by Aimée
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Also by Aimée and David Thurlo
Praise
Copyright
To Melissa Singer, Jen Hogan, and the folks at Forge who believed in Ella and helped smooth out her path.
And to Meg Ruley, who believes in us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To those people who have helped us but whose jobs or affiliations make it inappropriate for them to accept a public thank-you: You know who you are, and we’re both deeply grateful for the kindness you’ve shown us.
PROLOGUE
Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah bent down to the water fountain installed in the tiny alcove of the Shiprock bank lobby. The water was so cold it hurt her teeth, but at least it didn’t have that metallic aftertaste like the fountain at the station.
It was her day off, but she needed to deposit her paycheck. She’d been carrying it around since yesterday. She hated making ATM deposits, so she’d rushed over this afternoon barely making it before closing time.
Straightening up, Ella noticed the bank manager standing behind his desk, key ring in hand, staring oddly toward the door.
“Nobody move! This is a robbery.” A man’s voice yelled from across the room. He sounded Anglo, with a trace of a southern accent, maybe Texan.
Ella ducked out of sight and took out her pistol, peeking around the corner of the alcove. Two masked perps were just inside the lobby door, brandishing a pistol and sawed-off shotgun.
“Everyone down on the floor. Now!” shouted the man with the accent. He was waving a pistol—a nine-millimeter Browning. Everyone quickly complied, including the old man and woman who’d been behind Ella earlier, and now were depositing their Social Security checks.
Nobody except the robbers made a sound, which was a good thing. Noise and excitement tended to make armed criminals even more nervous and apt to pull the trigger.
Ella watched the man with the Browning. He was a real cool customer. As she studied him, he grabbed Herbert, the bank manager, by the collar, and stuck the pistol to his head, forcing him out from behind his desk. “Give me the keys to the cash drawers!”
Ella ducked back out of sight as the perp with the shotgun took a quick look around the room. She had to consider her options carefully. If she made her move now and tried to make an arrest, two customers and at least three bank employees could get hit if the robbers decided to open fire. But there was another possibility. If she could avoid detection for a while longer, maybe the opportunity to get the drop on them would present itself, or she could follow them outside and try to make the arrest in the parking lot.
She still vividly remembered a heavily armed lunatic in a crowded L.A. diner. It had been a very close call for her and a bunch of other people. Hostages had been wounded. She’d finally put a stop to it by killing the gunman at point-blank range. She didn’t want to have to do that here again today.
The leader, the one with the Browning, took a set of keys from Herbert and put the pistol to the back of his head. For a second Ella wondered if the perp was planning on pulling the trigger. She took aim, but Browning just laughed, then leaped over to the teller’s side of the high counter. The employees over there had already disappeared, probably curled up on the floor, praying that a little cooperation would get them home alive tonight.
Shotgun continued to watch the room, sweeping the sawed-off pump around like a fire hose, making sure nobody else came into the bank. Ella kept low behind the corner of the alcove. Fortunately, one of those stand-alone counters was between her and the robbers, and there were none of those surveillance mirrors to show where she was hiding.
In another minute the leader filled a bank bag with cash. As he tossed over the money and climbed back across onto the customer side, Ella took advantage of his preoccupation and slipped out beside the island counter. If she had figured it right, it would be possible to edge around behind the robbers without being seen.
“Let’s go. Keep watching for trouble.” Browning yelled to Shotgun, then he turned around to the prone customers and employees. “Nobody gets up for five minutes. If I see one of you dipsticks so much as raise your head, I’ll come back in and blow your brains out.”
Shotgun stopped at the door and looked outside. “Looks clear. Here I go.”
Ella inched closer, and saw the first robber disappear from view. When Browning passed by the counter, Ella saw her chance. She reached out and grabbed his pistol hand, puting her own nine-millimeter Sig into the small of his back. He flinched, but let her take the pistol without a word.
“Good choice, smart mouth,” Ella whispered. “Now keep walking and don’t make any sudden moves. I’m a cop, but I’ll blow your spine in half without a thought to save these people’s lives.” Ella prodded the man forward, slipping the Browning into her jacket pocket while she walked toward the front entrance. “Call 911, Herbert,” she said a bit louder, without looking away from her captive.
They made it to the door without incident, and with the perp in front of her, Ella was screened somewhat from the other man outside. “If you want to live, stay smart.”
They stepped outside, her pistol still in the small of the man’s back. Ella tried not to tense up. She knew she still had to confront the man with the shotgun less than twenty feet in front of her. He was carrying the weapon unobtrusively down at his side, and surveying the parking lot for cops when her makeshift strategy was suddenly put to the test.
“Cop!” a woman screamed. Ella looked to her right and saw a woman pointing a pistol at her from out the window of an old brown Chevy.
The man with the shotgun whirled and fired, dropping the money sack in the parking lot and doing some serious damage to the big blue mailbox just to her left. Ella shoved her prisoner down below the brick planter in front of the bank, following him behind cover just as the shotgun went off again. Chunks of brick and shreds of boxwood showered the wall above Ella’s head, and her prisoner groaned in pain.
By then, the woman in the Chevy was firing too, screaming and yelling at the top of her lungs. Bullets struck the cinder-block wall in a half-dozen places above the planter, but Ella had already left the wounded robber and was moving toward the other end of the structure.
Fear left a bitter taste in her mouth, but training and instinct spurred her on. Ella rose slightly, risking a fast look, and saw Shotgun jump into the car with the bag of money. As she raised her pistol and took aim at the shooter, she spotted two people standing by a pickup a few vehicles farther down, right in her line of sight. She’d planned to hit the robber’s front tire, but it was at the w
rong angle. Shifting her aim, she fired two quick shots into the Chevy’s engine block instead.
Shotgun fired, and she was forced to duck down again. Ella heard the squeal of tires and, in frustration, watched as the vehicle roared down the street, heading away past the grocery store. She couldn’t even get one shot off without endangering civilians, but she smiled slowly as she saw smoke coming from underneath the hood. With luck, they wouldn’t get too far.
Ella hurried back to her prisoner who was laying on the sidewalk behind the planter, cursing a blue streak. Blood oozed from buckshot wounds along his upper thigh. As she crouched beside him, Herbert poked his head out the door of the bank, and noticed the wounded man. “Want me to call an ambulance too, Officer Clah?”
“You better get them here fast. I’m bleeding to death!” the robber said, and moaned.
“You’ll live,” Ella assured him. Giving Herbert a nod, she read the perp his rights. “If I were you, I’d start thinking of a way to cut a deal. Life as you know it has just come to an end.”
ONE
Ella stood at the window, watching the last rays of the fading sun arc across the land in blood red sheets, changing the soft earth tones of the New Mexican desert into crimson hues. The rugged mesas floated among a soft haze created by the dust that lingered in the air, easing the stark outlines of the sagebrush- and juniper-dotted canyons.
At least the morning hours today had been hers to enjoy. Gathering medicinal herbs with her mother and learning about the Plant People, had left her with a sense of connectedness to the Dineh, one she hadn’t felt in a long time. And while the late afternoon had been an adventure she didn’t want to repeat again soon, it certainly could have gone a lot worse, as it had for the person she’d come to interview.
Now, as she waited in the hospital lobby for her crime scene officer, the rush of excitement and adrenalin she’d felt earlier finally started to vanish along with the sunlight.
There had been a time when serious crime had not been a problem here on the Rez, but those days were long gone. The outside world had crept in, leaving its mark on them all. Admittedly, crime often took a different form here, one unique to the Navajo Nation. The spiritual and material worlds were too intertwined in The People’s thinking for it to be otherwise. Yet, lately it seemed that even that distinction was becoming less pronounced.
As round-faced Sergeant Tache came into the lobby, Ella turned and faced him. Like herself and a half dozen other specialists and detectives on the Tribal force, Tache wore civilian clothes, which in the Four Corners usually meant western boots, snaps instead of buttons on a colorful print shirt, and jeans. Big silver belt buckles were also almost standard. Only the sidearm and badge he wore clipped on his belt would identify him as a police sergeant, and even those would usually be hidden from casual view by his Levi jacket.
“I got your message from the dispatcher and came right over,” she said. “We still haven’t found the other two perps or that brown Chevy. Are the doctors finally going to let us interview the prisoner? I tried to get him to waive his right before, but he’s a tough nut to crack.”
“His attorney was here when he came out of recovery ten minutes ago and they’ve been talking ever since. The nurses had him moved upstairs to Room Two-oh-two, so I stationed an officer outside and cuffed the prisoner to the bed. I can tell you what else we’ve learned about him on the way up there.”
“Then let’s go.”
Tache’s expression was somber as he walked with her to the elevator. He stared ahead, organizing his thoughts, and when he spoke, his words were measured and well thought-out. Ella had expected no less from this man who was an integral part of their generally successful crime scene investigations team. Tache had been the first officer to arrive after the bank robbery that afternoon, and had been the last one to leave the crime scene two hours later.
“The County Sheriff wants to move the prisoner to the jail in Farmington as soon as possible, but that’s up to Big Ed and the Tribal attorneys. It probably won’t be for twenty-four hours anyway, according to the doctor who briefed me. By the way, the fingerprint results confirm the ID you made from the mug files. He’s Joey Baker, all right.”
“I also caught a glimpse of the female, who wasn’t wearing a mask. I believe she’s Baker’s wife, Barbara,” Ella added. “Anything on the man with the shotgun?”
Tache nodded. “According to Baker’s file, another Anglo named Jim Shepherd was convicted along with Joey Baker and Barbara about five years ago for armed robbery. They’ve all been living in Farmington for the past year or so since their early good-time releases from prison.”
Ella nodded to the officer in the tan uniform stationed by the hospital room door, then went inside with Tache. Baker, a muscular, dirty-blond man with several tattoos, was sitting up on the bed, resting against the elevated mattress and several pillows. He was handcuffed to the bed by his right wrist. The moment he saw Ella Baker swore, his stare filled with hatred. She ignored his mad-dogging, a move typical of criminals looking for someone to blame when the law caught up to them.
Ella shifted her gaze to the other Anglo man in the room. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and standing to the right of the bed. With one raised eyebrow, she silently asked him to identify himself. From the silk tie and sharkskin boots, she guessed he was a lawyer.
“I’m Martin Miller,” he said fluidly. “I’m Mr. Baker’s counsel, and you must be Special Investigator Ella Clah, the ex-FBI agent and arresting officer.”
Ella nodded, and Miller continued. “Tread carefully, officer. My client and I fully expect to file a civil suit against your department. Mr. Baker has been threatened, shot, and harassed, all for having the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“While threatening citizens with a loaded handgun, wearing a ski mask, and robbing a bank,” Ella added, amused. “You better find an attorney who can cut a deal, Baker, or at least someone with a stronger grip on reality. I hope that’s not your whole story. That defense won’t work on a five-year-old.”
“My client has explained to me that the actual bank robber assaulted him outside the bank, and forced him to go inside at the barrel of a shotgun.” Miller added.
“Then why was your client wearing a mask? Surely the ‘real robber’ wouldn’t have cared if Baker’s face was seen. Another point, your client was the one giving all the orders, waving around a pistol loaded with fourteen rounds of live ammunition,” Ella countered smoothly. “And the pistol functions perfectly, right?” She turned to Tache, who nodded in agreement.
“I was told what to say,” Baker said, a smug look on his face. “And he said the pistol didn’t work.”
Ella watched Baker. Something about this man was making her skin crawl. She knew from his behavior in the bank that he was calm and cruel, and enjoyed baiting people. But that, in itself, was not unusual for a criminal. There was something else about him, something more elusive, that was sending signals to her brain.
“I don’t have to remind you that I certainly didn’t shoot myself,” Baker added with a confident grin. “It was the actual criminal who did that.”
“Sergeant Tache has helped me identify the other two members of your gang,” Ella said meeting his gaze and holding it. “You seem to share a history of crimes with them. Want to change your story any before I continue?”
“My gang? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Your wife Barbara, who fired at me several times with a handgun, was the driver of the getaway car. The man with the shotgun was James Shepherd. They’re the ones who shot you, remember? If I hadn’t pulled you down behind that planter, you might be in the morgue now instead of that bed.”
“My wife? Barb was the one who dropped me off, if that’s what you mean,” Baker said, his eyes never wavering from Ella’s. “And Shepherd? Well, I do know him, he shares our rental home, but he’s been busy lately looking for a job, and I haven’t seen him all day. It’s true we’v
e made mistakes in the past, but that’s behind us now. We all served our sentences. You can’t pin this on us. I was a victim of a criminal today, just like the other people at that bank.”
He was sticking to his lies, hoping to find anything to contradict so he could get them on the defensive. Ella felt Baker’s open challenge, and figured it was time to try and rattle that composure a bit. “Your wife and your friend are out there on the run in a disabled car, with every officer within a hundred miles looking for them. You’d be better off helping us locate them before they come up against a group of well-armed officers. We already have enough physical evidence and testimony to convict you. Don’t let the next piece of news you hear be an account of your wife’s death.”
“That’s enough.” Miller held up his hand. “You’re badgering my client, and he’s been nothing but patient with you, despite his life-threatening injuries. This interview is finished. If the district attorney has any charges to file against Mr. Baker, then I should be told about them now so I can have adequate time to prepare his defense.”
“I’m aware of the law, counselor,” Ella replied, forcing her tone to remain casual. She started to say more, when she caught a glimpse of Officer Justine Goodluck standing just inside the door. Two years ago, her second cousin had been assigned to her crime team, and since that time, Ella had never had reason to regret it.
Excusing herself, Ella sent Tache to check on hospital security while she met with her assistant in the hall. Justine’s handgun, holstered at her belt beside the open front of a blue satin rodeo jacket, seemed disproportionately large for the slender young woman’s figure. But, despite her youthful appearance, Justine was all business.
“Any more news on the two perps still at large?” Ella asked.
“Not yet, but you know we had roadblocks up within five minutes of the call, and extra officers are out searching every mile of road in the area. Hopefully, those two shots you put in their engine block screwed up something. Even if they didn’t, there’s no way they’ll make it out of the county, much less the state. By now, I’m sure they know it, too.” Justine’s voice was confident.