by Aimée
In a few minutes, Ella had Carolyn on the line. “Hi. I’m at a meeting with Chief Atcitty and Agent Blalock, and I just told them about the second set of samples sent to the state lab. In light of the latest news stories, what do you think about releasing the news of this second set?”
“I’d like the department to keep those samples a secret, if my vote counts. I have a feeling we’re going to need an edge before everything’s said and done,” Carolyn confirmed.
“I agree, and I’m glad you’re willing to tough it out a little longer.” Ella nodded to Blalock, who was now ready to leave. She said good-bye to Carolyn, then confirmed their strategy with Big Ed.
Ella spent the rest of the day in her office. Sometimes a paper trail was the best way to access leads. That’s how she’d first discovered Angelina’s shares in the power plant operation.
Ella made careful note of the senator’s voting record. Senator Yellowhair had always promoted coal mining interests, and she knew now that it was because of “Angelina’s” interest in that company. But whether that made him an enemy of The Brotherhood, or a friend, remained unclear. The Brotherhood didn’t appear to want to close the mine, but according to Anderson, there were Navajos willing to risk such a closure through sabotage. Or maybe Anderson had just been trying to confuse the issue.
Only one thing remained clear, Carolyn was being used as a scapegoat. The only things she hadn’t been blamed of so far were the murders themselves.
Ella leaned back and rubbed her eyes. She was hitting a brick wall, no matter which direction she turned. Needing a break, she walked to the vending machines in the lunchroom and bought herself a bag of corn chips. She’d skipped lunch altogether, but she wasn’t hungry, just frustrated and tired.
She sat near the window, staring outside. For the first time in about a week, the winds had not come up today. The sun was high in a cloudless sky, and it was deceptively peaceful. But, with each sunny day that passed, the more parched the land became.
Restless, Ella picked up her empty bag of chips and tossed it into the trash. As she approached the door, she heard a conversation taking place out in the hall.
“Who knows? With a job like that maybe the M.E. does have a hidden agenda, trying to stir up things,” Ella heard a man say. “The evil ones thrive on chaos.”
Anger corkscrewed through her, bubbling up, and practically choking the air from her lungs. She stepped out into the hall and stared at the young Navajo cop by the door and his buddies. “I will not have this department’s M.E. being bad-mouthed. Dr. Roanhorse is a hard-working professional who, like most of us, is doing a thankless job. As a cop, you should sympathize with her struggle to stand up and do what has to be done, instead of chiming in with her enemies.” Ella struggled to keep her hands from shaking, curling them into tight fists and shoving them inside her pockets.
The officer backed up a step. “Sorry, ma’am, we were just kidding around.”
“Only a coward lashes out at a horse that’s already tied up.” Her voice shook, outrage filling her. She wanted a fight, something to vent her anger, but the officers, speechless and embarrassed, dispersed and fled.
When she turned around she saw Justine standing behind her, her eyes wide. Ella stared at her, still hot. “You’ve got a problem?”
“No, not at all.” Justine smiled slowly. “Bet that felt good.”
Ella glared at her for another moment, then smiled back. “Yeah. I was getting tired of not being able to do anything to help Carolyn. This, at least, was something I could act on right now.”
Justine nodded. “It’s a frustrating time. I wanted an informant inside the mine more than you can imagine, but it’s not going to happen.” Justine took a deep breath then let it out again. “You were right about Nez. He wants me to be his informant. Do you believe it? I’ve met with him twice now, both times very briefly and at night near my cousin’s, so I wouldn’t be alone, like you said.”
“What happened?”
“It was apparent from his questions that his interest is in you, and what you’re doing, not me.”
“What do you mean in me? What kind of interest?”
“Professional,” Justine said with a shrug. “He said he wants to work with you, but you’d have to agree to let him run things his own way.”
“In a pig’s eye,” Ella spat out. “That’s not working with the police. He wants to put himself in charge of the investigation. Convenient for him, but out of the question.”
“In either case, I can’t do anything with him. Maybe you can.”
Ella shook her head. “No. First, he’s been using you to get to me, and that’s a bad sign. He wants to play games. My guess is that he’s with the Fierce Ones, despite what he says. What I can’t make up my mind about is whether he’s one of the leaders.”
“What makes you think there’s more than one leader?”
“It’s closer to our way to have councils rather than have one man making all the decisions. Of course, that’s just a guess.”
Ella picked up the file folders from her desk and locked them in the cabinet. “I’m going home for dinner. I need to get away from here, if only for a while. You want to come? Mom would love to see you.”
“What kind of relaxing would you do with me along?” Justine shook her head. “No, I’ll go take the last two notes you received over to Blalock. He wants to add them to a special shipment that’s going to their FBI lab tonight.”
“Okay. You leaving now?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll walk out with you.”
Justine stopped by the lab, picked up a sealed pouch, then went with Ella to the parking lot.
As Justine got into her unmarked vehicle, Ella continued across the parking lot toward her Jeep. It was on days like today that she wished she had managed to find a hobby, something besides E-Mail and computer solitaire. If she didn’t find a way to relieve the stress, she was going to go crazy.
Ella opened the driver’s door, then, with a sharp gasp, jumped back. Walking across the driver’s seat were several scorpions.
SEVENTEEN
There were at least five of the nasty creatures walking around on the front seat of the Jeep. Ella backed away and glanced around, searching for a stick or something to gather them up and remove them from the vehicle.
A moment later Justine drove up, parking beside her. “What’s wrong? A bee get inside?”
“Worse, I think. Scorpions,” she said, gesturing to the front seat.
While Justine peeked inside, Ella noticed a Russian olive branch that had fallen to the ground just off the pavement, and went to retrieve it. As she reached down to pick it up she saw some tracks in the sand that chilled her to the marrow. Four quarter-sized imprints marked the soft sand beside the asphalt, then disappeared into the pea-sized gravel that covered the ground farther away.
“Interesting,” Justine muttered, joining Ella and looking over her shoulder.
Ella stepped around the marks and went back to her Jeep. “Let’s get back to those in a minute. Right now I’ve got some unwelcome passengers to get rid of.”
“How did they get in there? Was your window open?”
“The window was up and the doors locked.”
Ella brushed the scorpions out onto the pavement and Justine started to step on them. Ella pushed her aside gently. “No. Don’t kill anything that doesn’t have to be killed.” Scooping them up one or two at a time, she set them off the parking lot in some buffalo grass.
Justine hesitated briefly, but then, as if with a burst of courage, started to open the back door.
“No! Don’t touch anything else. Look around for any other critters first, and check for a bomb,” Ella said, remembering their encounters with skinwalkers in the past.
After several minutes of careful observations, Ella gave Justine the all-clear. Justine opened the back door and searched the rear of the vehicle while Ella checked the front and the engine compartment.
“I can’t be
lieve I’m looking around for bombs and scorpions,” Justine muttered. “This is some job we’re in!”
“We chose it. Keep reminding yourself.” Ella searched every inch of the vehicle, including underneath and the glove compartment. “Okay. I’ll concede now that we’ve found everything that’s in here.”
“You think they got in here on their own somehow?”
“No, not five, especially after seeing those odd tracks next to the Dumpster.”
Justine crouched on the ground and studied the marks. “This is starting to get creepy. Every time we see these something crazy happens. You know, these marks remind me of something, if only I could remember what.”
“Maybe skinwalkers are trying to unnerve me,” Ella speculated.
“Or maybe the scorpions were a gift from Yellowhair’s people. You’re not on their most-favorite-people list. Of course your list of nonadmirers doesn’t end there,” she added cynically. “By defending Dr. Roanhorse, some of the Dineh are angry with you, too.”
Ella drove home, leaving Justine to photograph the markings for the ever-growing case file. Pain stabbed her temple, shooting all the way across her head and down her spine. She stretched her neck from side to side, trying to relax her muscles. It didn’t work. Tension kept her body rigid and her nerves on edge.
By the time she reached home even her stomach ached. As she pulled up next to her mother’s house and parked, she saw another car coming up the dirt track. She left the Jeep and waited.
A moment later, she recognized Carolyn’s beat-up maroon pickup. She took several deep breaths, and forced herself to relax. The pain eased.
Carolyn climbed out of her pickup and waved. “I tried to call you at the office, but Justine said you had already left for home. I hope you don’t mind my dropping by.”
“Since when do you need an invitation?” Ella smiled and led her inside. “What brings you by?”
“After reading the newspaper account again, I just wanted someone to talk to, someone I trust.”
“Then you came to the right person. How are things going for you at the hospital?”
“I’m still working the inoculation clinics. To be honest, it’s a real perk for me to go into the remote areas. I don’t have to deal with the suspicion cast on me by Neskahi’s poisoning, or with people who know I’m the M.E.”
Rose stepped into the living room and smiled at both women. “I was going to go out to Mrs. Pioche’s and help her dye some wool, but I’ll stay now that you’re both here and fix dinner for you.”
“No, Mom, don’t. Carolyn and I can fix something for ourselves.”
“Well, there are some freshly made tortillas and some cheese and beans…”
“Great. We’ll make burritos. Go on and have fun. Just be careful and check the pickup before you climb in.”
Ella told her mother about the scorpions, then walked her out to the truck. In a few minutes she joined Carolyn back inside. “Mom needs to get out more. Heck, I do, too. I need a life.”
“You and me both. But, you know, I can’t see us spending afternoons dyeing wool.”
“It’s not so bad. It’s interesting to see them prepare the dyes, but what I enjoy most is the actual spinning. I never got the hang of it, and nowadays Mom buys her wool from one of the other women, but I’d like to learn someday.”
“I miss the companionship of other women, too. Loneliness itself becomes a companion after awhile, though. It becomes so much a part of life that I think I’d miss it if it wasn’t there.”
“Our family legacy is a bitch to live with. That legend about the young people from our line having to fight the evil that’s part of our heritage makes things tough. Since it is said that the outcome is never certain, that sometimes evil will win over the good, many people prefer to stand back and give us a wide berth.”
“I’ve heard about that legend, but not its origins.”
Ella brought out the fixings for their burritos and told Carolyn what she knew as they worked. “It’s something that’s not often discussed with anyone outside the family, so I don’t know how it became so generally known. I must have been sixteen before my mother ever said a word about it. But, in general terms, one of my ancestors broke our taboos and got pregnant by a man from her own clan. She was shunned, but Navajo witches sought her out and she learned their skills and magic. She became very powerful, then taught her daughter all she knew. In the end, my ancestor redeemed herself by using the powers skinwalkers had taught her to help others, not harm them.
“Her daughter, too, continued on the side of good, but the belief that the line couldn’t escape the evils that were in their blood from the beginning still remained. Each generation’s offspring would be endowed with certain powers, but what remained to be seen was whether they’d use them for good or evil. It was then decided that those of our clan would always have two children. If the darkness seduced one, then the other would be there to counter it.”
“How do you feel personally about all that? I can’t see you taking any of that to heart.” Carolyn finished preparing the last burrito.
“I don’t know,” Ella said, sitting down to eat. “My thoughts on that subject change, depending on what’s going on in my life. But the cost the legend exacts never changes. It’s an invisible barrier that separates me from people. They’re afraid, and I can’t blame them. Son of a gun, it scares me, too, sometimes. It’s a darkness just below my feet, waiting like quicksand beneath a layer of thinly packed earth.”
“Is that why you haven’t remarried?”
“No. I can’t honestly say that, though admittedly it would be a dandy excuse. Sometimes I’ve even wondered if I wasn’t using my job as a rationalization, but I honestly don’t think so. My job takes everything out of me. By the end of the day, I don’t have much left to give.”
They were halfway through their meal when the cellular phone rang. Ella answered it, afraid it was more bad news. As usual, she was right.
She recognized Blalock’s voice.
“I hate to bother you, Clah, but Senator Yellowhair filed a complaint with my home office stating that all the samples the M.E. used to base her findings were taken from a body other than his daughter’s. He’s demanding a separate autopsy be done.”
“That body’s been embalmed. It’s too late,” Ella said. “He probably knows that.”
“Our experts say some tissue samples might still provide results, though toxicology is out. Also, our forensics experts can check for physical injuries that might have caused her death, as opposed to the drugs.”
“What are you proposing? Exhumation?”
“Precisely.”
“Oh, that’s going to score a lot of points around here. You know how my tribe feels about bodies and the dead. Digging up a corpse is not going to make things easier for anyone. Does the senator know what you intend to do?”
“I think he believes we’ll just throw up our hands and drop the case without exhuming the body. Personally, I’d rather call his bluff, even if we don’t get squat.”
Ella considered it. “I think you’re right. He’s hoping that his charge coupled with the fact the body’s been embalmed will cause you to throw out the case. Well, let’s throw him a curve ball. Get a court order and let’s go and dig her up.”
“I’m ahead of you—the order’s already a done deal.”
“When are you going to exhume?”
“Right away.”
“Who do you want to bring in as the M.E.?” She saw Carolyn glance up.
“Dr. Michael Lavery,” he answered. “He works for the Bureau on special occasions, and is the chief pathologist at the University teaching hospital. As a matter of fact, Dr. Lavery is in town now, and I’m calling you in transit. We should be at the gravesite shortly. I’m hoping you can get a crew there to dig up the body.”
Ella laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Navajos? In the evening?”
“Failing that, it falls to you and me.”
“Oh, crap,�
� Ella muttered. “I’ll meet you at the gravesite, and bring some tools.”
* * *
Carolyn went home, but Ella was there with two shovels and a pick by the time Blalock arrived. Since it was the church cemetery, Ella informed the minister. He was Navajo and wanted no part of the exhumation, but he made no attempt to interfere. Ella was relieved.
Ella and Blalock dug for twenty minutes. Finally, Ella took a breather, leaning on her shovel. Blalock’s tie lay over the hood of his car, along with his jacket. He had rolled up his sleeves, but amazingly, his white shirt remained white, and not a bead of sweat dotted his forehead.
Ella wiped the perspiration from hers. “At least this sand is not hard-packed, though you’d think they would have pressed it down with one of those thumpers.”
“Keep digging, Clah. Daylight’s running out.”
“Yeah, some time you picked. We’re going to be here, carting off a body after dark.”
“Dr. Lavery has limited free time. We’re lucky he agreed to come at all.”
It took some time, but finally the tip of her shovel touched something hard. “We’re there.”
Dr. Lavery stepped forward. “You don’t have any heavy lifting equipment. You’re going to have the devil of a time bringing up that casket,” he said.
“Interesting choice of words, Doc,” Ella said.
“I’ll tell you what,” Blalock suggested. “I’ll open the casket down here, we’ll put the body in a croaker sack, then transport.”
“You have such a way with words,” Ella said with a grimace.
“Mr. Diplomacy, that’s me.” Blalock gestured to the casket. “Get busy, Ella. We’ll need to dig out around the casket a bit more so we can stand clear when we open the lid.”
“Once you get it open, let me take photos and do a preliminary on site,” Lavery instructed. “And Blalock, I expect to be reimbursed for overtime, and the working conditions.”
Ella glanced at Blalock. “How the heck do you open a casket? There are no snaps or latches.”
Blalock reached for the side, found the handle and began turning it. The lid lifted with a high-pitched squeal.