Head Wounds

by Michael McGarrity

  In the morning, he’d visit the Apache homeland to see where Fernando had been killed. He’d say prayers, offer tobacco so that his hunt would be successful, and take a look around the reservation. From what he’d seen so far, the mountains that were home to the Apaches held much beauty.

  Twice a month, Isabel Istee served as a docent at the Mescalero Tribal Cultural Center and Museum in the village center just off the highway that cut east and west across the homelands. It was a small museum, low to the ground, round in shape, protected by large shade trees at the entrance.

  She liked the morning shift best, arriving early to make sure all was in order, walking through the displays of tools, weapons, clothing, and the wonderful collection of old baskets. She dusted and straightened as necessary, put out stacks of brochures about Apache history and culture, and prepared the bank deposit slip for the voluntary contributions made by visitors the day before.

  As she often did, Isabel had driven, but today she was in her brand-new all-wheel drive SUV, with her ten-year-old Pekingese, Chapo, in his car seat next to her. It had been fifteen years since she’d gotten a new car, and she was quite pleased with herself. Well behaved and quiet, Chapo loved to sprawl near the museum front door and greet visitors with a tail-wag.

  The museum opened at eight and there were rarely any visitors until midmorning, which gave Isabel time to sit undisturbed with her needlepoint. She was about to start in on a complex pattern of Navajo blanket triangles when Chapo came and asked for an outside.

  She stepped out with him under the tall trees fronting the museum. A low sky masked the sun and muted the morning gray. A man stood alone a short distance away, holding a buckskin bundle secured with rawhide strips under one arm. Chanting softly in a language Isabel could not make out, he turned slowly in a circle, sprinkling something onto the pavement.

  His face was shaded by a hat and she couldn’t see his features. She wasn’t sure he was Apache. She’d heard of no cleansing ceremony to be held at the site where Clayton had killed the intruder who’d been outside Blossom Magoosh’s front door. Any such ritual would surely have included Clayton, and he certainly would have told her about it.

  If not Apache, what tribe? she wondered. What kind of ceremony?

  The man stopped when he saw her, stood very still for a moment, retreated to a nearby Jeep, the wheels caked in mud, and drove away.

  Relieved of his burden, Chapo signaled he was ready to return to sentinel duty inside. Isabel walked to where the man had been standing, knelt, and picked up a sample of the sprinkled substance. It was tobacco, one of the sacred plants, and it appeared to be homegrown.

  Isabel had been told of other people who had stopped to view the crime scene. A reporter writing a follow-up newspaper story for a weekly, some of Blossom’s curious relatives and neighbors interested to see where the shooting had occurred, a graduate student documenting police shootings on Indian reservations. But that was nothing like what she had just witnessed.

  Clayton was off the case, the investigation taken over by federal agents. She’d call him at home in the evening and ask if he knew anything about what had just happened.

  Trevino wasn’t happy the woman had seen him outside the museum but wasn’t unduly concerned about it, either. Her face veiled by the shadows of the trees, he could only see that she was petite. An older woman, he guessed. She’d made no attempt to speak to him, probably because she’d been surprised. Hopefully, she’d pass him off as some weirdo and let it go at that. He hung around the area out of sight for a while on the off chance she’d called the cops, but none showed.

  He drove some of the major paved roads on the rez to get familiar with the area, his appreciation of the land growing with each new vista. He cruised past the ranch area, the fish hatchery, and circled the village center before visiting the impressive resort and casino a few miles outside of the town of Ruidoso.

  In town, he parked behind a block of retail stores and entered the GPS coordinates for Isabel Istee’s residence. Since he was in the neighborhood, he’d scout her location. He’d do the same with Istee’s gringo father Kerney, his wife Sara, and his son Patrick as well as the two Istee children and the deputy’s wife. Where did they go? What was their routine? Once he knew how to get to everyone, only then would he be prepared to act.

  He’d spend one more night in the Sacramento Mountains, drive to Santa Fe, and camp in the nearby national forest. He was interested to see Kerney’s ranch up close.

  He reviewed Isabel Istee’s profile on his tablet. Never married, retired nurse, former tribal council member. Her house was on a heavily treed hillside at the end of a long driveway behind the Mescalero Public Health Service Hospital. She had one dog and drove an older-model Chevy Blazer.

  He decided to make a quick run-by and then continue cruising the rez before returning to camp.

  Isabel’s shift at the museum ended at ten a.m. when eighty-six-year-old Blanca Tapaye arrived to relieve her. Considered one of the most treasured tribal healers, she always dressed traditionally while at the museum. Today she wore a long denim skirt, a flowered blouse, and had a handmade shawl draped over her shoulders. A beadwork necklace made by her grandmother with dozens of sparkling tiny mirror pendants hung around her neck.

  At eleven, a busload of fourth-graders from Alamogordo were scheduled to tour the museum and listen to Blanca talk about the long-ago days. She liked to tell the story of how the necklace could be used as a signaling device to warn the people far away of approaching white-eyed strangers or the hated pony soldiers.

  Isabel asked Blanca if she knew anything about the ceremony she’d witnessed outside the museum earlier that morning. She described it in detail.

  “I know nothing about it,” Blanca replied. “Was he a singer?”

  “I could not see him clearly,” Isabel replied.

  “Was it Junior Second?”

  Older than Blanca, Junior, bent and frail, was the most famous singer of them all. “No, this was a much younger man.”

  Blanca shook her head. “Then he was not of the people. This was a bad power you saw. Did it speak to you?”

  “No. As soon as he saw me, he left.”

  “Good.” Relief flooded Blanca’s voice. “You have not been harmed.”

  Isabel picked up Chapo, who was ready to leave. “I am glad to know it.”

  “We will meet again,” Blanca said in Apache.

  “Our paths will meet again,” Isabel agreed.

  In her new SUV, just for the fun of it, Isabel drove to town. She picked up some good olive oil and balsamic vinegar at a specialty food store and returned the more leisurely back way home past the resort and casino. As she turned onto the road to her house, a muddy gray Jeep Wrangler passed in the opposite direction.

  She slowed to look at it through the rearview mirror. Unlike New Mexico vehicles, which had none, she’d glimpsed a front license plate but couldn’t make out the state. Maybe it wasn’t a real plate at all, just one of those that advertised or promoted something like EAT MORE BEEF or JESUS LOVES YOU.

  On a road where she could name the owners of every other vehicle, the Jeep didn’t fit in. As she turned up her driveway, she remembered the man outside the museum had retreated to the same type of vehicle. It gave her a creepy feeling.

  Glad to be going home, Chapo barked once.

  Seeing the SUV on the road surprised Trevino. It had been parked outside the tribal museum, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. As the vehicle turned up Isabel Istee’s driveway, his concern turned to alarm. That wasn’t the vehicle listed on her profile. Had she bought a new car? Was it a friend come to visit? Was it possible she’d watched him perform Whistling Bear Paints with Clay’s favorite dance? It was the last act on earth his spirit would witness. Without it, he would not be welcomed into the spirit world, freed from all cares left behind.

  He had to know who the driver of the SUV was. The slightest chance he might have raised suspicion was unacceptable.

  H
e considered driving to her house, pretending to be lost, scoping out any vehicles, and asking for directions. Maybe with a White Eyes that would work, but in the tight-knit, insular Apache community of Mescalero, probably not.

  He decided to return to camp before his presence became more obvious. Tomorrow he’d find a way to put his eyes on Isabel Istee. Perhaps he would kill her.

  That would even the score. Take away somebody Istee loved. The single mother who’d raised him, who adored him. The mother he still honored and cherished. The idea had appeal.

  He took the quickest way out of the village and arrived at the entrance of the old ranch road to his campsite. Fresh tire tracks led toward the abandoned ranch house ruins, which were two miles in. However, several rutted roads branched off along the route. Perhaps his camp hadn’t been discovered. He’d proceed and see if the tracks veered away.

  At the junction of the last fork in the road, the tire tracks continued on. Trevino stopped and killed the engine. If he had a visitor up ahead, there was no sense warning whoever it was that he was coming. He put his Glock 9mm in a coat pocket, left the Jeep, and circled on foot behind the old ruins. At the base of undulating foothills one mile in, he caught sight of a four-by-four pickup truck, engine running, parked next to his campsite. The man behind the wheel was talking on a cell phone.

  Trevino considered taking a shot at his head, but at fifty yards the distance was too great for the Glock to guarantee a sure kill. He decided to play innocent. He stepped out into plain view from behind a partially shattered wall and waved at the man in the truck.

  The man got out of the cab clutching a lever-action Marlin hunting rifle. In the hands of an experienced hunter, it was a weapon of great accuracy.

  Bulky in a winter barn coat and wearing a felt cowboy hat, the man looked to be middle-aged. “Is this your camp?” he yelled.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Get over here,” the man growled.

  “What’s the problem?” Trevino asked as he moved forward. He stuffed a hand in a coat pocket and gripped the Glock.

  “You’re trespassing.”

  “This is public land,” Trevino replied, drawing close.

  “I lease it, and you crossed my land to get here.”

  “I meant no harm.”

  “Like hell. You outsiders come here, shoot my livestock for the fun of it, leave your trash to blow in the wind, cut down trees, start fires, and I can’t do a damn thing about it unless I catch you in the act. Well, this time I did, and I’ve got a deputy coming to arrest you.”

  Trevino moved closer. “That’s not necessary. I’ll pack up and leave.”

  The rancher leveled his Marlin at Trevino’s chest. “You’ll do no such thing. Stay put.”

  Trevino raised his hands skyward, stepped forward, and smiled remorsefully. “I’ll pay whatever fine you want. Right here, right now. Just tell me how much.”

  Surprised by the offer, the rancher lowered the Marlin. “You ain’t got that kind of cash.”

  “Five hundred?” Trevino countered. He stuffed his hand back in the pocket with the Glock. “I can do more if you want.”

  The rancher shook his head. “No, I want your dumb ass in jail. Teach a lesson to others like you.”

  “I’m sorry you said that.” Trevino cleared the Glock from the pocket and shot the man twice in the head.

  As he approached the body, a cell phone in the rancher’s truck rang. He stopped to listen when the call went to voice mail. The deputy had found the jeep and was a mile out.

  Trevino picked up the Marlin, climbed into the bed of the rancher’s truck, hunkered down, and sighted the weapon down the ranch road. Given where and how the rancher had lived, he figured the weapon was zeroed in at about a hundred yards, but he couldn’t be sure.

  The deputy’s SUV came into view, emergency lights flashing, which Trevino thought unnecessary and comical in such a remote, unpeopled space. He waited until the vehicle closed to under a hundred yards and shot the deputy twice through the windshield.

  The SUV plowed off the road into a rusty water tank and flipped up, hood in the air, before crashing back down on its wheels.

  Trevino approached cautiously. The deputy was dead. He’d taken one shot through the neck, the second one high in the chest. On a clipboard he’d written the make, model, and license plate number of Trevino’s Jeep. Maybe in a hurry he hadn’t called it in.

  The police radio crackled. A dispatcher asked for the deputy’s location. Trevino reached in through the shattered windshield and grabbed the clipboard. There was no time to finesse the situation.

  He broke camp in a hurry, loaded everything in the rancher’s truck—including the dead man’s Marlin and cell phone—drove to his Jeep, transferred the gear, and set the pickup truck on fire. He was on the pavement long before he heard the wail of sirens in the distance.

  Ten miles out, along an empty stretch of a two-lane state highway, he stopped, cleaned his prints off the rifle and the cell phone, and threw them into a culvert.

  It was time to go home. He never, ever should have done wet work north of the border.

  At a Juárez chop shop, Trevino traded the Jeep Wrangler for one of the owner’s personal vehicles, an older Dodge Ram truck with seventy-seven thousand miles. The seller got a great deal and Trevino got a vehicle with legal papers and plates that shouldn’t raise any Texas cop’s interest. He dumped all his camping gear except the Glock in a garbage bin behind a vacant gas station, crossed back into El Paso, and merged with the heavy I-10 traffic heading eastward.

  Eagle Pass was about five hundred miles and eight hours away, but Trevino wasn’t in a hurry to get there. He needed time to think. Killing the rancher and the deputy sat heavy on his mind. They were innocent civilians, dead by unfortunate circumstances. Messy. That wasn’t who he was.

  He’d gone off-kilter with the Goggin-Nautzile job. Too greedy for the big money Lorenz had offered for the hit, too agreeable about scalping them both for the bonus payment. Taking out the money-hungry hotel night manager Cosgrove had just been a matter of cleanup, always part of the job, and nothing to stick in his craw.

  He’d been stupid to work outside of Mexico, stupid to let vengeful feelings about Clayton Istee cloud his mind. He was the one who’d sent Whistling Bear Paints with Clay to his death, not the cop who’d shot him.

  He had to stop and think. The small farming town of Van Horn sat on I-10, an hour away. He’d get a room there, have a meal and a good night’s sleep, and head out in the morning on U.S. 90 through pretty country not yet spoiled by too many people.

  The idea of adopting Jose Hernandez’s son, Little Bear Den Near Cattails, started to sour. Who was he to take a child from a father? To raise him to tolerate loneliness, thrive on violence, be wary of everyone? He’d already done that with Fernando. It was time to stop.

  The tribe had let him do just about anything. But was it out of respect or fear? Trevino laughed out loud at the stupidity of the question.

  He could do one good thing for his people, buy the Mexican hunting ranch closest to the tribal lands and give it as a gift. It would provide abundant wildlife to hunt and keep Kickapoo traditions, ceremonies, and rituals alive. He’d have to put everything he owned into it, but it could be his legacy.

  He’d been cruising in the right-hand lane at the speed limit, big rigs roaring past him one after another, vehicles weaving in and out to pass, gathering precious seconds on the way to somewhere.

  Trevino decided he needed a new somewhere. One that was more balanced.

  CHAPTER 16

  Despite promises made and good intentions, Clayton was unable to completely let go of the Goggin-Nautzile homicide investigation. The killing of DEA Agent Sedillo at the Piedras Negras border crossing, Agent Harjo’s disappearance into Mexico, and Isabel’s report of the strange ritual outside the tribal museum continued to fuel his obsession with the case.

  The ritual had all the earmarks of an indigenous ceremony, right down to the nat
ive tobacco his mother had found at the scene. Could it have been conducted by El Jefe?

  Was it El Jefe that Isabel had seen driving on the road to her house? Who later that day killed a rancher and deputy sheriff responding to a misdemeanor trespass call? Virtually no evidence had been left behind at the crime scene. That made no sense, unless the killer wanted to shield his identity, which was exactly why the Las Cruces hotel night manager had been killed.

  Occasional telephone calls from Special Agent Fallon, asking if he had any word from Harjo, made the case harder for Clayton to walk away from. He’d never met Fallon but could tell by the man’s voice his concern for Harjo’s welfare was genuine and deeply personal.

  When he could sneak the time, Clayton kept trolling the Internet, concentrating on veterans websites, armed forces unit reunion events, veterans conventions and conferences, chat rooms favored by former military personnel, looking for anyone asking about an old comrade or a training classmate called Bear. All in vain.

  Did he keep working the case because of vanity? To redeem himself for the fuckup with the state police that cost him the job and marred his reputation? Had regaining honor become a conceit? Sometimes psychology, no matter how insightful, wasn’t helpful at all.

  There are nameless enclaves in the world where people have lived for years, in some cases centuries. They are not on any maps, old or new, and there are none of the usual mapmaker symbols to lead you there. Extreme outdoor adventure enthusiasts exploring the wilderness sometimes stumble upon these unknown outposts. They are often never heard from again.

  Such places dwell in the realm of legend and myth. Lost tribes, outlaw bands, forgotten civilizations, survivalists preparing for the apocalypse. Thriller movie stuff. But for those who are hunted, they are places of refuge. For others, the enclaves are their home grounds.