White Thunder

by Thurlo, Aimée

  The smell of decaying flesh was strong here and she didn’t need to touch the body to know that he’d been dead for some time. Ella studied the label on the prescription bottle. It had been refilled recently but it was empty now. She recognized the brand of painkillers as a common but powerful drug. She’d been given some after a dental visit and cautioned against overdosing. The counterindications had disturbed her so much she’d decided not to take any at all. Sometimes pain was preferable to the alternative.

  “What have we got?” Justine asked, having followed her in. She stopped by the doorway, lifted a hand to cover her nose, and stepped back. “Never mind. Suicide?”

  “Looks like it, though that’s kind of rare for old Navajos,” Ella said, backing out of the room. “At least this is a modernist area so maybe his death won’t impact too badly on the neighborhood.”

  Fear of the chindi—the evil side of a person that remained earthbound after death—was still strong on the reservation, but not with the modernists. Relatives or neighbors still wouldn’t line up to move into this house once it became available, but even in the Anglo world few people wanted a house where a tragedy had occurred.

  “Now I know why the boy ran off like he did,” Ella commented.

  Justine nodded. “He’s sitting in my unit now, and he won’t even look at the house.”

  Another cruiser pulled up outside and Ella saw Joseph Neskahi, a sergeant in the department, climb out of his unit. Joseph was a sturdy Navajo, with a barrel chest and powerful arms. His dark eyes were flat—the look of a cop who’d long lost any hope that human nature could surprise him.

  Neskahi came in, caught the smell in the air, then stopped without moving any farther into the room. “I heard the call and wanted to check it out. I know … knew Mr. H,” he said, avoiding mentioning the deceased’s first name out loud out of respect for tradition. The Navajo Way taught that using the name of a dead person would call their chindi. “He was a friend of my dad’s and I knew he’d been sick for a long, long time—the big C—and things were getting worse. A week or so ago my dad mentioned that Mr. H had left the hospital, telling everyone that he didn’t want to die there. There was no hogan for him to go to anymore, and even if there had been, he couldn’t have made it far into the desert. So, since he had no family to speak of, he decided that he’d go on his own terms in the comfort of his home. He told my father that his modernist neighbors wouldn’t give a rip if he died here.”

  “It’s a sad way to go … with no way out and no friends around to comfort you,” Ella said, remembering being alone in the mine, facing hopelessness and the certainty of death.

  “He’d already said good-bye to the few friends he had,” Neskahi said. “The only thing his future held out to him was the certainty of more pain. He didn’t have many options.”

  “I’ve always wondered if I’d make that same choice if I were faced with a long, painful illness I knew I couldn’t beat,” Justine said. “What about you?” she asked Ella.

  “I don’t dwell on things like that,” Ella replied honestly. “I figure I’ll cross each bridge as I get to it.”

  “At least he controlled the way he went,” Neskahi said. “That’s a win in my book.”

  Joseph’s answer didn’t surprise Ella. Almost everyone she knew in law enforcement prized control. It was a survival skill so ingrained that it became a part of who they were. But her own perspective about Tapaha’s death was different.

  From personal experience she was convinced that the end of this life wasn’t the End. Would Tapaha get to the other side and regret speeding up the clock? Would he miss all the little things that he’d taken for granted, or just be happy the ride was over? She hoped for his sake that he’d find peace in the hereafter.

  “Call the funeral home that the tribe uses to take care of unclaimed bodies,” Ella instructed Neskahi. “You’ve got the name and number?” When he nodded, Ella continued. “It’s not a suspicious death, so our role is over except for documenting the burglary attempt—just the TV, probably. The tribe’s ME gets a pass on this one.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Neskahi said, then glanced around the room. “I don’t see a phone, so I’ll just relay the message through Dispatch.”

  “Use my cell.” Ella tossed him the phone. She and Justine had cell phones, courtesy of a community program, but routine patrol officers, as Neskahi was at the moment, had to rely on regular equipment unless they were called in for emergency duty, or carried one at their own expense.

  Ella looked at Justine. “Take the kid back to the station and book him. Neskahi will process the break-in, and I’ll be in shortly. I want to talk to the dead man’s neighbors and make sure that there’s no family that should be notified. After that, I’ll head to the station.”

  Leaving Justine, Ella went across the street. May opened the door before Ella had the chance to knock. “Is he all right? Herbert, I mean. I haven’t seen him for several days, so I was wondering … .”

  “I’m afraid he passed away” Ella said, deciding that May didn’t need to know it had been a suicide.

  May crossed herself, which marked her as a Catholic as well as a modernist.

  “Do you know if he had family on the Rez?” Ella asked.

  “No, I don’t think there’s anyone left now. I’d go over just to talk to him sometimes—to give him a little company, you know—and he told me once that he’d outlived all of them.” She sighed softly. “I tried to help him out whenever I could, but he wasn’t easy to get along with. He never came right out and said so, but I got the distinct impression that he didn’t want me to come over too often. He said that he’d made peace with himself a long time ago and he preferred being alone. He even ran off his caregiver last time he came back from the hospital.”

  Thanking her, Ella returned to Tapaha’s house and retrieved her cell phone from Sergeant Neskahi, who was already busy taking photos of the interior of the house. Leaving him to his work, Ella headed down the street toward her unit. The run had left her sweaty and she absently lifted her long black hair off the back of her neck for a moment with her fingertips, enjoying the cool air that touched her skin.

  Ella thought about Mr. Tapaha trapped inside a body that had turned traitor, with no way to escape the disease that had been consuming him. Life without hope soon became unbearable. Without hope, you stopped moving forward and reaching toward the next goal, and you died inside long before you took your last breath.

  Ella took one more look around the neighborhood as she opened the door to her unit. Here in this area of essentially modern housing filled with amenities, hope had a chance of being more than a fading dream shadow. But there were other places deep on the Rez that hope had deserted, where the land lay wounded with little chance of full recovery. Those places, ravaged by greed, stood empty and seemed as soulless as the gaze in Tapaha’s eyes. And that hopelessness, in turn, touched everyone because the land and the Navajo were one. Mother Earth provided the food they ate and nourished their spirits, and, eventually, all living things went back to her, completing the endless circle.

  Ella drove back to the station in a dark mood, unable to get the image of the old man out of her mind. With any luck this morning wouldn’t be an indication of how the rest of the week would go.

  Ella had just pulled into a parking spot at the station when her call number came over the radio. She answered Dispatch quickly. “I just pulled up at the station.”

  “That explains the strong signal. Big Ed wants to see you right now, Investigator Clah.”

  Before leaving her unit, Ella cracked the window open just a bit so the heat wouldn’t build up inside. Venting was the only way to avoid returning to a vehicle that would feel like a cross between a pressure cooker and an oven in a very short time. It was nearly eleven-thirty now, and the cool air was quickly being replaced by high desert temperatures that only the long-awaited afternoon downpour would abate.

  She’d just stepped into the station lobby when Big Ed spo
tted her from down the hall. Their chief of police was a large man. If Neskahi was a barrel of a man, Big Ed Atcitty was a refrigerator with arms and legs. His hair was turning gray these days but to assume that he’d passed his prime was a huge mistake. As it always was on the reservation, appearances were deceiving. Big Ed could not only keep up with his officers, he qualified with them every year.

  “Chief,” she said with a nod.

  “You’re back. Good. In my office,” he said, cocking his head down the hall.

  The lack of inflection in his tone caught her attention and made her skin prickle with discomfort. He was trying too hard to act casual, and whenever that happened major-league trouble was at hand.

  Ella took a seat in the chair across from his cluttered desk and waited as he closed the door and walked toward her.

  “We have a situation,” he said, as he slowly lowered himself into his old vinyl-covered swivel chair.

  His words let her know without a doubt that something was brewing. Another bad sign was that the light on his phone was blinking, indicating he had someone on the line, holding. As silence stretched out between them, she waited, noting that her boss was rocking back and forth in his chair, an unspoken signal that he was thinking and didn’t want to be interrupted. The chair squeaked slightly, but he apparently hadn’t noticed, and she wasn’t about to point it out or dare crack a smile.

  Although on the outside she would have already fired off some questions, on the Rez things moved at their own pace. Respecting that, she remained still, wondering if the person on the other end of the line would be as patient as she was being forced to be right now.

  “Our new FBI resident agent, Andrew Thomas, apparently interrupted a Sing last night. Now he’s missing. Thomas never returned to his office, called in, or e-mailed his supervisor. He’s been completely out of touch since around seven last night—over sixteen hours.”

  The bad feeling she’d had suddenly got worse. Andy Thomas was in a world of trouble. If he didn’t turn up quickly, alive and well, dark times lay ahead for the missing agent—and the reservation.

  TWO

  Ella gathered her thoughts quickly, mentally checking off the information she’d need to formulate a plan of action. “Interrupting a Sing is a major offense. If that report is true, Agent Thomas’s disappearance is going to be a real bear to investigate. A lot of folks are going to think that the gods have punished him and that’s why he’s missing. They’ll fight any attempt we make to find him.”

  He nodded. “Our traditionalists will be especially hard to deal with, but that’s the way it stacks up.”

  “I’ll get started on this right away, but I’m going to need more to go on, like who was the patient at the Sing and which hataalii performed the ceremony? Also, where did it take place?”

  Big Ed shook his head. “We don’t know any of that yet, but the FBI area supervisor should have some of that information by now. He’s looking through Thomas’s case files as we speak.”

  “So there’s a chance our information is wrong and Agent Thomas didn’t really interrupt a Sing?”

  “No, our information about that is right on target. Agent Thomas followed local law-enforcement protocols, at least. He called our dispatcher to report that he was pursuing an investigation on tribal land and was on his way to question a suspect he believed was attending a Sing. Thomas didn’t give any more details other than that and told Dispatch he’d call back and let us know when he was finished.”

  Ella nodded thoughtfully. Senior agent Dwayne Blalock handled cases here on the Rez, out of his Shiprock office. From what she knew of local Bureau procedures, Andy Thomas, though he was currently sharing Blalock’s office, usually handled cases off the reservation unless tribal officers called him for support. But that couldn’t have been the case, at least in this instance. “Didn’t Dispatch give him a heads-up about Sings?”

  “Dispatch warned him to keep his distance and not to interfere, but Thomas said that he was going to wait until it was over, then question the suspect. Dispatch told him that Sings could take up to a week, but Thomas said that, according to his information, this particular ceremony wouldn’t take long, so he intended to hang around until it concluded.”

  “In his ignorance, he might have thought it was a fair compromise. But just to be seen in the vicinity, if he wasn’t invited, could be construed as interrupting—not to mention bringing misfortune to those present,” Ella said, her insides tightening. Young agents like Andy Thomas came out of Quantico with equal portions of confidence, arrogance, and ignorance. Thomas had only been assigned to the area a short time and probably still didn’t know much about how things worked on the Rez. If veteran agent Dwayne Blalock hadn’t been on vacation, Thomas would have never gone to question anyone on the Navajo Nation alone.

  Unfortunately, she had a strong feeling that Thomas had assumed that a Sing was akin to a church service or doctor’s appointment. He’d just wait outside until the suspect emerged and then confront him. But different rules applied here.

  Big Ed stopped rocking in his chair and sat up straight. “Thomas called Dispatch mostly to make sure his butt was covered. But because he never called back and no one’s heard from him since, I think we can safely assume he’s in some kind of trouble. Blalock’s out of touch so I contacted Agent Simmons, the FBI’s area supervisor, at seven this morning.”

  Ella glanced at the phone’s blinking red light. Whoever was on hold was probably seething by now.

  “I’ve got Agent Simmons on the line,” he said, glancing down at his telephone. “You probably know Thomas and Blalock were sharing an office because of budget cutbacks, so Simmons is over there now, trying to find any open case files that’ll give us an idea of what Thomas was investigating.”

  Big Ed paused, staring at the phone, then continued. “Off the record, Simmons is one major pain in the butt and there’s a history of bad blood between him and Blalock.”

  Ella nodded. “I remember Blalock talking about him a few times. Simmons likes to micromanage every case, and it drives Blalock nuts. But what’s Simmons’s next move? If the FBI plans to flood the Rez with agents, that’s going to backfire big-time—particularly under the circumstances.”

  “Let’s hear Simmons out.” Big Ed pressed the button. “Agent Simmons, I’ve got Special Investigator Clah in my office now, so I’m putting you on speaker. Why don’t you fill us in on how you want to proceed.”

  “My priority right now is locating Agent Thomas, but the Bureau has run into major brick walls on the reservation before. Sending in teams of federal agents who are unfamiliar with the area isn’t going to help us find our man quickly. We need the help of the tribal police, and we need it now. Thomas could be almost anywhere, injured, stranded, lost, or maybe dead. We can’t pick up the locator signal from his cell phone, and his unit didn’t have a GPS installed. That means we’ve got to find him the hard way. We’ve got to move fast on this while people’s memories are still fresh, and to prevent any cover-up from taking place, if that’s an accurate assessment of this situation. After thirty-six hours, you know as well as I do that it’ll be nearly impossible to pick up his trail.”

  “Does Agent Thomas live in Farmington?” Big Ed asked.

  “On the western outskirts. He has an apartment.” Simmons gave them the address quickly.

  “That’s in county jurisdiction. Sheriff Taylor will have to be notified,” Big Ed said.

  “Already taken care of,” Simmons answered coldly. “What I need is for your department to search the reservation. My feeling is that he’s still there.”

  “We’ll get on it,” Big Ed said.

  “Contact me directly if you get any leads at all. You’ve got my cell number and you can reach me on it day or night.” He paused, then added, “Officer Clah, I need you to come over to Agent Blalock’s office ASAP so I can fill you in on the particulars. I’ve got to leave town shortly, so the sooner the better.”

  Before she could answer, Simmons h
ung up.

  Ella looked at Big Ed. “Should I call him back and remind him that I’m not with the Bureau anymore and I take my orders from you and the tribe?”

  Big Ed grinned slowly. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “You know, I can’t even imagine you in the Bureau, Shorty. I have a feeling you’d be busting the chops of those good ole boys left and right,” he said, chuckling, then took a deep breath and grew somber. “But right now we have to stay on target. Simmons may be reluctant to send in an army of special agents, but I think he will if we don’t get results fast enough for him.” Big Ed leaned back in his chair.

  “It shouldn’t be that hard for us to track down Agent Thomas once we find out what he was working on and get his last known location. A Navajo suspect can hide in plain sight on the Rez, but a redheaded Anglo like Thomas is really going to stick out.”

  “Good. Work fast, Ella. We aren’t going to have any peace until this is settled. I had to report the incident to the council and I’ve been getting nonstop phone calls since then. Even the tribal president’s office left a message. Everyone wants Thomas found before half the federal agents in the country start racing around the Four Corners in their gas-guzzling SUVs.”

  “What about my other cases?” Ella asked. “One is critical right now. Unless I track down the witnesses to the Twin Lakes hit-and-run ASAP, the woman will have all her tracks covered. We’ll never get enough for an arrest.”

  “Her ex still in intensive care?”

  Ella nodded. “Not that he didn’t deserve it. He beat her with a baseball bat not long ago, I heard.”