by Ethan Cross
“Sir, I need you to remain calm and tell me what happened. Were you in some sort of an accident?”
“Why do you ask? Oh yes, the blood. No, it’s not mine.”
“Then whose blood is it,” she said. Liana’s hand had been inching ever closer to the Glock pistol mounted on her hip. Placing her palm over the butt of the weapon, she added, “Sir, I’m going to need to see your hands.”
“How many officers are on duty right now? Are you the only one here?”
“Hands. Now,” Liana said as she pulled her pistol and trained it on the newcomer.
“If I wanted to report a crime, is there some sort of form I need to fill out?”
Liana took aim at a spot in the middle of the terrifying interloper’s chest. Keying the radio attached to her shoulder, she said, “Officer Nakai at the station. I need immediate backup.”
A voice she recognized as belonging to Officer Pitka replied, “Pitka, two minutes out. What’s the situation?”
“Possible homicide,” Liana said, her voice cracking.
The blood-covered belegana merely looked around the tiny station house as if he were there on some kind of routine business, just some guy filing a noise complaint or reporting the theft of a lawnmower.
“Sir, I’m not going to ask you again. Raise your hands slowly. No sudden movements.”
With a roll of his eyes, the man finally complied and raised his hands over his head. As he did, she noticed that he held two cylindrical objects in his hands. “What are you holding? Drop whatever it is right now, or I will have no choice but to fire.”
“I’m afraid that may be a bit of a problem. You see, these are glued into my palms. I couldn’t drop them if I wanted to.”
“Who would do something like that?” Liana said before she had even realized she had spoken aloud. There was nothing in the handbook, no training at the academy on how to handle a situation like this. Despite her degree and knowledge, her mind was a blank. All she could think to do was to keep her gun on the target and wait for the others to arrive.
The bloody man said, “Actually, I glued them there myself.”
“Why would you do that? And whose blood is all over you?”
“Yes, well, about that. I’m here to report a murder. Well, more precisely, several murders.”
3
Francis Ackerman Jr. liked the young Navajo Nation Police officer from the moment he had laid eyes upon her. She reminded him slightly of the Mayan girl who had taken his virginity, but there was more to it than that. She had something that so many lacked, a spark in her eyes, a transcendent fire just waiting to burst forth.
The average normal would have likely admired her spunk and would have elected to take it easy on her during the coming altercation. The old Ackerman would have enjoyed extinguishing such a fire slowly through pain and blood. The present version of himself, which he had come to view as Ackerman 2.0, felt a strange stirring to show dominance over her, but he had also been given a holy mission, the nature of which endowed him with a level of self-control he had never experienced before.
He was about to cause bodily harm to the young officer, but only because it was part of the plan. Not because he was going to enjoy it. Of course, that wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t thoroughly enjoy the rush of battle, but he wasn’t rushing to battle for enjoyment’s sake. And he felt that to be a definite step in the right direction.
The backup officer whom Officer Nakai had radioed, responded in a shaky, breathless voice that said he was already rushing to her aid. Ackerman had no intelligence about the officers on duty and wasn’t sure whether the quick response was merely a superb dedication to the job or if there were certain undertones of affection between the young female officer and her partner. Just one of a million facts he filed away for possible exploitation.
Ackerman knew that many would find his methods and machinations distasteful, but as always, he maintained that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And when someone he cared about was missing, Ackerman wouldn’t hesitate to steamroll anyone who got in the way of his straight line.
Unfortunately, by no fault of her own, Officer Nakai had found herself in his path.
He had hoped she would wait for backup before approaching, that would make it easier on her. Since he wouldn’t have to render her temporarily unconscious while he waited for her friends to arrive. In an effort to be as responsible as the circumstance allowed, he preferred to limit himself to one performance of higher difficulty rather than several small showings.
The door to the tiny substation of the Navajo police flew open and a wild-eyed American Indian youth stormed in with his weapon drawn and its hammer cocked. The newcomer was a squat but muscular young man wearing the earth-toned uniform of the Navajo Tribal Police. Waving his Glock 22 like it was a cross warding off evil spirits, the male officer caught sight of him and immediately shouted, “Get down on the ground!”
Officer Nakai had taken the opportunity to round the desk and move into position to assist. She said, “Place your hands behind your back and get down on the ground.”
“I don’t think so,” he replied.
“Get down or we will be forced to taze you.”
Ackerman laughed. “I enjoy a good jolt as much as the next guy, but I’m afraid that I will have to respectfully decline. Are there more officers coming or are you my only two playmates this evening?”
The male officer ignored him completely and shouted his instructions again. “Get do—”
Before the last word had left the officers mouth, Ackerman sprung into action. With a jerk of his arms and a flick of his wrist, he extended the collapsible batons he held in each hand. The weapons were a standard for most police officer’s utility belts, and when they were extended to their full length of nearly three feet, they increased Ackerman’s effective reach enough that the distance the officers had placed between themselves and their blood-covered interloper had been completely mitigated.
Dropping low and spinning on his heels, Ackerman took the two officers completely by surprise.He heard the sound of the Taser discharging and the air rushing past his right shoulder as the barbed prongs of the device embedded themselves in the wooden paneling that covered the walls of the station.
Ackerman had no fear that he would fail in his task of overwhelming both officers. First of all, he was well-versed in several martial arts disciplines and had honed those skills on countless opponents over the years. Second, due to the neurosurgical experimentation of his deranged father, Francis Ackerman Jr. was incapable of feeling fear. He was once bitter about the years of torture he had endured at the hands of his progenitor. Anger at the world had fueled a man who had been designed from the ground up to be the perfect killing machine. But then Ackerman had connected with a brother he didn’t even know he had and discovered that destiny had merely been grooming him for the great works to come.
He had also learned that his lack of fear gave him a split second advantage in nearly every circumstance. While others experienced a moment of doubt and indecision, he merely analyzed the situation and reacted.
For the current encounter, that reaction took the form of a roll to the ground and a hard swipe of one of the collapsible batons directed at the achilles tendon of the male officer. Then, as the man left his feet, Ackerman brought the other baton down on the officer’s chest, driving the air from the man’s lungs and momentarily taking him out of the fight.
Officer Nakai squeezed off a shot that sailed wide, and Ackerman hurled one of the batons in her direction. The metal weapon struck her in the chest, doubling her over.
Before the baton fell to the ground, he rushed forward caught the weapon and brought it down on Officer Nakai’s arm, causing her to release a shrill cry of pain and drop her gun. With a reaction time that spoke of skill and training, the young woman ignored the pain in her right arm and pulled a can of pepper spray with her left. Ackerman merely disarmed her again and then brought the full force of one
of the batons to bear on the back of her thigh, bringing her down to the speckled linoleum.
The male backup officer was starting to recover and acquiring a target with his Glock 22, but Ackerman easily disarmed him with a few well-placed blows designed to demonstrate exactly who was in charge.
With both officers rolling on the ground, clutching wounded limbs, Ackerman retrieved their sidearms, ejected the magazines and the chambered rounds and then disengaged the locking mechanism of the top slide and pulled it free from the lower assembly, rendering the weapons inert. The male officer was still trying to stand and required a bit more negative reinforcement. Once that was done, Ackerman—whistling the “Heigh-Ho!” song of Disney’s seven dwarves—retrieved the Tasers and removed the batteries from those weapons.
Then he pulled over a metal folding chair between the two tribal officers and waited while the young ones tried to reconcile their defeat.
The woman asked, “Who are you?”
With a small smile spreading across his face, Ackerman said, “You’ve heard of Pandora’s box, I assume. I’m kind of like that. If you poured all of the darkness in the world, the pain, the death, all the depravity of which man is capable, and dumped that into the life of a child—that would be me. I am the amalgamation of all the world’s worst monsters. I am the night, imbued by a darkness that few have witnessed but all men fear on a primal level.”
She looked at him as if he had just declared himself to be the re-incarnated spirit of Elvis. She said, “What do you want?”
In response, he held out both wrists to her in surrender and said, “I’m here to turn myself in.”
4
Due to budgetary constraints, only the larger tribal police substations held actually jail cells, the closest being the headquarters at Shiprock, which was over a two hours’ drive. The prospect of riding over a hundred miles with a clearly insane white man in her back seat terrified Officer Liana Nakai. She hoped that when the captain arrived those wouldn’t be his orders.
They had placed the now compliant assailant into the small barred cell that filled one of the substation’s corners. It was really nothing more than a fenced off six-by-six square with a cot along the back wall. It wasn’t actually a proper jail cell and was never supposed to be used for real criminals. The officers of Roanhorse had simply gotten tired of driving two hours to throw someone in the drunk tank, especially when their most frequent customer had a tendency to urinate and defecate on himself. They had all taken a turn driving a stench-filled squad car to Shiprock. Still, Liana would have picked a feces covered drunk over a blood covered madman any day of the week.
The stranger now sat ramrod straight on the cot, staring out at her and Ernie Pitka, the officer who had rushed to her aid. She tried to identify the expression on the stranger’s face. After a moment, she settled on “whimsical curiosity.”
Liana said, “Where did all the blood come from? Is someone hurt? Did you attack someone?”
“I’ve done many terrible things to people over the years, far worse than the damage I’ve caused tonight. But yes, certain people from your town are definitely experiencing an evening of unsettling ramifications. And this is only the beginning.”
“Who? Where?”
“All good questions, but I’m afraid that I can only provide that information to the man in charge of your little town.”
“Captain Yazzie is on his way, but if you—”
“I wasn’t referring to your commanding officer. I’m waiting for the man who pulls your superior’s strings.”
Upon considering the statement, Liana surmised that there was only one man in town fitting that description, the business man who had founded the town and employed nearly all of the residents at his ranch. John Canyon had inherited a small sheep farm from his father and had turned it into one of the largest Basque-style sheep and cattle operations in the Southwest. But everyone in town also quietly accepted that John Canyon traded in much more than sheep and not all of his business endeavors were strictly legal.
Liana wondered what connection the stranger had to Canyon and whatever illicit dealings Canyon was caught up in, but if their benevolent benefactor was involved, then Captain Yazzie would want to handle this situation personally. He had informed her on her first day as to the policy involving Mr. Canyon and the ranch. The man was loved by most everyone in the county and had powerful connections on both the tribal council and the government beyond the reservation. Captain Yazzie had told her that any complaints or problems involving John Canyon should come directly to him, and his tone had more than implied that Canyon was beyond reproach and, at least in this valley, immune from the long arm of the law.
She didn’t necessarily have a problem with Canyon and had even gone on a few dates with his son,Tobias. It was the way of the world for people with money and power to control and manipulate others in order to gain more money and power. Or, at least, that was the way of the belegana world. She had accepted the Canyon situation as a necessary evil, especially considering that the man had done more than any cop could ever hope to accomplish in way of taming illicit dealings within the county.
Still, Liana had always kept it in the back of her mind that someday the deal that the town of Roanhorse had made with the devil would burn them all. As she stared into the drunk tank at the stranger, trying to get a handle on what game the man was playing, she wondered if today would be that day of reckoning.
When the station’s back door opened and Captain Yazzie stomped his way inside, she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She had never been so happy to see her boss as she was at that moment. In fact, most of the time, she cringed when he entered a room.
The tan uniform of the Navajo Nation Tribal police hugged Yazzie’s five foot nine frame snuggly. Although the captain wore an official uniform from the neck down, above that was hardly within regulations. He wore his typical buffalo skin revenger-style Stetson wrapped by a band made from the skin of a Copperhead. A pair of small spectacles—which adjusted to the light so that he could wear them day or night, outside or in—always seemed to hide his eyes. The glasses reminded her of those worn by John Lennon, only more sophisticated in order to accommodate the captain’s sensitivity to light.
Moving to her first, the captain rubbed Liana’s shoulder and said, “Are you okay?”
“We’re fine, sir.”
“It’s a damn good thing Pitka was nearby.”
Ernie Pitka whispered, “I can’t say that I was much help, sir. He pretty much kicked our asses. He’s only in that cell because he wants to be and the prospect of that scares the hell out of me.”
Yazzie said, “Calm down, officer. We don’t even know what’s going on yet.”
Liana felt like she should offer something to the conversation. She had drawn a hundred insights from watching the prisoner and imagined a thousand possible scenarios to explain the blood. But in the moment, her mind went blank, and all she could think to say was, “The stranger claims that he will only speak to John Canyon.”
Yazzie’s face went cold and the sternness in his eyes showed his annoyance at not being notified of this earlier. He said, “This guy asked for Mr. Canyon by name?”
Liana’s stomach flipped like an old biplane when she realized her mistake. Had the prisoner actually mentioned Canyon or had that merely been her own inference? Trying to recall the conversation, she replied, “He said something about wanting to talk to the puppet master or something.”
“‘Or something?’ That the kind of terminology they teach you at that fancy belegana school? What did he say precisely?”
She felt the blood rush to her cheeks and she fought for words. She looked to Ernie Pitka—who had been crushing on her since junior high—for assistance again. Ernie’s eyes went wide, and he offered, “The prisoner said that he was waiting for the man who pulled our superior’s strings.”
The captain said, “So…Officer Nakai…Our prisoner mentions the person who pulls my strings
and you instantly assumed he was referring to John Canyon. That’s an interesting assertion, officer.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Liana whispered, her head bowed in deference, “I didn’t mean to imply that—”
Yazzie raised a hand to stop her. “You’ve said enough. It’s fine. You’ve been attacked and aren’t thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have pushed you. Either way, perhaps it’s time that I hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
5
Ackerman smiled a warm greeting as the wannabe-cowboy police captain approached the bars. He said, “I would extend a handshake, but your officers insisted on securing my arms behind my back.”
The captain said nothing. He merely observed with a stone face and eyes unreadable behind round wire-framed glasses. Ackerman had immediately noted the captain’s choice of weapons—two Colt Peacemakers, one on each hip.
Ackerman said, “I like your old wheel guns. A couple of famous pieces of Americana. Known as ‘The Gun That Won the West’”
The captain said nothing.
“You remind me of another little piggy I met on the road to Cancun. Actually, I believe that was the last occasion I was in a foreign nation, and I have to say that I find the Diné people to be significantly more hospitable than your Mexican neighbors. That now-deceased police captain underestimated my fortitude and the bloody lengths to which I would go for revenge. I only mention it because I see some parallels between your current predicament and the unfortunate deaths of a great many people south of the border. You see, that dead Mexican captain took someone dear to me. Just as your friend, John Canyon, has taken someone very close to me now. Would you like to know the ultimate fate of your Southern counterpart?”
The cowboy captain’s lip curled back. Ignoring Ackerman’s question, he said to the young male officer, “Pitka, go out to the tank and fill up a couple ten gallon buckets of water. Then bring them back in here and give our new friend a quick shower.”