Coyote's Wife (15 page)

They’d been at the scene less than an hour when they heard the sound of approaching hoof beats. Ella stepped out into the bright moonlight and was surprised to see a teenaged girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting astride a pinto.

Ella walked over to meet her, reminding herself of the ride she’d promised Dawn this weekend. “I’m sorry, but you can’t come any closer,” Ella said. “This is now
a crime scene.”

The young girl nodded. “I know what happened.”

“How?” Ella pressed instantly.

“I heard people talking at the clinic. I was there earlier with my
shizhé’é,
my grandfather,” she added.

“What did you hear?”

“That Marilyn’s badly hurt. They broke in here and tried to make her confess to hurting her husband. But she didn’t do anything.”

“What’s your name?” Ella said, stepping
closer. The teen slid down off the horse and stood beside it, holding the reins lightly. “I’m Carol James. I just wish I’d known what was going to happen. I saw them drive up.”

“Who did you see?”

“Four guys in two old trucks, one gray, the other tan. They came up the road, and I figured they were just relatives. I didn’t even think twice about it—till later.”

“Did you see their faces, or notice
anything in particular about the trucks?”

“Trucks are trucks to me,” she said with a shrug. “The
guys…well, they were riding in the cab. One lit a cigarette and I saw his face for a second or two. He didn’t seem that much older than me, which made me think they were nephews rather than brothers or cousins. Then the driver stopped for a few seconds right in the middle of the road and turned on
the cab light. I think they were probably checking a map, but I don’t really know. Just a few seconds later, a second truck joined them, pulling up beside the first one. That driver opened the door and stepped out to go talk to the others. At that point, both cab lights were on.”

“And you saw them more clearly then?”

She nodded. “At least one of them had long hair, tied back,” she answered.
“Two of them had baseball caps, one black, the other brown, with the bills forward, like they wore them for work, not play. And one was wearing a jacket with a shearling collar. You know the kind.”

Ella nodded. “What color was the jacket?”

“Blue, like in jeans. The others just had plaid shirts on, different colors, I think. Blue, red, green, like that.”

“Did they call out to you?”

She shook
her head. “I don’t think they even knew I was there. Their trucks were rattling so much on the bumps, they couldn’t have heard my horse.”

“What about license plates? Did you happen to get that?”

She shook her head. “Maybe yellow, like New Mexico? I couldn’t say. I was looking at the guys.”

“Did any of the guys especially catch your eye?” Ella asked, playing a hunch.

She stared at the ground,
then shifted from foot to foot. “The passenger in the gray truck, the second one,” she said quietly. “I just thought he looked, you know, cute. He was the one with the long hair.”

“What appealed to you about him?”

“I could tell he was a big guy. Even sitting, he was a lot taller than the others. His skin seemed really light, too, so maybe he was only half Navajo. But I don’t know that for sure.
He was just…interesting.”

“Thanks for your help. But tell me. What are you doing out at this time of night?”

“When my parents come home late and start arguing and yelling, I usually take off. I can’t sleep with all the racket and my horse Warrior’s better company.”

“You really shouldn’t go riding by yourself this late at night,” Ella said. “It isn’t safe—for you or your horse.”

“It’s a clear
night and there’s lots of moonlight once your eyes adjust. We’ll be fine. Warrior and I take care of each other.”

Ella couldn’t help but wonder if Carol’s parents had a problem with alcohol. That was all too common on the reservation. Though liquor sales were banned on Navajo land, it was a short drive to the adjoining communities.

“If you remember anything else, will you call and let me know?”
Ella asked, giving her a card.

“Sure.”

After giving Ella her address, the young woman rode away. Ella watched her, lost in thought. It was amazing how secure some girls felt on a horse. Dawn was the same way.

A moment later Tache came out and caught her eye. “You better come in and see this,” he said. “The Fierce Ones left a message.”

She followed Tache down the hall into the master bedroom.
Searching for evidence, one of her team had tossed back the chenille bedspread. Spray painted in red on the sheet below was the message, “We’ll be back.”

“They’ve been watching too many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies,” Ella said.

Turning to Tache, Ella gave him a description of the long-haired, light-skinned man the young woman had seen. “Does he sound familiar to you?”

He thought about it for
a few seconds. “I remember seeing someone who fits that description at my brother-in-law’s place months ago. He’s Henry Brownhat’s son, Arthur. He’s got long hair, light skin, and his eyes are pale—gray or hazel, I think. He hasn’t lived on the Rez for long and from what I hear, he’s bad news, Ella. He likes trouble. That entire family is more at home in jail than out of it.”

“We need to find
someone who can verify that Arthur’s a member of the Fierce Ones,” Ella said as Justine came to join them.

“I’m your man then,” Tache said. “My brother-in-law’s a member. If I push, I’m sure I can get an answer from him.”

“Do you think you can get us any additional information about what happened here?” She hated the thought, but Ella suddenly wondered if Tache would turn out to be their leak.

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything. My brother-in-law doesn’t trust me anymore than I do him.”

Ella glanced at Justine as Tache moved away to take close-ups of the spray-painted message. “We should go pay Jimmy Levaldo a visit. He was the head of the Fierce Ones last time I heard,” Ella said.

Overhearing them, Tache stopped boxing up evidence bags and glanced over. “Not anymore. And no,
I didn’t hear it from my brother-in-law. My sister, who knows Levaldo’s neighbor, told me.”

“Who’s the new head?”

“According to what she said, their new leader is a younger man, a new traditionalist. His name is Delbert John.”

“Get me an address from Dispatch,” Ella asked him, continuing the search for prints.

A moment later, Tache handed her a piece of paper from the notepad he normally kept
in his shirt pocket.

Ella looked at it. It wasn’t exactly an address. It was mostly directions, which wasn’t all that unusual on the Rez, where many of the dirt roads leading to the homes had no official names. “This is an area of scatter homes, right?” The term signified the nontract homes built by the Navajo Housing Authority.

“I believe so,” Tache answered.

“We’ll go pay him a visit tomorrow.”
Ella checked the time and realized it was almost two in the morning now. “I should have said later today.”

“Do you want us to check out Wallace Curtis’ home before we finish up?” Justine asked.

“Yeah.” Ella remembered her brief talk with the battered man. Though he hadn’t said so, Wallace was obviously afraid that he hadn’t heard the last of the Fierce Ones, particularly now that he’d spoken
to the police.

“We’ll go take a look. If they broke into his place, too, we’ll arrange to leave an officer posted there tonight to preserve the scene until we return in the morning,” Ella said. “But we’ll have to process the area outside the house before we call it quits. No one can predict the weather and we can’t afford to lose evidence to Mother Nature. Unfortunately, we’re all beat by now,
and prone to mistakes.”

“Think we should work in teams and double-check each other?”

Ella nodded, then yawned. “Good idea.”

They drove to the Curtis’ home and found ample evidence of a B and E. After a quick look inside to make sure there was no immediate danger, like a broken gas line or electrical device, they processed the grounds outside the residence. It was nearly three in the morning
by the time they wrapped up. Justine drove Ella home first.

“Pick me up at around eight. We’ll finish processing the crime scene, and then go visit Arthur Brownhat and Delbert John,” Ella said, getting out of the car.

As Justine drove away, Ella stood in the bright moonlight gazing at their newly rebuilt home. Everything on the reservation was changing. Even her own family seemed to be in a
state of flux these days. Yet Rose and her daughter remained at the heart of everything that gave meaning to her life. Family ties were the one thing she could always count on. That would never change. Taking comfort from that, she walked inside.

Ella woke up at around seven—and not by choice. She could hear her daughter’s radio going full blast while Dawn got ready for school.

Ella opened one
eye then the other and groaned. She would have traded twenty years of her life for another few hours of sleep. Oddly enough, the music from her daughter’s room got even louder. Tossing the covers aside, hoping the cold air would give her some badly needed energy, Ella stood and put on her robe. As she walked to the bathroom, she felt for the bump on her head, and realized the swelling was almost
gone. She’d been lucky.

Twenty minutes later, dressed and ready to begin the day, Ella joined her daughter for breakfast. As she watched Dawn fix herself some oatmeal, Ella realized just how quickly Dawn was growing up.

“Mommmmm! You’re
not
listening!” Dawn cried out.

“I am. You were talking about our trail ride this weekend,” Ella answered.

“We’re still going, right?”

“I’m planning on it,”
Ella said. “But remember we’ll have to get up
really
early, kiddo.”

Dawn launched herself into her arms. “Great!”

Rose came in and smiled, seeing them together. “Good morning,” she said, filling the teakettle with water and placing it on the stove.

“I heard what happened to the new widow,” Rose commented, avoiding the use of names. Names had power, and were not to be used lightly.

Ella stared
at her mom. It never ceased to amaze her how quickly word traveled on the Rez, and how well-connected Rose was. “It appears the Fierce Ones had a hand in what happened.”

Rose sat down across the table from Ella, who was finishing off a piece of toast. Just then a loud car horn blew and Dawn jumped up. “Gotta go! It’s Sara’s mom. She’s taking us to school this week.”

Ella hugged her daughter
and kissed her good-bye. Dawn raced out the front door, leaving it half open as usual, and Ella went over to close it. “She’s a bundle of energy in the morning. I wish I could harness some of that for myself,” she said, laughing.

“At her age,
you
were just like her,” Rose said, then lapsed into a long silence.

After fixing herself a second cup of tea, Ella looked across the table at her mother.
“What’s bothering you, Mom? Are you still thinking about the possibility that Dawn may go away to school?”

“In my day, the boarding schools the Anglos set up for us were just
horrible.
This one’s different, I know, but I can’t imagine her really
wanting
to leave home, even for those fancy horseback riding lessons.”

“Mom, I don’t want her at Valley either,” Ella admitted softly. “But if she thought
for one second that I was against her going, it would suddenly become the one thing she wanted to do more than anything else in the world.”

Rose nodded. “I know. In that way, she’s just like you. You
had an independent streak like that, too. I remember your father tried to push you into going to his church, but the more he did, the more you fought it. When I tried to teach you traditionalist
ways, you didn’t want any part of that either.”

Ella smiled, recalling how badly her mother had wanted her to become a traditionalist. Rose’s methods had been subtle, but she’d felt like a piece of Turkish taffy back then, always caught between her parents. “But it’s different for my kid. That’s what I find puzzling. She’s not in the middle of anything she has to rebel against.”

“Isn’t she?
Her father wants her to grow up like an Anglo. Yet here at home she’s been taught Navajo ways.”

“But I’m more of a moderate, Mom. I’m part of the Anglo world and the Navajo.”

“And that’s what you want for her, too,” Rose observed, a trace of regret in her voice.

“It’s the path with the most options, Mom.”

“We each believe that our own path is best,” Rose answered with a sad smile. “Like you,
your daughter will eventually make her own choices. But she loves you and, whether or not you realize it, she’s already feeling much the same pressures you did.”

Ella considered her mother’s words. “Let’s see how things play out with this scholarship thing, Mom. Truth is, I may yet say no. I don’t think I’m ready to wake up and not hear her voice in the morning.”

Rose smiled and nodded. “Neither
am I.”

Hearing a car drive up, Ella glanced out the window. “That’s my partner. I better get going.”

Ella took the last swallow of tea from her cup, grabbed her gun and belt from the top of the bookcase, and hurried out the door. Today she’d be facing off with the Fierce Ones.