Enemy Way

by Aimée

  “You’ve got it.” Justine pressed on the accelerator.

  As they passed, the boys honked, raised beer bottles up to where they could be seen, and made lewd suggestions.

  “It’s just too dark. A lit cigarette here and there inside their car isn’t enough to show their faces,” Ella said, “especially when they’re holding bottles for us to see instead. All I know for sure is that they’re members of a gang, probably the Many Devils. One of the boys tried to flash a gang sign, but then he almost dropped his bottle. I couldn’t make it out.”

  “At least I didn’t see my cousin. I was worried that they might recognize us if he was with them.”

  “Let’s go for broke. There’s a gas station ahead with lighted bays,” Ella said, turning her cap around so the bill would cast a shadow on her face. “Stop there and buy cigarettes. I know you don’t smoke, but they don’t. When the boys pull up, do your best to keep their attention focused on you. Get them out of the car, if you can, so we can get clear IDs.”

  As Justine pulled into the station, she gave Ella a quick glance. “Should I warn Wilbert Jones to be careful? He owns this place.”

  Ella thought of the frail, white-haired Navajo man. Although many believed that his thinking was no longer focused, the reality was that he was as sharp as a tack. She’d met him once while attending a Plant Watchers’ meeting with her mother. They’d spoken about many things, including police work. She still remembered his advice. “Never tell all you know. Never show all you have.”

  “He’ll know who you are,” Ella said. “Don’t worry about him. If there’s trouble, he’ll take the right course of action.”

  Moments after Justine walked inside the Quick Stop, Ella watched the boys pull up. Justine timed it just right and came out of the store holding a pack of cigarettes. Two of the gang members got out and began flirting with her. While Justine played it for all it was worth, Ella tried to get a clear look at the boys who’d remained in the car.

  Despite her efforts, Ella soon realized that it was useless. The glass on the car driven by the teens was tinted a smokey gray. That made looking inside nearly impossible. She reluctantly settled for listening to them, trying to get a handle on who they were. As she eavesdropped, a great feeling of sadness swept over her. They seemed so lost in a world of bluster and false bravado. They hid behind gang names and created chaos because only within that did they find identity.

  For a moment she shared her brother’s sorrow at what was being lost. Navajo ways were of no importance to these kids. They followed a junk culture that had no past and held no future.

  Strangely enough, it was through the old myths that the gangs’ behavior made the most sense. In her mind, she could almost hear her mother recounting the familiar tale. When Black God was sprinkling the heavens, creating the constellations, Coyote came up and grabbed the star-filled pouch. He flung the stars up into the skies, scattering them at random, ignoring Black God’s plan. Those stars, without pattern or order, according to Navajo beliefs, remained nameless to this day. Only the stars put there by Black God had names with which to identify them.

  These boys were like those random stars, without order, without definition, endowed with a potential that would never be fulfilled. Their unfocused and misdirected search for identity had doomed them from the start. They honored no one, including themselves; they were set on a course of violence that led nowhere.

  Ella leaned forward to get a clearer look at the boy in the back seat. He seemed to be trying hard to stay out of sight and avoided getting close to the windows. He was wary and cautious, sitting rigidly in the seat, though all she could see was his outline. She had a strong feeling that he was the leader.

  As she shifted to one side, the boy saw her. “Cops!” he shouted, then leaned over, throwing the driver’s side door open for the others and diving back into the shadows.

  In a heartbeat, the boys took off, running to the car. The driver leaned out the window and hurled an empty beer bottle at the windshield in front of Ella.

  Ella ducked, shielding her face. The glass shattered into a spiderweb pattern but, with the exception of a few tiny cubes, the windshield remained in place.

  Justine dove behind the wheel and started the engine as the boys raced down the highway.

  “Don’t let them get away,” Ella said, urging her cousin to speed up as they gave pursuit. “We have them on a variety of charges now. If we catch them, we can haul them in and have the next twenty-four hours to question them.” Ella used the portable radio unit, and called in a description of the boys’ car, along with the plate number. “The boy in the back seat recognized me. That’s why he recalled his troops. He must have eyes like a hawk to have spotted me like he did. I made sure my face was never exposed.”

  “This car’s altered suspension can’t handle high speeds,” Justine said, her voice rising in alarm as the car began to shake like a paint mixer.

  “Don’t slow down. They’re not that far ahead of us. We can catch up.”

  “They’re headed back to their own neighborhood. They probably have a hiding place or a garage to pull into there.”

  Ella felt her blood racing with the thrill of the chase. In the dim nighttime world, colors washed out and everything became a lackluster hue of steel blue or brown. Danger, like the intensity of any life and death situation, brought back the colors. The adrenaline rush made everything feel sharper, and sensations become more focused. She was aware of the way her heart pounded against her ribs, of the cold night air that filled her lungs with every breath.

  “They’re going around that curve, and they’ll be out of sight behind the hill for a minute. An ambush, you think?” Justine asked.

  “I doubt it. They don’t want a confrontation, not with cops. That’s why they’re running. They’re only brave when they’re dealing with people they can push around.”

  Justine had to slow down anyway for the curve, and it was a good thing. As they rounded the bend, the headlights revealed a scattered mass of broken bottles tossed across the road just ahead. Justine touched the brakes and swerved sharply. The vehicle lifted off the ground on one side, then left the road and plowed across a field thick with tumbleweeds, bouncing like they were on a trampoline. Ella hung on for dear life as the prickly branches scratched the sides of the vehicle like fingernails across a chalkboard.

  As they finally slid to a stop, Justine leaned back, and glanced over at Ella. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, but I hate to concede another win to those little jerks,” she said, unfastening her seat belt. “They must have thrown out a case of beer bottles. The road was like a mine field for the tires.”

  “These punks are starting to annoy me,” Justine said. As they got out and looked over their damaged vehicle, Justine shook her head. “If Fred Duncan had any ideas of buying this puppy, he’s going to be sore as hell when he sees what we’ve done to the paint job and the windshield. But at least it wasn’t a complete waste of time. We can ID at least two gang members now if we see them again.”

  “I’d really hoped to get a good look at the boy in the back seat, the one who I suspected was the leader,” Ella said, kicking the beer bottles out of the road so they wouldn’t cause an accident. “He was too cautious. That’s out of character for someone with gang affiliations. Those guys are into strutting around, maintaining a tough-guy image and staying high profile. Anything out of the norm with these guys makes me curious.”

  Ella returned to the car and circled it once more. Surprisingly, they hadn’t ended up with a flat or major structural damage. “Okay, let’s get out of here. It’s time to get back to the station. Let’s see if our APB on the boys’ car gets us anywhere.”

  Ella had Justine drop her by the station, then drive to the motor pool to return the Impala. Ella also gave Justine the job of finding another car for her if the Jeep still wasn’t available. While her assistant covered that, Ella filled out a report. After her public comments about Leo Bekis, everything she did
now would come under scrutiny. Her statements had undoubtedly earned her an enemy or two in high places, at least in the legal community. Big Ed needed to be kept current on everything they did.

  As she filled out the forms, she mentally sifted through the evidence, organizing her thoughts and evaluating what she knew. There was no reason to believe that Lisa’s murder was connected to anything other than the gang and the rash of local burglaries, but something kept nagging at her.

  It was common knowledge that Lisa had not allowed Wilson to move in with her, despite the fact that they were inseparable off the job, and Lisa lived alone with no family in the area. Some had speculated that it had been Wilson’s idea to wait until they were married, but Ella thought she knew him better than that.

  Had Lisa been protecting her virtue and reputation, or was it possible she’d had a secret she hadn’t wanted Wilson to know about until after they were man and wife? The gossip she’d heard through her mother suggested that Lisa wasn’t the kind to worry about propriety.

  She ran a hand through her hairspray-stiff, shoulder-length hair and, grabbing a rubber band from the drawer, tied it back into a pony tail. What she needed to do was find answers and stop trying to formulate theories without anything substantial to go on.

  Hearing a knock at the door, Ella glanced up just as Big Ed walked inside her office.

  “Heard you’ve been having some interesting and humbling experiences,” he said, a half-smile on his face as he sat down in the only chair in the room. “Is that why you’re hiding behind all that makeup, or are you working vice tonight?”

  “The punks got away, and there’s been no luck on the APB I put out. Don’t rub it in, Big Ed.”

  “Too many of our officers haven’t been taking the gang problem seriously enough. When this story gets around, maybe they’ll realize that these kids aren’t all dumb punks.”

  “They eluded us this time, but I’ll track them down. Two of those young hoodlums have graduated from shoplifting and burglary to murder. That puts them squarely on my home court. I’ll bring them down. You can count on it.”

  “Watch your back,” Big Ed said, standing up again. “By the way, I need you to go testify to a state DWI task force meeting in Santa Fe tomorrow.”

  “My mother’s in the hospital, Chief. I can’t go away for any extended period of time.”

  “It’ll be just a morning trip, that’s all. You can fly. The tribe will be covering it.”

  “Why me? I thought you weren’t too thrilled with my statements to the press before. You’re the spokesman for the department. You made that clear this morning.”

  “It wasn’t my call. The Tribal President asked that you be sent to represent the tribe because you’ve got a personal stake in this. He wants you to remind them about the bars just off the Rez, and how liquor finds its way in here despite laws forbidding it.” He placed a ticket for a Farmington-based airline on her desk. “Be there.”

  An hour later, Ella was surprised and happy to discover her Jeep was ready for use again. According to Justine, the new protective finish the department had been putting on their vehicles had shielded the Jeep from uncured paint. The spray paint had buffed off easily, and the car re-sealed with the new finish.

  After retrieving her keys and grabbing a quick shower at the station to shed the heavy makeup, Ella drove to the hospital to spell Clifford. Her flight would leave early tomorrow morning. She’d let her mother know her plans first, then she’d have to make arrangements for Clifford or his wife Loretta to go by and make sure Two had food and water.

  Her hands clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. It was a rotten time for her to have to leave. Work was making distracting but important demands on her just at the time when she should have been free to spend time with her mother at the hospital. Frustration gnawed at her. Her brother would have said that it was her inability to embrace the two sides of her own nature that was at the root of all her problems. The hózhq, all that was good and beautiful, had to be paired with the hóchxq, the evil and ugly, in order for balance to exist.

  She wondered if he would have still been able to accept the necessity of both so readily if he’d seen the effects of that darkness through the eyes of a cop. But Clifford wasn’t a cop and never would be. He lived in a world where harmony was the only way.

  Reaching the hospital, Ella slowed her vehicle down and parked. She was walking down the hall to her mother’s room, when Clifford met her halfway. “You haven’t been here all day. Couldn’t you make time to see your own mother?”

  She met her brother’s accusatory glare with a cold one of her own. “No, I couldn’t get away, but I did call. Is that a problem?”

  He exhaled softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come at you like that, but I’m exhausted. I have my own patients to attend to, but there were problems here and I couldn’t leave Mom.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Mom isn’t herself. I can’t get her to cooperate with the doctors or with me. It’s as if she’s lost interest in everything. She sounds like she doesn’t want to live. Her leg injuries were serious, but she’s not in any danger of dying. The doctor says she has a good chance of walking again if she’ll work at it.”

  “Remind her of everything she loves, like her grandson Julian. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for him.”

  “I’ve done that. But she keeps insisting that it’s her turn to go on. The accident was just a sign. I don’t have to tell you that many of our people have been able to will themselves into a grave. Mom’s scaring me. She has to snap out of this.”

  “What can we do?” Ella asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said, a worried frown on his face. “I would like to believe that she’ll work this out on her own, like she did with Father’s death, but that may not be the case this time. Part of the problem is that her accident is a direct result of the Anglo world’s influence on the Dineh. Alcoholism is an imported illness and one of many signs that the traditions and the beliefs she holds dear are slowly fading away. She’s never been hurt like this before. And now, adding insult to injury, she’s being asked to depend on the white man’s medicine to get well. I think all that, coupled with the loss of our father, is destroying her from the inside. She feels obsolete, and too tired to continue the fight.

  “And that’s why she needs both of us right now,” Clifford added. “Together, we’re a constant reminder that the modern world and the old ways can co-exist, that she’s not simply a leftover from a past whose time has come and gone.”

  Ella’s body ached with guilt and regret. She was slowly being torn between two very different kinds of duty. “I’ll be around as much as I can, but things are really flying at me in the department now. Tomorrow, I’ll be testifying on behalf of the tribe at a DWI task force in Santa Fe. And I’m right in the middle of a murder investigation that’s getting more complicated by the hour. There are discrepancies that are making me a little crazy.”

  “I know about our friend’s loss. I regret not having had a chance to go see him since it happened. I tried to call him from the hospital room, but he wasn’t at home.” One more thing for her to feel guilty about, Ella thought as Clifford fell silent for a few moments.

  “Is there any way I can help you? I’m willing to listen if you need to sort out your thoughts. You know I’ll keep whatever you tell me confidential.”

  “I could use a sounding board,” she admitted. Ella told her brother about the circular marks she’d found at the murder scene and the scene of her mother’s accident, and reminded him of the other times she’d encountered them. “Of course there’s no way to prove if those impressions were left by the same person who dogged me months ago. It’s enough to make me mighty squirrely though.” She stared at the painting of Ship Rock on the wall, lost in thought. “There were times when the cane marks I’d find seemed to be connected to incidents involving The Brotherhood and the Fierce Ones, the Anglo and Navajo groups that are struggling over th
e jobs at the power plant. But at other times, those prints would turn out to be linked to the evil ones.” Ella avoided referring to skinwalkers directly, a custom she shared with most Navajos.

  “Either way, those cane marks, if that’s what they really are, always spelled trouble for you. I can see why they make you uneasy now.” Clifford mulled it over before saying anything more. “A cane is something that many of the old ones use. Although it’s too broad to be a clue, there’s another aspect of it you might want to look into. Some believe that the xa’asti, those who are extremely old, can be very strong spiritually. That’s why many times they are accused of witchcraft. Sometimes the accusations are completely unjustified, but at other times they’re founded on the truth.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  Clifford nodded slowly. “There’s a chance that our old enemies are working behind the scenes, creating as much trouble for you as they can. Destroying so many of them has made them hate us more than ever, you know.”

  “So it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll strike out at us any way they can, including through our friends and family.” Ella remembered the sense of evil she’d felt at Lisa’s home, then brushed the thought aside. There wasn’t any evidence linking a skinwalker plot to Lisa’s death. She was facing two separate issues.

  “We should both keep an eye out for our professor friend,” Clifford said, referring to Wilson, “though he may not welcome our help. He helped me hide, then joined us to fight the Navajo witches after our father was killed. He is their enemy as much as we are.”

  Ella thought of her last conversation with Wilson. Her brother was right in thinking that Wilson would not want anything from them except to be left alone. “I’ll do my best, but he won’t make it easy.”