Red Mesa (20 page)

“She shouldn’t
drive when she’s hurt and angry.” Ruth said quickly. “I’ll go get her, but maybe you should leave for now.”

Ella stared at Ruth walking away, too stunned to speak. She’d wanted to let them know how much she was going to miss Justine, and that she was hurting just like they were. But all the words were lodged in her throat.

Rose returned to join Ella as Angela and her daughters stood by the SUV
talking. “We’re not welcome here, daughter. It’s time to leave. Your cousin is overwhelmed by grief and anger. She wants to blame someone, and is striking out at you and our family.”

“Her daughters blame me, too,” Ella said. “Mom, I’m sorry. I should have never brought you along. I didn’t expect this.”

“I’m glad I came. It’ll help me get prepared for what lies ahead.”

Ella nodded. There would
be no peace for her or her family in this land between the sacred mountains until she found the truth. The
Dinetah,
always a very dangerous place, had suddenly become a land of betrayal.

THIRTEEN

Ella returned home with her mother. With Dawn away with Kevin, the house seemed quiet and lonely all of a sudden. Ella suddenly understood why Dawn and her mother needed each other so much. For a woman like Rose, who had always had family within her home, this had become an empty nest despite Ella having returned to share the house. Rose had spent too much time alone here, listening
to the silence. But with Dawn’s birth, Rose had found a familiar and comforting purpose for herself again.

“This house seems too big and empty sometimes,” Rose said, almost as if reading Ella’s mind. “Someday I may have to accept that modern times make new demands on all of us. Families can’t be as close as they once were.” She shook her head sadly. “And they call it progress!”

“Your granddaughter
will always be close to you, and I belong here, too. Someday we’ll also have a young woman from the tribe coming in to help with the chores.” Ella looked at her mother and smiled. “And please don’t tell me that you’ll actually
mind
not doing so much laundry and cooking!”

Rose didn’t answer.

Ella gave her mother a hug. “I’m going to go back to the office for a bit, then afterwards I’ll stop,
pick up my daughter, and come home. Will you be all right here?”

Rose nodded. “Two will keep me company.” She scratched the head of the furry mutt, who wagged his tail in response. “He’s acting normal again, and it’s a good thing.”

“Are
you
all right?” Ella asked. Her mother seemed even more tired than usual. Then again, it had been a trying day for all of them.

“Your cousin’s death has reminded
me of how quickly I could lose you.” Ella started to protest, but Rose held up one hand, stopping her. “I don’t think I could stand a loss like that. When your father was killed, it took me a long time to accept his death and go on, but a woman never expects to bury her children.”

“Mom, nothing is going to happen to me.”

“Your cousin probably said the same thing to her mother.”

“She had far
less training and experience than I do. And she was always trying to prove herself. I’m past having to show how good I am at my job.”

“Even so.”

“I want to stay on the reservation, Mom, and I know that’s what you want, too. But being a cop is all I know. And it’s the only career I can pursue here. In law enforcement the line between Anglo ways and our own is blurred enough to allow me to fit
in.”

“I wish you had never left the reservation in the first place. You’ve been torn in two ever since.”

“And then where would I be today if I hadn’t? I guess I could have been a clerk at a store, or a waitress at a restaurant, but I need more than that to be happy. You, of all people, know how hard I fought to find an identity at all. With a Christian preacher as a father and you following
The Way, I learned I was most comfortable when walking the line between both worlds. Being a cop allowed me to give my life some meaning and still remain true to myself.”

“And what has all your training gotten you? You’re in a job where anything could happen to you at any time.”

“But it’s a job where I can make a difference. And one where I can earn enough money to be able to provide for us.
We’re not rich, but we don’t lack anything either and we never will. And when I retire, I’ll have a pension. I’ll never have to depend on anyone to help me provide for my family.”

Rose sighed, then sat down in her easy chair. “I know we’ve had this conversation many times before, daughter, but I still worry about you.”

“I know. You’re my mom. That’s your job,” Ella teased.

Rose shook her head.
“Go to the police station, if you must. Just bring my granddaughter back as soon as you can.”

“You’ve got it.”

Minutes later, as Ella headed down the highway, anger, then annoying tears, filled her eyes as she thought of Justine and everything that had happened. She would have to actively pursue whatever leads she had, and right now, only one seemed clear. Harry Ute was tracking a fugitive who
had sworn to get his revenge on Justine and her, and recently he’d bankrolled himself, literally. She needed to talk to Harry about Samuel Begaye.

The problem, of course, was how to find Harry quickly. An undercover cop had to be careful every moment, and for Harry that meant he’d be hiding and blending with others, doing his best to disappear among the
Dineh.
Any attempt to find him could have
disastrous results for his own operation.

As she weighed her options, Ella realized she had only one alternative open to her. When she reached the station, she called the Marshals Service and left a message for Harry to contact her as soon as he could. She did the same to the State Police Department, asking Rob Brown, the officer who was sharing his home with Harry, to contact her.

Ella sat
back, unsure what else she could do to speed up the process. There didn’t seem much, though she did leave a message with Blalock, who also knew Harry was in the area and might be contacted by him.

Next, Ella went to Justine’s smaller office, in an alcove off the forensics lab, to try and find the note Justine believed Ella had written to her.

The moment she stepped into her cousin’s office and
saw the small pigs on a shelf above Justine’s desk, the sadness Ella felt became almost unbearable. Each pig was different. There was a ceramic pig “cop,” two cartoon characters in uniform, and a plain barnyard hog. There were four of them in total, one for each year Justine had been a police officer.

It was so hard to believe Justine was gone. Even the scent of her perfume lingered in the room,
and there was a slight indentation in her desk chair where she’d spent so many hours on paperwork. The tears Ella felt running down her cheeks slowly became hot, and thoughts of revenge started her heart beating faster. Taking deep breaths, and wiping away the tears with a tissue, Ella slowly forced herself to focus back on reality.

She didn’t want revenge. What she would work for was justice.

Ella couldn’t bear to sit in Justine’s chair, so she searched her late assistant’s desk while standing. Within seconds she found the note atop a stack of unfinished reports. The signature was nearly identical to Ella’s own, probably traced.

Ella brought the note back to her office and put it in the folder along with the one she’d received, labeling and dating the folder. Perhaps an FBI handwriting
expert could prove that they were forgeries. If not, she was sure that the notes would eventually be used as evidence against her. As she mulled over her situation, Ella realized that even if they were proven to be forgeries, a good attorney could argue that she could have made the forgeries herself as easily as anyone else, even tracing her own signature to construct phony evidence.

Disgusted,
Ella left the office and drove to Kevin’s home. Dawn was asleep on his couch when she arrived.

Kevin held one finger over his lips. “She’s been out for hours. I had hoped she wouldn’t fall asleep so soon,” he said, glancing over at the child, covered by a small quilt.

“Maybe you should try to schedule time with her earlier in the day, Kevin.”

“It’s hard for me to get away unless I have a last-minute
cancellation or schedule change.”

Ella nodded, distractedly.

“You look like you’ve been through hell and back. What’s going on?” Kevin motioned for her to join him at the kitchen table.

Knowing he’d hear all about it by tomorrow morning at the very latest, she told him about her meeting with Justine and the subsequent events. “I still can’t believe she’s gone. It doesn’t seem real, you know?”

“I received a note from her recently. You can have it for handwriting comparison, if you think it’ll help.”

“Are you sure it was from my second cousin, and not a forgery?”

“It was real,” Kevin assured. “She followed it up with a phone call. She was worried about the problems her aunt Lena was having with the Hopis over water.”

“Did you meet with her?”

“No, I only spoke to her on the phone.
We’d scheduled a meeting for later this week.” Kevin paused, then continued. “Is it possible that she made some bad enemies stemming from that Hopi-Navajo dispute her aunt had?”

“I can’t see how. That took place way over in Arizona, and seemed like a local problem,” Ella said. “There was a prisoner transfer from Window Rock that same day, too, but neither she nor I was the focus of that.”

“Okay.
It was just a thought. If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.” Kevin touched her gently on the arm.

“Actually, there is. As an attorney for the tribe, you have your own contacts in the legal system, and you also have access to tribal investigators. Can you find out if any criminals we’ve put away have made threats against either her or me recently, or if there are any rumors
that may shed light on what’s happened?”

“Okay. I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow.”

Ella looked at Dawn, who was sleeping so comfortably, she almost hated to move her.

“I know you don’t really want to disturb her now, but we don’t have a choice. I have to be in court early tomorrow. That means waking up in time to rush out the door and race to my office. I won’t have time to take care of
the baby in the morning.”

Ella nodded. “I couldn’t leave her here tonight anyway. Mom would kill me. She really misses Dawn when she’s not around.” Yet, despite that, Kevin’s admission still bothered her. Sometimes she got the feeling that fatherhood was only okay with him when it was convenient.

Dawn fussed a little when Ella picked her up and put her in the car seat, but before long, she drifted
off to sleep again. By the time Ella pulled up in front of her mother’s house, Rose was sitting on the darkened porch in her rocking chair, Two beside her.

A minute later Ella lifted Dawn out of the car and handed her to her grandmother, who was waiting with open arms.

“
Hatsóí,
my daughter’s child,” she whispered as Dawn began to fuss again. “Sleep now.” The little girl settled quickly in her
arms.

After Dawn was safely in her own bed, tonight without the need for a bedtime story, Ella said good night to her mother and went to her room. Although she suspected that Rose wanted to talk, she just wasn’t up to it. The details of Justine’s death were bearing down on her, and it was hard to think of anything else, even for a moment.

In hopes that her Internet contact “Coyote” had sent
her a message, she checked her E-mail, then remained logged on to the Internet provider where she’d received the previous instant message. After about fifteen minutes she received E-mail, but it was just spam asking her if she’d like to become rich working at home. She deleted the message, its contents obvious from the subject line.

Knowing that she had to remain on-line to receive an instant
message, Ella cruised the basic services of her provider, checking local weather and reading the news updates on national and international events. Local news was still only available from radio, newspapers, and a local cable TV station that ran a teletypelike service.

Tired of seeing the same old information repeated endlessly, she decided to call it a night. She was about to log off when she
heard the electronic tone signaling an instant message. A brief message flashed on the screen in the little white box.

Your partner’s death may only be part of a larger picture. I’m trying to uncover the truth. Watch your back.

Coyote

The instant message stayed on her screen, but the sender was gone before she could reply. Irritated because she hadn’t been able to ask him some questions, she
printed out the message, switched off the computer, and crawled into bed.

Although she wanted to sleep, slumber eluded her. Her mind raced with thoughts of Justine, the crime scene, and a thousand other details.

Trying to relax, Ella let her thoughts shift to Dawn. Her little girl meant everything to her. It was really a shame she’d never have the kind of dad Ella would have wanted for her.
And from what she could see, Kevin’s family wasn’t interested in Dawn either, at least not enough to play an active part in her life. Wondering if she should be relieved or sad, she drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

*   *   *

Ella woke up the following morning ready to tackle the murder investigation once more. There was a lot for her to do, and there was no time to waste. One day had already
passed, and with each additional hour the chances of catching the killer or killers grew more distant. Dressing quickly, she said good-bye to her mother and Dawn and went to work early.

By nine, she’d questioned every officer and civilian staff member who’d been in the building the day Justine and she had received the notes that had lured them to what was rapidly becoming known as Red Mesa.

It seemed a lot of people had come and gone that day. Although the officers could recall who they’d personally seen there, no one had noticed anything that could help her identify who’d delivered the notes. The only thing she was certain about was that the person responsible for those notes couldn’t have been Begaye. The last place he would have gone to was a police station. Too many of the officers
would have known him, even if he’d been in disguise.