by Aimée
Ella eased her hold and a second later, Truman threw up on the grass. He continued retching off and on for at least five minutes.
Ella rolled her eyes as Blalock and a Farmington cop finally approached. “He’s all yours,” she told the cop.
The cop glanced at the grass, then at Truman, and grimaced. “Thanks for making sure he was on empty before I loaded him into my car.”
“We aim to please,” Ella answered.
As the cop took away the prisoner, along with the bagged and tagged baseball bat, Blalock leaned back against Ella’s Jeep, cellular phone in hand. “It shouldn’t take us long to get that warrant. There’s a judge I work with here. Under the circumstances, I think she’ll do her best to cut through the red tape.” He looked at the house. “Anybody else in there?”
“If there is, they haven’t shown themselves. Does he have a family?”
“His wife’s at work, and his kid’s in school. As far as I know, nobody else lives there. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have company.”
As the minutes ticked by, Ella kept her gaze on the windows of the house, searching for signs of a reclusive visitor. “Did you get anything on Truman?”
“He’s an interesting piece of work. He was arrested once in Utah for attacking some environmentalists and, although we can’t prove it, we suspect that he’s part of a radical militia group that’s shown up lately in New Mexico: white supremacist, antigovernment, global conspiracy stuff. He was also hauled in a few years back on income tax evasion.”
“What’s a white racist doing working for the tribe?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but it probably creates a little tension at the company picnic.”
A half hour passed as they waited, and Blalock’s patience was wearing thin. When, at last, another FPD patrol officer came up carrying the search warrant, he snatched it from the woman’s hands. “About time.”
“It wasn’t that long. Damned fast, if you ask me,” Ella commented, nodding to the officer, who simply rolled her eyes at Blalock and walked back toward her unit.
“Who’s asking?” Blalock shot back.
“Right.” Ella managed to keep her temper. What an incredible talent Blalock had for pissing people off. It was only recently, however, that she’d discovered it was his way of gaining the upper hand. Keeping a cool head when others around him were too angry at him to think straight, allowed him to emerge as the one in command every time. What annoyed her most was that it had taken her so long to figure him out.
Blalock strode up to the front door, pistol in hand. “FBI!” he shouted, then kicked back the partially open door as he flattened against the side wall.
As the door swung back on its hinges, Ella scarcely breathed. They waited, but no sounds came from inside.
Ella followed Blalock in and looked around, her pistol ready. Three tense minutes later, after it was obvious no one else was home, she holstered her weapon.
Blalock walked to the bookcase and stared at the contents with a grimace. “Will you take a look at this pile of crap? Hitler would have loved this guy. Books, tapes, everything for the well-read sociopath and his impressionable child.”
“Interesting,” Ella said, joining him and reading some of the titles. Racial hate books slightly outnumbered the how-to volumes geared for the amateur anarchist. “I’d like to be there when you question him. Any objections?”
“None. I’m going to let him sweat it out in jail and sober up first, though. How about if we meet at the Farmington PD around six this evening?”
Ella checked her watch. It was three now. “Sounds good to me. Do you mind if I have Justine pick up that bat and check it out? If she finds anything, Carolyn can run the necessary checks on her equipment and do a blood comparison.”
“I have no problem with that, and I don’t think the PD will either. I’ll sign the release.” He went through the house with her but, besides two legal semiautomatic weapons, gunsmithing tools and reloading gear, and over five hundred rounds of ammunition, found nothing out of the ordinary.
“This case is going to involve people on and off the reservation. Shall we keep it simple?” Blalock suggested. “You question all of the Navajos, including Bitah’s coworkers. They’re more likely to talk to you. I’ll take the Anglos.”
“All right.”
“Something’s bugging you, Ella.” Blalock observed. “You usually argue more and take a few potshots. What are you holding back?”
“Just a feeling,” she answered. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
Ella waited for Blalock to sign the protocol releasing the bat to her department before leaving. Since the evidence had already been taken in, she made arrangements for Justine to pick it up at the Farmington station.
As Ella drove back to the reservation, her stomach felt tied up in knots. Nothing was making a great deal of sense to her right now. First, the murder of a Navajo rights activist, and next, the same day and not ten miles away as the crow flies, a young woman had taken leave of her senses and the highway.
Now, to top everything else off, they’d taken in a suspect to the murder and learned he was a white supremacist who currently worked at the Navajo mine. The whole thing made her skin crawl.
As she sped down the highway toward the recently expanded Shiprock Medical Center, Ella found herself looking forward to seeing Carolyn Roanhorse and hearing someone start making sense of this situation.
She trusted Carolyn implicitly. In the beginning they’d been drawn together mostly because they were both outcasts. Carolyn had become a pariah because she was a Navajo working with the dead, and Ella was a woman in male-dominated law enforcement. It didn’t help either that Ella had spent years off the rez in the FBI, and lost the trust of many she once knew.
Over the past year or so they’d become good friends, though they still usually saw each other mostly in the course of police business.
As her call sign came over the air, she picked up the mike. It was Justine.
“I’m on my way to Farmington now. What’s your ‘twenty’?” Justine asked, using the code for a location.
“I’m on my way to the morgue. Whatcha need?”
“We’ve been trying to notify the Yellowhair family. But with the state legislature not in session, the senator’s not keeping office hours, and his wife’s not home. Their neighbor suggested we talk to your mom.”
“I don’t get it. How come?”
“The senator and his wife are members of the church where your father used to preach, though he doesn’t attend regularly.”
Ella felt a cold hand squeezing her heart. More connections leading everywhere, yet nowhere. “I’ll swing by my mother’s home and see if she has any ideas before I meet the M.E. Anything new on the evidence processed from the crime scene?”
“Not yet. But by the time you come in, we may have something. And I’ll go over that bat the minute I get it back to the lab.”
“Good. Once the news is out about the accident, I’m going to be on the hot seat because of my report. If I have an open murder case on my hands at the same time, we’re all going to be sweating, from the chief on down. Keep working.”
“Ten-four.”
Ella gazed at Ship Rock—standing like a distant sentinel about a dozen miles southwest of the town named after it—thinking about her father. He had been dead eighteen months, and his killers had been caught and punished, but the memory of his loss still filled her with intense grief. Such a brutal, senseless death.
It was even worse for her mother. Ella could still hear her pacing the house at night, as if searching for the companion she’d known for a lifetime. Her heart twisted inside. So much pain, and so many dead because of beliefs as old as the Dineh themselves.
But right now Ella’s focus had to be on the cases before her. She thought of Bitah, and then Angelina Yellowhair. Both those deaths had been just as senseless as her father’s, in their own ways, and the questions about them needed to be answered.
Ella drove up the bumpy dirt track that led to her mother’s home where Ella had lived ever since her return to the reservation. Her mother and she were both alone, both widowed, and living together had given each of them much needed companionship.
She parked near the side of the house and saw her mother, Rose, out back by the clothesline, hanging out laundry. Dog Two, or “Two” for short, lay nearby. Dog, her mother’s old companion, had finally died of old age six months ago. Dog Two, another mutt, had wandered onto their porch one cold November evening, and had been around ever since.
Hearing the car, Rose turned her head and waved. Finishing with the laundry, she went to meet her daughter, Two at her side. “Is something wrong? You’re home early.”
“There was a car accident,” Ella answered. “I was hoping you could tell me where to find Senator Yellowhair, or his wife.”
“Their daughter?” Rose spoke in scarcely a whisper, avoiding the name.
Ella nodded. “She’s dead. Just ran off the road.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Was she drinking or something? Her aunt said she has been pretty wild nowadays.”
“We’re looking into that now, but we need to contact her parents. One of the neighbors suggested that you might be able to give us an idea of where to find them.”
“Why? I used to see the senator’s wife when she went to your father’s church, but I don’t go there anymore. Since your father’s death, I haven’t seen any of them except at the post office or grocery store. I could ask around, though. I heard someone mention at my weaver’s association meeting that the family was going down to Fort Defiance to visit relatives, and that the senator would be stopping by Window Rock to give some speeches. But that was two weeks ago. They may be back, I don’t know. Doesn’t he have an office you can call?”
“Yes, but he’s not keeping regular hours right now. But thanks for the suggestion, I’ll check it out. Meanwhile, I better get back to work.” As Ella headed back to the car, Rose called out to her.
“I just remembered something. Have you tried going to the church? I understand they’ve been getting some blankets and coats together to send out to the Dineh who live over by Mexican Hat. If the senator’s family is back, his wife might be over there.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll have someone check it out.”
As she drove back out onto the highway, Ella contacted Justine on the radio. She relayed what she’d learned then asked her to pay a call to the church and see if anyone had seen Mrs. Yellowhair. “If you need me, I’ll be at Carolyn’s.” Her stomach growled, reminding her that she needed food, and soon. “I’ll go ten-sixty-one there,” she added, informing Justine she’d be stopping for something to eat.
“Ten-four.”
As Ella stepped out of the hospital basement stairwell, she felt that peculiar coldness that was always present in the morgue and had nothing to do with the temperature. She wasn’t sure how Carolyn stood it, though she knew that the reason her friend worked here was because this was where the tribe needed her most.
As she walked down the short hallway, she felt a shudder run up her spine. A sudden flashback to the day she’d come to see her father’s body left her feeling weak at the knees. She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and touched the badger fetish around her neck. There was nothing she could do to change what had been. She had other duties now.
As she reached the outer office she could hear Carolyn’s monotone voice as she spoke into a tape recorder inside the autopsy suite. Through the glass that separated them, Ella could see her friend’s back and a corpse’s foot and toe tag. Three stainless steel tables stood empty, but trays filled with surgical equipment surrounded the M.E.
The smell of disinfectant made Ella feel a little sick to her stomach. She leaned back against the wall for a moment. Suddenly a stocky young man wearing a blue vinyl apron over scrubs rushed out of the autopsy suite, looking pale in the bright lights.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, after nearly running over her. As his gaze dropped down to her belt and he saw her badge, he gave her a thin smile. “Oops. Sorry. Dr. Roanhorse told me to expect a visit from the police.”
“I haven’t seen you here before. Who are you?” Ella asked, looking at the young Navajo with surprise.
“I’m Howard Lee, Dr. Roanhorse’s assistant. I’m the med student assigned to work with her this semester.”
Ella nodded. That explained it. Carolyn’s job didn’t attract volunteers. “Could you tell her I’m here?”
“I already know,” Carolyn yelled out, reaching up to turn off the tape recorder’s mike. “Come in.”
“I’d rather not,” Ella answered.
“Don’t be such a wuss. You’re a cop.”
The barb stung, just as Carolyn had intended it to. Ella took a deep breath, then forced herself to enter the room. The body was half-covered with a sheet. Lines marking where the incisions would be made were clearly delineated on the skull and torso. Ella swallowed the bile rising at the back of her throat.
Carolyn turned around, bloody gloves held high and away from her body. “Hey, I was wondering when you’d come. You’re just in the nick of time.”
“For what?”
“Can you reach that drawer and get the peanut butter cup in there? I’m hungry, but I’ll need you to feed it to me. I can’t get it near the body or touch it with these gloves.”
Ella did as she asked, wondering if this was legit or just one of Carolyn’s pranks meant to make her squirm. Either way, she wouldn’t balk.
Ella held the candy out as Carolyn leaned forward and took a bite. “How can you eat this now?” Ella said, forcing her voice to remain steady.
“Why not? It’s not as if I have to share,” she said, pointing to the body, “and I missed lunch.”
Ella’s gaze strayed past Carolyn to the face of the body on the table. It was Angelina Yellowhair. She fought the sinking sensation at the pit of her stomach. “What caused the convulsions? Was she ill?”
“I don’t know yet, but I will soon. If you rule out drugs or poison, which of course I can’t do until the tests are run, your description makes me think she may have had a stroke or a heart attack. But neither of those is consistent with the other evidence. People who are in the midst of a heart attack, or even a stroke, usually have enough presence of mind to slow down. Of course there are always exceptions, but the percentages bear me out.”
Ella nodded. “Epilepsy?”
Carolyn took another bite of the candy bar, then swallowed. “There’s no record of that in her medical history. I know her doctor. He’s right upstairs. He said that she was in perfect health.”
Carolyn was just finishing the last bite of candy when the med student came back into the room. He strode in confidently, and despite the fact that he was wearing a wide, gold wedding band, gave Ella a bold once over as if they were in a single’s bar instead of a morgue. Then he turned to Carolyn. “Doctor, I’ve logged the blood samples and the other fluids.” He looked at the body, trying to act casual, but his face turned a shade lighter.
Ella knew immediately that, despite his training, he was no seasoned morgue veteran. He was reacting to the body with the distaste most Navajos showed a corpse. When she glanced at Carolyn, and saw the gleam in her eyes, her heart went out to Howard Lee. If her guess was right, Carolyn was about to have some fun at the young man’s expense.
Ella cleared her throat. “I was hoping to talk you into taking some time off and going out for lunch with me, upstairs, outside, anywhere but here.” She needed to talk to her friend, but she wouldn’t ask specifically. It wouldn’t have been a fair request. What had allowed their friendship to blossom was their mutual understanding of each other. To both Carolyn and her, work always came first.
“Give me a few more minutes,” Carolyn said. “Howard and I have a few more things to do here.”
Ella braced herself when the high-pitched whine of a bone saw filled the room. Then she heard a sucking
noise as the body was cut open. She would have run out of the room right there and then, but she was afraid that if she moved, her legs would buckle and she’d fall on her face. Ella leaned back against the cold wall, closed her eyes, and took a breath. The smell of death filled her nostrils, and she felt her empty stomach churning and bile rising again to the back of her throat.
Hearing a sound she could only describe as that of a runner wearing water-soaked shoes, she opened her eyes and saw Carolyn removing something large and reddish brown from the body. Ella rushed out of the room, knowing she’d have to put up with Carolyn calling her a wuss for the next several months.
“Hang on. We’ll have lunch in a bit,” Carolyn called out to her cheerily. “I just want to show my assistant one more thing.”
Ella heard a drill, then a crunching sound that made her skin crawl. The next instant, she saw Howard Lee running from the room, one hand held over his mouth.
Carolyn looked up at Ella and smiled. “Oh good. You’re still here. Now, we can leave. I have a valid reason for taking a break from the autopsy because my student’s indisposed. He’s an arrogant little twerp. He should be used to viewing autopsies by now. This certainly wasn’t his first.”
“The body is of a young Navajo woman. Could be it reminds him of his wife,” Ella suggested. She knew how viewing a loved one here had affected her.
“I suppose. But he’s been so annoying today, I couldn’t resist pushing him a little. Ready for lunch?”
Ella stared at her friend. “You’re positively amazing.”
Carolyn peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the trash can used for biohazards. “Give me a second to wash up. Since you had to wait, I’ll treat you to lunch upstairs. I hear the special in the cafeteria today is liver and onions.”
Ella swallowed convulsively, recalling the reddish organ Carolyn had lifted from Angelina Yellowhair’s body. She wouldn’t break. Carolyn was goading her on purpose. That black sense of humor was one way Carolyn stayed sane. “If you can gag it down, Doc, so can I.”