Bad Medicine (8 page)

Ella accompanied her mother out the back door to the herb garden. “Of course this trouble may just be the product of criminal activity here on the reservation.
We may be reading much more into it than there is.”

Rose smiled slowly. “You don’t believe that any more than I do, so please be careful, daughter. Our family has enemies that will take any opportunity to destroy us. But they’re cowards. They won’t fight us as a family, they’ll try to take us down one by one.”

“If anyone threatens you or if you’re ever afraid, just tell me,” Ella said. Their
family had come under attack in the past. She hadn’t sat by idly then, and she wouldn’t now.

“Always the fighter. You want to meet every threat with guns and bullets. But there are other ways to fight.”

“That depends on what you’re fighting,” Ella said, leaning over to kiss her mother. “I’ve got to go back inside and get ready for work.”

Ella left home shortly after seven and drove directly
to the police station. As she walked into what had once been Peterson Yazzie’s office and was now her own, she felt a shudder travel up her spine. On the reservation, crime sometimes had a different identity. Her adversaries were too often faceless and hidden behind superstitions that were as old as the tribe itself.

She forced such thoughts from her mind. This wasn’t the time to indulge in fantasy.
She had a very real murder to investigate. Ella tried calling Carolyn at the hospital, but only got her voice mail. After leaving a message, she began her daily paperwork. A few minutes later, Ella heard footsteps and glanced up to see Justine at the office door.

“May I have some time off this morning, or will you need me?” she asked.

“How much time do you need?” Ella asked.

“A few hours. I
want to go to Angelina’s funeral.”

“They’ve already made arrangements?”

“It was in this morning’s paper. I think the senator pulled out all the stops to get it in there. The service is going to take place in about an hour.”

Ella regarded her for several seconds. “You know what? I’m going to go with you.”

“You want to see who’ll be there?”

“You bet. There’s something about that accident that
bothers me. I have a feeling that we’re going to end up uncovering a real can of worms.”

Justine nodded. “Why don’t we go together then.”

Ella was reaching for her jacket when the telephone rang. “Special Investigator’s office,” she said quickly.

“Have you heard that the memorial service for the senator’s daughter will be today, this morning in fact,” Rose asked.

“You’re not thinking of going,
are you?” Ella asked. Her mother was a traditionalist Navajo. The last thing Ella could imagine Rose doing was attending a function for the dead.

“Me? Absolutely not, but I thought you should know, particularly because it strikes me as so artificial.”

“How so?”

“The senator’s wife is active in your father’s church, but the senator himself usually keeps his distance to avoid prejudicing traditional
voters. It seems this time he’s trying to cover himself with the traditionalists by saying that it’s a memorial service, not a funeral, and the burial has already taken place. Of course he’s not going to appease anyone. Traditionalists believe in the four-day mourning period where the name of the deceased isn’t even mentioned so a memorial service within that time is, at best, ill-planned.”

“Thanks for letting me know.” Ella hung up, then hurried out to join Justine.

The ride to the church took almost half an hour. Ella stared at the structure, hating its presence because of the cost it had exacted from her family. “There are times when I wish this building would disappear off the face of the earth,” Ella muttered. “Whenever I look at it I feel as if someone had dropped bricks on
my chest.”

“It’s understandable,” Justine said. “Why don’t you let me go in alone? I can handle this.”

“No. It’s part of my job. I won’t back away for personal reasons.”

Justine nodded slowly. “I can understand. I wouldn’t either if the situation was reversed.”

“Let’s get busy then.”

As they stepped out of Ella’s Jeep, Justine noticed the senator and his wife standing by the door, greeting
the handful of people who’d showed up. “I’d like to talk to the family, if you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead. I’m going to focus on the others who’ve come. Later, we can compare notes.”

As the mourners gathered and went inside, Ella chose a pew near the back. Five young women had shown up. Ella recognized Mary Tapahonso. Rose was a friend of Mary’s mom, and Ella had heard about the wild crowd that
Mary ran around with. Present, too, was Evelyn Todacheene. The girl had recently been brought in to the station after having been caught shoplifting.

Three other young women she didn’t recognize were also there. Ella suspected they were Angelina’s classmates. One in particular didn’t seem to fit with the rest. She wore her hair short, dyed a carrot-like red, and was clad in black clothes with
what looked like underwear on the outside. The diamond-stud nose ring she wore was the focus of attention. Ella glanced over at Justine, then allowed her gaze to drift over the women, a question in her eyes. Justine nodded, understanding.

As the memorial service progressed, each of the girls stood up and tearfully shared memories of their friend. But it was the last young woman, Diamond Nose,
who took them all by surprise. Her stance warned Ella even before she spoke a word.

“My name is Ruby Atso, and I’ve got to tell you all that Angelina would have hated this tear fest. She was a free spirit who refused to bow down to rules and ceremonies. Angelina was my friend and I loved her, but I think that we should cut this short and go remember her in the way she would have liked. If you
ask me, she would have much preferred for us to get together with a six pack of long necks and talk about the good times. I’m sorry if what I’m saying offends you, but I know that somewhere Angelina is laughing right now.”

Senator Yellowhair rose quickly to usher the girl away, but Ruby was already heading for the door along with a short, pudgy yet scholarly looking girl. Ella watched, struggling
not to smile. Ruby’s behavior had been undeniably rude, but it was an honest response and, as a cop, she’d learned to value honesty as the rare commodity it was.

The service ended shortly afterward and Ella met Justine by the Jeep. “Do you know who the girls were?”

Justine nodded. “Ruby, you just met. Chances are it’ll be a long, long time before the senator forgets her, too.”

Ella smiled.
“Kinda strange, wasn’t she?”

“That group of Angelina’s is like that. They’re all freshmen at the college. The short one who left with Ruby is Norma Frank. She’s smart as a whip and, in my opinion, she’s going to go far. She knows she can’t rely on looks. Let’s face it, contact lenses aren’t going to help her much so she uses the assets she’s got: her brains and personality. I’ve never met anyone
who doesn’t like her. Norma’s really a nice kid and lives a few miles from my place. She was really quiet until last year when her mom died. I think she’s sowing some wild oats now because she’s never been able to before.”

“That makes more sense now. She seemed out of place around the others. Let’s get all we can on these kids, okay? I want a full background report on each of them. As soon as
you finish one, put it on my desk.”

“No problem.”

They drove back to the office, Ella at the wheel of her Jeep. “I’m going to make a stop by the morgue for the autopsy reports. You don’t mind a detour, do you?”

Justine hesitated noticeably before answering. “No, that’s okay,” she said finally.

“I know it’s not the most cheerful place in the world, but it doesn’t really bother you, does it?”

“Honestly?” As Ella nodded, Justine continued. “It gives me the creeps, but not because of the
chindi.
It’s just a creepy place, with shattered bodies all over the room. I don’t know how Dr. Roanhorse can stand working there.”

“Neither do I,” Ella admitted. “But it’s a good thing she can. Without her, the tribe would probably have to do without an M.E., because the salary we can offer wouldn’t
be competitive. The tribe owes her a debt of gratitude. She should be treated with more dignity and respect.”

“I don’t think being such a loner bothers her,” Justine said softly. “As a matter of fact, she really goes out of her way to keep people from getting too close to her, even though you’d think she’d want friends.”

“She does want friends, I think. It’s just that she’s been so isolated
because of her job for such a long time, she’s built barriers around herself to keep it from hurting.”

As Ella entered the hospital’s parking lot, Justine looked, deep in thought, at an indeterminate spot across the way. “Do you mind if I stop by the cafeteria on the way downstairs? My sister-in-law works there, and I’d like to talk to her. She knew Angelina far better than I did. She would have
been at the memorial service, too, but her supervisor wouldn’t let her take off any more time. She used up all her leave when she got married last month.”

“Let me know what you find out.”

Ella parked near the side door, said good-bye to Justine, then went downstairs to the morgue. As usual the floor was quiet and, though fitting, the silence made her shudder. As she entered Carolyn’s office,
she heard the sounds of country western music coming from the autopsy suite.

Ella peered inside cautiously and saw Carolyn cleaning up. The acrid smell of disinfectant stung her nostrils.

Carolyn looked up. “I got your E-mail and the message you left on my voice mail. I’ve been expecting you. Come in, but be careful where you step.”

Normally she would have asked Carolyn why she was cleaning
up in the middle of the day but, at the moment, she didn’t think she wanted to know. “What’s up?”

“First of all, I have some info on the Bitah case. I found tiny slivers of French Walnut embedded in the victim’s skull. The murder weapon was probably a leg from a chair or table.”

“Great,” grumbled Ella. “Now all I have to do is find somebody with a three-legged chair and haul them in.”

“It’s
probably firewood by now.” Carolyn shrugged. “I also found out that Bitah had traces of mescaline in his system, but not enough to have affected him at the time of his murder. He might have been a member of a church that uses peyote during their rituals, like the Native American Church.”

Ella nodded. “What else did you find out?”

“The blood at the murder scene wasn’t all Bitah’s. Two of the
smaller spots were type AB. Bitah was type O. The subject with AB probably suffered just a minor cut, or a nosebleed. I’d guess Bitah got in a punch or two. He might have even marked the killer or killers.”

“What about the senator’s daughter? Have you got anything on that yet?” Ella asked.

“I’ve got the report ready on the blood and fluid workup we did on her. It’s interesting, to say the least,
considering Bitah’s tests. I found very high levels of mescaline in her system, which came from more than two partially digested, ground-up peyote buttons in her stomach. That drug would certainly account for her erratic behavior prior to the accident. It would have induced hallucinations.”

“But the accident didn’t kill her, did it? And I thought mescaline wasn’t fatal.”

“Correct on both points.
What killed her was a lethal quantity of hyoscyamine, hyoscine, and atropine, as well as belladonna. All those, plus ground-up, partially undigested plant leaves, indicate that Angelina had ingested a fatal dose of jimsonweed.”

“Were the peyote and jimsonweed ingested at the same time?”

Carolyn nodded. “I found traces of both plants in her stomach, and some of the jimsonweed was mixed in with
a partial peyote button. I think the button had been hollowed out and filled with the jimsonweed. For the symptoms to appear, she must have taken the drugs forty to forty-five minutes prior to when you saw her. Her digestive juices were just starting to work on that plant matter.”

“She could, I suppose, have been trying to commit suicide, but that seems highly unlikely. My guess is that she thought
she was taking peyote only,” Ella said thoughtfully. “Nobody would conceal a deadly herb like jimsonweed in peyote like that by accident, though, and that brings up an interesting question. If it was murder why would anyone want to kill her? Does this have something to do with the senator, or just with her?” Ella paused for a long moment. “It also seems too coincidental to have two deaths on
the same day with peyote in the bodies of both victims. Those deaths are related somehow.”

“You might look into the drug connection.”

“Any idea where the drugs came from?”

“All I can tell you is that both jimsonweed and peyote can be obtained locally, more or less. Peyote is found in southern New Mexico and Texas and, as you know, the Native American Church uses it in their ceremonies. Jimsonweed
grows wild here in New Mexico.”

“That doesn’t narrow the list of suppliers down very much, unfortunately. And I can’t imagine Senator Yellowhair is going to take this news very well. I doubt he’ll be helpful in tracking down the source of Angelina’s drug connection, since that would mean admitting she had one.”

“You can count on one thing,” Carolyn said. “He’s not going to thank you for what
we’ve discovered. If anything, he’ll fight our findings and deny everything. He’s very protective of his image. If Angelina was in anything like the Native American Church, I doubt he knew about it.”

“You sound as if you know him pretty well.”

Carolyn shrugged. “He’s a politician. What more is there to say?”

Ella watched her friend as she returned to work. There was more to it, she could tell
that from Carolyn’s voice. But she also knew the futility of pressing Carolyn for an answer she didn’t want to give. “I better get back to the office. I’ll see you later.”

As Ella came out of the elevator on the first floor, she saw Justine in the lobby. “Did you find out anything useful?” Ella asked her assistant.

“I now know a little more about Angelina and her circle of friends. But my meeting
had a down side. While my sister-in-law and I were talking about Angelina, Nelson Yellowhair came up. Do you know him?”