She had gone out the night before and hadn’t returned home until after two, waking him up when she stumbled through the front door. She’d gone to Gallup, she’d said, with a few friends and had some drinks at the American Bar. When he asked her how she had gotten home, she said a friend drove her. She would not name the friend. He looked at the panties now, tempted to examine them for evidence of infidelity, to prove once again that she was cheating on him. But he realized it wouldn’t do any good. He’d confronted her before, and she hadn’t denied it.
“What do you want me to do?” she’d said. “I’m a woman. I’m young. You just want to sit home and read your stupid books. I can’t do that.” She hadn’t spoken Navajo that time.
That was the first of a dozen arguments they’d had about her sleeping around. His family would tell him from time to time that they’d seen her here or there with this guy or that guy. He’d tell them to mind their own business. Once, he told his brother, “What am I supposed to do? I can’t run after her.” He’d stopped driving when he started to lose his sight, so he just sat at home like a good invalid. He still wielded some power on the reservation, still had some friends—still had some enemies, too. He could find someone to pay a visit to one of her friends, but that would imply he still cared. He didn’t. Let her have her fun. He wouldn’t be around much longer. Didn’t want to be around much longer. Living was too much work now. Work and pain. As for him, they could put him in the ground tomorrow. A relic to be uncovered sometime in the future. A fitting end for an archaeologist.
He tossed his shirt on top of the pile and spun his chair around. He wheeled through the living room, out the front door, and onto the porch.
The Navajo Times lay there, wrapped with a rubber band. He bent and scooped it up, the effort making him breathe hard. He coughed. He smelled the air. The sage was strong and clean, energizing. As president, he had often told his constituents how much he loved the high desert and beautiful mesas, and how blessed the Navajo were to occupy their ancestral lands between the four sacred mountains. But after leaving office, he started telling the truth. He missed Vermont. He missed the deep greens and the vibrant colors of the Northeast. And more important, he missed the world-class hospitals there.
He sat for several moments, enjoying the warm sunshine. Then he pulled off the rubber band and unfolded the paper. He focused on the top story. “Clue to Congressman Edgerton’s Disappearance Found on Reservation.” His hands shook as he read.
SEPTEMBER 25
SATURDAY, 11:43 A.M.
JONES RANCH ROAD, CHI CHIL TAH (NAVAJO NATION), NEW MEXICO
Joe dropped to one knee, gun drawn. The sound of the shot had been close. Too close. He checked on the others. Bluehorse knelt by the fender. Mark’s head eased up to the driver-side window from within the car.
Joe scanned the woods. Who the hell was shooting? And what were they shooting at?
“Police! Stop firing your weapon!”
Another gunshot roared.
It came from the east.
Joe and Bluehorse moved behind the vehicle.
“Police! Stop shooting!”
Silence.
“Get out of there, Mark.” Joe said.
Mark crawled through the passenger door on his hands and knees, staying low, below the dash.
Bluehorse pointed in the direction of the shooter. “Maybe forty yards.”
“Sounds like a shotgun,” Mark said.
Joe swept his weapon across the tree line.
“Andi,” Joe shouted over his shoulder. “You all right?”
Her voice came back immediately. “Right as rain!” She and the other agent were a little ways back, crouched behind trees. “Hunter?”
“Probably,” Joe said.
Another gunshot.
“This is the police! Stop firing your weapon!”
“What do you want to do?” Mark asked.
“Let’s move to contact before this asshole sends one our way,” Joe said. They made a quick plan. He would head toward the shooter. Bluehorse and Mark would flank right. Andi would stay behind to secure the scene, along with the other agent.
He had worked with Andi many times over the years and would have preferred to go into the woods with her, but sometimes a situation dictated differently. Thankfully, Bluehorse and Mark both seemed more than capable of handling themselves. Some officers he’d encountered would have given him cause to worry. And he guessed his own squad may have felt that way about him.
Another gunshot went off.
“Let’s go.”
They sprinted for the tree line.
Joe’s adrenaline surged. Twenty steps and his heart was already hammering. His thoughts turned dark. Would he have a heart attack or catch a stray bullet from some yokel shooting cans? With less than ninety days till retirement, what the hell was he doing out here? This was the type of story cops shared in the locker room. Hey, you remember old Joe from BIA. He was only ninety days out when …
He ran on, trying to clear his head. When was his last conversation with Melissa? Wednesday? Had he told her he loved her? He wasn’t sure.
Another gun shot. Much louder. Closer. Like he was on the range without ear protection. He yelled for Bluehorse and Mark to hold up. He needed to get his bearings.
“See anything?” he asked.
Nothing.
He yelled again into the woods.
No answer.
Another gunshot. He zeroed in on the sound and rushed forward, jumping over sage and rabbitbrush. He smelled cordite in the air. That and freshly turned soil. Maybe a little burned wood, too.
He saw a figure no more than two dozen steps ahead of him. It appeared to be a man. He held a double-barreled shotgun, his back to Joe.
“Police! Stop firing!”
The man held the gun to his shoulder. It pointed down to the ground, to a fallen oak in front of him. Another round went off. Deafening. What the hell was he firing at?
Joe slowed, gun at his chest, muzzle lowered. He didn’t expect to use force, but the man had a firearm. Bluehorse and Mark moved up from Joe’s right. Good. Less chance of cross fire.
“Police! Stop firing!”
The man made no movement to indicate he’d heard the command. Instead, he broke the shotgun open and began to eject the two shells. Joe ran up behind him. With his left hand, he grabbed the man’s wrist, disabling the hand that held the shotgun. The man turned and let out a startled yelp. Joe was glad the man hadn’t dropped right there from fright. He was old enough. The warranty on his heart had surely expired a decade earlier. From the deep lines in his face and his urine-colored eyes, wide now from surprise, Joe guessed the old man had watched eighty pass him by a few years back. Hell, maybe even ninety, from the looks of his barren gum line. How had this decrepit old soul been firing a shotgun?
Bluehorse and Mark came to stand next to Joe.
They all looked down at the hole in the ground under the oak. A burrow.
The old man stared at Joe and then at Bluehorse. He gave Bluehorse’s uniform the once-over.
“What are you shooting at, Grandpa?” Joe asked, his tone giving the title respect.
“Huh?” The old man cocked his head to the side, so his right ear faced Joe.
Louder: “What are you shooting at?”
The old man pointed to the other side of the oak. Joe leaned over for a view. A coyote lay dead on the ground, its body ripped apart from shotgun blasts.
“Why are you shooting at the hole?”
“Huh?”
Joe repeated himself, this time closer to the man’s ear. Bluehorse and Mark covered their smiles.
“Pups.”
The old man had been out to exterminate an entire den. Joe didn’t agree with such wholesale slaughter of wildlife, but he knew how the Navajo viewed coyote: bad luck and a nuisance.
Mark spoke loudly, “Damn, old man, you gave us quite a scare.”
The old man turned to Mark. “My English bad.”
Bluehorse spoke to the old man in Navajo while Mark left to tell the others about the situation.
After a few minutes, Bluehorse filled Joe in on the grandpa.
“He lives a little east of here. The coyote killed two of his chickens and attacked one of his dogs, almost killed him, too.”
“Ask him about the Lincoln.”
Bluehorse spoke again in Navajo. His face was practically up against the side of the old man’s head. Several more minutes passed as they talked.
“He says the car’s been there a long time. Back when Peter MacDonald was president, before he was arrested by the FBI, before the riot. They called the police back then, but no one came out.”
Joe knew the history. Every BIA agent did. Early in 1989, the then president of the Navajo Nation, Peter MacDonald, was suspended from office following allegations of corruption. On July 20 of that same year, MacDonald, unhappy with his own removal, led a group of supporters to take over the Navajo administration building in Window Rock, Arizona. The few Navajo police officers who responded to control the crowd and protect property were attacked by supporters; three lost their weapons, one of which was used in a shoot-out between supporters and the police. In the end, two people were killed and several officers wounded.
“He stays away from the car,” Bluehorse said, “because evil spirits walk there.”
“Why does he think that?”
Bluehorse translated. The old man’s answer was long, his voice quiet, as though he didn’t like the subject.
Bluehorse’s voice had a touch of excitement. “There was blood on the seats when he found the car. The front seat, he thinks, but he’s not sure because it was so long ago. That was why he called the police. He remembers the bullet hole in the door, but the ones in the windshield were from his son, Leon, years later, after the car had been stripped. His son had just been goofing around.” Now his voice turned somber. “He thinks the car was bad luck for his son, who killed himself a few years later. The old man thinks it was because his son had disrespected the spirits.”
SEPTEMBER 25
SATURDAY, 12:51 P.M.
RESIDENCE OF HAWK RUSHINGWATER, CHINLE (NAVAJO NATION), ARIZONA
Hawk Rushingwater, known as Dwight Henry before he broke ties with the American Indian Movement and founded Navajo NOW, tore open the envelope and extracted a handwritten letter and a check. He tossed the letter to Sleeping Bear, who sat across from him at the battered kitchen table. A small battery-powered radio sat on the counter behind them. A woman announcer reported the news in Navajo.
“Ten bucks.” He flung the check to Sleeping Bear. It fluttered to a rest next to the bookkeeper’s beer. “Donations are way down. We need publicity.”
Sleeping Bear read the letter. “A Girl Scout in Green Bay held a cupcake sale.”
“Write her back. Tell her to try selling magic brownies. Bigger profit margins.”
Nightwind, who sat on the couch reading a comic book, laughed. Then he coughed. He took a hit from his bong, long and deep. He coughed again and went back to reading.
“We could do a podcast,” Sleeping Bear said. “Maybe a video of you talking about the UN project.”
“Yeah, I like that. Like our own news channel on the Internet. Maybe we can boycott something, too. Something controversial. Beer distributors.” Rushingwater took a deep breath and pushed out his chest. “I call upon the righteous to take up our cause and put a stop to the annihilation of our people and the pervasion of capitalism. The beer industry has targeted Native American communities for genocide.”
“Perversion,” Sleeping Bear said.
Nightwind laughed. Rushingwater turned, lip curled, ready to attack, but Nightwind was laughing at his comic.
Sleeping Bear downed the rest of his warm beer, stood, and made his way to the bathroom, a five-gallon Home Depot bucket at the other end of the trailer. He stumbled only once.
Rushingwater watched Nightwind reading. Then something the radio announcer said caught his attention. Congressman Edgerton. Rushingwater tilted his head as though the idea formulating inside was too heavy for his neck. He grinned, a big toothy grin.
SEPTEMBER 25
SATURDAY, 1:01 P.M.
JONES RANCH ROAD, CHI CHIL TAH (NAVAJO NATION), NEW MEXICO
Mark was back inside the Lincoln, rechecking his bullet-trajectory rig, when Joe returned to the scene. Bluehorse had accompanied the old man home so he could talk with his wife. It was unlikely she had any additional information, but it was best to be thorough.
If the old man was telling the truth—and Joe had no reason to doubt him—then something had happened in this vehicle. Something bad. Blood put a whole different spin on this case, more than simply a congressman fleeing prosecution. Most people had assumed Edgerton had run. Others, however, including several prominent news personalities, had speculated Edgerton and his staffers had been killed to protect the people behind the corruption, but those theories never amounted to much because no bodies were ever recovered. In addition, there had been a number of alleged sightings over the intervening years, but none ever confirmed, and that folklore further cemented the idea Edgerton had simply fled. Mexico and South America had topped the list of possible destinations. The most outlandish had been a story connecting Edgerton to a secret cabal bent on world domination, operating on a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. This was supposedly the same island where John F. Kennedy had lived out the remainder of his life, confined to a wheelchair. Joe knew conspiracy theories abounded when prominent people were killed or went missing. Of course, being a New Mexican, Joe well knew the story of Edgerton and even the tales of alleged sightings, which were often discussed on the evening news programs. But he never gave them much thought. He’d had his own cases. Wasting energy on gossip and speculation was something he never did.
And he didn’t want to squander his time now considering tabloid scuttlebutt. Joe was still waiting for the case file, which he’d requested from the archives. Without it, the only information he had access to came from the publicized corruption probe, which estimated Edgerton had made off with as much as half a million dollars, possibly more. But the investigation was able to link him directly to only one small wire transfer made to a Mexico City bank. The money had been traced back to a lobbyist representing a group of casino developers interested in influencing the new Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The lobbyist tried to ensure his clients would profit from exorbitant casino-management fees. Today, Indian gaming revenue was twice the size of that of Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined. A $27 billion industry. Half a million dollars in 1988 was now a stingy tip tossed to a cocktail waitress. He’d probably made off with a lot more than anyone had guessed. For all Joe knew, Edgerton was sitting on a beach somewhere, sipping a mojito, watching the news, and laughing his ass off that his car had finally been found. If he had run off alone, it could explain the blood. Edgerton could have killed the driver and that girl, the one the tabloids had labeled “the tramp with the movie star name.” No witnesses. Edgerton as a killer didn’t fit. There was nothing to indicate violence in the congressman’s past. But Joe wasn’t a fool. People did crazy things when money or sex was involved. Then again, there was another possibility. Edgerton had been killed to shut him up. Or one or both of his missing staffers had killed him and made off with the money. Or—
Mark was calling to him.
“Can you grab the card stock from my backpack?”
Joe searched the backpack and pulled out a sheet of the heavy paper.
“Now stand in front of the laser,” Mark said, “and let the beam hit the center of the stock.”
Joe moved into position and saw a bright red dot the diameter of a pencil hitting the paper. He shifted so the light rested in the center.
“The next part’s easy. You walk backward, keeping the light on the sheet. If the light hits a tree, we’ll just shoot an azimuth. It’s not as accurate, but, oh well.”
Joe began walking backward slowly, keeping the cardboard clo
se to his body, head lowered, looking at the red dot as it danced up and down the sheet with each step. His progress was slow. And for some reason, Mark felt it necessary to offer encouragement.
“You’re doing good. Nice and slow. Don’t lose the beam. It’s hard to find again.”
Joe ignored him.
“Hey, watch out for the cactus.”
Joe, a little annoyed, looked up at Mark. “I think I can—” His right foot landed on something flat and forgiving. Son of a bitch. He shifted to the side. When he looked down, the red dot was gone.
He looked behind him. The way seemed clear. It took him several minutes to find the red dot again. Then he continued moving backward.
Mark stayed silent.
Sixty paces later, Joe backed against a full-grown pine.
Joe yelled to Mark. “It stops here.”
“Good work.”
The beam was higher than the hole in the driver-side door by at least a foot, coming almost to his chest. Joe estimated the distance to the vehicle to be seventy-five yards. He checked the trunk for a questionable hole while Mark stretched yellow string along the ground from the Lincoln’s door to the pine. He then created a triangle from two more lengths of string, the tip of the triangle at the vehicle’s door, the base ending ten feet on each side of the tree.
Bluehorse returned, and they all broke for lunch.
SEPTEMBER 25
SATURDAY, 1:46 P.M.
THE NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND SCIENCE, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
Sierra Hannaway knelt at the base of the Coelophysis, a dinosaur the size of a human, with a long, flat head and an impressive set of sharp carnivorous teeth. Coelophysis roamed New Mexico in the Triassic period, but several of the plants in the display were from the Carboniferous period. A major faux pas if another museum called them on it, but necessary if Sierra was to open the display on time. Paul, the director of acquisitions, had ordered an entire jungle of the wrong period, so Sierra was forced to use these plants until the correct period flora arrived, which might not be for several more weeks.
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