by Beverly Bird
Finally he nodded.
He went to speak to one of the detectives. She moved for the door again, then she felt him behind her. They reached the elevator and stepped inside. He didn’t speak to her and his silence was heavy, cold, suffocating.
The elevator reached the lobby, its doors sliding open. They were halfway across the parking lot before she wondered if her car would make it all the way back to the Res. She fumbled with her keys as one of the men working over the skeleton of the Jaguar called out to them.
“Hey, you’re the owner of this thing, aren’t you?”
Dallas looked over and crossed to him slowly. Oh, God, she thought, he looked so beaten.
“Yeah,” he answered wearily. “Did you find something?”
“The explosives squad left a while ago but they found enough to tell us that it was the mother of all blasts,” the second man answered. “We don’t know exactly what was used yet, but it was set up to go off on some kind of cue—maybe a timer, but probably the engine turning off.”
“When did this happen?” Ellen asked carefully.
She wasn’t sure Dallas would answer her. There was still something in his face that told her it was in her best interests to leave him be—a lingering rage, barely controlled, that she wildly thought might even turn violent if she provoked him enough. Then his expression finally hardened and she understood.
There would be ample time for accusations and recriminations later. Now they were picking their way slowly, dazedly through a nightmare, and Ricky’s life was at stake. Everything depended upon them laying down arms long enough to put the fragments together into some kind of sensible picture and he realized it as well as she did.
“Right after I parked,” he said tightly, finally. “I was on my way inside. I would have made it, if the lobby doors hadn’t been locked.” Reflexively, he touched one of the scabs on his forehead.
“Which leads us to believe that no one meant to hurt you,” the first man said. “He probably just wanted to show some muscle. Man, I’d say you really ticked somebody off.”
“Not me,” Dallas said hollowly. “My son.”
“Were you coming home from work?” Ellen asked, trying desperately to understand how it had all happened.
“I was coming back from your reservation,” he continued.
“The Res?” Her breath snagged. He had been all the way out to the Res and he hadn’t found her, hadn’t looked her up? Then she understood and something cracked in her heart all over again. He had stopped trusting her when she hadn’t told him the truth the previous weekend, when she’d had every opportunity and chance. He had almost certainly gone around her to get help for Ricky.
She ran a trembling hand over her eyes and watched him nod curtly. “I went to see your Uncle Ernie about all this,” he answered. “I was a day too late. When I came back Mrs. DiNardo was trussed up and Ricky was gone. She said a Navajo man took him right after he got home from school. He was—” His voice cracked. “He was playing Nintendo when the guy broke in.”
“What did Uncle Ernie say?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you after you tell me,” he snapped, his anger coming back, turning away from the remains of his car. “I guess the ride will be long enough that we can cover everything.”
“Hold on,” one of the technicians called out. “I told you it was a hell of a blast. It takes a lot of force to throw pieces off before the point of incineration, but that’s what happened. You had bits and pieces of Jaguar all over the parking lot. The boss says you can take the stuff he left behind.”
“That’s comforting,” Dallas growled.
The man shrugged. “Well, for what it’s worth, here’s the case of motor oil you had in your trunk.”
Dallas looked at it dumbly. The cardboard was ripped and black and greasy, and half the cans were gone. But three of the original twelve were actually intact—badly dented, but intact.
“I’ll be damned,” he murmured.
The man turned back to a large forensic-evidence box behind the car. “We’ve also got your steering wheel, your gearshift, the glove box and one tire relatively intact.”
Dallas moved to stare down at it all incredulously. Finally he lifted the tray of the glove compartment. It was cracked and one end was completely gone, but Ellen noticed dazedly that there were still some things inside the other half.
“Is that how you found it?” she asked disbelievingly.
“Yeah,” the man answered. “This notebook here is wedged in kind of funny, so it didn’t come out. I guess it kept that other stuff trapped beneath it.”
Dallas pried up the notebook, then he handed a canister of film back to the technician.
“This isn’t mine. Somebody else must have dropped it near the spot where you found everything.”
“It’s yours, all right,” the man argued without taking it. “Nothing’s in that tray that wasn’t there when the blast happened. We didn’t throw anything else in there. We put the loose stuff in that plastic bag over there.”
Dallas glanced at the bag and dismissed it. He put the tray down to scowl at the notebook and flip through its pages. They were blackened in places, but readable. “The film was beneath this? It couldn’t have been. This is my business mileage. I must use it once a week, any time I travel any distance. If the film was there, I would have noticed it before. Besides, I don’t even own a regular camera, just a video one.”
The technician’s jaw hardened stubbornly. “Well, I can’t help that. I’m just telling you what we found. Either you want it, or we’ll dump it. Forensics doesn’t need this stuff.”
“Take it,” Ellen breathed. Suddenly her heart was moving hard. Her voice hitched over it. Dallas looked at her sharply.
“Why?”
“There was nothing in his room.”
The technician looked at them, his eyes narrowing. “Hey, are you saying this is some kind of evidence? Maybe we ought to give it to Detective West.”
“No,” Ellen lied. Forgive me, Holy Ones. Once again, it was necessary, so necessary. She just had an instinct that they needed to know whatever it was Ricky had gotten into before the cops became aware of it. They were Anglo, but a Navajo wolfman had taken Ricky. Anglo cops wouldn’t know a clue if it jumped up and bit them, but she would...she hoped.
“It’s mine,” she went on. “I lost it out of my purse a few weeks ago and we looked all over for it. We thought Ricky—his son—must have found it and put it somewhere.” She laughed shakily. “And here it is.” She reached for Dallas’s hand and closed her own fingers over the little container quickly.
Her heart skipped once, twice as she waited, then the technician shrugged. “I got no authority to tell you otherwise.”
“Thanks,” Ellen said, then she hurried back to her own car.
Dallas dropped into the passenger seat and gave her a level look. If it wasn’t warm, then neither was it entirely cold. Something moved in the pit of her stomach, something soft, yearning...hopeful. Maybe—please, God—maybe they could get through this and there would be something left.
“What are you thinking?” he finally asked.
She drove out of the parking lot, the smoky smell from her engine returning quickly, getting stronger. “When was the last time you wrote your mileage down in that little book?”
Her thoughts were moving fast. He could see it in her face. Damn her face, so beautiful, so expressive. He hated her as much as he wanted her—still, in spite of everything.
“Wednesday. I went to Phoenix,” he answered tightly, then he felt an almost physical thump of surprise. “No. No, I didn’t. I was in a hurry to get upstairs because of all that’s been going on lately and I don’t think I jotted that trip down.” He opened the notebook again. “Tuesday, March twenty-ninth,” he said. “That was the last time I wrote in it.”
“That was before I wrote you the letter,” she breathed. “Before you came to the orphanage.”
“I’ve been promising myself I would cut
down on my traveling. Since Ricky’s been having problems, I finally did it.”
“So the film could have been in there—it probably was in there—all this time. Do you know anyone with a darkroom?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Unless—Nelson’s wife works for the Flagstaff newspaper.”
“Who’s Nelson?”
“A lousy racquetball player. Turn here,” he said sharply.
Ellen steered sharply onto a narrow side street. Her engine died as soon as she made the turn. “No, no, no!” she cried, hitting the wheel with her palm, just barely guiding it to the side of the street. Dallas leaned over to look at her dashboard.
“When was the last time you put oil in this thing?”
“Oil?”
He looked at her disbelievingly. “To lubricate things and keep them from grinding together and getting too hot to function.”
“I guess Eddie did it the last time he worked on it.”
Dallas gave a growling, frustrated sound and pushed his door open. “It doesn’t matter. The Wythes only live four houses down.”
Ellen scrambled out after him. He was still talking, almost to himself. “If Nancy doesn’t know somebody, maybe she can commandeer the newspaper equipment.”
He started running, then slowed to a jog long enough for her to catch up. “I still want an explanation,” he said. “Later. After we find out what’s in these damned pictures.”
Ellen nodded breathlessly, her heart squirming, hurting again with hope. But then his voice got quieter and there was only pain.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”
* * *
Nancy Wythe knew of no one with a darkroom, but she called the newspaper and was able to secure the use of their facilities. She sent the kids next door, shouted to Nelson to come in from the backyard, and the four of them piled into the Wythes’ car.
The newspaper offices were noisy and hectic with activity. They rushed through the chaos and crowded together into a cramped darkroom. Its eerie red light made Ellen feel oddly light-headed. She felt her heart pounding hard, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of what the film might show or from Dallas pressed so closely against her back.
Once, briefly, she thought she felt him rest a hand against her waist to peer forward over her shoulder. But the touch was fleeting, fast, snatched away again, and her heart rolled over painfully. He held himself stiffly after that, asking Nancy questions rather than leaning forward to see anything for himself.
It took the woman close to thirty minutes to get the prints into the developing solution. Finally she leaned over, scowling into the tray as images began to take shape on the first one.
“What?” Dallas demanded for the thousandth time.
“It looks like...pages.”
“Pages?”
“This one’s a bunch of papers spread out on a desk.” She pinned up the first photo and dropped in another. “Okay,” she said again, “now we’ve got close-ups of each page.”
“What the hell?” Dallas muttered.
“We’ll know more when I finish and we can go outside again,” Nancy said. “The light’s too poor in here to read them yet. Just hold on.”
The room was close and hot. Ellen felt a trickle of perspiration roll down between her breasts. Pages? Of what? Oh, Ricky, what have you done?
An hour later Nancy gave a sound of satisfaction. “Okay, that’s it. That’s all of them. You can open the door now.”
Dallas jerked at it. Air rushed in at them, so sweet and clean and air-conditioned that Ellen felt faint all over again. Nancy handed a couple of the photographs around to each of them and they studied them as they made their way back through the production-room chaos toward her editorial office.
“I don’t get it,” Dallas said finally.
“That’s what you brainy artist types have lawyers for,” Nelson answered wryly. “To figure out the really hard stuff for you. I don’t know what you’re holding, but I have a picture of the corporate registration for the Saguaro Power Company.” He stopped just inside the newsroom, scowling.
“Saguaro?” Ellen’s head hurt. She had heard that name before. Then it came to her. “That’s one of the companies bidding for the power plant they want to put on the Res.”
“What did you say that guy’s name was?” Dallas demanded. “The one running for tribal-council president?”
“Calvin Ozzie,” she answered dazedly. “Jake Benally is the incumbent. Why?”
Nancy and Nelson looked back and forth between them, clearly confused. Dallas handed one of his photos to the attorney. “Isn’t this a list of corporate officers? But it’s for a Monolith Holding Company.”
“Wait!” Nancy said. “I have something here about Monolith. It owns National Crude Oil out of Dallas.”
Nelson whistled softly. “And National owns Saguaro.”
“It says here that this Calvin Ozzie is the owner of Monolith. Does this mean he owns the whole damned network?” Dallas asked incredulously.
Ellen groped for a vacant chair and sat down hard. “Ozzie?” she repeated. “Calvin Ozzie owns it all?”
Nelson waved his photographs. “Here’s the proof. I wish to God we had the actual paperwork, though. This must mean something big.”
“It does.” Ellen stood again carefully, gripping the edge of the desk until she was sure her legs would hold her. “Calvin Ozzie’s whole campaign is based on that power plant,” she explained. “If he gets elected, he’ll give the contract to Saguaro. His own company. He’ll personally make a fortune.”
“I thought this hozro business prohibited fortunes,” Dallas bit out.
“It does,” she whispered. “Unless you’re a wolfman. Unless you don’t care about hozro and don’t follow the Navajo path.”
Dallas’s face went slack. “So this Ozzie is the wolfman?”
“What the hell is a wolfman?” Nelson demanded, but no one answered him.
Ellen nodded. She couldn’t think of any other explanation. “He must be, to own Saguaro. To own all of it. If he took that much material wealth for himself, then he’s left the path.” She felt sick. Ozzie? He was already a tribal councilman!
“So Ricky didn’t actually run into him,” Dallas went on. “He took something from him.” Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t buy it. He’s eight years old! Why the hell would he think to take something like this and not tell me about it?”
“I don’t think he did,” Nelson mused, and this time they both looked at him. “My guess is that somebody gave it to him, made it part of a game or something. They probably told him to hold onto it until a specific time. When’s your election?” he asked Ellen.
“What’s today’s date?”
“He asked me that recently!” Dallas burst out. “Damn it, he asked me that a couple of weeks ago and I had no idea it meant anything!”
“It’s Saturday, April thirtieth,” Nancy said.
“The election’s this week,” Ellen breathed. “On Tuesday.”
Nelson started grabbing the photos back from them. “Well, there we have it. I’ll bet that whoever gave this stuff to Ricky wanted it to come to light right before the election so it would cause the most scandal, so this Ozzie wouldn’t get elected.”
“Someone knew he was a wolfman?” Ellen murmured, still amazed at that.
“Whatever that is,” Nelson said again. “It doesn’t matter. Somebody knew that what he was doing was crooked.”
“And somehow Ozzie knew that Ricky had these,” she realized. “That’s what he was looking for when he changed shape and what he was threatening him about when he appeared to him. It’s why he wanted him to stay off the Res—so he couldn’t give them to anyone who might understand what they meant.”
Again, Nelson and Nancy looked at her oddly. Both she and Dallas ignored them.
“So why blow up my car?” Dallas demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “Maybe to make sure you didn’t find these pictures. Oh,
God, Dallas, he has Ricky. Ricky can’t tell you now—he can’t tell anybody about them. But Ozzie probably made him tell him where they were. And for some reason, Ozzie couldn’t get to them so he tried to destroy them instead.”
“He couldn’t search my car easily or thoroughly,” Dallas said tightly, “because it was with Eddie Begay while I was in the coffee shop talking to Ernie.”
“Searching would take a while,” Nelson agreed, “but it wouldn’t take a heartbeat to slide an explosive underneath the carriage.” He gave the negatives to his wife. “Go make another set.”
“Do I get an exclusive on this?” she tried to quip, but she was already moving, heading back for the darkroom.
“You take her copies to the reservation,” Nelson told Dallas, “to someone in authority there. I’ll run these back to the detective at your apartment and fill him in on our theory.”
“No!” Ellen argued. “We’ve got to get to the Res right away. We can’t wait another hour. We’ve got to find Uncle Ernie and tell him about Ozzie. He can do something—protect Ricky now that we know who has him.”
Dallas looked torn, undecided.
“Please,” she begged. “You’ve got to listen to me. We were going there anyway, before we found the film.” Just keep trusting me a little bit longer.
Nancy hadn’t gone so far that she didn’t hear them. “I’ll bring these to the reservation as soon as I finish developing them. You two go on. Who should I take them to?”
“Any tribal-council chapter house,” Ellen called back, but she was already running for the door again. “There’s one right in Tuba City.”
She finally heard Dallas come up behind her. He was moving fast now. He grabbed her hand as he passed her and dragged her along with him. When they reached the parking lot he finally released her and began jogging from vehicle to vehicle, peering in the windows.
“What are you doing?”
He found one with the keys in it and yanked open the door. “Unless you’re planning to walk, I’m stealing a car.”
Chapter 16
It was a blue Dodge. Ellen stared at it dumbly, then she realized that Dallas was going to drive away with or without her. She grabbed the door handle just as the car started to move and jumped in beside him.