Zeb Hanks Mystery Box Set 1

by Mark Reps

  “Angel, Angel Bright,” he said softly. “A bright angel, now in heaven.”

  A hundred miles beyond the ancient cottonwood sat the city of Tucson and an open invitation for a return to his old job. At least in the city ghosts didn’t have names or, worse, personal history.

  “Angel Bright.”

  His words caused a spasm in the pit of his stomach. The sheriff suddenly found himself needing something extremely ordinary to make this a normal day. Serving a writ or two, even a humorous encounter with Fritz, the town drunk, or finding Joe Black Feathers’ one eyed dog wandering through the alleyway would do just fine. But wishing away reality has the unintended consequence of drawing it ever nearer.

  Helen knocked twice sharply on his door. The sheriff’s feet dropped to the hardwood floor as his secretary entered. He pulled the cowboy hat away from his heart and placed it on the desk.

  “Sheriff, it’s that man, Eskadi Black Robes, from the San Carlos Reservation on the phone. He’s demanding to talk to you.”

  Zeb took a deep breath and blew it out hard between tightly pursed lips. This day was going downhill in a hurry.

  “Eskadi Black Robes?” What does he want with me?”

  “He didn’t say. You want me to ask Mr. Black Robes for you?”

  “No. No, I’ll take it. You sure he didn’t say what he wanted to talk about?”

  “How long have I been doing this job, Sheriff?”

  She paused for less than a fraction of a second before answering her own question.

  “Thirty-one years next April. If Eskadi Black Robes would have said what he wanted, I would tell you.”

  “Sorry, Helen.”

  Helen, making no bones about the level of her disgust, gave Sheriff Hanks a good, old-fashioned Mormon up and down, stopping at his eyes, saying nothing. He had witnessed enough of her behavior over the years to know what her cold gaze meant. She was forgiving him because of his bad day, but he’d better snap to, pronto!

  “Would you please shut the door for me, Helen?” asked the sheriff.

  Helen quietly semi-closed the door. Zeb, chewing away at an irritating hangnail, glared at the phone. What could Eskadi Black Robes want from him? Since becoming a tribal official on the San Carlos, Black Robes had all but shunned interaction with the White community. Eskadi’s ardent belief that there were two separate worlds within one land, and two separate ways of doing things, made him difficult to deal with. The relationship between the San Carlos Apache tribe and local citizens had never been a rosy one. It wasn’t uncommon in Zeb’s youth for the Indians and Whites to brawl over scarce day labor jobs and practically go to war over the better ones at the copper mines. His own father had spent more than a few nights in the local jail after decking it out with Indians who had crossed him, inflaming his short temper. Zeb remembered his old man saying, more than once, “Those damn Injuns look at me like I don’t even have a soul. They can all go to hell for all I give a shit.”

  Zeb’s first memory of Eskadi was of a skinny, nerdy, quiet kid with hand-me-down clothes and oversized glasses. But ever since returning to the reservation from college in California, his politics had become radicalized, and his voice demanded to be heard. It was as if he had swallowed the rattle of and grown the fangs of a nasty, desert diamondback rattler. He had become a genuine, left-wing, off-the-wall dissident, a type not appreciated within the city limits of Safford.

  With Eskadi’s rising tribal power, his views became the public face of the local Apaches within the White world. The old timers grumbled about his demands over their morning coffee. In their minds there was a single kind of justice that fit his ilk, a razor strop and a quick trip behind the woodshed. Some even suggested a few ounces of lead might do the trick.

  Wherever Eskadi went he left behind a trail of discord. Even inside the tribe he was creating friction and infighting. Younger males and educated Apache women who sided with him saw the changes in the power structure as long past due. In their collective thinking change was not happening quickly enough. The Elders disagreed with their progeny, freely pointing out that Eskadi had returned from the White man’s world with a chip on his shoulder. The old men and women voiced a strong opinion in favor of a slower, more tempered way of changing the world.

  But Eskadi’s most recent demands included the return of Apache land and millions of dollars in reparations for land he claimed to have been taken illegally by the government and given to the mining companies. He had publicly been making loud noises about a long history of lies from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When it came to broken treaties, water rights and repatriation of Apache territory, the federal government was equally to blame. Recently, when their cars passed on the highway, Eskadi hadn’t even returned the sheriff’s friendly wave. So why in the hell was he calling today?

  Sheriff Hanks looked down at the flashing red button on his phone. Helen noticed the sheriff hadn’t picked up yet, turned, looked over her shoulder and peered over the top of her glasses through the slightly open door to see what the holdup was. Feeling the heat of her gaze, the sheriff peered in her direction, raised his eyebrows and nodded. Satisfied, she returned to her paperwork.

  “This is Sheriff Hanks.”

  He snarled his name in his most authoritative tone, knowing full well that it was pointless to approach Eskadi in such a manner. But it was a strange day. Who knew what anyone was thinking? For all he knew Eskadi might have a bug up his ass about a White sheriff arresting one of his tribe. The last time Mormon ranchers’ cattle had wandered onto the reservation from nearby Bureau of Land Management property, Eskadi raised a fit. When Zeb tried to reason with him, Eskadi threatened to butcher the cattle and give the meat to his people as partial payment for past sins of the ‘imperialistic, invading White skins’. God only knew what he would want this time.

  “This is Eskadi Black Robes. Is there any chance your business finds you up towards Antelope Flats today?”

  The sheriff moved the phone an arm’s length away from his ear and stared at it like he couldn’t believe the words he had just heard. What the hell? What the hell was Eskadi talking about? Eskadi would never think, not even for one moment, that the sheriff had business on Apache land. Sheriff Hanks put the phone back to his ear. The silent hum offered nothing in the way of an explanation.

  “Antelope Flats is on the San Carlos. That’s tribal police jurisdiction, isn’t it? Hardly a place for a White skin who might get arrested for trespassing.” Zeb’s response sounded extremely sarcastic, even to his own ears.

  “Yes, it’s Native American land, Zebulon. But I would like you to come up here today if it’s at all possible. I mean, if you can find the time. It’s rather important.”

  The sheriff’s ears burned in disbelief. Eskadi Black Robes called him Zebulon and asked for help all in the same breath. The two of them had never been on a first name basis, even in childhood. Still stunned by the apparent softening in Eskadi’s attitude, Zeb quickly concluded that whatever Eskadi wanted was very serious.

  “Are you still there, Zeb?”

  Now it was Zeb, not Zebulon.

  “Yu-up, I’m still here. I guess I could make my way up there today, if it’s that important.”

  “It is,” said Eskadi. “Could you meet me in Bylas, say around noon at the Silver Spur Saloon?”

  “That sounds doable. You mind telling me what this is about before I head up there? I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

  “There’s been a murder.” Eskadi’s voice cracked ever so slightly as he spoke.

  Eskadi paused so long after saying murder that the sheriff thought the line had gone dead.

  “It happened very late last night or early this morning. The body of a young girl was found out in Antelope Flats. She lived up in Wildhorse Canyon.”

  “Wildhorse Canyon,” said Zeb. “That’s where Jimmy Song Bird lives.”

  “That’s why I called you.”

  Eskadi’s answer produced another gripping sensation in Zeb’s gut
and shot a bilious taste across his lips and tongue.

  “It was Song Bird’s granddaughter who was murdered.”

  A lightning bolt shot through Sheriff Hanks’s mind unleashing another long-forgotten image. In his mind’s eye, Jimmy Song Bird, beautifully dressed in his Apache ceremonial garb with long, shiny, black hair braided in a ponytail hanging to his waist, stood side by side with Jake Dablo. Jake carried the craggy face and timeless visage of a western lawman from a bygone era, only without the holstered gun at his side. That day Jake looked utterly ridiculous in his ill- fitting and seldom worn Sunday suit. Zeb’s remembrance was of two good men, Jake Dablo and Jimmy Song Bird, smiling proudly at their daughters’ high school graduation, also his graduation.

  The girls, Maya Song Bird and Jenny Dablo, were two of the prettiest girls in his graduating class and two of the most troubled. Zeb’s heart had carried a hidden schoolboy’s crush on at least one of them, and sometimes both, from the time he first started thinking about girls. Much to his dismay, they viewed him only as a friend who sneaked the family car out of the garage late at night to drive around the desert, drink beer and stare at the moon with them.

  This day, Jake Dablo and Jimmy Song Bird, who had held their friendship as near and dear as life itself, these men whose lives had been entwined for so long a time, carried a common horrible thread, a link that should join no two men…that of a murdered grandchild. Jake's granddaughter murdered, seven years ago today. And now, on October eighteenth, Jimmy Song Bird’s granddaughter had also been taken. The smooth, deep voice of Eskadi Black Robes brought Zeb back from his ugly reflection.

  “It looks like a ritualistic murder. Almost identical to Sheriff Dablo’s granddaughter a few years back. Only this time the victim is an Apache girl.”

  Zeb’s mind catapulted into disbelief. Only fifteen minutes earlier Helen had dredged up the hideous memory of the murder of Jake’s granddaughter. Now, Eskadi invoked the same dead child as well as the murder of a defenseless young Apache child. The most horrific memory in the history of Graham County, a ritualistic mutilation of a child, was repeated seven years later, to the day. Time ground to a screeching halt. The images and thoughts in his mind became more unreal with each passing second. Shaking his head did nothing to clear the thickening haze in the sheriff’s mind. The distant mountain and its scrubby undergrowth melded into a single indistinguishable maze. Time somehow doubled back on itself and horrible, vicious memories erupted anew.

  “I can be on my way right now. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you at the Silver Spur.”

  The sheriff hung up the phone and rubbed a quivering hand through his hair before bringing it to a rest on the nape of his neck. A warm flush followed by an instantly cold, clammy feeling oozed through his skin, leaving his body dampened with beads of icy sweat. A feeling of constriction descending from his throat landed in the pit of his stomach and gripped him like the instant onset of a flu virus. This day was careening from bad to worse. There was no telling what was at the bottom of the ugly abyss that awaited him.

  Zeb poured a tall cup of strong, black coffee into a Styrofoam container. He grabbed the keys to the department’s Dodge Dakota pickup truck. He stopped momentarily at Helen’s desk.

  “I’m headed up toward the San Carlos Reservation at the request of Eskadi Black Robes. There’s been a murder. A young girl. Up near Antelope Flats. The child was Jimmy Song Bird’s granddaughter. You can reach me on the two-way. I’m meeting Eskadi in Bylas. I’ll probably be back late. Have Deputy Steele handle anything that comes up in town. Deputy Funke is on rural patrol this morning. He can take care of anything that comes up out in the country. I’m sure you will keep everything else under control.”

  The door had barely closed behind Zeb when Helen picked up the phone and made the first call, setting in motion a chain of gossip that moved through town faster than a late August wildfire.

  Helen called her best friend, who passed it on to the girls at the coffee klatch, who in turn called cousins, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts—anyone who might possibly be interested in passing on the sad news. By the time supper would be set on the tables in the homes of the small community of Safford, only the town hermits and recluses would be without knowledge of the young girl’s murder. By the time the supper hour was over, there would be no shortage of suspects and more than a little finger pointing.

  As Helen gossiped, she found herself idly writing the date, October 18, on a blank piece of paper. After tracing over it several times, she underlined it and placed three question marks after the eighteen, underlining them too. Squinting at the exaggerated handwriting, Helen searched her mind. There was something else about the date of October eighteenth. Something she was forgetting. Something she should remember.

  3

  Sheriff Hanks drove a few miles outside the city limits of Safford before removing his hat. When he patrolled local streets, his hat, a symbol of authority, never left his head. As he placed the time worn hat on the seat, he noticed a sweat stain in the shape of a five-cornered badge. The hat carried a long history of its own. It wasn’t new when he first placed it on his head. It had been a gift from Jake Dablo. Zeb remembered the day. He was twelve years old, only weeks shy of his thirteenth birthday. Sheriff Jake had come out to the farm that day to arrest his father again. It was the arrest that sent his father to prison where he eventually died. His old man was a drunken thief and a wife beater who hated everyone, especially Apaches. Zeb took another gander at the hat, further dipping into his memories.

  That day Jake had tousled his hair. Jake told him to “rest easy” as he placed the hat on young Zeb’s head. Sheriff Jake Dablo insisted the hat would be good to him. He told Zeb not to worry, that the world was a big place and things had a way of righting themselves.

  “Good always triumphs over evil,” Sheriff Jake Dablo told him with certain authority. The moment Jake placed the cowboy hat on his young head Zeb knew his life had changed forever and for the better.

  Zeb didn’t cry that day. He wasn’t even sad as he watched Jake haul his old man off to jail. Time and circumstance had taught the preteen to hate his father. In Zeb’s mind, the sheriff had, in that moment, become his surrogate father. An added benefit was the entrance of Jake’s daughter, Jenny Dablo, into his life.

  That day was a blessing in so many ways. How many men could point to a single day in their lives, an exact moment, as the pivotal turning point for their future? That day, those events altered the course of Zeb’s existence. With the magical placement of an old ten-gallon hat on his head, Jake Dablo had done for Zeb all that a boy could ever ask from a man. He had given him validity.

  The road to Bylas also fired the flames of memory regarding Zeb’s first meeting with Jimmy Song Bird. It was shortly after Jake had given him the hat. At their first encounter, Song Bird, noting Zeb’s deep black hair and pale white skin, baptized him with a sacred Athabascan name. Loosely translated it meant ‘Little Sheriff who is both Night and Day’. More importantly, several years later when he was wrestling with a thousand disjointed emotions at the time of his father’s death, Song Bird as Medicine Man once again entered his life.

  Feeling guilty that he still hated his old man when he died, Zeb’s reaction was to raise hell and stay out all night partying with his friends, Maya and Jenny among them. It was at that time Song Bird pulled him aside and explained that he shouldn’t hate his father. Zeb’s father, Song Bird explained, suffered from an injured spirit, a spirit that could not be healed in his lifetime. He told Zeb that acting out his hatred would do no good for anyone. If he didn’t watch himself, he too would damage his own spirit and end up doing evil deeds, perhaps even carrying forward his father’s legacy. It was at that moment Zeb was finally able to shed a tear for his departed father.

  Zeb observed a pair of scavenging buzzards circle over the rotting carcass of a dead desert animal as he reflected on the hard road of his father’s life and the track his o
wn would have taken without the aid of Song Bird and Jake. He shuddered involuntarily.

  Zeb’s mind turned to murder as his eyes wandered across the vast expanses of the open desert. Song Bird’s words about his father’s injured soul made him wonder what sort of injury and pain a soul would have to sustain to seek balance by killing a child. It was far easier for him to think about the facts of the murder than to dwell on the underlying motivation of a killer. Zeb was a man hunter, not a psychiatrist. His only goal was to catch the perpetrator of this heinous deed, not to look into the driving forces behind his psyche.

  But the thought wouldn’t leave him. Where does the pure evil necessary to kill a child come from? And what impels it forward into action? Merely having to think such dark thoughts made Zeb feel tainted and dirty. Spending the trip to Bylas focusing on the evil nature of mankind was getting him nowhere. He cleared his head and regained his grip.

  A Peterbuilt semi-tractor trailer zipping by at high speed from the opposite direction produced a wind shear, rattling the Dodge Dakota and practically lifting it off the pavement of State Highway 70. The movement jarred the sheriff away from his inner thoughts and back to a state of present-time consciousness. He checked his speed, seventy-two miles per hour. He would be in Bylas in no time. In Bylas he could begin gathering the facts he needed. Facts were exactly what he would focus on.

  Ahead the horizon grew into faintly purple mountain peaks abutting a cloudless blue sky. To the east, jagged tips of land, erupting from beneath the earth’s crust millions of years earlier, created a profile like that of an ancient dinosaur spine. Arizona and its ruggedly untamed beauty was made to be loved. But why did God, who created such awesome wonder, also create the soul of a child killer? Why would this evil deed happen out here in this beautiful country? Not once, but twice? Frustrated and caught between beauty and anger, Zeb felt his anger rise.