Death and Desire

by P. H. Turner

  “The mine,” she yelled frantically, muffled by the blanket. “They’ve had an explosion at the mine. So many will be dead.”

  “Do you have your phone on you?”

  “It’s on the table.”

  I ducked through the hogan door, grabbed her phone, and snatched a bottle of water. I backed out quickly, unwilling to test the strength of a homemade roundhouse in a blast zone. I ran back to her and dropped her cell and the water in her lap. “Call Trace and tell him. He’ll send help.”

  I broke into a run to my car, jerked my gear bag off the front seat, and jogged toward the canyon opening. Smoke and debris sifted down on me as I neared the construction trailer that was Chavez’s office. A huge whoosh of fire erupted into the sky behind the trailer. I dropped to the ground in a tight ball. When I looked up, the Quonset hut where Torres had claimed the men were barracked was engulfed in fire. Men were running, some stumbling, screaming wildly, twisting and turning to paw at the fire on their backs. The door to Chavez’s office trailer swung open, and a wild-eyed Torres ran out and leaped off the bottom step.

  “Jose, what happened?”

  He swung his head in my direction but didn’t answer, just stared at me with bright, fearful eyes. He stumbled, righted himself on the handrail, and bolted past me without a word, headed to a line of SUVs. He wrenched open the car door, over cranked the whining engine, and finally spun out on the hard-packed road.

  “Mis manos.” I turned to see a teen holding his charred hands out in front of me. He swayed on his feet. His face was fiery red and blistering around his blue lips. He sank to his knees. Two young men grabbed him under his arm pits shouting, “Vamanos,” and hauled him away.

  The acrid smoke darkened the scene with a stinking chemical murk. I crept up to the ragged hole torn in the side of the big Quonset hut. The metal roof was torn open. Jagged metal sagged down into the floor space. The front wall was reduced to a hunk of molten metal, and red liquid was streaming down off the back wall. The men milling outside had garish red stains on their clothes and faces. This wasn’t a barrack. There were no rows of burned-out beds. Glass bottles and shards littered the floor, and the intense heat had charred and twisted large metal pots. Smoldering countertops curled on the floor.

  Two boys, not out of their teens, huddled together by the blown-out opening.

  “What is this place? What were you doing in there?”

  “El polvo blanco,” he stuttered in Spanish. The white powder.

  I was dumbstruck. Meth lab. The stinking leach pits had covered the distinctive smell of fifty million dollars’ worth of meth cooking.

  Police sirens and the whanging of fire engines roared into the clearing. I pushed my way through a group of aimlessly wandering workers to the second Quonset hut that stood unscathed. The door stood ajar, and I eased the door open, praying it wouldn’t squeak. On well-oiled hinges, the door swung wider. Faint narcorrido music was playing inside. Here was the empty dormitory for the workers. Rows of dirty thin mattresses were spread on the floor. The smell of sweaty clothes and the hazy scent of beer and unwashed bodies ripened the air. Two sinks, a toilet, and a small shower stood open against the back wall. No privacy for these men. There was only one door into and out of the hut—a hazard in itself. A small walled-off cubicle hugged the far back wall by the shower. I walked over quietly, put my hand on the knob, and bent my ear to the door. I heard rustling and then a soft mewing.

  I eased the door open, and a young Navajo woman lay on a dirty mattress, her hands and legs tied to the eyebolts in the wall. Her eyes were wild with fright, and she tried to scuttle away from me in fear. “Anne Notah?” I asked.

  Tears leaked from her eyes as she nodded. Her dress was filthy and torn. Her bare legs were stained with brown blood. Yellowed circles marked the dirty mattress. “I’m Taylor. Let’s get you out of here.”

  I had a Swiss Army Card in my gear bag more suited to taking care of a hangnail than bonds, but the tiny scissors opened enough of a hole in the fabric for me to rip the rotting rag off her mouth.

  “Gage and my son?” she begged as soon as her mouth was free.

  “They’re not here.” That much was true, but I didn’t want to tell her where they were.

  “Are they safe?” she demanded. She grabbed my arm and pinched the flesh. “Where are they?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her feet were still tied. She tried to sit up, and I cradled her in my arms. “I’m sorry.”

  High-pitched keens of rage and sorrow filled the room.

  “They were shot. It was fast. I swear it was fast.” I sawed through the filthy rags that held her legs to the bolts. “Can you walk?”

  She swayed to her feet. I slipped one arm around her thin waist to steady her. I heard the front door bang against the wall and heavy footsteps approaching. I pulled her closer to me and turned us to face the door. I locked eyes with Sancho Chavez.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He aimed a small caliber pistol at us.

  Anne’s shoulders crumpled and she leaned on me. “No,” she cried out.

  “I’m taking Ms. Notah for medical help,” I said with more bravado than I felt.

  “No you’re not. Nosy perra.” He smirked, holding the gun steady. “You’ll die with her. She’s of no use to me now.”

  Anne shuddered and slipped to the floor. His eyes tracked her. I took one step forward and he recovered. “Don’t even try it,” he growled, raising the gun. I was close enough to see his finger hovering on the trigger. Smoke filtered through the open door, obscuring my vision. Boot heels thudded on the floor right behind Chavez. Two figures loomed in the smoke. “Drop the gun,” a man’s hoarse voice rasped. Chavez’s gun hand wavered. I pulled Anne to her feet to shelter her, not knowing if the enemy of my enemy was my friend.

  Trace stepped out of the gloom shouting, “Now. Get down on your knees.” The .22 clattered to the floor and Officer Nez kicked the gun between an aisle of beds. Trace jerked Chavez’s hands behind his back, tying them with plastic cuffs. Chavez threw back his head and a smug smile crawled across his face. “I will see you in hell,” he spat at me.

  I blanched at the raw power in his voice.

  Trace shouted at me, “You okay? Where are you hurt?”

  “I’m not. Anne is.” I pointed to the small figure rocking back and forth, moaning quietly.

  Nez yanked Chavez to his feet. Chavez brushed by me, spitting at my feet, and snapped, “Chinga tu madre.”

  I recoiled from the nasty wad of mucus by my shoe. Nez jerked him roughly away from me. “Silencio!” He dragged him, boot heels scuffling, toward the door.

  Trace bent down to Anne. “Ms. Notah, I’m Captain Yazzie. May I pick you up? There’s an ambulance outside.”

  Anne nodded mutely, and Trace carried her as easily as he would a child.

  Outside was a riot of milling police, firefighters, and stunned workers. Trace turned Anne over to the EMTs. “How is Yanaha?” he asked urgently.

  “She’s okay.”

  “Go back. I’ve been crazy worrying about you. Please,” he urged as the smoke swallowed him. “I’ll call you later,” he shouted as he disappeared in the hazy din.

  “Clear!” A man in an FBI jacket shouted from the steps of Chavez’s trailer. He ran down the steps and joined a troop of men moving toward the three metal sheds.

  I had the camera focused on the door when they breached the first shed. Inside, on sturdy metal racks, were rows of Anasazi pots carefully placed by size, largest water jug to tiny seed pots. Two Navajo policemen pushed their way up the steps and into the shed, gesturing and speaking in a rapid burst of Navajo. The agent left them in the shed and waved his men forward to the next two sheds. Both were filled with neatly arranged Anasazi artifacts.

  “You guard that shed.” The FBI agent pointed to a Navajo policeman. “You, take the second. You, third one. No one gets past you, got it?” The men stood feet apart, guns at the ready, guarding their ancestral history.

  What an
opportunistic bastard Chavez was, making meth, looting graves, and giving bullshit interviews about how clean the mine was and what a good neighbor they were to the Navajo.

  Water from a tanker truck sprayed the fires, turning them into sizzling rubble. Police herded tight huddles of bewildered Hispanic men and boys into police wagons for transport. I saw Chavez awkwardly stepping into the van. He stared over his shoulder into my lens as I recorded his journey from CEO to prisoner. I moved through the rubble, shooting small vignettes of chaos. Pot hunting had only been a side business for the meth lab.

  My throat was parched, and I smelled the toxic stink on myself. Fatigued seeped into the hole the adrenaline rush left. Firemen still kept a steady hose flooding the remains of the lab, mopping up the hot spots. Steam poured off the jagged roof. Police were sifting through debris while armed policemen were stationed around all the buildings. I shot the area with one long slow pan, turning completely around. The images on the tiny monitor looked like the aftermath of a bomb. I turned the camera off and trudged toward Yanaha’s.

  Yanaha still sat under the leafy willows where I left her. She lifted one arm tenuously and waved to me. “I was worried about you, my child.”

  I grabbed her and held her tightly. “You must come into town.”

  “I prefer my little hogan.” She smiled wanly.

  “You can’t stay here. It wasn’t the mine. It was a meth lab and the smoke is full of toxic chemicals.”

  She sighed and nodded. “I’ll go to my grandson’s.”

  I was relieved she didn’t argue. I had to get to work. I helped her pack a small duffel with a few clothes and made sure her medications were included.

  She looked tired and fragile when I helped her into the Rav. “All those men. Did anyone die?”

  “Some died and several were badly burned.” I didn’t spare her the truth.

  “Evil,” she murmured. I waited for her to continue. “Evil feasts on the power of ugly emotions.”

  “Are you talking about the shapeshifters or the miners?”

  “Child, you are thinking in absolutes. Everything in the world is intertwined, and you must not view things as happening inside your logical little boxes. The witches fed off the vileness of the miners, but they needed to destroy us—the points of light—to achieve the highest level of priesthood, clizyati, pure evil.”

  “But why us specifically?”

  “You are curious and write stories about malevolence, robbing graves, and stealing a baby’s corpse. You have the power to tell your stories to many people.” She shrugged. “And I live in Kaih Canyon.”

  “So why didn’t they appear to the miners?”

  “We don’t know that they didn’t, but I know they fed on the miners’ viciousness and grew stronger. We were the threat, the ones who needed to be destroyed so the Witchery Way could grow.”

  “There’s more to this than the fact you live in Kaih Canyon, isn’t there?”

  A smile of amusement crossed her face and she held up one hand. “I am a shaman, a yataalii, for our people and you, child, are inquisitive.”

  “I’ve been told that before. What abilities do you have that threatened the witches?”

  “I am able to enter the world of both compassionate and malicious spirits, and I use what I see to foretell the future and practice healing. Ridding themselves of me would have empowered them.”

  “You helped Trace with my smudging ceremony, didn’t you? You helped him to heal me.”

  “Yes, he wanted to complete each step correctly to keep you safe. He loves you very much.”

  I stared round-eyed at her. I wasn’t sure she knew how much we loved each other, and I didn’t know if she was disappointed that I wasn’t a Navajo woman.

  She leaned over and pressed a dry kiss to my cheek. “I’m very happy he chose you.”

  I pushed out a long breath of relief. “Thank you, Grandmother. I needed you to be pleased for us.

  “Drive us to town, dear. You’re itching to go to work.”

  I turned the engine over, reversed in a wide spot by the willows, and pulled out onto the road. “Are the witches gone now?”

  “They are never gone, my dear.” She patted my hand. “Fire has cleansed Kaih Canyon today, but the evil ones are always with us.”

  Uncertainty battled with my feelings of relief. I had carried the grasses for so long they had nearly turned to dust in their Ziploc bags.

  I drove way too fast back to town. Yanaha was quiet and clung to the handhold the whole trip, but she never complained. I settled her at Trace’s condo. On the way to the station, I called and left him a voice mail that she was safe and at his place.

  Marty yelled from his office, “Tell me you haven’t been having a tea party somewhere and missed the explosion at the mine. I had to send a guy who’s barely out of his internship to cover it. He hasn’t found his way home yet.”

  I held up the camera. “Got it right here. Louis, you back there?”

  He rushed to my side and hugged me. “Thank God, you’re okay. Yanaha all right?”

  “Yeah, I dropped her at Trace’s.” My hand was shaking so badly I couldn’t connect the camera to the computer.

  “Give it to me. I’ll do it.” Louis easily plugged it in. Marty joined us to see the footage I had shot.

  “It wasn’t the mine.”

  “What?” Louis exclaimed.

  “They were running a huge meth lab in that Quonset hut Chavez claimed was a dormitory for the men.”

  “Police scanner says they found a woman out there,” Marty said.

  “Anne Notah was tied to a filthy mattress in the men’s barracks.”

  “Oh my God, you found her?” Louis said.

  “Chavez came back to finish her off so there would be fewer loose ends.”

  “You were with her?” Louis demanded.

  I nodded. “Trace arrested him.”

  “Gal, you got nine lives. Geez, look at the scope of that fire—burned hot and fast. That doesn’t look like blood on the walls of the hut. What is it?” Louis tapped the monitor and looked over his shoulder at me.

  “Red phosphorus,” Marty read aloud from his tablet. “Poorly processed meth results in red phosphorus, which is ‘highly volatile and can cause flash-burn injuries to anyone near the explosion.’ Wikipedia. Love this site.”

  “Like this?” I pointed to the monitor.

  Pictures of a man curled in the fetal position with extensive burns came on the screen. I slowed the speed of the footage. When the EMTs rolled him over and laid him on the stretcher, blistered red skin slipped from his arms, peeling in long bloody strips.

  “We’ll blur his face and use that,” Marty said matter-of-factly.

  “So we didn’t smell meth cooking even though it was right there in front of us because the sulfuric acid in those leach pits stunk so bad. Damn good plan.”

  “But the pot hunting,” Marty questioned. “You were sure they looted graves. . . .”

  “Wait until the police open that shed.”

  “That’s the one Torres called a storage unit for the machine shop,” Louis added.

  “Watch,” I said to Marty.

  “Holy crap, look at the number of pots in there!” Louis hooted in glee.

  “The other two sheds are full, too. It was a lucrative side business. Chavez was a greedy son of bitch.”

  “You got arrest footage?”

  “Footage of Chavez being led away in handcuffs.”

  “Damn fine piece of work, McWhorter,” Marty said gruffly.

  Marty laid the tablet down and said, “Here’s a list of the shit it takes to make meth. Methanol, benzene, trichloroethylene, toluene, and ammonia. Pity the poor bastards cooking it.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Get this story cut. I’m sending it to the southwest bureau. Might make the network tonight.”

  Before we had finished the story, the joint task force of FBI, state police, and Navajo Nation Police released a statement that Sancho Chavez and Jo
se Torres were charged with making meth, the intent to distribute illegal drugs, hiring illegal workers, and the theft of Navajo artifacts. The spokesperson added that Sancho Chavez’s phone had been tapped in an ongoing FBI investigation. No statement about what the records revealed. Over fifty undocumented workers were swept up in the raid and were awaiting arraignment. The number of deaths stood at seven, though more were expected. I cut the FBI statement in under my footage of the blast zone.

  “I need a statement from Dr. Hebron about the pollution from the blast,” I said to Louis. “Won’t take long if he’s in his office.”

  Dr. Hebron answered his phone on the first ring. “Ms. McWhorter, I thought you might call for my opinion.”

  “Will you give me a statement about the toxicity levels after a meth lab explodes?”

  “Certainly.” I put the phone on speaker. “All of the debris has mercury and lead in it, heavy metals that will leak into the groundwater. Plus, for every pound of meth created, the process leaves behind five to six pounds of toxic waste.” He gave the perfect short bite.

  I hung up and looked at Louis. “The ramifications are going to rumble through the Navajo Nation for years.”

  Louis threw his hands in the air. “Why would anyone cook up shit from a bunch of toxic chemicals and then put it in their body?”

  We added ten seconds of Hebron’s interview to the end of the story. Marty tagged the file and e-mailed the story to the NBC bureau chief in Phoenix. Within fifteen minutes, the bureau in Phoenix verified the story was on its way to New York.

  Louis, Marty, and I watched the NBC nightly news at five-thirty. The anchor teased my story before the commercial break. “The story of a suspected cartel super lab on the Navajo Nation.”

  As the story finished running, Trace called. I stepped into my cubicle, pretending I had a vestige of privacy there. Before I could say hello, I blurted out, “My story went national.”

  The pride in his voice thrilled me. “I’m proud of you. You’re damn good. I’ve been worried sick about you. How are you?”

  “I’m fine and so is Yanaha. I picked up food for her and got her settled at your place with the television. Left you a message.”