Edge of Dawn

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “And when will that be?”

  “In a few more days.”

  He started to leave, only to be pulled back when Pamela said, “Are you planning to see Grenier?”

  “I really don’t have anything to discuss with him,” Richard said.

  “You ruffled his feathers with this California thing. You might want to do a bit of feather smoothing while you’re here.”

  Richard sighed and smothered the sudden flare of irritation and resentment. As if he didn’t have enough to contend with, now he had to soothe the ego of a man he feared, hated, distrusted—and needed.

  “Okay, I’ll stop by and see him.”

  * * *

  He heard footfalls approaching. The quick, sharp staccato of heels on stone, and he knew at once who it was. There was nothing restful about Richard; he moved like one of those dust devils that periodically swirled and danced across the deserts and mesas of New Mexico. Grenier felt a momentary sense of pique. He hadn’t been told the boss was coming home, but then anticipation replaced the feeling and he looked up as Richard swept through the door.

  Richard looked well. More rested than was usual, and he’d gotten some sun. The narrow nose and high cheekbones were tinged with a bit of sunburn. That nose wrinkled as the young man took an appreciative sniff of the redolent and seductive smells of ginger, mint, lemon grass, and chili that floated though the office.

  “Oh, that smells good.” He paused and cocked his head, one of his little habits. “I didn’t have any breakfast, and I just realized I’m hungry.” Grenier suppressed the urge to hug the take-out containers to his chest and protect his lunch. Richard held up a finger in a wait-one-moment gesture and was gone with a swiftness and grace that reminded the older man of quicksilver and lightning. He returned in a few moments clutching a plate and utensils. Somehow he knew of Grenier’s ad hoc kitchen, which had Grenier wondering how much else Richard knew about his habits.

  Richard began scooping out Tip’s famous teriyaki fried rice and added a large dollop of pad Thai and an inordinate amount of ginger beef. Grenier tried to curb his annoyance. Clearly he failed, because those ice-blue eyes, brimming with amusement, stared challengingly into his.

  “You don’t mind if I bogart part of your lunch? There’s enough here for four,” Richard said.

  A flush swept up Grenier’s cheeks. “That was cold.”

  “But true.” Richard took a bite of noodles, chewed and swallowed. “You know, I really wish you’d grow back your beard. That many chins just aren’t natural.”

  “Did you come here solely for the purpose of irritating and insulting me?” Grenier snapped. “But you are correct,” Grenier continued. “I ordered too much food, and I would have eaten it all if you hadn’t shown up.”

  “I think you’re gorging because you lost your magic. Trying to fill the void,” Richard said.

  Grenier found the remark smug and condescending, and he struck back. “So says the man with daddy issues.”

  There was a flash of anger in the amazing blue eyes. “Okay, I’d say we’re even on the exchanging-insults front,” Richard said.

  Grenier gave him a thin smile. “Don’t try to outpsych me, Richard. Two can play that game, and I’ll always win. But let’s start with your statement. I did not lose my magic, as you so euphemistically phrased it. You robbed me of it, and took my hand in the process.”

  “You were trying to kill my father and Angela.” Once again the pale cheeks were awash with color.

  “The merest touch of the sword is enough to destroy a person’s power,” Grenier shot back. “You didn’t have to cut off my damn hand!”

  “You had spent the past two days having your thugs beat me up, then topped it off with you running electricity through my balls. At that point I wasn’t feeling very charitable.”

  There was no good answer to that, and Grenier didn’t try. Instead he voiced the question raised by Jorge. “People wonder why you let me stay here.” Then he added a poisoned dart. Looking down at his desk, he shuffled papers and casually added, “It makes them question your judgment.” He looked up quickly to catch Richard’s reaction, and was pleased when he saw doubt cloud those eyes.

  Richard shook it off and gave Grenier a challenging look. “Would you like me to kick you to the curb?”

  “I’d rather you not. The Old Ones have long memories.”

  “Besides, you know why you’re here,” Richard said.

  “Actually, I don’t. Why do you keep me around, Richard?”

  “You know how the Old Ones and human quislings work together, and you can recognize signs of those unholy alliances—”

  Grenier held up an admonishing finger. “Ah, religious allusion from the newly minted atheist.”

  “First, it’s been two years since Kenntnis and Cross showed me how the world actually worked. And sometimes you can’t avoid the occasional dear God or good heavens. But back to the subject. I like to keep you where I can watch you.”

  “So you don’t trust me?”

  “Would you?”

  “No,” Grenier admitted, and tried to cover the emotional hurt with a rueful laugh. He decided to launch one more poisoned dart. “But you also need me here. I’m the daddy figure you cannot do without.” He watched it land with bitter satisfaction, because while Richard had initiated the break, the estrangement from the man haunted him. Richard had spent his life trying to please and win the respect of his cold and distant father, and while he had come tantalizingly close when he had outplayed and defeated Grenier, ultimately Richard had failed.

  Richard stood and looked down at Grenier. “Well, you’re just full of little croakers today, aren’t you? Pamela said you needed stroking. Looks like she was right.”

  “You’re learning to punch above your weight.”

  “Not a very good allusion in your case,” Richard said with a smile that extended only from the teeth out.

  “Touché.”

  Richard checked his watch. “And I’ve got to go.”

  He walked out, and Grenier stared for a long time at the closed door.

  * * *

  After the rather fraught conversation with Grenier, Richard returned to his office. As he emerged from the stairwell, he contemplated sneaking past his assistant, but Jeannette had her desk arranged to defeat any such maneuver. She handed him a stack of messages as he walked past. The sheaf of pink papers included the COO based in London; the CFO based in Japan; Damon Weber; Cassutt, who ran Lumina’s Washington lobbying firm; and Egan, who ran human resources out of offices in Harlem in New York City.

  “Do you want me to ring them for you?” Jeannette asked.

  This was an ongoing dance-battle. She had slowly trained Richard to behave like a proper executive. He no longer came out to the reception area to greet visitors. He didn’t make his own dinner reservations. He didn’t type his own letters, which was one dictum he didn’t mind. He had come to hate typing because he’d always gotten stuck typing up reports when he was a cop. Richard was a touch typist while his fellow officers were strictly hunt-and-peck, and he had been a rookie so there was no way to avoid being drafted. Since talking into a recorder made Richard feel stupid, he wrote out the letters in longhand and gave them to Jeannette to type. It wasn’t the most efficient use of either of their time, but it seemed a suitable compromise.

  But Jeannette hadn’t won on the phone thing. “No, thank you. The day I’m unable to punch a few buttons, you need to take me out and shoot me,” he said.

  “Don’t even joke about it,” Jeannette said, and Richard could see he had really upset her.

  It wasn’t conscious, but Richard found his hand gripping his thigh where the bullet had torn through. Next he touched the bandage over his ribs and wondered if the claw wound was going to leave a scar.

  Jeannette glared at him over the top of her reading glasses. “Look, it diminishes you when you call, and some secretary—”

  Richard held up an admonishing hand. “Uh-uh, administrative
assistant, please.”

  She threw a computer screen cleaner designed to look like a Siamese cat at him. He caught it, and began squeezing it, feeling the seeds inside crunch and slide. It did seem to be a day for people to throw things at him.

  Jeannette continued. “While an administrative assistant”—she rolled her eyes—“keeps you waiting while she rings through to her boss. The assistants should do the waiting.”

  Richard hitched a hip onto the edge of her desk and stared down at her, fascinated.

  “You’re taking this seriously, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. With really important people, assistants try to make certain that you both come on the phone at exactly the same time.” She shrugged. “It’s a power thing.”

  “My ego isn’t that big, and besides, most of the people I call work for me,” he demurred.

  “True, but you should let me place the call when it’s anyone outside Lumina. Otherwise you’ll leave the impression with that other executive’s assistant that you’re not powerful, a bit naïve, and probably a pushover, and she’ll pass that on to her boss, which puts you at a disadvantage.”

  Surrender came in the form of a sigh, then he added, “Okay, I’ll agree to that much.” She reached for the messages, but he pulled them away. “But all of these people work for me.” He went through the heavily carved wood-and-glass doors and into the office.

  He settled into the chair behind the desk. Studied the colors swirling and combining like a mad creation by Jackson Pollock. He couldn’t put it off any longer. With another sigh, he picked up the wireless receiver and started making calls. Cassutt wanted to host a Washington mill-and-swill and needed funds. Richard okayed it. Kenzo, the CFO, wanted to fly in from Tokyo and meet with him. The Japanese man’s voice sounded grim, and Richard desperately wanted to postpone the meeting, or fob him off on Lumina’s COO, Dagmar Reitlingen. Instead he reminded himself that the buck stopped with him, and he said okay. He jotted down the date on a piece of paper to give to Jeannette. He then applied himself to the stack of papers on his desk, only to be interrupted by a soft knock on the office door.

  It was Joseph. “We need to leave for the airport.”

  Richard checked his watch. “Right.” He wasn’t sorry to abandon both the office and the paperwork.

  Chapter

  SIX

  IN the distance, Shiprock thrust its jagged pinnacles toward the sky as if some ancient power had placed a stone pipe organ in the middle of the desert. Richard peered through the front window of the helicopter and felt awe.

  “The Navajos call it Tse Bit’ a’i, rock with wings,” Jerry, the helicopter pilot and a Desert Storm vet, called over the headphones.

  Richard nodded, the beat of the chopper’s rotors a thrumming in his chest. He sat in front next to Jerry, while Joseph, his dark features serene, sat behind them, a duffel bag containing a shotgun and a submachine gun at his feet. The sword hilt gouged at Richard’s lower back, and he shifted in the seat.

  Beyond the mass of red sandstone that dominated the space, distant peaks, blue tinted, edged the horizon in all four directions like rampart walls defending the basin. Immediately below, the scrub brush, blasted brown by summer heat, clung doggedly to the tan dirt. In the distance, Highway 491 made a black scar on the face of the desert. A red pickup, looking like a toy from this height, drove in splendid isolation. Such vastness and emptiness left Richard momentarily longing for the green of Rhode Island and the blue of its lakes and the bordering ocean. He knew he would never return home; there was nothing there to return to. But at odd times he found himself afflicted with homesickness.

  “Where are we landing?” Richard asked.

  “Near the senior center,” Joseph answered. “There aren’t a lot of choices out this way.”

  “Really? Looks to me like we’ve got hundreds of miles of choices.”

  “Not if you want to be anywhere close to town,” Jerry said. In the west, monsoon thunderheads were building, lightning jabbing at the earth beneath. “We want to land before that hits,” he added, a frown between his gray brows.

  The helicopter had seemed small. Now it seemed a fragile soap bubble caught between rock and fire. A few more minutes and the town came into view. There didn’t seem to be a lot of houses or trailers. What there was, was a long, wide main street lined with a multitude of fast-food restaurants, a few unidentifiable buildings, and some banks. Smaller roads snaked away into the desert, but only for a block or two. As they drew closer, more details came into focus. Virtually every car on the road or in the parking lots was a pickup truck. People looked up as the helicopter pulsed overhead.

  A gust of wind made the copter yaw, and Richard grabbed for a handhold, but Jerry was unruffled and set them down in a dirt lot next to the senior citizen center. The rotors slowed and stopped. Richard pulled off the headphones and opened the cockpit door. The wind swirled into the helicopter, carrying the scent of dust, rain, and fried chicken. In the distance, the sky muttered to itself. A car, a big dust-covered Cadillac, pulled out of the center’s parking lot, drove down the shoulder, and came jouncing across the dirt lot toward them. Richard slipped behind the tail of the copter and laid a hand on his gun. Only when Joseph walked forward to talk to the driver did Richard relax.

  Joseph beckoned, and Richard headed to the car. “We’ll leave as soon as I’m back,” he said to Jerry.

  The older man pointed at the threatening clouds. “Only if that lets us.”

  Joseph held open the door against the buffeting wind and Richard climbed in. He leaned forward across the front seats and held out his hand to the driver, a broad-shouldered man with his hair in a traditional rolled queue bound with a white cloth. He also wore a Washington Redskins baseball cap. “Hi, I’m Richard Oort.”

  “Wendell Benally. So, we’re goin’ to Henry Yazzi’s?”

  Richard checked his notes on his iPhone. “Yes.”

  “They’re not in trouble, are they?”

  It was an echo of what Richard had heard on the Cahuilla reservation. It depressed him to think that the arrival of a white man always meant trouble to these native peoples. “No, not at all. I’m a police officer, and we have information for Mosi Tsosie about what happened to her family.”

  “They all got killed by that crazy kid. What else is there to say?” Benally grunted.

  “Well, we have a bit more insight into what happened. I thought she should know.”

  “Hmm, not how cops usually act.”

  There was no possible response. They drove north on the main drag of Shiprock. Past a KFC, presumably the source of the smell, a Taco Bell, a McDonald’s, a Domino’s Pizza, and the largest Laundromat Richard had ever seen. Most of the male population seemed to be teens and younger and over sixty. There was a wider age range among the women. Richard’s impression was of sleek black hair, T-shirts, and blue jeans. Occasionally there was a flash of deep blue as an older woman in the heavy traditional velvet skirt and blouse, loaded with turquoise jewelry, flashed by.

  “Was this a traditional encampment?” Richard asked, making conversation.

  “Nah, it was founded in 1903 when the government built a school and agency here.”

  “Oh.”

  “And we don’t call it Shiprock. We call it Naat’áanii Nééz.” Richard repeated the words, trying to wrap his tongue and palate around the unfamiliar syllables. Benally gave a short laugh. “Not bad for a white eyes.” He laughed again. “Now you see why they used it as a code during World War Two. My grandfather was a code talker,” he added with pride. “They’re almost all gone now.”

  “That’s sad,” Richard said.

  Benally shrugged. “That’s life.”

  The road took a sharp curve to the right, and they crossed over a river. A sign identified it as the San Juan. Richard could see where the river had originally flowed, hundreds of yards wider, but irrigation and drought had reduced it to a narrow blue ribbon. They crossed a modern bridge, but on the other side the traffic
crossed over an old steel truss bridge. Benally turned left on Hephaestus Peak Road. They passed a police station and a run-down mission called the Power Place. At the top of the bluff, Benally turned left down a small paved road. Well, it was paved only if a person was generous. The edges had been nibbled away, and the center of the road was a collection of potholes.

  They passed a corral with a pair of tired-looking horses standing head to tail and swishing flies. A trailer with nine cars and trucks in various states of disrepair parked in the dirt yard out front. Then they reached a cinder-block house painted bright blue. The tin roof was adorned with thirty or so old tires. Richard wasn’t sure why. Nestled among the tires, a large, rusting swamp cooler thrummed and clanged as it tried to beat back the heat.

  As in Tecolote, there were a lot of dogs, and they began caroling when he and Joseph stepped out of the car. The noise brought a heavyset woman to the front door. Richard put her in her forties. The high cheekbones of her Amerind genes struggled to be seen in a round, fat face. Her expression was tight and closed off as she watched Richard and Joseph walk toward her.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Yazzi?” There was a stiff nod in reply. Richard flashed his badge. “I’m here to see Mosi Tsosie.” He found the name hard to say with the three s sounds, and he flushed with embarrassment.

  “FBI said we all done with that,” came the unencouraging reply.

  “This is the final follow-up, and we have information that we thought would be a comfort to Mosi,” Richard said. Sweat was breaking out in his armpits, and the August sun beating down on his bare head made him feel faint.

  “That girl’s crazy. Maybe crazy as her brother. She smashed the screen on our computer. Tried to smash the computer screens at the library.”

  “I may be able to help with that,” Richard said.

  Her face closed down even more. “We’re gonna have a medicine man do a sing.” The message was clear: We don’t need your help, White Eyes.

  “If I could just see your niece, please.”

  The leading edges of the clouds rolled over them, and the temperature immediately dropped twenty degrees. Lightning flared and thunder snarled overhead. The woman reluctantly stepped aside, and Richard and Joseph entered the house. The furniture was fairly new and of better quality than Richard had expected. “Your husband isn’t here?”