Bad Medicine (3 page)

“Are you okay, cousin?”

“I went to school with her…” Justine muttered, her voice shaky. “Are you sure—”

Ella nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“You said she was under the influence, or having some kind of attack?” Carolyn asked.

“I saw what appeared to be convulsions, but I can’t even guess at a cause,”
Ella answered. “That’s your department.”

Carolyn expression was guarded. “You want toxicology?”

“I want you to establish the cause of death, like you always do. Unless I miss my guess, the
accident
didn’t kill her.”

“You’ll most likely want a full autopsy then.” Carolyn took a deep breath, then let it out again.

“Is there something wrong?” Ella looked at her friend curiously. She’d never seen
Carolyn hesitate on anything pertaining to her job. Senator Yellowhair was bound to cause problems, it was certainly one of his major talents, but Carolyn had never been known to run from trouble.

“Let’s just say I know how our senator operates,” Carolyn answered with obvious distaste. “My findings are always substantiated by tests, so I can cover myself and my department. But he’ll object to
my doing tests or an autopsy on his daughter because he’s going to want her buried quickly and without scandal. You can expect major-league trouble from him when I don’t release the body right away. Cover yourself as best you can. He’ll be after somebody’s ass on this. Count on it.”

Ella nodded. “Don’t worry. I can handle whatever comes. I know what I saw.”

“Which case do you want given priority?”
Carolyn asked.

“This one, the homicide. Do the workup on it first. The faster we move, the better chance we have of not having it end up a real luncher.”

“We won’t have to eat this case,” Justine answered flatly. “We’ll solve it.”

“Idealism of youth,” Carolyn said, walking away.

Ella saw the spark of anger in Justine’s eyes and laughed. “Relax, Justine. She just said that to annoy you. We’ll
do our jobs. And, speaking of our jobs, let’s get back to work. There’s a lot left for us to do here before we can release the scene.”

TWO

Ella sat at her computer. She’d run a check on Bitah, and he was certainly no model citizen. From what she’d turned up, he’d been arrested for drunk and disorderly just two days before his death. He’d been in a fight with an Anglo by the name of Louis Truman, fellow employee of the mine, in a Farmington bar. The two of them had pretty much torn up the place. Truman, unlike Bitah, had no previous
local arrest record.

Ella picked up the telephone and dialed Blalock’s mobile number. She wanted to know more about Truman’s background, and experience told her that the Bureau’s files would be more comprehensive than her own. Though the Bureau was supposed to cooperate with tribal law enforcement, she hated asking for favors, and she knew that was exactly how Blalock would view her request.

Ella smiled as Blalock practically barked his name into the phone. “I see you’re in Bureau mode,” she said.

“Whatcha need?” he snapped. “I already spoke to your assistant earlier today. The vehicle tracks are too common to identify.”

“Were you voted Mr. Congeniality in your graduating class at the Bureau?”

“First runner-up. How did you guess? Is there a point to this conversation?”

“I need
you to check the Bureau’s computer and see if you come up with anything on an Anglo by the name of Louis Truman. He lives in Farmington,” she said, giving him the background and Truman’s street address.

“I’ll run it through, then meet you at the guy’s house. I assume you’ll want to question him ASAP.”

“I can be there in forty minutes. How about you?”

“Same ETA. I’ll see you there.”

Ella picked
up her jacket and stepped out of her tiny office. On her way down the hall she passed the lab. Justine was hard at work processing the trace evidence. Tache was nowhere to be seen, but the red darkroom light was on. Ella continued walking down the hall. Justine’s talents were better used here for now than assisting at the upcoming questioning.

Ella drove out of the station parking lot, taking
the highway east. As she approached the low-income housing area that bordered the road, she noticed fresh graffiti spray-painted on the cinder block walls. The reservation was changing, and it wasn’t all for the better. Youth gangs, an ever-growing presence she’d thought she’d left behind in L.A., were now making their appearance here as well. Navajo kids, caught between cultures and needing something
to identify with, were lured by the excitement gangs offered them. Passing the subdivision’s main turnoff, Ella saw kids wearing baseball caps on backwards, baggy pants, and black pro-team jackets staring at her.

Drug use and juvenile crime were on the upswing, especially auto theft, and Jeeps were popular targets. She shook her head sadly. Though the tribe would survive this surge of lawlessness,
as it had other dangers through the decades, anything that attacked their youth threatened the very existence of the
Dineh.
She wondered what toll this would take on the tribe, before harmony was restored again.

Ella continued her drive through the gap in the Hogback that had been worn by the San Juan River, passing the coal mine and power plant in the distance. It was here that Bitah had been
employed, and here he had worked as a Navajo rights advocate on the side. She’d never agreed with the methods of most activists but, in this case, her sympathies were with them. It was hard to see Anglo companies making a profit from the few resources on tribal land. Though it was true that the companies that came in were required to hire a certain number of Navajos and pay the tribe a percentage
of the profits, it saddened her to know that so much of the money from these resources left the reservation. But the
Dineh
needed jobs, and they hadn’t had the expertise to manage the operations themselves. That’s what had opened the doors to outsiders.

At least nowadays, Anglo companies were required to work with the land rather than ravage Mother Earth. Yet that was small consolation to those
who’d had to relocate their homes and deal with contaminated water.

As Ella left the reservation, she brought her mind back to the case. The murder of a Navajo rights activist was bound to foster even more unrest within the tribe. The faster she cleared up the matter, the better off everyone would be.

Twenty minutes later, as she entered the city of Farmington, Ella weaved through the residential
streets until she found the address she was searching for—a small wood-framed cottage in a rundown area among the cottonwoods which lined the river.

Ella pulled up next to the curb and saw a man in his mid-thirties sitting out on the porch in a folding chair. He was drinking something from a can, but from her vantage point she couldn’t tell if it was a beer or a soft drink. She bet on beer. Blalock
wasn’t in sight yet but, to be fair, she’d made good time and was a few minutes early.

As she switched off the ignition, the man rose from his chair and headed her way. Ella noted he was weaving slightly as he approached, and the beer can she now could see clearly in his hand, confirmed his condition. Hating to deal with drunks, she decided to remain in her car until she could gauge his mood.

“Who the hell are
you?
” he demanded, coming out into the street and over to the driver’s-side door.

“I’m Special Investigator Ella Clah, of the Navajo Tribal Police. If you are Louis Truman, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The man’s expression suddenly went sour, and he stepped back, throwing the can against her windshield. The container bounced off the glass without leaving a scratch,
spraying beer everywhere.

He splashed himself as much as the car, and that only made him more angry. “I’m so sick of you Indians!” He crossed over to the toy-scattered lawn and picked up a kid’s baseball bat. “Question this!” he yelled, swinging the bat down on the hood of the Jeep with a thump, leaving a groove in the sheet metal. “You’ve got no jurisdiction here.” He stomped around the vehicle
toward her door again.

Ella reached for the PR-24, the new standard-issue baton with a side handle, and pulled back from the window, as if terrified. The moment Truman drew close, she threw the door open hard, catching him in the chest. He stumbled back into the street, gasping for air. The bat flew across the asphalt, out of his reach.

Ella jumped out of the car and pushed Truman back toward
the lawn using the tip of her baton. He tried to scramble to his feet so, with a quick lunge to the right, she hit him behind the knees. As Truman tumbled to the grass, she knelt on his back as she cuffed him. “Calm down,” she snapped. “You’re in enough trouble already.”

She was lifting him to his feet when an approaching siren wailed in a short burst. She glanced up and saw Blalock’s car screech
to a halt behind her own.

“What’s going on?” Blalock stepped casually out of his vehicle. “This Truman?”

Ella filled him in quickly. “Will you call Farmington PD and have him taken in? I’d also like that baseball bat bagged and tagged as evidence. The M.E. said Bitah was killed with a blunt object.”

“I didn’t kill nobody,” Truman slurred. “You’re just looking for some white man to put in jail.”

Ella shoved him against the Jeep. “Pipe down,” she snapped, then read Truman his rights.

“I’m going to ask for a search warrant while I’m at it, too,” Blalock said, walking toward his car.

Ella held on to Truman, trying to shut out the tirade of obscenities while she waited for FPD to arrive. “I’ve heard all of those words before, buddy,” she said, feigning boredom. “How about telling me something
that may actually reduce your jail time?”

Truman sputtered, then tried to yank away. Ella pushed him back against the Jeep, forcing him to lean forward and stay off balance. “Your choice: You can stand here, or lay facedown on the ground.”

Truman coughed, then made a gurgling noise. “I’m sick, let go.”

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.”