The Ties That Bind

by Andi Marquette

  "Kare, we need to find out what the hell Monroe wanted from him. It's got to have something to do with Bill. Purcell knows something that he's not saying and the longer he holds out, the more fucked up this gets. Now get your ass over here."

  "Goddammit, you are the most fucking annoying sister ever."

  "You know I'm right. Now would you please call Shoshana and then get over here?"

  She said something I didn't catch and hung up. I closed my phone and put it back in my pocket, and a piece of grass tickled my bare thigh, which made me think of bugs crawling up my legs. Especially ticks. I probably had ticks in my pants after running around in the grass like I'd been doing. Fuck. I shifted positions and brushed at my legs, a bad case of heebie-jeebies sending little chills up my spine. Great. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or freakin' Lyme Disease. Explain that to Sage. I brushed the back of my neck and my arms off, then went back to brushing my legs off.

  The screen door opened again and this time, Brutus and Sam emerged. Purcell stood for a moment watching them, right hand braced on a cane, left holding the door open. He turned away and the door banged behind him as he retreated into the house. At least he was up and moving around. And at least the dogs were okay, too. Brutus and Sam were busy sniffing around the patio before they started investigating the place where Monroe's truck had been parked. I stayed still, hoping the breeze didn't shift and tip them off. My legs started to cramp and just when I thought for sure my thigh muscles were going to explode, I heard my car coming down the driveway.

  As soon as it appeared, Kara at the wheel, I stood up and started walking toward her. She stopped the car in the same area Monroe had parked. Brutus and Sam started examining the car and sure enough, Sam peed on the front tire while Brutus bounded over to me, recognizing either the car, me, or both. He sniffed my feet and rubbed his bulk against my knees. I petted him, waiting for Kara to get out of the car. She did and took her sunglasses off, shooting me a glare. Just like old times.

  "We'll argue about this later," I said. "Right now, let's go check on Purcell and see if we can get some info."

  She glared at me again and in silence preceded me to the front door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  PURCELL SAT IN the recliner he'd been in two days earlier, staring at his legs, avoiding my gaze. "I don't know what he wanted," he said again, referring to Monroe's visit a half-hour ago. Why didn't I believe him?

  "Mr. Purcell," I said as patiently as I could, "Monroe came out here minutes after we'd been to Ridge Star. Had we not set up that appointment, chances are he wouldn't have wasted your time today, either. Please help us understand what the missing piece is here." I tried appealing to his sense of duty.

  He remained silent. Seconds stretched into a minute. I felt another of Kara's glares boring a hole into my skull.

  "Look," I said, losing more of my patience. This was about nasty people who might fuck with me and people I loved. I wasn't in the mood to let him off the hook. "We know somebody's watching us. We don't know who and we don't know why. But whoever it is, they're watching you, too." I leaned forward from my position on the couch across from him. "And I think it has something to do with Bill's death."

  He looked up at me then. "You're in over your heads. Just stop and go on back to Albuquerque," he said, sullen.

  "You have no idea how much I want to do that. But I'd like to know who's watching us and what the hell they want. I don't want to have to worry about this crap there, too." This was going nowhere. It pretty much had hit a brick wall when he'd answered the door. I'd have had more luck pulling teeth with tweezers. After another minute of stony silence and yet another hole in my head from Kara's stink eye, I stood, trying to keep my temper in check. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Purcell. If you decide to help us or Nestor and Tonya in the future, I hope you feel you can call me or Detective Simmons." Kara stood as well, and I knew I was going to get my ass chewed once we left. Oh, well. I started walking out.

  "What about Nestor?"

  I stopped and turned back toward him. "You think these guys aren't watching him, too? Whatever Monroe came here for today, he'll go looking at Nestor's and Tonya's. It's just a matter of time before something else happens." I took a stab in the dark with that, but I knew Purcell had thus far lied about the level of his association with both Bill and Nestor, so maybe a little nudge on his conscience would shake a few things loose.

  Purcell started fiddling with the top of his cane, which was lying across his lap. "Bill kept tabs on Ridge Star and wrote stuff down," he said. "They want the notes Bill took after Nestor got hurt."

  "So Bill was doing his own investigation," I said, like I didn't know that already.

  "Yeah," he answered. "But I don't know what all he found or where he kept it all. Monroe keeps talking about a notebook. I don't know where the hell Bill would put something like that. Maybe his old lady has it. Maybe he hid it somewhere." He sounded frustrated, and I suspected that Purcell really didn't know that Bill's notebook had ended up with Nestor.

  "Why would Monroe want it?" I pushed.

  Purcell shook his head. "I'm not sure. Now that Bill's gone, it's not like he can do any whistle-blowing."

  But somebody else could, if he--or she--had the notebook. "Is Monroe worried that somebody else will use Bill's notes against the company?"

  Purcell regarded me stone-faced for a long moment then a wry smile broke the impasse between us. "That's what I'm thinking," he concurred. "Can't say I'd mind if somebody else went to the press with whatever Bill had dug up." He ran his fingers over the smooth wood of his cane.

  I watched his fingertips trace imaginary lines on the cane's surface. "You know, don't you?" I asked. He didn't look up. "You know who'd do that with Bill's notes, if they turned up." I was missing something. But what?

  Kara moved closer to me, and her fingers dug into my shoulder and I took another shot in the dark. "Does Monroe have something to do with Bill's death?"

  "Can't prove it," he said, still not looking up at us. "I've had my suspicions that he had it in for Bill after Nestor got hurt." His fingers stopped moving and he raised his gaze to mine. "Monroe's a company man. In the bad sense. He'll do anything to make sure the company looks good. Ridge Star pays him a lot of money to make sure their shit doesn't stink. 'Scuse my language."

  Kara murmured something in response and smiled at him. She took her hand off my shoulder and my skin practically sighed in relief. "Would you say he does a good job at that?" she asked, and I knew that by engaging Purcell that way, she wasn't as pissed at me as she had been a half-hour earlier.

  He half-laughed. "Me? Yeah, I'd say Monroe's a good propaganda machine. But he hadn't counted on Bill. Had Nestor not gotten hurt, I don't think Bill would've gone after Ridge Star the way he did. Like I said, Bill was tight with Nestor. Saw him as some kind of Indian healer and told some of the guys that if it wasn't for Nestor, he'd be a worse screw-up than he already was. I got the feeling Nestor helped Bill find some stability here. I think that Bill felt he owed it to Nestor to make sure he got something out of Ridge Star for what happened and he wanted to keep it from happening again." Purcell dropped his gaze to his cane again. "But it did happen again. And Bill kept digging, and he got the shit kicked out of him a few times for it, too. But he wasn't going to let the guys down. It was like he was on a mission."

  I sat back down on the couch and Kara did, as well. "Did Monroe go after Bill himself?" I asked.

  "No. He's the type who keeps his own hands clean," Purcell said, thoughtful. "He found a way to put pressure on Bill without any direct links to himself."

  I'd figured as much. "Other guys at the site, then? Or did Monroe bring in outsiders?"

  "Don't know. A few of us had our suspicions about a couple of the other guys at the site, but nobody said anything specific about that. And I was gone in April, so I don't know much about what happened after that."

  "Who do you think called you yesterday with the threat?"

  H
e looked up, surprised, then laughed. "Shoshana told you," he said. "I didn't want her to, but then I thought maybe she should let you know that somebody's interested in what you're up to."

  "Do you have any idea who it was?" I tried again after his deflection.

  He nodded. "Jimmy Surano."

  I stared at him. Where had I heard that name...Nestor. Surano was company man the day Nestor got hurt. "What did he say?"

  "That if I talked to anybody else, I'd end up like Bill."

  "Talked to anybody else about what?"

  Purcell didn't respond at first and I guessed he was picking his words. "I haven't been straight with you," he admitted.

  No, really? Shocking. I bit that back and gave him room to continue. Kara avoided my glance.

  "Bill and I used to hang out some, before Nestor got hurt. We'd have a beer every now and again and he'd help me out around the house when my back was bothering me."

  I held my breath, afraid that if I moved he'd startle like a deer and stop talking.

  "After Nestor got hurt, Bill changed. He was...I don't know. Like a crusader or something. He felt like he'd failed Nestor, and that by extension, he failed the other guys. He knew about Ridge Star's safety violations before Nestor's injury but he didn't do anything about it except complain with the guys after shifts. What happened to Nestor lit a fire under him, and it got kind of uncomfortable for a lot of us." He gripped his cane then released it. "Here's the thing. Most of us who work these jobs like the money. The work is hard and dangerous. But the money can be good, and it's not like a guy like me has a lot of options for a good-paying job. I dropped out of high school and screwed around for a while before I figured out that a man needs a job and money to put away for rainy days. Working the rigs messed me up physically, but I made good money and saved a hell of a lot. Most of the guys on the rigs are like me. Families to support, kids on the way, house payments, car payments, whatever. Fighting the man is a good thing, sometimes. But out here, where jobs are scarce--" he stopped and looked at both me and Kara, to see if we understood his meaning.

  "Guilt by association," I said.

  "Exactly. So when Bill started up with his investigating, he tried to get other guys in on it, tried to get them to help him and to pass along information if they had it."

  "You were one of those guys he approached."

  He offered me a little smile. "Yeah. And I was upset about what happened to Nestor, too. But it wasn't a battle I wanted to fight. My back was getting worse and I had to think about what I was going to do if I couldn't work the rigs anymore. And I heard what happened to Nestor, that Monroe said he'd been drinking the day he got hurt so Ridge Star didn't owe him a thing. I couldn't afford to get involved with Bill's snooping around, though I admit, I was glad somebody was doing it."

  Something occurred to me. "Do you think that some of the guys Bill approached to help him might've beaten him up?"

  Purcell shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. I heard rumors that the first couple of times Bill showed up with black eyes it was because of that. But nobody mentioned any names and I didn't ask."

  My stomach clenched. Maybe it wasn't Ridge Star that went after Bill. Maybe his fellow coworkers did, because they were afraid they'd lose their jobs if the company found out they were associating with Bill, someone who didn't make it a secret that he was angry about what had happened to a buddy of his on the rig. And maybe there were factions here, with some of the guys supportive of Bill, and some not, but both with a reason to either scare Bill enough to get him to quit investigating or to kill him.

  Surano, for example, had a lot to lose if Bill's investigation ever came to light. Surano didn't check the pipe the day Nestor was injured. He was caught, too, between a rock and a hard place. If he had stopped work to deal with it, Nestor might've avoided injury. But Surano probably would've lost his job. Bill's investigations, however, also put Surano's job in danger. Nestor said Surano had a couple of crimes on his record, and it was no doubt tough for him to get employment.

  I wanted Purcell's take on something else now. "Nestor said that after he got injured, some of the Indian guys at the site quit. Why?"

  His brow furrowed in thought. "I do remember that. I figured at first it was because they were Diné and did it out of solidarity with Nestor. But a couple of weeks after Nestor got hurt, one of the other guys said that the Indian guys were saying that there was something bad at the site. They didn't like how it felt, and they said that the bad energy would call more bad things." He shrugged.

  "What kinds of bad things?"

  He gripped his cane again. "Evil spirits. The kind that Diné believe in."

  "Do you know if--" I hesitated. "Did Bill believe in those spirits, too?"

  "I don't know," Purcell said, dubious. "I guess it's possible, since he hung out with Nestor quite a bit and Nestor hung out with the other Indian guys. But I couldn't say for sure. It didn't come up in any conversation Bill had with me."

  "Did any of the white guys at the site talk about this bad energy?"

  Purcell thought for a bit. "While I was there, I did hear a few rumbles from some of them about the so-called 'crazy Indians' and their 'bad magic'." But then when more bad things started happening, a few of the white guys quit and went to other companies. They started talking about 'curses', which is basically the same thing as what the Diné were saying."

  I thought back to Bill's chronology in the letter he'd sent to River. "You mean the injuries in March?"

  "Yeah." He paused, thoughtful. "It does make you wonder about bad energy. Three in one month."

  Not to mention the death in June and then July. "Mr. Purcell," I said as I stood up. "I'm sorry I was sort of pushy with you. I hope you understand why."

  He smiled and started to push himself out of his chair with visible effort. Kara offered to help him but he declined. "This old war horse still has a few years left in him," he said, gaining his feet. "I'm not going to lie to you. I'm scared. I appreciate you giving me the heads-up about Monroe. I was able to bring the boys in before he got here, which gave me a bit of an edge, but I don't know where Monroe's going to take this."

  "Do you have somewhere else you can go for a few days?" I asked, hoping to hell he did. "We'll give you a ride if you need one."

  "Nah, I'm good. My wife's family lives in Shiprock. I called her before you got here and as soon as she gets in, we'll head over there."

  Kara's shoulders relaxed in relief and my gut unclenched a bit. "Good. Would you be willing to talk to Detective Simmons again?"

  "That's the woman?"

  "Yes."

  He nodded. "Better attitude than the fellow she's working with." He limped as he escorted us to the door.

  "You have her number?" I asked as Kara opened the door.

  "Nan does."

  "Good." I stood looking at him, trying to figure out what more to say but felt awkward. I instead offered my hand. He took it. "Thanks for all your help."

  He squeezed my hand in a grip surprisingly warm and firm. In his prime, this guy had been seriously strong. "Thanks for yours. Oh, hey--" he looked out the door at Kara, who was stroking Brutus's head while she watched us. "Let me give you Nan's cell number."

  "Excellent," Kara said. She took her phone out of her pocket and entered it as Purcell recited it to her. Then she read it back and he nodded confirmation. Satisfied, she then pressed some more buttons, probably adding Nan to her "contacts" list. I stepped outside and closed the door behind me, following Kara to the car. She tossed me the keys before getting in on the passenger side.

  "Are we speaking?" I asked as I buckled up.

  "You're not. But I am."

  I looked over at her.

  "I will now lecture you on how wrong this whole freakin' day was and your role in making it that way."

  I started the car and steered away from the house. "I already know how fucked up it was," I said with resignation.

  "Jesus, Kase. Who the hell knew my sister was completely insan
e?"

  "Excuse me? You're the one who wanted to follow Monroe in the first place. You and all your Nancy Drew shit."

  "You could've said no."

  I guided the car around the ruts. "So could you."

  "Dammit, this shit is not funny." She jerked on her seatbelt for emphasis.

  "I know. I agree with you. It's not funny. At all. In fact, it sucks giant ass. So how about this? If you hadn't suggested we follow Monroe, and we didn't, something might have happened to Purcell and we'd never have gotten the info we did. Plus, he might have gotten hurt. Or worse."

  "The ends don't always justify the means," she muttered just loud enough for me to hear.

  I stopped at the main highway, preparing to turn left back to Farmington. Before I pulled onto the blacktop, I regarded her. "I'm not going to argue philosophy with you. Sometimes you have to make do with what you're presented. We got an opportunity and used it."

  "And you barged in on an injured guy and demanded that he tell you shit," she said, exasperated.

  I turned onto the highway, equally exasperated, and accelerated. "You're right. I did. And I apologized. And offered him a ride."

  She made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat.

  We sat in silence for the next few miles, both stewing over our morning. Kara was right--I shouldn't have pushed Purcell. But on the other hand, I didn't feel I had much of a choice. Monroe going out to his place might have given us a little leverage with Purcell, though in my opinion, Monroe should have waited to go out there until he was sure Kara and I had left Ridge Star. Clearly, he hadn't read Nancy Drew. Or the Hardy Boys, for that matter.

  By the time we hit the outskirts of Farmington, I hadn't managed to sort through all my thoughts, but I knew two things. I was drained and I felt badly about pushing both Kara and Purcell with regard to Bill's death. What the hell was wrong with me? I decelerated but didn't look over at her. "Kare, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry this happened. I'm sorry I pushed Purcell. I'm feeling a little edgy about this whole situation, as you know, and maybe a little desperate and I was a total bitch. Truce?"