Red Mesa (38 page)

Heart racing, she braked hard, swerving to the right onto the shoulder and trying to keep the pickup from rolling as she hit soft ground.

As she focused on controlling her
truck, Ella heard the squeal of tires telling her the shooter was also braking, trying to slow enough to turn and continue the pursuit. Headlights flashed into her rearview mirror, but by then Ella was heading parallel to the highway across a relatively level stretch of desert.

The driver, seeing her pulling away, fired two more shots, but they whined overhead, missing the truck completely. Ella
spotted a set of wheel ruts running nearly parallel to hers, and swung the pickup onto them, hoping for an easier path. The lights in her mirror dimmed as Ella pressed down on the accelerator. The track she was on led down into a shallow, sandy wash, and she was certain that the sedan couldn’t follow her very far there.

She turned off her lights and came to a stop a few hundred yards down the
arroyo, hoping to get a glimpse of the car and maybe get a make or color, but the driver didn’t follow her into the wash. Instead, he turned and headed back to the highway.

Ella knew her truck’s engine was far from the souped-up package in the tribal unit, but acting on instinct alone, she turned her truck around and went after him, leaving her own headlights off. He arrived at the highway, and
as he turned onto the good road, she closed to within fifty yards and flipped on her headlights. For just a split second, she caught a glimpse of the driver’s face as he was looking in her direction. She couldn’t swear to it, but he looked like Samuel Begaye.

Anger and frustration ripped through her. If he
was
involved, she wanted to haul his sorry butt to jail. She was racing down the highway
after him when she suddenly realized that she was heading straight into danger without anything to back her up except a two-shot .22 derringer and a pocketknife. She couldn’t request cover officers be dispatched to her location, or even force him to pull over on her own. All she could do was get herself killed.

Ella grasped the steering wheel so hard that her hands hurt, but she gave up the chase
as he increased his own speed in order to escape. He hadn’t known she was outgunned, obviously, which had turned out to be a lucky break for her.

Ella found the cell phone on the floorboard and called Blalock. Help had never arrived because she’d never completed the call to the department. After describing the vehicle, tag number, and Begaye’s direction of travel, she turned the matter over to
him. Handing police business over to someone else was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

She knew then that she’d have to find a new way to work around her limited resources. Her enemies had succeeded in making things more difficult for her, so she’d have to learn to improvise so she could get the job done.

*   *   *

Ella arrived home edgy and tired, but grateful that her bullet-ridden
truck still worked. Her mood suddenly worsened when she saw Kevin’s car parked near the side of the house. She went inside, wondering if her already miserable day was about to get worse.

It didn’t take long to find out. Kevin’s expression was decidedly somber as he turned Dawn over to Rose. “What happened to your leg, Ella?”

She looked down at the bloody tear in her slacks. The wound was about
two inches long, but not more than a good scratch, fortunately. “Would you believe I bumped up against a nail?”

“Better wash it off, then.” Kevin shrugged, accepting her suggestion without question.

Ella kissed her daughter good night and promised to come read her a story in a few minutes.

“This is going to take more than a few minutes,” Kevin said. “Now that you’re finally home, we have to
have a serious talk.”

She didn’t like his tone. “Then you’ll have to wait. Dawn will expect me. Let me take care of her first, wash off this scratch, then I’ll deal with whatever’s bothering you.”

She saw his eyes narrow, but other than that, there was no response. Rose just smiled at both of them and went into her sewing room.

By the time Ella returned to the living room, thirty minutes had
passed and Kevin was pretending to read this morning’s newspaper. One look at his face and she knew she’d made him angry.

She smiled at him calmly and cocked her head toward the kitchen. “Let’s go in there. I need something to snack on. All I’ve had for hours is a cup of coffee. Do you want a diet cola or something?”

“No, thank you,” he replied stiffly.

Ella took a can of soda from the refrigerator,
grabbed a handful of homemade oatmeal cookies from the cookie jar, then sat across the kitchen table from him. “All right. You’ve got my full attention. What’s the problem?”

“I heard that this has been a really bad day for you,” he said slowly. “I understand that you were asked to turn in your badge.”

He waited, but Ella said nothing, instead eating a cookie hungrily, then washing it down with
swallows of soda. There was nothing for her to say. His sources were impeccable.

“That’s why I came over. Now that you’re no longer a cop, you’re more at the mercy of your enemies than ever.”

“Where did you get that idea? I turned in my badge, not my brain.”

He shook his head. “Same old Ella.”

“What did you expect? I’m not going to curl up into a ball and die. I’ve had to work with less resources
before. I can handle this without a crime team or a partner.”

“Yes, I suppose you can. But what about Dawn?”

“She has no idea what’s going on. She’s just a baby.”

“Exactly. She’s just a baby. While you go investigate things on your own—and don’t bother to deny that you’ll be doing just that—she’ll be here, an easy target for any of the people you’ve ticked off over the years. Or worse. Maybe
she’ll be the target of the person who’s working so hard to put you away for good.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. We have no reason to believe that whoever is after me will strike at anyone else in my family. And if they try something here, the police department will come into the picture. Big Ed will do whatever it takes to keep Mom and Dawn safe.”

“I’m amazed that you have so much confidence
in the same people that have hung you out to dry.”

“I don’t see it that way,” she said in clipped tones.

“Are you willing to gamble our daughter’s life on your opinion?”

“And I suppose this is what you’ve been leading up to. What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to send Dawn to live with my sister Mary Ann. She’s a teacher in Scottsdale. Her husband is Anglo and they’re well off, living in
a very safe neighborhood. Dawn will be protected and have everything she needs.”

“Except her mother and her grandmother,” Ella snapped. “My daughter stays here with my mother and with me. She’ll be well looked after.”

“You’re not thinking straight.”

Ella regarded him coolly. “And of course, your eagerness to send Dawn away has nothing to do with the pressure people who want you to run for office
are putting on you to sever the connection between us. Since the heart of that connection is Dawn, our daughter, sending her away could remove a potential problem standing in the way of getting you elected. Out of sight is out of mind. Very convenient, I admit, but I’m not buying in to this. Dawn stays home.”

She had never seen him this angry before. He stood up so quickly, the chair nearly toppled
over.

“I can’t believe you said that to me.”

“The thought never occurred to you, or at least to your powerful friends?” she asked, nonplussed.

“Even if it has, that wasn’t why I came here and suggested it to you.”

“So it did occur to them,” Ella observed.

“Think carefully, Ella. This isn’t about politics. This is about Dawn and keeping her out of harm’s way. Can you guarantee her safety here?”

“I can’t guarantee her safety anywhere, but if I really believed that she was in danger, I wouldn’t send her anyplace that’s so easily traced, such as to a relative of yours. But we have no reason to believe that anyone is interested in Dawn.”

“So you’re just going to wait and take that chance?”

“It’s not a matter of taking a chance. It’s a matter of my judgment, based upon the facts. But let
me warn you, Kevin. If you or your friends are talking about this subject with other people, you could be giving my enemies some ideas that they’re better off not having.”

“Nice. So if anything happens, it’ll be my fault now.”

She stood up and began walking him to the door. “Kevin, I’m tired. The point I’m making is that your self-serving friends are making a problem where there isn’t one, and
if they continue with this, things could get worse, not better.”

Kevin strode past her wordlessly, closing the door a bit louder than usual. A moment later she heard him speed away in his pickup, spewing gravel halfway up the drive.

“He’s not worried about Dawn. He’s worried about himself,” Rose said from where she was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “It’s a good thing, too, that you
pointed out the harm his friends could do. He’ll discourage any talk about Dawn being sent away now if he really cares about his daughter.”

“Yeah, but I probably should have handled it differently. His name is on the birth certificate as the father. Kevin’s never disagreed with me about custody, but he could if he wanted to.”

“You mean if he thought it would serve him. But it won’t, and he knows
it.”

Ella rubbed her eyes, then sighed. “It’s been an awful day.”

“I heard what he said. Is it true? You’ve been suspended?”

Ella nodded. “I guess now I get to see how a private investigator works. They have fewer rules, you know. I may get to like the freedom from having to follow the nitpicking police procedures.”

Rose shook her head. “No, you like the structure the rules provide. You’ll
be back on the force before long.”

“You sound very certain, Mom.”

“I am. I’ve learned to accept many things about you and the path you’ve chosen in life.”

After Rose went to bed, Ella fixed herself a sandwich using leftovers, then went to her room and turned on the computer. Coyote was nowhere to be seen tonight. She answered a few E-mails that had accumulated from friends on-line, then crawled
into bed.

Two began barking furiously just as soon as she’d closed her eyes. Ella reached for the service pistol she normally kept on the nightstand, then remembered she didn’t have it anymore. Not wasting time, she hurried to her closet and reached for the upper shelf, bringing down her father’s old hunting rifle. It had been in the family for years and it hadn’t been checked any time recently,
but she knew it would work. What’s more, her aim was deadly with it.

Ella loaded the rifle and, as she went out into the hall, met Rose. “Stay here with Dawn. I’ll go see what’s going on.”

Ella grabbed a flashlight from the drawer as she walked through the kitchen. Keeping it off and using the darkness to hide her, she stepped outside.

The full moon bathed everything in a muted light. Two was
watching an area just beyond the garden. As she started to move forward, Two positioned himself in front of her, his hackles raised. The low sound coming from his throat was a deadly challenge to whatever was out there.

Ella moved carefully, still not using the flashlight. Hearing a strange rustle through the brush, she stopped and raised the rifle to her shoulder. “Come out where I can see you.
I’m armed.”

There was a pause, then she heard a familiar voice. “Don’t shoot. I’m not your enemy.”

Herman Cloud stepped past a small juniper and appeared in the open.

“You’re the last person I expected to see here,” Ella said. “What on earth are you doing?”

“My nephews told me what happened to you at the police department. They’ll be keeping a watch on your place unofficially, but right now
they’re both patrolling areas well away from here. That’s why I came over to watch over you and your family while you slept.”

Ella fought the impulse to hug him. Philip and Michael Cloud were two of the best cops in the department, and Herman, their uncle, had been a solid ally. Although in his seventies, he stood tall and proud, wearing a red headband. His black eyes were fierce with determination.

“You’re going to freeze out here. Come in and have something warm to drink.”

He shook his head. “My place is out here for now. I stood beside you once when your enemies were all around you, and I’ll do the same again. But don’t worry. I’m not alone out here.” He whistled, making a long, mournful sound. Someone answered, imitating his call.

“What made you think we would need protection here at
home?” Ella felt her skin prickle as it often did when danger was near.

“I have friends where your lawyer friend works. They want your daughter out of the way. Because of that, we don’t trust them.”

“We?”

“It’s better that you don’t know any names other than mine. But rest easy. You have many friends.”

Ella felt the power and confidence behind his words. He was a man on a mission. She could
no more dissuade him from this duty than she could change Mount Rushmore.

“Thank you, old friend,” she said quietly.

As she walked back inside the house, she felt her spirits lift. She now knew that the battle was no longer hers alone.

TWENTY-FOUR

Ella woke long after the sun had risen. Not used to sleeping late, she looked at the clock radio and realized she’d never set it the night before. Not that she needed to do that now. Still, it surprised her that such a long, ingrained habit could be broken so easily.

Dressing quickly, she went outside with a cup of warm coffee in hand, searching for Herman. He’d need this by now,
though she suspected he and whoever had been with him had brought their own provisions.

After several minutes of searching, she realized he’d gone home. His watch must have concluded at dawn.

Rose came outside. “Why on earth are you standing out here?”

“I thought I’d give our old friend a cup of coffee.”

“Daughter, he’s been gone for hours! We had a talk, then he left.”