Eagle's Last Stand (12 page)

As the car swung around broadside to the trailer, the two passengers reached out their windows, pistols in hand.

“The Diablos,” Billy yelled, diving to the dirt just as bullets started to fly.

As Detective Bidtah dropped to one knee and returned fire, Rick grabbed Kim’s shoulder and pulled her to the ground.

The attack only lasted a few seconds before the sedan accelerated and disappeared into the freshly generated smoke screen of sand, dust and gravel.

Chapter Thirteen

They got up slowly, looking around to see if anyone had been hit. Rick concentrated on Kim, and as soon as he verified she was okay, turned to Bidtah. The tribal cop was on his cell phone, calling in the incident as he brushed the sand from his pants with his free hand. He seemed no worse for wear.

Rick looked over at Billy and saw pure hatred in his eyes. “Cool down, man,” Rick warned.

“How do I know you didn’t bring them here?”

“We were
not
followed,” Rick assured him. “The detective and I know how to spot a tail. At least nobody got hit,” he added, looking at the other gang members now on their feet and dusting themselves off.

“The Diablos know where we hang, bro,” one of the three boys said. “After last week—”

“Drop it!” Billy ordered, turning toward the boy. “Don’t be putting our business out on the street like that.”

He looked back at Rick. “From me to you, dude, you stick out—the big Navajo with the scar on his face—so watch your back. And don’t worry, lady, if we see Sandoval I’ll pass the word along.” He turned to the detective. “You’re Bidtah, right?”

Bidtah nodded and gave Billy his card. “Cell number is on the back.”

After the four gang members drove away, Bidtah went to his unit. Rick noticed Kim reach up to touch her shoulder and wince.

“I thought you were okay,” he said.

“I am. I just landed wrong.”

“Putting something cold on it will help,” Rick said, walking with her toward the SUV. “We’ll get you an ice pack.”

Bidtah came over and joined them. “Patrol cars are out looking for the silver sedan. I don’t know if Preston mentioned it to you, but the Rez gangs have changed a lot since you and your brothers lived here. They’re trying to control some parts of the Rez turf. If there’s a price on your head, you’re going to need to be on full alert. What they lack in training, they more than make up in brutality.”

“I hear you,” Rick said.

Bidtah handed him his card. “If you have a problem or need some backup don’t hesitate to call me.”

“Thanks for all your help,” Rick said as they parted ways.

Once they reached the main highway again, he and Kim drove west toward Copper Canyon, his gaze continually darting to the rearview mirror.

“Once we get home and take care of your shoulder, I’m going for a long, slow walk around the house and the shed. Maybe what I need to break Hosteen Silver’s code is one particular memory, something I haven’t thought about in years.”

“Become the teenager you were back then. See things through his eyes.”

Rick called Preston on the car phone to update him.

“That professor keeps coming into the picture, and it’s got to be the same guy.”

“Probably, but I have a hard time seeing a professor as a hit man,” Preston said, his sour voice mirroring his mood, from what Rick could tell.

“McCullough’s cultivated sources in the Four Corners that seem to be at the heart of this case,” Rick noted. “Don’t write him off yet.”

After hearing that they were on the way to Copper Canyon, Preston said, “I’m not sure if that’s a safe place for you anymore, particularly if you’re being targeted by the gangs.”

“Let them take one of their low-slung rides into the canyon. They’ll either high center on sandstone or be so worn out from getting unstuck they’ll turn around and head back down the highway,” Rick said.

Preston laughed. “Probably so,” he said, adding, “I’m going to send you the photo I found of Professor McCullough. It was on a college social website. I don’t know how old the photo is, but see if Kim can make a positive ID. I’m also sending you a copy of a paper he wrote for an anthropology journal.

“One last thing,” Preston added. “I ran a background on Angelina Curley. Although her husband’s death was ruled a suicide, there were some unanswered questions.”

“Like what?” Rick asked.

“The man died in his garage from carbon monoxide poisoning, and there was a suicide note next to him that matched up with his desktop printer. The department spoke to friends and neighbors, but the only person who claimed he’d been acting strangely was Angelina. There was no real evidence of foul play, however, so Angelina inherited his money and the business.”

“Good to know, but at the moment, Nestor Sandoval’s at the top of my list,” Rick said and ended the call.

Kim turned in her seat to face him. “I don’t think Sandoval should be our prime suspect. Maybe he played a role, but we’re dealing with a multilayered case. Until we have a lot more answers, nothing is going to fit together.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Intuition,” she said.

“Intuition’s good, but you have to make sure it’s not just wishful thinking or your own bias. You want it be Angelina, don’t you?”

“Maybe I do,” she admitted grudgingly, “but unfortunately she has an alibi. She was scheduled to speak to an association of minority businesswomen during your welcome-home event. She’d been practicing that speech for weeks.”

“Yeah, and the brief glances we’ve gotten of the suspect suggest it’s a man.”

“She could have hired out,” Kim said.

“She may also have canceled her plans at the last minute,” Rick said, then called Preston back. “Did you ever speak to Angelina Curley about her alibi for the night of the explosion?”

“I checked it out. She was speaking to the MWA— Minority Women in Action. People saw her there and there’s a DVD of the event that shows her staying late to talk to the participants.”

“Okay, thanks,” Rick said, disconnecting before he told Kim what he’d learned. “She’s still a viable suspect, but stop trying to make the facts fit. It’s an occupational hazard, I know, but what we need is hard evidence.”

* * *

T
HEY
ARRIVED
AT
the house thirty minutes later. The weather had turned cold, with the jet stream bringing down much cooler air from the north. Rick built a fire while Kim checked out the materials Preston had sent them.

“How’s your arm?” he asked. “We keep reusable ice packets in the fridge. I’ll get you one.”

“Ice packs on a cold day. Brrrr,” she said, pressing it to her shoulder when he returned.

He smiled. “Don’t use it for more than twenty minutes,” he said. “I remember that from my high school football injuries.”

His concern washed over her like a gentle warm breeze. He was the toughest, strongest man she’d ever met, yet he could still show gentleness.

“Preston said he copied the file from your phone onto the computer over here,” she said, walking to the reconverted closet where the electronics were kept.

He pulled up a chair and sat beside her in front of the computer as she opened the file folder. She could feel the warmth of his body envelope her, and that made it hard for her to think clearly.

Locating the photo that Preston had sent, she took a moment to study it and nodded. “McCullough was much younger when this photo was taken, but it’s him.”

They used the link in Preston’s email to read Professor McCullough’s paper.

“The prof refers to his primary source only by initials, but A.T. could be Angelina Tso,” she said. “He also admits that there were other
hataaliis
he’d wanted to interview, since most specialize in two or three types of Sings only, but they wouldn’t cooperate.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Rick said. “The spoken word has power, so Sings would lose their effectiveness if everyone discussed them freely. Anglo professors interested in padding their résumés with tribal ceremonial secrets are generally avoided like the plague.”

Kim sat back, thinking. “This paper is interesting, but it’s far from a motive for killing anyone.”

“I agree.”

Rick stood and turned, looking across the main room. “We’ve made some progress. Now let’s see if there’s something else I can do. It’s time for me to visualize what this place looked like when I was growing up. My brothers updated it, but the past is still here. Like those bookcases,” he said, pointing across the room. “I helped Hosteen Silver build those.”

“He read a lot?”

“Yes, we all did, usually together. We had a TV, but it only got local channels and we were limited to two hours a night. Our dad loved reading history books, particularly those covering the Southwest or anything dealing with the Navajo code talkers.”

“They were radio operators for mostly Marine units in the Pacific theater, right?” she asked and saw him nod. “We read about them in school.”

“They transmitted messages the Japanese were never able to figure out by developing a sub code using Navajo words for military terms. For example, the word for
navy
was comprised of the Navajo words for
needle, ant, victor
and
yucca.
And the code word for
tank
was the Navajo word for
turtle.
”

“Do you think that’s the code Hosteen Silver used?”

“No,” he said. “That required those at both ends of the message to know the code, which never varied,” he said. “But his interest in codes was always there. That may have led him to use one that required something simpler, like a reverse-sequence key based on identical books. Anyone reading the message would just see numbers, but those numbers might indicate the page number, line number, word number or character number within that word. For instance, a number sequence 39, 14, 25, 5 could mean you look at the fifth letter of the twenty-fifth word on the fourteenth line on page thirty-nine of the book. That letter could be an
a
.”

“Okay, so each set of numbers gives you letters to spell words, and once you know the words and the sequence, you know the message,” she said.

He nodded. “The reason it would be hard to break is that the letter
a
could have a different number sequence every time it appeared. No pattern. Unless you had an identical copy of the book, you couldn’t decode the message.”

“If you’re right, figuring out which book he used is going to be tough,” she said.

“There are several dozen books still on the shelves, but over time the majority of what was there has been given away, taken home by one of my brothers or lost. We may not even have the particular book Hosteen Silver used anymore.” He was about to say more when his cell phone rang. Looking at the screen, he saw it was Preston.

“I did some more digging on McCullough,” Preston told him. “He took a sabbatical to conduct field research and he’s currently at an Anasazi dig on the Rez.”

“Where?” Rick asked.

“About twenty miles southeast of the ranch house. It’s on a low bluff about a quarter mile above the old riverbed. A recently formed arroyo apparently exposed some artifacts.”

“I think it’s time we went to talk to him,” Rick said.

“Something else... I spoke to Detective Bidtah. The professor’s already been warned twice about straying off the site. Once more and he loses his permit.”

“Okay, good to know. If I don’t find him at the dig, we’ll look around.”

“I’ll text you the GPS coordinates for the site,” Preston added.

After Rick disconnected, he glanced at Kim and filled her in. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”

“Excellent idea.”

En route he decided to take a shortcut, using the GPS on his phone to zero in on the location. Turning off the graveled road, Rick headed across an area of sandstone bedrock and shallow depressions where pools formed during the rainy season—when there was one.

The next half mile was filled with jarring, gut-crunching drops as they bounded along the desert landscape.

“This washer-board road is more like a death wish than a shortcut,” Kim said.

“We should be able to cut a few minutes of travel time this way and, coming in from another direction, we’ll arrive without giving anyone much warning.”

As they topped a rise he said, “There they are, just below us.”

Below was a narrow arroyo leading to the river through a break in a sandy plateau that extended for miles. An angular section of hillside had been carved out of the side of the arroyo. It was about three feet deep and wide, with neat, squared corners. A man in tan-colored pants and jacket was crouched within the dug-out section, examining the strata with the help of a small, bright lantern.

Around him wooden stakes and posts were laid out in a pattern that defined the site, which extended in a string-outlined rectangle about the size of a large house. Wooden screens with wire mesh bottoms were being loaded into the back of a white Land Rover carry-all by two college-aged men wearing green boonie hats. Beside the first vehicle was a light green Jeep.

“When you said a ‘dig,’ I envisioned more than three people,” Kim said. “I had in mind a camp with tents or RVs, floodlights and a dozen or so student volunteers.”

“This is clearly a low-budget operation,” he said. “It’s getting late, too, and this isn’t the kind of place you want to be once the sun sets. You could easily drive off a trail and end up stuck all night.”

“Good point,” she said, watching as the younger men finished loading their gear and climbed into the carry-all. The vehicle started up and then headed out along two ruts that comprised a route to the site. “Now that the students are gone, looks like we’ll have the professor all to ourselves, assuming he’s the guy still at the excavation.”

As Rick parked beside the Jeep, the man in the arroyo looked up.

Just as soon as Kim got out of the SUV, the man smiled, recognizing her. Then he took another look at Rick, turned off the lantern and walked over to meet them.

“I’m surprised to see you out here, Kim,” he said. “That’s your name, right?”

“Yes, Professor McCullough. I’m glad you remembered. I’m helping investigate what happened at the Brickhouse Tavern,” she said.

“I heard it was a case of arson,” the professor said.

“From who?” Rick asked.

“Just here and there,” he answered, then focused on Rick. “Are you the son of the medicine man known as Hosteen Silver?”

“I am,” Rick answered.

“Well, talk about serendipity! I’ve been trying to find out what happened to the
hataalii.
All anyone would tell me is that he’s gone.”