Moonlight Water

by Win Blevins

  Zahnie and Red got there at the same instant. She sucked in air so hard she made a little shriek.

  Red had never seen a body ripped open by gunfire. The hole in Dr. Nielsen’s chest was huge, red, and hot, like a volcanic crater. His life’s blood had blasted away, lava from a living heart, now splattered on his clothes and in the dust, desiccated.

  By clamping down, Red kept his breakfast.

  “What happened?” said Zahnie softly.

  “They killed him,” said Damon, his voice squeezing out of a throat tight with fear. “He … Never mind. They killed him. They’re looking for me. They’ll be back soon, and if we’re still here, they’ll kill all of us.”

  * * *

  Zahnie said this was a crime scene, so they couldn’t touch the body, much less bury it, or even cover it with rocks—had to be left as-is for the investigating officers. But Red knew it wouldn’t stay the way it was. He looked into the sky for Ed. There the buzzard was, riding a thermal in big circles around their little group. Ed might hold off, but his colleagues and other critters wouldn’t.

  Zahnie tried to get a GPS reading and cursed. Without hope, she tried the radio. “The canyon walls are blocking our angle on the satellite,” she said. “Can’t report the crime.”

  Damon pleaded, “Crime scene, my ass, it’s a murder scene, and we’re the ones gonna get murdered. Please, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  That gave Red’s brain a good kick in the tail, and instinctively he felt for the .45. Zahnie frowned but jumped into the Bronco and gunned away, leaving James Nielsen’s body behind. Half an hour later they passed the ATV. Zahnie spoke her determination through her foot on the gas. She also read Red’s mind, for she said, “Hell, we left all sorts of tracks. The bad guys will know someone was there.”

  She paused and looked across the bench seat at her son. “Damon, who exactly are they?”

  The boy just stared out the window.

  Lonely. Alone. Miserable about it.

  Thought Red, Like me, a lot of times.

  Damon made refusal into a palpable force. Once in a while, Zahnie would demand, “Damon, exactly who are they?” Damon would answer with stone-heavy silence. Zahnie would hold her breath in anger, glare at Damon, and then sigh. Five minutes would pass, and Zahnie would ask, “Damon, exactly who are they?” Again the teenager would whack her upside the head with the rock of muteness.

  It went this way until Zahnie suddenly said, “This is far enough.” She didn’t let Damon protest. “I’ll radio in the crime, we’ll have lunch, and we won’t go back until we’ve got some cops on the scene.” She punched some buttons and gave the sheriff their present location. Then she got the cooler out, pretending not to notice how antsy Damon was.

  “Okay, they are looting in Lukas Gulch. Are you part of them?”

  No answer.

  The kid concentrated fiercely on opening his cellophane package of crackers.

  For the first time Red really scoped out the kid physically. First glance you’d think he was older than seventeen, slender, and with a handsome, sculpted face. Second glance said he was truly a kid, wanted to pull attitude but couldn’t. The only incongruity was that he wore a necklace with some polished inlaid stones in a setting of silver (Red later found out it was Zuni, and way expensive). He wore his shorts and tank top in a nonchalant way, but he made them look good. With his build, style, and sultry expression, he might have been a very masculine male model.

  “What were you doing up there?”

  He was stonewalling his mother, hard.

  “Are you looting too?”

  Stonewall, stonewall.

  She handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and said what had to come next, trying to conceal the hint of quiver in her voice. “Do you know you’re headed for a murder rap? Accessory, at least.”

  Damon looked at her with stony eyes. “Goddamn you,” he said, quiet and hard.

  Then he hid his expression by staring down at his sandwich.

  Zahnie glared at him.

  “Be right back,” he said. He rose smoothly and walked the twenty steps to the SUV, opened the passenger door, and slipped in.

  Suddenly, Red realized what was happening. He jumped and ran for the Bronco. Damon cranked the engine and made it roar. The Bronco threw up dust and jerked forward.

  Red hurled himself at the passenger door, caught both arms in the open window, and clamped on.

  The Bronco shot ahead. Damon looked at Red and yelled, “I can’t go to jail!” He wiggle-waggled the Bronco. Red held on, but he was going to need his teeth to keep it up. “She has her radio,” Damon hollered, “and I’ll radio in your location.”

  He wiggle-waggled the Bronco harder, left and right and then hard left.

  Red lost it and sailed for the sagebrush. He slid and rolled through branches that scraped and poked him. He got his breath back and sat up.

  Zahnie was standing in the middle of the road, screaming at Damon.

  The Bronco stopped a hundred yards away. The driver’s door opened. Damon got out, opened a rear door, set their packs and a big water container on the ground, looked toward his mother for a long moment, got back in, and drove off in a spurt of dust.

  28

  UGLY BUSINESS

  Don’t eat from a pot that is still cooking. You’ll starve to death someday.

  —Navajo saying

  This wasn’t Red’s big fantasy.

  She looked at him and said stonily, “They’ll get right out here.”

  She led the way to the shadow side of a tall boulder. He wanted to take her hand, but it wasn’t the time.

  Red’s mind was on what had happened between them the night before. His heart was playing in keys he hadn’t remembered in years. Maybe she felt the same. Maybe not all the tears in her eyes were bitter or angry or grieving. He sought her gaze, but it was turned inward.

  Murder will do that, Red said to himself. Especially when your own kid is implicated.

  After a few minutes she relaxed. “Look here,” she said. She sketched with a finger in the air and he saw. A drawing of a horse was incised into the boulder. She reached higher. “And another.” She pointed to the lower left corner of the rock with a boot. “And one more. They’re horses,” she said. “What does that mean to you?”

  Red shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “They’re Navajo, and after the Spanish came. No horses in the Four Corners until Europeans brought them.”

  “No whirlybirds, either.”

  He’d heard the copter an instant before she did.

  She kissed his cheek lightly. “Now it’s all business.”

  * * *

  Damon was wearing cuffs. “Sorry, Zahnie,” said Sheriff Rulon Rule. “He was easy to spot, and he knows enough not to run from a gun.”

  Circling, the copter managed to trail the SUV to the crime scene, landing at the junction of the two tracks, so the wind from the rotors wouldn’t disturb any evidence. Two deputies scouted, one armed with an automatic rifle, the other with a shotgun.

  Rulon Rule’s voice was hard. “What’s going on, Zahnie?”

  She led the way behind the boulder.

  Rule’s voice was tinged with emotion now. “James Nielsen shot to death.”

  Finally, Rule huffed his breath out and looked around. “What’s Damon got to do with it?”

  “Nothing, except he found the body.”

  Being hopeful, thought Red.

  “That man?” Rule inclined his head toward Red.

  “Nothing at all. This is Red Stuart. He was camping with me.” She walked over and took his hand.

  The sheriff gimlet-eyed Red.

  “In fact, please let Red take the Bronco back to Tony’s.”

  “You sure he was camping with you at the time of the shooting?”

  “Beyond sure.” She added a look that clued the sheriff in.

  The sheriff nodded. “Okay.”

  Zahnie leaned her head against the front of Red’s sho
ulder. “Take the Bronco home. Don’t know when I’ll be back, maybe half the night. I’ll meet you in the Granary. In bed.” Red eased out the air he was holding in his chest.

  “Let’s do what we have to do,” the sheriff graveled at the coroner. To the copter pilot he hollered, “Take this boy in and put him in Holding.”

  “Mom!” Damon’s voice was sharp. Zahnie and Red turned to him.

  Damon drew both of them aside and spoke softly, pleadingly. “If I go to jail, they’ll kill me.”

  “Tell what you know and I’ll do everything I can.” Compassion and toughness knit oddly in her face.

  “Just keep me out.”

  “Probably nothing I can do when you’re a murder suspect.”

  “Mom, don’t you get it? They will shoot me, too.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. “I’ll be with you this evening. I’ll get a guard put on you the rest of the night. And see you again first thing in the morning. With a lawyer.”

  Damon looked like a deer caught in headlights.

  “Let’s get down to business, Zahnie!” called the sheriff, and she had to let go of Damon.

  The pilot pushed him roughly toward the whirlybird.

  * * *

  Red got out of the car and looked at the front door of Harmony House. A thought struck him. If he still had money, he could save the old folks’ home and would.

  Tired, he trudged through the darkness around the main house to Zahnie’s little place. It was cluttered with outdoor gear but clean. In the fridge she had nothing but milk (past its date), cheese with blue-green blossoms of mold, and white bread. Red cut the mold off, made a sandwich, carried it to the loft, and got into her bed, a single-width mattress on a hard board. Felt good because it was hers.

  He turned out the lights and lay there maybe half an hour, unable to sleep.

  Zahnie’s kid in jail.

  James Nielsen’s chest caved in. Blood splashed all over the clothes, on the boulder, in the dust.

  * * *

  Red switched the lights back on. First he stared at the ceiling, then the walls. Before long he started noticing things. He studied a picture of a group of schoolkids, about ten Navajos and two Anglos, with Damon sitting right in front, grinning. Cute kid. Red thought of the tenderness, and sadness, Zahnie must feel when she looked at the picture.

  Then he checked out some handwritten sheets pushpinned into the wall. They were poems in an attractive, flowing penmanship. Hey, they were good, too:

  So soon the dawn

  comes tumbling on the heels of night

  I stand and watch

  your shadow melt in light

  Roses bloom across the western sky

  The yellow moon descends behind the pines

  And for a moment you and I

  Always parting

  Stand as friends.

  Feeling guilty, he read them all. Loved them. Damn, this woman was fine.

  She came with the first light, her face stiff with fatigue. Faking sleep, Red watched her undress. She was beautiful and her movements graceful in a way only a lover would appreciate viscerally. She was also racked by the effort of staying up all night, hours spent near the stink of a decaying human body, and terrible fear about what would happen to Damon. Red could smell the fatigue and fear on her.

  Naked, she slipped in next to him. Red snored once and then threw his arms around her—she smiled. She started kissing him. Her lips were weary but hungry. Later, in her moment of pleasure, her face finally relaxed, and in a breath she was asleep.

  29

  THE BAR OF JUSTICE

  Don’t eat with your left hand. Ghosts do that.

  —Navajo saying

  They slept only a couple of hours. Zahnie made a phone call, negotiated, and got the public defender she wanted. They pointed Red’s van toward the county seat, Montezuma City, twenty-five miles up the highway.

  When they got to the old-style county courthouse, the lawyer was walking up the sidewalk. “Rose Sanchez, Red Stuart.” They shook.

  “Call me Rose,” she said. She was a hefty woman of middle age, her hair red-gold without a hint of gray, a face that said, Don’t get in my way. She didn’t look in the slightest Hispanic. Later Zahnie told him the Mormons had picked up some Hispanic names when they had polygamous colonies south of the border. Even on a hot summer day Rose Sanchez wore a suit coat with shoulder pads wide enough to make the NFL.

  Rose strode down the basement stairs, under the sign that said: SHERIFF’S OFFICE, and strutted past the front desk like she owned the place. Zahnie and Red followed wearily. The interrogation room was halfway down the hall. Rose opened the door like she had a right, which she did.

  The sight jolted Red. Damon was seated at the middle of a long table. Four cops crowded around him, in uniform, sidearms at their hips, cuffs dangling from their belts. Damon seemed small and scared, and the cops looked big and mean. Every anti-authoritarian hair on Red’s spine stood up.

  “This stops right now,” said Rose. She glared at the cops. “You know better than this. A minor, no parent, no attorney? Guns and handcuffs? Where’s the sheriff?”

  “Back in a minute,” said a cop as stretch-necked as a vulture.

  “Has his potty break been long enough for you to rough Damon up?”

  Red liked Rose.

  At that moment Sheriff Rule materialized behind them in the hall. “Zahnie, Mr. Stuart, you can’t be here.”

  Rose slashed Rule with her words. “Neither can these officers, nor the weapons nor the cuffs. What’s going on, Rulon? You know better than this.”

  For a moment Rule almost lost the kindly good humor of his face. “Now, Rose, let’s all just calm down and work this out.”

  He nodded at the cops to leave, then slid past Zahnie and Red and started closing the door on them. The last words they heard were angry-sounding ones from Rose. “Anything you got from my client will be inadmissible.”

  A moment later, Rulon Rule lumbered out and closed the door behind him. Lawyer–client talk, apparently, and privileged. In twenty minutes Rose invited Rulon Rule back in and Zahnie began to weep. Red held her.

  * * *

  They waited a long time on two hard chairs up front while Damon was grilled. The words murder one, murder two beat in Red’s head like a pulse. In an hour the sheriff took a break and Rose walked back up front. “I think it’s going to work out okay,” she said. “At least no murder charges. Damon will have to stay in custody until we talk to the judge. Why don’t you two go eat and come back in an hour?”

  They did, and discovered the little Mormon town had a tiny, unfashionable, very good Mexican restaurant. Zahnie ordered nothing, fidgeted, and pushed them back to the sheriff’s office in half an hour. More time on hard-backed chairs, staring at their fingernails.

  Rose led the way out of the interrogation room. “Let’s get some coffee.” Red was willing to bet that meant coffee and doughnuts for sizable Rose.

  “I want to talk to Damon,” said Zahnie.

  “After we’re done talking.”

  She hesitated. “Okay.” Then Zahnie called, “Sheriff, what are you doing to protect him?”

  Rule padded out of the room and spoke softly. “He’ll be in an inside cell, no windows. No one but officers can see him, and whoever you say.”

  “Me, Rose, and Mr. Stuart. No one else, period.”

  “Fine, Zahnie.”

  Coffee and a gigantic cinnamon roll for Rose, it turned out. “They’ll let him out on bail. Talking to the judge, doing the paperwork, it’ll take a couple of hours.” She looked each of them in the eyes to make sure she had their attention. “The charge against Damon right now is stealing the ATV. It’s baloney, and they’ll drop it. No jury would convict him. We would say he used the ATV to get out of the wilderness and report a crime.”

  All three of them knew better.

  “It’s possible other charges will be filed. Obstruction, perhaps, if his story isn’t true. I think it is. They scare
d him good.”

  “What was that bullshit intimidation?” Red’s tongue was running loose.

  “Actually,” said Rose, “the sheriff was doing us a favor. He would never tell you this. He talked Damon into a test, the up-to-date version of a paraffin test, early this morning. It showed Damon hadn’t fired a gun, which means he couldn’t be the killer.”

  Zahnie’s breath gushed out.

  “Once the sheriff knew that, he squeezed Damon hard. Too many officers, weapons, cuffs, intimidation—whatever he got would have no chance in a court of law. He knew that. He was after the killer, not Damon.

  “The boy’s not out of the woods,” Rose hastened to add. “He may have been one of them. If you’re committing a crime and someone is killed, even though you didn’t pull the trigger, you can be convicted of murder. That’s still possible. If he’s not telling the truth.”

  Rose picked a raisin off the cinnamon roll, dabbed up some icing with it, and poked it into her mouth with a blunt finger.

  “We have other problems. Damon won’t say what he was doing in Lukas Gulch. Everybody’s guess is looting. Eventually they’ll find the site, get evidence, and the feds will bring charges.”

  She switched her eyes back and forth between them. “The biggest problem is that he admits he saw the murder but won’t say who the murderer was. Or murderers. That could lead to an obstruction of justice charge. Will lead, unless Damon changes his mind fast.”

  “So why is the sheriff letting Damon out, if he isn’t coming clean?” This was Zahnie.

  “Sheriff Rule likes to solve crimes fast, real fast. Particularly when the crime is against a respected member of an old LDS family like the Nielsens.” Red cocked an eyebrow at respected, but no one noticed. “To get things done he goes by his gut a lot. He has a remarkable record for intuiting right.

  “In this case he believes Damon. He used a lot of juice to force the truth out. If he’s wrong and Damon could be charged with murder, Rule has screwed up big-time. He knows that, and he took a chance. Which is a lucky break for Damon.”