying pressure to his shoulder wound.

  He listened, shaking his head in disbelief. “He came in the back door. Surprised me.”

  “It looks like he wanted to kill you.”

  Franklin gave her a quick nod. She thought he looked pale.

  Bernie released the pressure a bit, checked the bleeding, and pressed again.

  “He didn’t want to kill me. Manzanares wanted to kill the girl because of something she’d seen in the cave. He was after Annie, not me. When he drew his gun, I stood in front so she could run. He thought she had found something of his that tied him to that place. I don’t get it. Too many crazies around here.” His voice was a whisper. “Officer, can I tell you something in confidence?”

  Bernie readjusted her position, She left his question unanswered.Franklin squeezed his lips together. “Annie had the idea that I pretend she was a hostage. She feels bad about Dom—she calls him Mr. Cruz. She thought that if we did that, someone would listen and she could help the searchers find him.” He breathed deeply. “She wanted to help me and she could have left anytime. I should have made her go.” He shifted toward Bernie with a painful grunt. “Tell that girl I’m so, so sorry she got mixed up in all this. I only wanted to do some good for Dom, and I’ve caused more trouble.” Franklin grimaced as he raised himself to a seated position. The movement restarted the bleeding.

  Two of the other agents were standing with Johnson, men Bernie had worked with on occasion and men both she and Chee respected. Old hands in the Four Corners. Maybe they were giving Agent Johnson some tips. One was saying, “. . . arrest him, and that means someone has to stay in the hospital with him. My daughter’s concert . . .”

  Agent Johnson left the group and walked toward Bernie and Franklin.

  Franklin seemed weaker now, but he kept talking. “I just needed someone to listen.”

  “I’m listening,” the agent snapped at him. “Give me the quick version of why you did this, in case you bleed to death. Start with you bringing a gun to the Wings and Roots office.”

  Bernie would have used a softer tone, and left out the part about bleeding to death, but Johnson was in charge here.

  “The gun? I always have a gun. I came to tell Cooper that Dom told me that Mayfair, the one who did the bookkeeping, really made some mistakes, and that she should check into that. Not to blame him. The girl said Cooper wasn’t here, so I went outside, pacing to stay warm, thinking, talking to myself like I do. Then that young cop drove up. I thought he might be coming to arrest me because of the shot I fired at Merilee’s house.”

  “You shot at a residence?” Johnson’s perfect crescent eyebrows moved toward her hairline.

  “Well, not exactly. It was a greenhouse.”

  “We can come back to that. Go on.”

  “When that cop started hassling me, I went inside the office. The girl and I started talking, and that’s when I found out she was the last one to see Dom before he disappeared. She told me that she’d seen a skeleton in a cave.” Franklin shuddered. “We were both crying.”

  Agent Johnson looked puzzled.

  Bernie tried to simplify. “The girl, Annie, didn’t stay where she was supposed to, and Cruz disappeared when he went out to find her. Besides working directly with the kids, he also is the group’s fund-raiser.” She paused. “Why are you involved?”

  “Besides the hostage situation, the other agents and I are here because Manzanares has been the subject of an ongoing investigation,” Johnson said. “It seems he was creating fake provenances for Indian artifacts and selling them to European and Asian clients on the Internet as part of an organized crime network.”

  “Agent, ask him why he wanted to kill Annie.” Franklin’s voice had softened with exhaustion and blood loss. “She’s just a kid.”

  “I can’t talk about that.”

  Bernie turned to Johnson. “Is there a connection between Cruz’s photos and the illegal pot business?”

  Johnson looked surprised. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Dom took pictures of petroglyphs and landscapes, for Merilee’s book. That’s it,” Franklin said. “Why all the secrets?”

  Johnson finally crouched down to Franklin’s level. “Did he ever show you any pots or artifacts that he collected out there?”

  “Never ever would he even touch that stuff.” Franklin grimaced. “You wouldn’t ask that if you knew him. Those things are grave offerings, and no one who follows the Navajo way wants anything to do with it.”

  Bernie could hear an ambulance siren now, faintly. She hoped Johnson would stop the attendants from putting Franklin and the man who tried to kill him in the same vehicle.

  “Dom is a good man, and that’s why I came here. To make sure people knew that.” Franklin closed his eyes but kept talking. “Merilee asked Dom to keep track of possible burial caves so they could make sure they were protected. He was careful to document them. They were going to share all of that with the National Parks and Wilderness Conservation people.”

  The siren grew louder, and then, with a crunch of tires on the dirt road, the wailing stopped. Bernie heard doors opening and closing. She put her hand lightly on Franklin’s arm. “The ambulance guys are here. Rest a moment. Save your energy. They’ll need to ask you questions.”

  She turned to Johnson. “What led you to arrest Manzanares today?”

  “The agency was tracking Larry Hoffman, a ranger with some links to a group that sold illegal Native American artifacts online and then used the pots for moving drugs. That’s what brought us to Manzanares. It looked like he was providing false provenances for the pots this guy fenced, saying they came from his ranch. We were investigating Manzanares when I was notified that Hoffman was in a one-car accident, and that Manzanares had arrived on the scene and insisted on interviewing Hoffman, who later died of what we’re told was a bad combination of alcohol and prescription opioids. The attendants suspected that Manzanares had given him something that killed him.”

  Johnson broke away to talk to the ambulance driver while a medic began to examine Franklin. Bernie stood to leave, and Franklin reached for her hand. “Please don’t let them give up on finding Dom. Tell Merilee I never meant to hurt her. I was out of my mind when I took a shot at her. How could I help but love her? When I look in her eyes, I see her brother, too.”

  27

  Bernie stood outside the Roots and Wings office and watched the ambulance leave. She noticed Cooper and Annie. They looked shocked and cold, as if they’d been standing there for a while.

  Annie ran toward Bernie. “Were those gunshots? Is Mr. Franklin dead?
”

  “No. He got hit in the shoulder, but he’ll be all right. He said to tell you he’s sorry that you got tangled up in all this.”

  “The whole dumb thing was my idea.”

  Cooper frowned. “Let’s go inside and warm up. You can call your mom and tell her you’re OK.”

  Bernie heard a car door shut, and then Mayfair bounced over to them. “What were the federal agents doing here?”

  “Agent Johnson didn’t exactly say, but it had something do to with Officer Manzanares,” Bernie said, and then summarized what had happened.

  Mayfair raised an eyebrow. “Do you think the FBI involvement has anything to do with Wings and Roots and our money problems?”

  Before Bernie could answer, Cooper stepped in. “Councilor Walker and I got that worked out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I convinced her that the money from the Navajo Nation was accounted for. Well, I didn’t really convince her—it was the bookkeeping. I showed her the reports Cruz had prepared.”

  “Dom took the credit, as usual, but I did the work.” Mayfair moved her hands to her slim hips. “There was never any problem with the tribal funds. The problem was the loss of the other grants and private money . . . and Dom’s inability to raise enough money. If it hadn’t been for that anonymous gift, we would have gone under.”

  “Do you know who the donor is?” Bernie asked.

  “No. If I did, I would have pressed that person for more money in exchange for keeping his or her name confidential. Dom was too laid-back. He didn’t have enough passion for raising money. He just wanted to go hiking with the kids. If I’d been the director, I would have hired a real fund-raiser, and put the old man out to pasture.”

  “Dom never said anything negative about you.” Bernie heard anger in Cooper’s voice. “I’m going to be relying on you even more. You’ll need to step in as fund-raiser, but you have to be more respectful.”

  “I have a better idea.” Mayfair’s grin, combined with her braids, made her look like a teenager. “Why don’t you work as our volunteer fund-raiser in your retirement? Everyone knows you. I’ll be the director and hire some interns to help with the trips. I’ll supervise you, for a change.”