After the door had closed Del Rio asked Yazzie to recount everything he knew about the murders, his relationship with each victim and his thoughts on who was behind it. As expected, everything Yazzie said matched with what Del Rio had read on the way out as well as what Chee had told him since his arrival.
Del Rio sat quietly through it all, staring intently at Yazzie. Even when the latter finished talking, Del Rio said nothing as he locked eyes with Yazzie for a full minute.
“Ben,” Del Rio said, finally breaking his silence, drawing a surprised look from Chee at his familiarity. “You asked us for help, and your friend Baker sent me out here to do that. You see, I can’t help you if you are going to lie to me.”
“Agent Del Rio...” Chee began heatedly as she bolted out of her chair, stopping as Del Rio held up his hand, palm facing her in a gesture that made it clear he didn’t want to hear another word from her. She was not sure which surprised her more; that his gesture had stopped her cold before she had even realized it, or Yazzie’s complete lack of a response to Del Rio’s charge.
“You’ve said,” Del Rio continued, never looking away from Yazzie, “that you have no idea who is doing this or why. Aside from all of you being in the Tribal government, there is nothing that connects all of the victims and you together. Yet somehow, after the second victim was discovered, out of over twenty possible candidates, you pulled out as someone in danger, the one name that just happened to be the very next victim. Now, sir, I’d very much like to know how you did that, if you don’t have more of an idea of what’s going on than you’re admitting to so far.”
The two men sat silently. Chee already knew who was going to win this contest. Agent Del Rio was going to push until he got his answer, and Yazzie was the one with his life on the line here.
“What connects the four of you enough to kill over?” Del Rio asked.
Yazzie shot a glance in Chee’s direction, clearly not wanting her to hear what was coming next, but Del Rio was having none of it.
“She is investigating this as much as I am. What I hear, she hears.”
Yazzie’s deep sigh was the indicator that Del Rio had won this battle.
“Very well,” Yazzie said. “We did not want this out in the general domain just yet. There were some legal issues to sort out first. The four of us were going into a business arrangement together; after we were done with our political careers.”
“What was the nature of this arrangement, sir?” Del Rio prodded when Yazzie paused.
“You may know we have a casino located just outside Gallup,” Yazzie continued. “It’s done pretty well since it opened back in 2008. We were thinking about opening another casino for the tribe near Tuba City, draw in some of the tourists from the Grand Canyon. The casino proceeds would go to the tribe, but we were thinking of building a full-fledged resort area around the casino — restaurants, hotels and a few other attractions — that we would run for ourselves.”
“Would there be a problem with a second casino? Is the land an issue in some way?”
“No,” Yazzie answered quickly. “It’s unused now, no one has any special claim to it. I know we had a few dissenters with the first casino, as well as some minor issues when it first opened, but everything settled down. The second casino would be far enough away that it wouldn’t impact the first. I just can’t see anyone getting worked up enough to kill over, even if they somehow found out. There was nothing down on paper, it was just at the talking phase.”
“You’re certain it was just the four of you who knew about this?”
“I never spoke to anyone else about it other than those three,” Yazzie said, then hedged his answer, “but I don’t know if they might have talked to anyone else.”
Del Rio stood silent, weighing the answers with the feeling he had; that Yazzie was still holding something back. He decided he’d pushed about as hard as he could for now, yet made one last bid to try to pry loose whatever secret Yazzie was so desperately clinging to.
“Okay, we’ll have to talk with anyone who objected to the first casino or has been a vocal opponent since it’s been in operation,” Del Rio said. “If you think of anything else, something you might have forgotten or a conversation that might seem to have a different undertone to it now that wasn’t apparent before, let me know immediately.”
Yazzie merely nodded. With that motion, Chee realized that just as Del Rio wasn’t buying Yazzie’s story as the whole truth, she too was certain that Yazzie was holding out on them.
“Ben,” she said quietly. “Please. You owe it to them to help anyway you can, especially Martin and James.”
Yazzie said nothing more; swiveling his chair away from them to look out the window at the huge red rocks, almost as if he wished he could pass through that large hole out there to anywhere else but here.
Chee made a move toward Yazzie to continue pleading her case, but Del Rio touched her on the shoulder and, with a nod of his head, indicated they should leave.
****
The rest of the day hadn’t fared much better for the pair. Before leaving the government center, Del Rio had asked Tso to have his men confirm where each council member and other officials were during the times of each murder. He also wanted whatever background Tso had on each person ready for Del Rio to pick up after they got back from visiting the houses of the three victims before heading back to Gallup for Runningelk’s autopsy. Tso hadn’t been happy about it, but he went off to see to it all the same.
Del Rio hadn’t expected to find any new clues, although he did bag what turned out to be some type of animal hair at each site, remarking as he did that they looked very similar to what he’d found at their first stop that morning. Exasperated by what seemed to be a waste of time, Chee asked what he hoped to accomplish with these visits.
“To get a sense of the victims,” Del Rio explained patiently. “All three were attacked in their home. Being at each location personally will help give me a feel for what happened and how it happened that you just can’t get from a photo or a video. Speaking of feelings, what do you make of Yazzie’s explanation back there?”
“He wasn’t telling us the whole truth.”
“No, he wasn’t, but was he outright lying, or trying not to reveal something that would be politically embarrassing to him and maybe the victims? Death it seems, is sometimes more preferable to a politician than public embarrassment.”
Chee caught the disgust in Del Rio’s voice, however she couldn’t disagree with what he’d said. The drive back to Gallup took some time. Her patrol car was starting to resemble a moving van after they’d stopped to pick up the requested documents and reports in Window Rock. They arrived just as the autopsy was about to begin. Before going in to the morgue, Del Rio stopped and looked back at Chee.
“I’d appreciate you being in there to help if a question comes up and for your impressions afterward,” Del Rio said softly, “but if you’d rather not see him like this…”
Chee appreciated the offer, but she was a cop. If this was the price that had to be paid to catch the killer, then she’d pay it gladly.
“I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
The autopsy revealed very little new information. Del Rio asked that blood be drawn to be tested later, even after the medical examiner had declared that no drugs or alcohol had been found in their initial test and hadn’t played a role in the death. The doctor finally wrapped up the procedure, began sewing the body back up and promised to fax his report and notes over to Del Rio as soon as possible.
Del Rio had been to more than one autopsy during his two-year stint as a deputy sheriff. It had been Chee’s first. She barely made it to the nearest bathroom stall before her lunch came back up. When she was finished, she turned around and was surprised to see Del Rio standing there extending a dampened paper towel with a bemused look on his face.
She was about to point out that walking into a ladies room, no matter the intent, wasn’t a good idea when she saw the two urinals mounted on the wa
ll behind Del Rio. She felt the heat rushing to her face as she took the proffered towel.
“Don’t worry,” Del Rio said. “Same thing happened to me after my first autopsy with the Bureau. I’d just had a big bowl of split pea soup before the autopsy; wound up dashing into the john and blowing green chunks everywhere. Unfortunately, the boss was already in the stall when I ran in and I hosed him down pretty good.”
He’d delivered the last line deadpan, except there was a little twinkle in the eyes that gave him away.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Hell no,” Del Rio said as the smile was already tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Why do you think he keeps sending me out on these kinds of assignments all the time?”
Chee laughed, feeling a little bit better as they exited the men’s room, drawing a very disapproving stare from a passing nurse.
“Well,” Del Rio said as they got outside, “I think we’ve done about all we can do for today. Let’s get your car unloaded at the hotel so you can go on home. I’m going to start going through this mountain of paper we’ve collected to see if there’s anything in there that might give us a lead. We can start fresh in the morning.”
“Sounds good,” Chee replied. “They’ve got a room for me there, too; wanted me nearby at all times in case you needed to get somewhere fast.”
“I appreciate the thought, but you really can go on home, you know.”
“It’s fine,” Chee said. “I live with my grandmother. She can take care of the house and herself while I’m gone. I’d like to get started going through some of this stuff as soon as possible. Besides, it looks like our nightly monsoon storm is going to hit pretty soon.”
It had been bright sunshine when they had gone inside for the autopsy. Now a dark wall of clouds was gathering to the southwest.
Even as they pulled into the motel parking lot, the first drops began to fall. Del Rio began to wonder if he should have packed a rain suit. Just seconds after they walked into the lobby with the last of the boxes and Del Rio’s bags, the full brunt of the storm hit, announcing its fury with a thunderous boom and a massive flash of lightning.
THIRTEEN
The hotel’s lobby was almost as big and open as Del Rio’s loft back in D.C. Walking inside, he felt transported back to the 1940s — which apparently had been the hotel’s heyday when the Hollywood stars had stayed there while shooting films. Oversized chairs and couches all made from thick wood filled the floor, while publicity photos of the old movie stars, many of them autographed with personal messages to the original owner, adorned the walls.
Passing a large display with a rock base and a round wooden frame, Del Rio paused at the side of what looked to be a large purple crystal that had to have been nearly two feet in height and a foot in width. Chee promptly informed him it was an agate, and the hotel’s gift shop had much smaller versions for sale.
“You people don’t do small in this part of the country do you,” Del Rio remarked as he followed Chee through the lobby and into a hallway that ran under the split stairway leading to the upper two floors of the hotel. The elevator, Chee had explained, was so slow you only used it when you had a week to get from one floor to the next.
A right turn past said elevator, and after what seemed to be a very long walk past rooms with names of some stars Del Rio recognized and others he didn’t, they arrived at Del Rio’s room, number 118, with the name plate on the door frame bearing the name “The Marx Brothers”.
Taking the key Chee had given him earlier, an actual door key, not a card with a slide strip, Del Rio opened the door and hauled in the luggage trolley they’d commandeered near the top of the stairs which was loaded down with his bags and the boxes.
“This is the suite they usually save for families of four,” Chee said as she walked in. “They said you needed a room with a lot of space, and this is the biggest they have.”
“It’ll be fine,” Del Rio said, looking around. The first room had two twin beds, a bathroom, a desk, TV and dresser. He could easily convert it into a functioning work area. He walked into the second room, which held a king-sized bed, TV, dresser and had a larger bathroom. Like the lobby, the furniture and décor were Old West.
“Since I’m the reason you’re stuck in town,” Del Rio said after they’d unloaded the trolley and he’d taken a look at how much rain was pouring down outside, “the least I can do is buy you dinner in the hotel restaurant before we start digging into all of these, or we could try swimming over somewhere else to eat.”
“Here is good,” Chee said, adding with an apologetic smile, “but I have to warn you, everything here is on the Nation’s tab as far as you are concerned. Yazzie’s orders. Look at it this way, you can really clean up at the gift shop before you leave.”
“I think my boss might have an issue with me if I did,” Del Rio replied.
“Probably. Give me a half-hour to change. We’ll try not to run up too large a tab on my boss,” Chee said as she headed for the door.
“Hey,” Del Rio called out, making her turn back. “Where?”
“Upstairs, next to the stairway,” she replied before exiting the room. “Room 213. Humphrey Bogart.”
“Pity we can’t have Sam Spade helping us out on this case,” Del Rio said to himself as she closed the door behind her and he turned to start organizing the boxes of files. He gathered up his bags and tossed them on the bed in the other room, noticing only then that he’d acquired a new bag, a black satchel similar to his own with quite some weight to it. He slipped the tie down loose and opened the satchel as he walked back into the work area. Inside was a thick file which he pulled out and flipped open, thinking it was a background file.
He quickly realized he was looking at the Chee homicide file and the bag had been Chee’s, not intended for him. The investigator in him was too curious to simply put the file back and he quickly skimmed it. It had been a horrific scene and the sketch of the knife was unique to any blade Del Rio had seen. He paused for a moment as he came across an old faded photo of Lucy with her parents during a happier time. It couldn’t have been taken too long before Peter and Mary Chee’s death.
He finished reading the file and realized, much like his current case, here was a crime that had been investigated as thoroughly as possible, and still no solution had presented itself. There was nothing he could think to be done that Chee and the original detectives hadn’t tried already. Except for one thing, he amended. He checked the activity log in the file and discovered how little effort the agent from Phoenix had actually put into the case. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something that might eventually yield a result, and that was better than nothing.
Del Rio spent a few minutes at his laptop, then carefully placed the file back into the satchel then went to get ready for dinner.
Working his way back down the hall and up the stairs — it was incredible how big the place was when it hadn’t looked so large from the outside — he found Chee’s room and knocked on the door.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him dressed in a simple white polo shirt and black jeans; that combination of colors suited him. She was quite surprised at what he held out to her.
“I thought I’d left that out in the car,” she said as she took the satchel, noticing that it had been opened.
“I thought it was something else,” Del Rio said, noticing where she was looking. “I just took a quick look. Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said, setting the bag down on the dresser in her room, barely half the size of Del Rio’s. She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door. “Did you find anything?”
“Just one thing,” he replied, adding quickly as she turned with a surprised look. “Not about the investigation. The file was never entered into VICAP. There are enough oddities involved that if your killer surfaces again, it’ll match up.”
There was something in his tone that told her that he’d done more than just a quick scan; a suspicion that
was confirmed when he handed her a slip of paper with a series of letters and numbers written on it.
“That’s the case number in VICAP,” he explained. “If any detail of your parents’ murders matches up with another crime, or if a similar knife style is used, it’ll flag me at my office. You can use that number to track any progress as well. I sent a message to a friend of mine in INTERPOL. He’ll add it to their system too, in case the killer was visiting from outside the country, and he’ll let me know if they get a hit.”
VICAP was the FBI’s database on violent crimes, and had been useful in bringing killers to justice that otherwise might never have been caught. In her drive to personally catch the person who’d murdered her parents, she’d never considered either outside resource.
“Thank you, Jack,” she said. “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble.”
“I’m a Virginia-born farm boy,” Del Rio said, affecting a slight Virginia drawl, “If I can’t buy dinner for a beautiful lady, then I have to do something for her, or I bring great shame on my ancestors. Besides, it’s the least I can do since you are stuck having to drive me all over the place.”
She wasn’t buying his “aw-shucks, ma’am” routine. On the contrary, she was grateful for his gesture, and had to admit to feeling a little thrill, as any woman would, at being called beautiful by a man. She was glad she’d spent the extra time getting ready, and while she’d only packed blue jeans to wear besides her uniform, she had packed the turquoise and pink blouse her grandmother had said went well with her eyes.
Driven by some deviltry, she decided to tease her escort a little as they passed the gift shop on the way to the restaurant.
“Sure you don’t want to duck in and see if you can find something to go with that necklace you got earlier for your girlfriend?” she teased, having noticed the lack of a ring or ring line on his finger.
“That was a peace offering,” Del Rio replied with a slight air of someone who knows he’s being teased, but could do nothing about it. “Tonight was supposed to be our third date, first time for dinner too.”
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