Changing Woman

by Thurlo, David

  “How about Pachmayr grips made of neoprene—only custom made to fit your ’new’ hand?”

  “They might help,” she said, considering Ella’s suggestion. “I’ll check around and see who might be able to work with me on that.”

  “Maybe we can go out to the range together and come up with a design,” Ella said.

  “I’d appreciate the help. Wilson has been out with me, and I’ve been practicing a lot. But I’ve got to tell you that I wouldn’t have qualified at all the other day if I’d had to shoot another round. By the end of the session my right hand was really in bad shape. The hammer kept tearing into the web of my hand every time the pistol recoiled.”

  “And being in pain didn’t help your aim, I would imagine. You might want to look for a smaller-frame weapon, even if it costs you in firepower—less rounds per clip.”

  “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. But, to tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking that maybe I should take a desk job.”

  “Why? You’d hate it.” Ella looked over at her, surprised.

  “Better than not being able to back up my partner when she needs me.”

  “You’d back me up, no matter what it took. I know you, cousin. In a firefight, you don’t even notice little details like pain until it’s all over.”

  Justine smiled. “I appreciate your faith in me, Ella. I mean that. But unless I can solve this problem soon, I’m going to ask to be taken out of the field. Maybe I can just do crime-scene processing and the lab work.”

  “That’s not really what you want. I think you should give yourself time to learn some new tricks.”

  Justine started to answer when a call came over the radio. Dispatch came through clearly, though that was not always the case when they were in rough country or around some of the big power lines.

  “SI Unit One, this is Dispatch. A resident reports a possible ten-thirty-eight on north Riverside. Perps are southbound in an old pickup. No further description of the vehicle is available. Respond Code One.”

  Ella acknowledged the call, then racked the mike. “Vandalism—still in progress. If we do a Code One, silent approach, we may just strike paydirt. Let’s catch these guys.”

  “I know that neighborhood,” Justine said. “Modernists and new traditionalists live there.”

  With the red light placed on the dash and no sirens, they sped west into Shiprock along Highway 64, then northwest onto the residential area around the old mesa boarding school.

  As they approached via a paved street with lampposts at each intersection, Ella switched off the emergency lights and asked Justine to turn off the vehicle lights as well. “Go nice and easy. I want to creep up on these jerks.”

  They turned down Riverside, heading south, and immediately saw two suspects in an old beat-up truck cruising slowly down the street on the wrong side of the road. The passenger was leaning out the window, tossing bricks into the windshields of parked vehicles.

  “Lights on. They’re ours,” Ella snapped.

  The sight of the flashing lights galvanized the pickup driver, and the vehicle skidded around the next corner toward the east and the main highway.

  “Stay with them,” Ella ordered, calling for backup. “See if you can close in so I can get the plate number.”

  Justine hit the siren, then the gas pedal, and the souped-up engine responded. But as they pulled up to less than four car lengths behind the perps, it was obvious that the plate had been intentionally splattered with mud, obscuring the three-letter, three-number code. Ella cursed.

  “Should I stay in pursuit?” Justine asked as they swerved south onto Highway 666, heading right into the center of town. “It’s late and there isn’t much traffic, but we’re doing sixty and there’s a light coming up.”

  “Stay with them as long as you can do it without endangering any bystanders,” Ella said. “Keep them in sight.”

  Passing the church at the next intersection, the perps ran the red light, nearly T-boning a car. The panicked driver of the small sedan managed to evade the pickup by swerving left, but that put it head-on with Justine’s unit and in the wrong lane.

  Justine turned the wheel hard to the right, nearly catching the rear end of the sedan, and hit the brakes, coming to a screeching stop fifty yards past the intersection. The sedan spun a full 360 degrees before jumping the median and slamming into a light pole with a crunch.

  “It’s your call, Ella. Should I continue pursuit or check out the accident?”

  Ella could still see the outline of the pickup roaring east out of Shiprock, its lights off now. Anger tore at her, but her duty was clear. “We stay. We have to check out the driver and any passengers. Even if no one’s hurt, something like this often brings on a heart attack.”

  While Justine got on the radio to request the EMTs, Ella ran over to the sedan. The hood was arched slightly and the front bumper had snapped where it struck the metal pole. But the airbag had inflated, protecting the driver, who’d fortunately been wearing her seat belt. A quick check revealed no passengers.

  The Navajo woman in her late thirties was wild-eyed as she climbed out of the car, yelling at Ella. Unfortunately, her radio was blasting a popular, fast-moving country song about a cheating husband, and Ella couldn’t hear what she was saying over the din. Seeing Ella gesture, the woman reached back into her car and turned off the ignition and, mercifully, the music.

  “What are the police thinking, going on a high-speed chase right through the middle of town? You weren’t even looking!”

  “We were looking. You were the one tuned out. You should have pulled over to the right shoulder and stayed out of the intersection when you heard the siren and saw our emergency lights coming down the hill. But you didn’t hear us with the music cranked up so loud, right?” Ella shook her head and asked for the woman’s driver’s license.

  The woman, Arlene Natani, handed it to her, somewhat mollified.

  “You’re lucky to have survived this without anything more than smeared lipstick and a good scare,” Ella told her. Unfortunately, the perps were probably halfway to Hogback by now. They’d go to ground on the Rez long before backup could materialize. The PD was stretched too thin these days.

  “The EMTs will be here shortly,” Justine said, joining them.

  “I don’t need them. I’m not injured. I’m a nurse and I know what signs to look for. I just want to go home. I’ve had a long day.”

  While Justine canceled the EMTs, Ella requested a patrol officer from the station be sent out to complete the accident report. While waiting for him, Ella and Justine began the paperwork, gathering the woman’s personal information and getting her statement.

  Fifteen more minutes passed before they were finally able to leave the scene. “That fender bender just cost us the first chance we’ve had so far to arrest these vandals. All we can do now is go back and see if any of the victims saw something we can use.”

  They returned to the north Riverside neighborhood and found most of the people outside, looking over their damaged cars. Ella and Justine split up, talking to the residents on opposite sides of the street. People’s tempers were short and when word got around that the vandals had escaped, their irritation became even more pronounced.

  Canvassing the neighborhood became a long and tedious process. Most of the victims had been awakened by the loud thuds of breaking safety glass and had neither heard nor seen anything useful.

  After an hour of going in and out of residences or standing outside in the freezing cold, Ella joined her partner. She could barely feel her hands now. They’d gone numb because she’d forgotten her gloves in her Jeep, which was back at the station.

  Ella stood beside Justine as she finished questioning Myrna Manus on the front porch of her home. The clinic director was always in a foul mood but was at her absolute worst tonight. Her BMW had lost its windshield.

  “I called right after I heard the first windshield pop. What took you so long? Did you stop for doughnuts along the way?”
r />   “Actually, we were here three minutes after the call, Myrna,” Ella said. “We were the closest unit.”

  “I still remember when we had that break-in at the clinic last year. The bad guys got away then, too, but at least this time you didn’t pepper the entire neighborhood with bullets. I suppose we should be grateful for that.” Myrna walked out to her car and stared at the mounds of cubed glass on the hood and dash. “Look at what they did! I saved for ten years to get that car. It doesn’t even have a license plate yet.”

  Justine gave Ella a tight-lipped look. “Look, Mrs. Manus, count your blessings. You’re insured. Lots of people on the Rez have to get by without that, even when it’s breaking the law, because they just don’t have the money.”

  “Yes, but now my rates will go through the roof. If you’d been doing your jobs properly, these criminals would have been in jail before tonight and none of this would have been necessary.”

  “We all want to put a stop to this crime wave,” Justine began.

  Ella tuned her out as an uneasy feeling began to creep up her spine. Losing track of what her partner was saying, she looked around carefully, trying to figure out what was wrong, but almost everyone had gone inside now. Yet, she could feel someone watching them. It was that creepy tingling at the back of her neck that made no sense in logical terms but, on a gut level, she knew not to ignore it.

  Once Mrs. Manus went back inside her home, Justine looked over at her partner. “What’s wrong, Ella? You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “What look?” Ella continued to study the area as they crossed the street, heading in the direction of their police unit.

  “The look. The one that says you know something’s up. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Ella answered slowly. She felt the badger fetish she wore around her neck growing warm despite the chill. It was probably just her body heat working overtime when her nerves were on edge but, the truth was, that whenever that fetish felt hot, there was danger close by. She reached beneath her jacket, unsnapping the strap that kept her weapon fastened in place. The metal was cold, almost sticking to her fingers, but the familiar touch was somehow reassuring.

  “Let’s get back to the vehicle as soon as we can. Step up the pace, but don’t run,” Ella ordered, quietly. “I think we’re being watched.”

  “By whom?” Justine glanced around casually, careful not to tip off their watcher. “I don’t see a soul. Everyone’s inside now, smart cookies that they are. It’s freezing out here.”

  “Yeah. But he’s there. I can feel it.” Sometimes the subconscious mind processed information that was minute by regular standards, but as a cop, she’d learned to trust her instincts. Ella’s gaze continued to sweep the area.

  As they approached the unit, passing under the illumination of a streetlight across the intersection, Ella saw a flash of light, like a small explosion, from the hill farther east. The stop sign, less than three feet in front of them, twitched abruptly.

  Ella dove forward, knocking Justine to the grass as the crack of a distant rifle shot reverberated in the air. Justine rolled into the long shadow cast by their police unit while Ella crawled over to the side of the vehicle.

  “Stay low. I’m calling it in,” Ella said, reaching for the handheld radio clipped to her waist.

  THREE

  “Backup is on the way,” Ella whispered, looking around the front tire rather than risking a look over the hood. “I saw the muzzle flash way up on the mesa about a quarter of a mile from here. I’m going over there now.”

  “We don’t have night-vision glasses and it’s pitchblack outside. And we’ll be sitting ducks in the vehicle. Let’s just sit tight until we have backup.”

  “If we do, and the sniper’s patient, he’ll have a lot more cops in his sights. But you’re right about getting in the unit or even staying near it. With the streetlight overhead, we’d be making ourselves great targets. Put some distance between you and the unit, but stay in the shadows and move quickly. I’ll go up onto the mesa on foot while you warn the residents to stay away from their windows. You can direct our backup when they get here.”

  “If you’re going up there, I’m sticking with you, Ella. You’ll need someone to divide the sniper’s attention. I’ll advise dispatch where the muzzle flash came from using the radio and, as far as the residents go, I’ll warn the ones in the closest house and have them pass the word.”

  Before Justine could grab her handheld, Ella realized that the lights inside the two closest homes had come on, and people were peering cautiously from the edges of their windows. “There’s a sniper! Stay away from the windows and doors and tell your neighbors to do the same!” Ella yelled at the person inside the home behind her. “And turn off your lights.”

  Immediately the figure watching them disappeared. The lights in the house were quickly turned off, and others down the street followed suit a short time later.

  “Okay. Let’s go, and follow an unpredictable course. It’ll be harder for him to track two moving targets, especially ones who aren’t coming at him in a straight line. Let’s just hope he doesn’t get lucky,” Ella said.

  Ella led the way up the wide alley behind the row of houses, running the entire length up the slight incline, zigzagging at random intervals. Justine followed several steps behind, using the same tactics but different moves.

  They reached the last of the houses within five minutes, then came upon several stunted trees. Ella kept her eyes peeled on the outline of the mesa above, looking for an easy way up the fifty-foot-high cliff as they got closer. She paused at the foot of a well-traveled trail, probably used by the kids on the way back and forth to school, and took out her handgun.

  “Unless he’s moved over to the edge of the mesa, he can’t see us at the moment, and won’t know which way we’ll come up,” Ella told Justine. “Give me a ten-second head start,” Ella added, her breath rushing out in clouds of water vapor now, “and look around before you expose yourself at the top.”

  Ella was nearly out of breath by the time she approached the top of the mesa and peered over cautiously. A hundred feet ahead she could see a cluster of crosses and low stone markers surrounded by the remnants of a white picket fence. “What the . . .”

  “You don’t remember the graveyard?” Justine asked in a whisper as she caught up with Ella.

  “No. Did you?” Ella whispered back.

  “Yeah, I sneaked over on a dare when I was a kid, and I never forgot it. There was a church here once but it burned down and they never rebuilt it. No one comes into this area anymore, except maybe chindi and skin-walkers.”

  “Then why is that housing development so close by?” Ella asked, then shook her head, suddenly understanding. “Never mind. I get it. The residents are mostly modernists and new traditionalists, right? Even if they could see this place clearly in the distance, they probably wouldn’t care.” Ella paused, her gut coiling into a tight knot. “I’m not thrilled about walking across a graveyard, but if we go around it, it’ll take too much time. The muzzle flash I saw came from that little rise over there. We have to cut through.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Justine said.

  Ella didn’t have to look to know her partner would follow her as she stepped over a section of flattened fence.

  “It’s not as big as I remember it,” Justine said, suppressing a shiver.

  “Less than twenty graves, I figure. But be careful where you step, so you won’t trip on one of the metal markers and fall on top of one of the graves.” Ella looked around cautiously. “The problem is that not all of the graves have permanent markers.”

  “Great. Just what I needed to hear,” Justine replied, stepping around a wreath of all-weather plastic flowers that must have been blown away from a grave.

  They made their way across the concrete pad that was once the floor of the church, crouching low. As they left the church ruins and the graveyard behind them, the wind carried the sound of a truck engine starting s
omewhere down the hill, then a heartbeat later, screeching tires on asphalt at the highway below. The roar of the engine quickly faded away to the north.

  “That’s probably him,” Justine said, slowly standing to full height. “I have a feeling he was watching us all the time from the truck, wondering if we’d cross the graveyard or not.”

  “Maybe, but he’s long gone now. The only chance we had of taking him by surprise was to come up on foot.” Ella holstered her weapon, unhooked her radio from her waist, and advised Dispatch.

  Once finished, she took out her flashlight and made her way to the area of high ground that would have made the best vantage point for the sniper. Working methodically, she searched the ground with Justine’s help. “Let’s see if we can find the spent cartridge or something that will help us track the sniper, the weapon, or both.”

  After several minutes of fruitless searching, Justine looked up, teeth chattering as the wind whipped against them. “I’ll come back tomorrow after daybreak. If there’s anything here, I’ll find it then.”

  “There’s the Stop and Go further ahead, on the north side of the bluff near the main highway,” Ella said, pointing. “You can see the parking lot sign easily from this high spot, and I think the tire marks veer off in that general direction. Once we get back to your unit, we’ll go talk to the night manager. Maybe he saw the guy racing by.”

  By the time they’d walked back down to the neighborhood and had reached Justine’s unit, backup was already at work. Most people had stayed inside, not willing to risk having a sniper use them for target practice—all except for Myrna Manus, who was walking toward them now.

  Ella heard one of the officers who was searching the intersection for evidence speak to his partner. “I knew she was itching to come out. A woman like that doesn’t fear anything. Hell, one look from her, and the bullets would fly into each other.”