Coyote's Wife (7 page)

Noting she was still in the room, Big Ed’s gaze focused on her. “Okay, Shorty, what else is
on your mind?”

“I know all about the budget constraints, chief, but I’d really like Joe to be permanently assigned to my team. He’s shown persistence, initiative, and all the necessary skills. He belongs with us.”

“You’ve been shorthanded for a long time now,” he admitted. “Neskahi can work with you now, at least, and I’ll see what I can do about getting him a long-term assignment.”

“Thanks,”
she said, standing. Big Ed’s word was his bond. If he said he’d try, he’d give it his best shot.

Ella returned to her office, lost in thought. Too many questions continued to circle in her mind about George Charley. The man’s connection to StarTalk didn’t make things easier, especially after what had been happening to Ervin Benally.

She’d just sat down behind her desk when the phone rang. Ella
picked it up immediately and heard Carolyn’s voice on the other end.

“I need to talk over a few things with you, Ella. Can you come over? I’ve been trying to reconstruct the incident.”

“No problem, but while I’ve got you on the phone, can you tell me if the vic’s blood contained any traces of drugs, and also how much alcohol was in his system?” Ella asked.

“Can’t say. I don’t have the tox screens
yet, but I put a rush on the results, so I
may
have that information for you by the time you get here. We’re now using the Albuquerque Metro Police Crime Lab for these reports. The state crime lab is much too slow, what with their staffing and funding issues.”

Ella didn’t press her. Carolyn rarely speculated before getting all the data collected. She dealt with facts.

Ella drove directly to
the hospital, parked near the rear doors, and went downstairs. The tribe’s morgue was in the basement of the tribal public health hospital in Shiprock. The glass-encased autopsy room was just beyond the unmanned outer office. Carolyn had been searching for an office clerk for years but no one had ever applied for the job.

Seeing Carolyn working, Ella tapped on the glass, but made no further attempt
to get her friend’s attention. Carolyn knew she was here and that was enough.

Alone, Ella took a seat by Carolyn’s desk and proceeded to wait. As she looked around she saw ample evidence of Carolyn’s major weakness—chocolate-covered peanuts. Empty bags of the candy had been rolled up into balls and were scattered all over the desk.

“Don’t say it,” Carolyn snapped as she came into the room. “Stupid
vending machine. I blew my diet, big-time. But life’s short. I’m reminded of that every day.”

Ella didn’t comment. Dieting never put her friend in a good mood, but breaking it didn’t seem to improve her attitude either.

“Come in with me while I try and fit the events to the physical evidence. We talked about this in general terms already, but I’ve now had a good chance to examine the wound.
The fingerprints Justine sent over match those of the victim, by the way, though that was pretty much a slam dunk already.”

Carolyn led the way to the autopsy room. The minute Ella stepped inside the glass partition, the smell of meat—more precisely, gamy meat—hit her. Her experiences had taught her to try and breathe slowly through her mouth, not nose, and she managed to keep from gagging.

Although she would have rather been almost anywhere else in the known universe, she’d learned a long time ago to stomach whatever was part of her job. She swallowed again as she saw the corpse on the stainless-steel table. Pale brown, almost amber eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, and she tried not to look at the chest cavity, spread open like the flaps on a cardboard box.

“You want to hold
the saw, or his arm?” Carolyn asked, a gleam in her eye.

Ella stepped over and picked the saw off the counter. “Stupid question, Doc.”

Carolyn motioned her over, then held out her own left arm. “Easier than standing him up, huh? Just don’t start that thing for real.”

They experimented with various angles, maneuvering the heavy saw and Carolyn’s arm, finding ways to match the wound and the chain
bar.

“The simplest answer is that he reached for something with his left arm and got too close to the chain. He was holding the saw with just his right hand,” Carolyn concluded. “Blood from the artery would have gushed forward, which accounts for the splatter pattern we found on the ground and its relative absence on the bar of the saw. Blood and tissue would have been thrown forward, away from
the user because of the rotation of the chain. If the bottom or lower tip of the saw had caused the wound, the splatter would have been thrown back toward the handle—and the user’s feet. Earlier I’d wondered if the wound might have been a defensive one, but the splatter is all wrong for that unless the attacker managed some kind of backhand. And taking into account the angle of the wound, that’s
almost impossible.”

Carolyn had Ella choreograph the motion that would have been needed. It was awkward and unlikely, and it put Ella so out of balance she nearly dropped the saw.

“Okay, so it certainly looks like an accident as a result of carelessness. But could it have been helped along?” Ella suggested, setting the saw back down on the counter. “The toxicology report?”

“It came in while
you were driving over. There was alcohol in his system, .04 to be exact, so he wasn’t legally drunk. His judgement would have been somewhat compromised, but at that level, there shouldn’t have been any physical impairment, in my opinion. And no drugs showed up,” she added.

Ella took a deep breath. “On the face of it, it appears to be an accident, but the link to Ervin Benally and StarTalk still
bothers me. To me, this fatality was just too coincidental.”

“How’s StarTalk figure into this?” Carolyn asked as they went back into the office.

Ella briefly explained about the vandalism the night before and described what she knew about the earlier incidents. “I can’t link what’s happening to Benally with this man’s death,” she said, cocking her head toward the morgue, “but it just doesn’t
feel right.”

“Coincidences happen sometimes,” Carolyn said slowly. “You may be looking too hard for something that’s just not there.” Carolyn walked to the coffeepot by the wall. “Want some?”

Ella looked at her watch, noting it was ten-thirty. “Half a cup,” she answered. “I’m meeting my daughter for lunch at school in a little bit. Today’s their science fair. She’s worked really hard on her
project. You wouldn’t believe how competitive she is.”

Carolyn smiled. “Wonder where she gets that? How’s she doing these days, with Kevin not around?”

“She’s fine, but she really misses her dad. She and Kevin did a lot of things together. When he took that post in Washington, I think Dawn felt abandoned. Kevin does call her every week, sometimes twice, and he sends her some pretty spectacular
presents. He still hasn’t figured out that Dawn wants
him
—not what he can give her.”

Carolyn nodded. “So what’s new with you?”

“Not much,” she said with a trace of a smile, aware that Carolyn was fishing for information about her and Ford.

“Come on, spill it. Those of us who make our jobs our life depend on gossip to fill in the gaps.”

Ella burst out laughing. “Oh, please. Like my life is
that different from yours? Add the fact that I have a kid, and that
means Ford has to take third place. But the reason things work out so well between us is because he feels like we do about our jobs. He’s on call all the time, or pretty much so. When we get together, we’re so relieved to have time off we enjoy every second.”

“Joke around all you want, but you’re comfortable with that separateness.
You’ve been keeping him at arm’s length for over a year now,” Carolyn said in a thoughtful voice. “It’s the religion thing, isn’t it? You’re not used to all the rules he’s chosen to follow.”

It had been nothing more than a shot in the dark, but Carolyn had hit close to the mark. “The real problem is that I
am
used to those rules. My dad was a preacher, and when I was at home, I followed them
too. But I’m an adult now and I can’t pretend to be something I’m not. I want more …or maybe less.”

Carolyn laughed. “Sounds like you’re describing my diet.” She rubbed her knee absently. “I’ve got to lose some weight, but I
hate
dieting. The first three letters of that word say it all. The thing is, I enjoy everything about food—the selection, the preparation, the eating—and particularly the
flavor you can only get from fats. To me, dieting is a bit like giving up a very comfortable friendship.”

“You need to find lower-calorie things to prepare,” Ella said. “And stick to portion control.”

“Portion control I can handle, but using low-cal substitutes means settling for odd tastes or completely flavorless food. But I guess I better get used to it.”

“Your knee must really be bothering
you,” Ella commented, knowing her friend.

Carolyn nodded. “Since I’m not going to have surgery, that leaves dieting. So here’s a heads-up. Don’t bring anything fattening to this office, and don’t expect my attitude to improve these next few months.”

“Warning taken.”

Ella left a short time later. Sometimes she wasn’t sure how Carolyn made it. Ella had her family to keep her sane. Carolyn didn’t
have anyone else in her life—and the nature of her work caused most Navajos to want to keep her at a distance.

Knowing Carolyn needed a distraction and some company, Ella made up her mind right then to set a date soon for their low-fat dinner.

As she drove to her daughter’s school down in Shiprock’s east valley, Ella called the station. With luck, there’d be no crisis for the next hour or so and she’d be able to give Dawn her undivided attention.

To her great relief, except for the ongoing investigations, nothing new had come up. Ella parked in the crowded school parking lot and saw her daughter
waiting in the lobby beside the old gym—now a multipurpose room. Today was a special day. Classes had been abbreviated and parents had been invited to come to the science fair.

Seeing her, Dawn jumped up and down, waving from behind the glass. Had it been anyone else, Ella would have seen that as a kid happy to see one of her parents. But with Dawn, she recognized it for what it was—a frustrated
kid waiting for her mom to finally show up. She checked her watch. She was about twenty minutes late.

“Hey, Pumpkin,” Ella said, coming in the main entrance.

Dawn’s eyes grew wide. “Mom, sh-h-h! Don’t call me that here, okay? They’ll think you’re calling me a fatty.”

Ella stared at her kid, blinked, then seeing how serious
Dawn was, fought hard not to burst out laughing. Dawn was rail thin
and growing like a weed these days. “Or that you’re orange. Okay. Got it.”

Dawn tugged at her sleeve, pulling her into the multipurpose room. The cafeteria line was just ahead; on the left, and to the right, rows of the folding cafeteria tables, the same kind Ella had grown up with. Beyond, toward the stage at the far end, were rows of smaller tables covered with science project displays.

“We’re
having spaghetti and meatballs,” Dawn said, going up to join the line. “The garlic bread is pretty good, too.”

Ella stepped up to the serving area and looked at the food in the serving trays behind the glass. Her mind instantly went back to the corpse at the morgue—the elastic bands of muscle, the reddish interior of the man’s chest cavity. Even the big meatballs looked like…She swallowed hard.

“Hey, Mom, you okay? You look…funny,” Dawn said, looking up at her with a furrowed brow. “You’ve eaten here before, you know.”

“I’m fine. Just not very hungry. I’ll have something to drink, though. Milk, or juice. And maybe a roll.”

“Are you sure? They make the best spaghetti, really!”

Ella nodded. “I’m sure they do, but I think I’ll stick to a buttered roll and a carton of milk. Okay with
you?”

Dawn shrugged. “Whatever. But the only thing better is on pizza day.”

Ella sat down across from Dawn at one of the long cafeteria tables with the fold-down benches and listened as her daughter chattered away. The lunch crowd had thinned because they’d come in at the tail end, but two other children and their equally late parents came to join them a short time later. After introductions,
and as the children chattered, Ella’s mind drifted. As she was usually working this time of
day, her thoughts never strayed away from business for long.

Glancing around, sipping from the carton of milk, she looked out the twin doors leading back into the lobby. A tall woman was standing there looking in their direction. Then Dawn made a comment, and by the time Ella turned back to look, the woman
was gone. Though Ella hadn’t been able to place her, there had been something familiar about the figure.

Ella’s gaze strayed back to the doors a few more times as the parents and children around her discussed the event. That’s when she caught another glimpse of her. The woman’s back was to them now, and she was looking at the big glass display case that held the school’s awards and trophies from
years past.