Bad Medicine (30 page)

“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.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you arranged that just for effect.”

“Don’t kid yourself. I find this as revolting as you do.”

As the lid lifted, Ella pressed her back against the earthen sides of the grave. Her stomach contents came up and she forced them
back down with a foul-tasting swallow. Then a smell reminiscent of strong perfume mixed with the odor of damp earth hit her. She coughed and scrambled out, gulping for air.

It took her a minute, but when she was relatively certain she wasn’t going to vomit after all, she returned to the grave and jumped back into the hole, avoiding looking at Blalock and Dr. Lavery, who were intent on the body.
The mutilated body stared at her accusingly, and memories of what had been done to her father assailed her. Ella staggered backwards and slammed into the earthen wall.

“The organs are missing,” Dr. Lavery said, oblivious to what was going on. “Explain,” he asked, glancing over at Ella.

Ella tried to regain her composure. “I’m sure the body didn’t leave the morgue that way. Dr. Roanhorse uses
the same protocols as every other M.E. in the state. She’s told me the organs are returned to the body cavity once the autopsy is complete. This must have been done afterwards.” She paused, then added, “No wonder the ground is still soft. This grave’s been dug twice now.”

Ella struggled to keep from shaking. She wouldn’t come apart in front of the men. If they could handle it, so could she. She
finally looked down at the body as Dr. Lavery took photographs. “That mutilation looks like—” her voice trembled and she stopped speaking abruptly.

“What was done to your father?” Blalock finished for her.

Ella nodded.

“You’re losing me here, folks,” Lavery said, setting his camera on the surface out of the way.

Ella looked directly at him. “In the eyes of someone not fully versed in our ways,
this mutilation might have been viewed as part of the ritual intended for War Medicine. In olden times, when an enemy was defeated, the tendons of his legs, arms, and neck were taken, along with his scalp. These would then be used by a medicine man to make the victors’ enemies weak, and their own warriors more powerful. But in this case it doesn’t fit. Angelina couldn’t have been much of an enemy.”

“What about her father, the senator?” Blalock suggested.

“The symbolism might have worked—had her father known about it, or if they were counting on one of us telling him.”

“But this body’s mutilations go way past what you described,” Dr. Lavery said. “Somebody wanted to make sure they removed every piece of the vital organs.”

“You’re saying that someone was making sure that duplicate samples
couldn’t be taken,” Ella said.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“So now we have to track down whoever did this,” Blalock said, helping Dr. Lavery place the body in the bag.

Ella and Blalock helped Dr. Lavery bring the body up and load it into the back of Blalock’s government van. “What can you possibly do with that body now, Doctor?” Ella asked.

“I can examine the muscles and skeletal
system to determine if there was a physical injury or trauma that could have caused death. I’m also going to check and see if there are any minute sections of the organs still present. But if I were you, I wouldn’t hold out any hope that I’ll come up with a startling revelation.”

As Blalock and Dr. Lavery drove away, Ella looked back at the grave—now covered with a piece of plywood so no one
would fall in—lost in nightmarish thoughts. Then she turned and walked hurriedly to her Jeep.

As she drove back, vivid images of the corpse continued to flash through her mind. She wondered if whoever mutilated the body had more than one purpose. Maybe the person who did this was hoping it would be blamed on skinwalkers at the same time he was covering his tracks. Or it might have been one of
the senator’s men, acting under orders to sabotage any further investigation. But it also could have been a way to rattle her, to bring back old memories that would disrupt her thinking as well as the investigation.

Ella knew she could be dealing with someone who hated her and her family, as well as someone who was trying to protect the senator. Unfortunately, that didn’t do much to narrow the
suspect list.

*   *   *

It was shortly after noon the following day when Ella got a call from Blalock. “Despite the way the body was torn apart, Dr. Lavery was able to determine a few things. There were no broken bones or evidence of trauma severe enough to have caused Angelina Yellowhair’s death. So, the case is still open.”

“Have you told the senator?”

“Oh yeah. There was this silence at
first, then he went ballistic. He claimed that Carolyn Roanhorse was responsible for desecrating his daughter’s body, and insisted that the evidence points to her.”

“What evidence?”

“Dr. Roanhorse would have known about Navajo lore. He claimed she’d tried to mislead us all, while wiping out evidence of her own incompetence.”

“That’s total garbage. We wouldn’t have exhumed at all unless Yellowhair
had pushed us into it,” Ella argued.

“I pointed that out. I also checked on a few other things, including having Dr. Roanhorse view Lavery’s photos. She was horrified. The body didn’t leave her office torn up that way. She has photos of her own to prove that. It turns out, the mortician who took care of the body was from Farmington. He corroborates Dr. Roanhorse. The man said the body was intact
when he placed it in the casket, and the organs had been placed back into the body cavity, which was then closed with those staples they use. So whoever took the organs removed them after the corpse left the funeral parlor. Problem is, the driver who took the body from the church to the graveyard left the casket for the burial detail. He didn’t wait to see it done. It sat there in the cemetery
alone for a couple of hours.”

“Who took care of burying it?”

“The preacher and five Anglo men. I’ve already talked to them. They all vouch for one another.”

Ella exhaled softly. “Those incisions were crude. I can’t imagine it taking very long to gut an already embalmed body.”

“I brought all of this up with the senator. I don’t think he heard half of it. He’s pretty steamed that we’re not arresting
Dr. Roanhorse, despite the evidence and a witness verifying her work.”

“Yeah, well, then he’s got two problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Getting steamed and getting over it.” As she hung up the receiver, Justine walked in. “I just came back from the mine. There’s been some trouble over there again, scuffles breaking out and that sort of thing. Big Ed ordered increased patrols in the area.”

The
telephone rang and Ella picked up.

“You recognize my voice?” a man asked.

It was Billy Pete. “Of course.”

“Then meet me at Kevin Tolino’s place.”

“Why there?”

“He’s away, working, and it’s out of the way. Nobody hangs around his property, either. He’s too well connected. Nobody will see us there.”

Ella stood up. “I’m going out to meet a contact at the place where Kevin Tolino is building
his home. In the meantime, see if you can find out how Neskahi is doing. If he can talk to us, find out if there’s anything he can tell us about what happened, what he ate or drank, who had access to it, etcetera. And we’re going to need someone to fill in for him. Ask the chief for a recommendation. Since he’s the one who told me I could add to my team, he may be more inclined to give us the extra
help. I don’t think we have much of a chance of actually getting anyone, not with these increased patrols, but it won’t hurt to ask.”

Ella was well outside Shiprock when she spotted a van several hundred yards behind her on the all but deserted highway. It wasn’t Billy Pete’s vehicle: He drove a pickup. As Ella watched, the van matched her speed, staying with her whether she slowed down or sped
up. Ella turned up a dirt road, then drove cross country, wanting to see if the van would follow. It stayed well back, but remained on her tail, the dust that rose up high into the air giving it away.

Ella picked up her cellular to contact Justine. Too many people nowadays had radio scanners. “I need backup,” she said, giving her assistant a rundown. “I think my contact set me up. Where are you?”

“I was on my way to the medical center to talk to the sergeant, so I’m not too far behind you.”

“Do you remember the long dirt track that leads into an open field about three miles west of the high school? It was going to be a housing development area, but it never happened.”

“Yeah. I know exactly where you’re talking about.”

“That’s where I’m at. There’s a canyon just ahead that will give
me a place of concealment to turn around and come straight back at this van. I’m going to turn the tables.”

“I’ll block the way out if the van decides to make a run for it.”

Ella continued on, keeping one eye on the vehicle behind her. It was still hanging back, like someone experienced in surveillance tailing. She headed up the canyon, knowing Justine wouldn’t be far behind. Ella pressed the
Jeep for more speed the minute she hit the sandy soil that would give her the advantage. Once out of sight of the van, she skidded into a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and started back toward where she’d last seen the van.

“Do you have a visual on them?” Ella asked Justine when she emerged from the canyon without confronting the vehicle.

“I’m turning down the track now. I can see it ahead.
But it’s stationary. They never followed you into the canyon.”

Ella frowned. It was smart of them not to follow blindly, but stopping didn’t make any sense either. That could mean trouble. “Is anyone still inside the vehicle?”

“Not that I can see, but they have tinted windows. I’ll go in on foot for a closer look.”

Ella’s chest tightened, dread filling her so completely it was as if her blood
had suddenly frozen. “No! Hold your position.”

“At least let me drive in closer.”

“No. Consider that an order.”

“All right. I’ll just block the track and make it more difficult for them to try to take off.”

Ella drew closer, parked sideways on the road, then took a pair of binoculars out of the glove compartment. She focused on the vehicle ahead, but the tinted windows made it impossible to
see anything inside. She searched the surrounding terrain, but couldn’t see where anyone could be hiding in ambush.