Mourning Dove (36 page)

A dozen or so questions popped instantly in her mind, but there was no time for her to comment as they walked into
Big Ed’s office. Blalock was there, looking physically tired but still mentally alert. Carson, of course, looked as if staying up all night was just another drill. Justine, Tache, and Neskahi were also there, eager and ready.

Big Ed nodded to Ella. “Take it.”

Everybody had met everyone else, so Ella got started without preamble. “I wanted everyone in on this because we’re running out of time.
We need to solve this investigation before most of our suspects leave the country.”

Ella introduced Ford to the others, most who’d met him casually already or knew he was a local preacher, and explained what Reverend Tome had been doing. “What I’m hoping is that by letting all of you in on this, we can work together to decode what Jimmy was trying to tell us.”

Ford knew all about presence—an
effective tool for any preacher. He glanced around the room, meeting everyone’s gaze, then glanced down at his notes. His voice didn’t exactly boom, but his speaking cadence commanded and his audience listened to every word. “The real problem with this . . . unfinished story is that it’s a code within a code—or actually several codes. At first I thought it was more akin to a parable, but that’s not
it. Mourning Dove, a character in Navajo creation stories, is the narrator—a creature said to carry messages, and Jimmy is really writing about events he saw or heard about while in Iraq. We read about the Dark Ones—Trickster, Gopher, Gray Wolf, and Stripes—bartering for umbrellas—an absurdity for animals in the desert—from non-Navajo, apparently humans, called Walpole, Mountbatten, and others.
Mourning Dove says these Dark Ones also buy gumdrops, shoes, and finally, nails.”

Ella nodded. She had her own idea about the items bought, and recent events had only served to support that notion. But maybe Ford had more.

Reverend Tome continued. “The people they obtain these objects from have a combination of familiar and unfamiliar names, such as Walpole, Weigel, Mountbatten, and Chopra.”

“The last two are well-known names, but Walpole and Weigel certainly don’t ring a bell,” Blalock said.

Ford nodded. “On page four Mourning Dove gathers his courage. Hearing the song of his soul he decides to follow his own lead. This entails even greater danger to him but, ultimately, Mourning Dove hopes it’ll free him. They all get ready to go home, with umbrellas, gumdrops, shoes, and nails
. . . but the story ends. . . .”

“That certainly doesn’t tell us much,” Carson said.

“I’d thought about the items bought, wondering if they represented something else, like guns,” Ella said. “But you’d have to know what kind of guns the nails represented—or maybe the nails were just ammunition? And what about the gumdrops? Grenades? If that’s what Jimmy had in mind, it certainly isn’t obvious
or conclusive. Or am I trying too hard to make a Codetalker kind of connection out of this?”

Reverend Tome smiled. “Many old, simple codes substitute letters or words for something else entirely, or just use ordinary words and have a system where you pick out one predetermined letter in a string of words and that forms the intended message. Anyone ever write notes in school, and have the message
concealed in, say, the third letter of each word?”

“Anagrams . . .” Ella muttered thoughtfully and looked down at what she’d written in her notes. “Wow. I never thought it would be this simple. Umbrellas, gumdrops, shoes, and nails. If you rearrange those so that gumdrops come first, then take the first letter of each, you get the word ‘guns’. That was what the characters were buying, right?”

B
ut we’ve already reached that conclusion, haven’t we?” Justine said. “And how do we know that was the intended message?”

“Sung, gnus, nusg? It has to be guns. Very simple code, once we think about it, and have the knowledge of subsequent events,” Blalock said. “Do you suppose he picked gumdrops, so we’d know to put it first? It’s the only food item in the
items bought, so it’s different from the others.”

“Okay,” Ella said. “Now what about the famous and not-so-famous names?”

“This is where it gets interesting,” Ford added. “Lord Mount-batten was a famous British war leader, and the best known Chopra is the self-help guru. Walpole and Weigel drew a blank so I tried a Google search on Walpole, and one of the first hits I got revealed that someone
named Walpole was the victim of a highwayman. Recalling that Lord Mountbatten was killed by an IRA terrorist bomb, I had a possible connection. Both had been crime victims. When I searched the other names, adding a crime variable, I learned that Chopra had been the victim of a blackmail plot, and Weigel is the name of a person who’d been kidnapped. And Google’s also where I found out who Bula and
Konik were. These are nicknames for men who were casualties of a Polish Mafia hit.”

“Okay, that links with the two men from the Guard unit who died overseas. So what Jimmy was giving us here are descriptions of the methods the Dark Ones used to obtain guns,” Ella said. “With that in mind, I believe more than ever that characters like Trickster, Gray Wolf, and the others link directly to the suspects,
men in Jimmy’s unit. But I still can’t figure out how Jimmy expects us to make an ID—not unless, like Jimmy, you happen to know what the soldiers did overseas and can link that to their namesakes in the story. I was hoping that we could brainstorm and compare the qualities of each animal in the story to specific suspects, and see if we can make a tentative ID that way.”

“Trickster might be the
imbedded photographer, Zamora,” Justine said. “From what we already know this doesn’t seem too far a stretch. By naming him ‘Trickster,’ Mourning Dove may have been alluding to the fact that he presented himself as one thing—a photographer—and, in reality, was nothing more than a thief.”

“Zamora was sent home after the MPs searched his luggage on his way back to his imbedded unit in Iraq and
found that he had thousands of dollars in cash,” Carson said. “He came up with a lot of explanations, but none of them rang true.”

“I’ve got an update on Zamora,” Blalock said. “He died in a one-car accident on a mountain road in southern Colorado the same day Jimmy did. The local sheriff said that it looked like he’d been drinking, but a blood alcohol test showed that he was well within the
limit.”

“Maybe more pinpoint evidence, like whether Zamora is Trickster, is on the half of the story that disappeared—the part we believe originally went to Samuel Blacksheep,” Ella suggested.

“I might be able to look over the unit records and see if any of the crimes Jimmy alluded to, like the blackmail or the kidnapping, turned up on any form within their platoon’s day-to-day operations,”
Carson said. “Certainly a Mountbatten kind of action, a terrorist bombing of an authority figure, would be listed. If
we can link a suspect to an incident like that maybe we can start identifying the other players, too.”

“We need to identify the leader of the operation. Who would you all say is the focal point of the story?” Neskahi asked.

“Trickster went his own way, so my guess is that it
has to be Gray Wolf, Stripes, or Gopher,” Ella said.

“Gopher seems too passive to be a leader, and Stripes, who is that? A skunk?” Justine asked.

“Gray Wolf would be my guess,” Ralph Tache suggested.

“Stripes could be a sergeant. You know, stripes on his sleeve,” Ella said, thinking out loud.

“But a captain and a lieutenant wear bars which could be referred to as stripes by a non-career soldier
or a civilian,” Carson pointed out.

“There’s still no hint of a resolution in the story—it was as if the writer was telling us that the battle was an ongoing one and Mourning Dove didn’t know how it would end,” Big Ed said. He’d been silent until now, taking notes, not wanting to intrude his authority into the discussion. “I suppose the resolution could be in the second part, but judging from
the overall tone, I doubt it.”

“But we’re all in agreement that guns were stolen overseas to be resold here at home for a handsome profit,” Justine said. “The motive is clear as well—Jimmy was killed because he knew too much and was on his way home to reveal the story, hopefully with a lot more details of the events alluded to in here.”

“If we’ve got a dirty cop involved, who’s to say that the
operation stops with weapons from Iraq? Maybe weapons confiscated in a raid—those that normally get taken off-site and blown up as a way of destroying them—aren’t being destroyed after all,” Big Ed suggested. “Or maybe evidence that should be locked up is turning up missing, jeopardizing future cases.”

“There’re a lot of possibilities,” Ella said. “But the heart of our investigation is Jimmy’s
murder.”

Big Ed looked around the room. “We’ve got a long list of suspects but, as I see it, the key player—if he’s clean—is Samuel Blacksheep. He knew Jimmy better than anyone else. He might be able to break the code—or may even have the remaining part of the story and has been keeping it from us.” He looked at Blalock. “Can you check his bank accounts, and things of that nature?”

“I’ll see
what I can do,” Blalock said.

“Samuel’s investigating on his own, Chief. And though he may have that last part of his brother’s story, I don’t think he knows about the part sent to me,” Ella said.

“We need more evidence to tie the guilty to the crimes,” Big Ed said flatly. “Let me see what I can do through the Farmington PD’s back door. What about the body we found in the rental?”

“I questioned
his known associates and they claim that the victim had started a new business. He was playing with the big boys and that got him dead,” Tache said.

“No other prints except Blacksheep’s were found on the vehicle, inside or out. The deceased was dumped onto the backseat, then shot with the assault weapon as he lay there, judging from the damage to the seat, which corresponds to several wounds
on his torso,” Justine added. “He wasn’t killed by Jimmy Blacksheep, that’s pretty certain, though Jimmy probably shot him at least once. There was one nine-millimeter slug recovered from his thigh which happens to have been fired from the same gun that put the round in the sign where Jimmy’s body was found. From the angle, that round had to have come from the sedan,” Justine concluded.

After
they left Big Ed’s office, a heavy silence fell over the group. Somehow, they had to narrow down the field and sort out the innocent from the guilty.

As Carson left to make the necessary arrangements regarding Richardson, Justine caught up with Ella in her office. “We just got a call from one of the Many Devils. He didn’t identify himself, but I took the call and think it was Tony. He says that
he suspects
that the carjackers are going to be on the watch for targets on the stretch of highway south of sixty-four between Farmington and Kirtland.”

“The isolated stretch a lot of power-plant workers take?”

Justine nodded.

“When?”

“He said soon, and that they seemed to be casing the traffic flow for early evening, after the go-home rush has ended.”

“We thought they’d be changing their
M.O. When did the call come in?”

“I took it less than a minute ago when I stopped by to check phone messages,” Justine answered. “But it’s not on our turf, you know.”

“Yeah, but most of the vehicles on that route are driven by Navajos, and it’s within a stones’ throw of the Rez. It’s our informant, so I’m sure we can get in on this. Let’s get with the Farmington PD and sheriff’s people who are
working with us on these crimes and set up a sting. The carjackers like pickups, so let’s see what we can get from the closest Farmington dealer. Hopefully one of the same models they’ve taken before, but not the most common. We don’t want to make it look like a trap.”

“I’ll get that ball rolling with a call to Sheriff Taylor,” she said, and walked out of the room.

The day went by quickly. Carson
left with Richardson, and her team focused on processing the evidence and getting the details of tonight’s operation worked out. Knowing she wouldn’t be home until late the next morning, Ella stopped by the house at around dinnertime. To her surprise, Dawn was back.

Dawn met her at the door, giving her a big hug. “What are you doing home?” Ella asked.

Rose came in. “Her father had to drop her
off. He had an unexpected meeting with some tribal officials,” she said with a trace of a smile.

Ella didn’t comment.

“But Daddy will pick me back up after. Beth Ann’s coming over tonight, too!”

It was all they could do to calm Dawn down so she’d sit still long enough to have dinner with them. Even before they finished, Dawn asked to be excused and, a second later, Ella heard her on the phone.
Ella and Rose continued eating in silence for a while. Then Rose finally spoke.

“
Bizaadii
and I will be married next Saturday. We won’t be sending out invitations or making it a big thing. We’ll have the wedding at my son’s hogan and start the ceremony at sundown according to custom. That way, when we leave, darkness will cover us with peace.”

Ella smiled. “You’re a romantic at heart, Mom,”
she said, all sorts of opposing emotions clashing inside her. “I’m glad you’re happy,” she said. “But the date you’ve set doesn’t give us a lot of time to make plans. Do you have a dress? You can borrow one of mine. I have a few fancy ones I’ve never worn.”