The Blood of Brothers: A Sycamore Moon Novel (Sycamore Moon Series Book 2) (7 page)

 

 

 

 

Marshal Boyd held a finger in the air as he continued speaking into his cell phone. He was grinning from ear to ear like a politician even though whoever he was talking to couldn't see it. But the words could be clearly heard. They were strong words. Action words. "Mobilizing." "Command post." "Top priority." They were words meant to inspire confidence in the listener. Maxim wondered if Boyd was talking to his father, the mayor of Sanctuary.

The detective closed the door silently and sat across from his boss. He'd been in this office many times. It was the place where he talked through his cases. The first time he was required to vocalize his theories. It was also the first time that outside pressure crept into his investigation. The marshal wasn't a real police officer—he had been appointed to his position by his powerful family without ever having patrolled the streets—but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. For the most part, Boyd left the police work to the officers. Despite Maxim's initial fears when Boyd took over, the man hadn't overstepped his bounds. He supervised at a macro level, choosing to place more emphasis on his role as a civic leader and the public image of the marshal's office. It was an arrangement that worked well for Maxim—and Marshal Boyd was an expert at managing expectations—but judging from the phone call he was finishing up, it didn't look like this case could afford free reign.

"Did he do it?" asked the marshal, suddenly tossing the phone to his desk and shifting his full attention to Maxim. Boyd's cold blue eyes engaged the detective. They worked on many levels. Now all they were seeking was gratification.

Maxim almost winced under the glare. "It's not looking solid."

"I don't want to hear that, Detective Dwyer. Did Clint James string that man up next to Sanctuary High School or not?"

Maxim cleared his throat. "No, Marshal. It doesn't work for me so far."

The blue eyes searched the ceiling. "I've been on the phone all afternoon saying we had a suspect in custody."

"And that's true. I did put him in custody, and that's where he's gonna stay for now. But I don't think he was involved."

The marshal took a few moments to process the news. It was unwelcome. It meant that they were further behind than he had thought. He slowly leaned back into his leather chair and waved his fingers towards him, wordlessly asking for Maxim to continue.

"This is what I've got so far," said the detective. "The vic was killed early this morning, off site. He was suspended upside down and killed with a single gunshot wound to the head. Then he was skinned and bled dry. We have the knife but not the gun yet. Hitchens has his guys searching the school grounds as well as local dumpsters and drains, but I don't think we're going to find anything. Furthermore, we don't have a definite ID on the body. But I have a feeling. I think the vic is Carlos Doka."

Marshal Boyd immediately sat forward. A manhunt the year before hadn't been able to find the fugitive. Maxim could see the wheels turning on the man's face.

"You know this for sure?"

"Like I said, it's my theory. There are some indicators. An old wound matches up. He's a Native American. A single long hair that was embedded into the skull when it cracked survived the skinning, and it's long and black, like Doka's. There's enough there to make it my operating theory."

Boyd chewed his lip. The initial news was great for Sanctuary. It was a missing puzzle piece finally coming into place, and another win for the department. But the troubling implications began to crease into his face. "This sounds like the Seventh Sons beef with the Yavapai. Payback for last year."

"We don't know that for sure."

"They have the best motive," reasoned the marshal. "This was done on their turf."

"
Moved
to their turf. We don't know where it was done. Not yet. Could be anywhere in Sycamore."

"Close enough. The skinning knife is pretty damning. What's the biker have to say?"

"Not a whole lot. He's only making statements through his lawyer. A Ms. Teresa Banks. I looked her up. She made a name for herself in Los Angeles and recently started a practice in Flagstaff with an associate. She may be new here, but she's not small time. I think she's going to be the regular defense attorney for the club from now on."

"That's all we need."

"Anyway, we can't dick her around. The knife gives us a direct link but he's claiming his bag was stolen. I think I believe him."

Marshal Boyd folded his hands in front of his face and looked past them, paying attention to the potential reality one, two, seven days from now. The one where he would need to be accountable to the public. "There's going to be a public outcry, Detective. You've done a great job the last nine months ensuring that these two gangs didn't break out into open war, but that bottle may have just been uncorked."

"Maybe. I'm not discounting the motive. I just don't understand the method yet. The skinning doesn't make sense."

"Perhaps it was meant to muddle forensics."

"I mean the whole thing. The rope. The display."

"Some kind of warning?"

"Sure," said Maxim. "Yavapai stay away, right? I've considered that."

"And?"

Maxim shook his head. Vocalizing his gut feelings wasn't always easy. "I don't know. This is definitely a message. I don't know why the Seventh Sons would risk this."

The marshal rested back in his seat again. "Believe me, I would like nothing more than for them to be miles away from this. Their involvement would be... tricky."

The motorcycle club had connections that Maxim only suspected. If he had to guess, he would say they had an in with the mayor himself. The police had habitually ignored their infractions in the past, but that had all changed last year. Once national attention was put on their department, the Sanctuary Marshal's Office needed to shake any impression of impropriety. Maxim had pulled the department and the motorcycle club out of the mud and had become the star of the moment in the process. The rock star. Since, the detective had tended to set his own rules when it came to what could be enforced.

"Nevertheless," continued Boyd, "we can't appear to be shielding the motorcycle club. Everybody on the street thinks they were involved. Keeping Mr. James in-house while you investigate other angles seems most prudent. Notify Ms. Banks that he's being held overnight. That will give you ample time to balance the other end of this equation."

Maxim blinked. He was surprised at the marshal's even temper. But there was something else. He had missed something. "Sir?"

"Well, Detective, you said it yourself. This is a message of some sort. The victim's family is the most likely candidate. You need to test the air at the reservation."

Maxim nodded. "I'm heading there tomorrow. I want to compare the vic's X-rays to Carlos Doka's dental records, assuming they exist. With the tribal PD involved, I figured it would be faster in person." If the body sitting in the basement cooler was Carlos Doka, the dental records would be the quickest way to get an official ID.

"Tomorrow's not soon enough, Detective Dwyer. If this is a war, I need you to gauge tensions now. Because of the circumstantial evidence, Ms. Banks will tolerate us holding Clint James tonight, but tomorrow she's likely to raise a stink. We need to move quickly here. I want you to drive down immediately. Alone. I'll notify the tribal police."

"Uh, Marshal, I was planning to avoid them completely. I'm not effecting any official jurisdictional powers. They'll just hinder my progress."

"We're already under the microscope on this one," said the marshal sternly. "We can't conduct an investigation on the reservation without alerting them. It could land us in some serious shit."

Maxim released a heavy breath. Boyd didn't curse like that often. It got his point across. The detective knew it couldn't be helped. He didn't trust the police on the reservation. The Yavapai mercenary outfit that had been led by Carlos Doka had a lot of respect among the tribe. They brought in money and supported the community, and they offered protection that no outsiders had ever been able to guarantee. They would be tough to talk to without the police acting as buffers.

"Tell you what," conceded the marshal. "I'll tell them that you're heading down to notify the family. I'll leave you to confirm the ID with the dentist independently. But, if he doesn't cooperate, don't go so far as to threaten him with a warrant without notifying me. At that point I will have no choice but to alert their department."

Maxim nodded. "Fair enough."

The marshal leaned forward and placed a finger firmly on his desk. "Tread lightly, Detective. Use no official powers on that reservation without first contacting me. If I get any complaints that you did anything without my knowledge, it'll be your head."

"Yes, sir." Maxim stood up, seeing no problem with the terms.

 

 

 

 

It was more beautiful than she remembered. The valley. The sweeping hills teeming with brush that rustled under vast sheets of wind. The rolling clouds over Watson Lake reflected off the black surface. Impressive rock formations towered high along the edges, hosting groups of spectators as kayakers paddled by. The residents hadn't mowed the land over as much as they had settled within it; they allowed it to live free, as they did. Absent were the manicured lawns, the man-made overpasses and other blights to nature. Here it was just a peaceful coexistence that felt quaint after coming from Manhattan.

Prescott was the center of Yavapai County. Its location afforded the Quad-City area room to stretch as far as the eye could see along the north-south valley corridor. To both sides it was sandwiched between national forests, walled off from the outside, away from the reaches of the Interstate that connected Phoenix to Flagstaff, away from the highways where cars passed on their trips to California.

In a very real sense, the Yavapai Indian reservation was also cast aside. It was the tribe's own area on the border of Prescott. Not as central, perhaps, but a lively destination in its own right. The opening of the brand new casino was why she was here, after all.

Kayda Garnett sat in the back seat of the taxi, turning her purse over in her hand as she hesitated to open the door. She had come this far already. It was too late to turn back.

She had grown up on the reservation. Lived there most of her life, only leaving when she was seventeen to go to school at Columbia. Now a young woman of twenty-two, a graduate, she had felt that she was ready to face her family again. Except the long trip had shaken her resolve. She wasn't so sure that returning home was right. She didn't know if she would still fit in.

She didn't know that she ever had.

Kayda's mother had been a beautiful Yavapai woman from a well-respected family. After her husband died and left her to raise two boys, she'd met a wonderful man. A white man. A business man. It was a more modern time. If people weren't as accepting of the union, they had at least tolerated it. But Kayda couldn't say that it made growing up in the tribe any easier. Even her two half brothers, much older than her, didn't protect her. At times, she thought they'd been harder on her than most.

It had shattered her self-confidence as a child. It wasn't that she didn't think she was pretty. Her face resembled her mother's. Big, brown eyes. A full smile. But she had broad shoulders, thick, ropey arms and legs, and always weighed more than she liked to admit. She'd inherited her large breasts from her mother, but she never could manage the same slenderness or sexy grace she saw in her mom's old photos.

Her mother had died when she was fifteen, and Kayda finished up school with the tribe, but her father wanted to give her a better foundation. He thought the outside world offered a better chance, and Kayda didn't complain. The last four years at Columbia University were an education in and out of the classroom. Her experiences with boys were not always the best, but it felt normal to have highs and lows. She was different from many of the students—she knew that—but it was her differences that made her stand out. Shine, even. She had become a confident woman. Better, she liked to think.

A sharp rapping at the window startled Kayda. She turned and saw a young girl in a ceremonial dress with swaths of yellow and red. She didn't recognize her. Kayda smiled, and the little girl smiled back, then quickly darted down the street.

The grand opening of the casino would see the attendance of the entire tribe. Almost two hundred people in a space that could fit thousands. A sort of soft-opening celebration before the floodgates were thrust away.

Kayda Garnett took a breath and opened the car door. The casino event was just an excuse for her homecoming. She wanted to see everybody one more time before she went out into the world and made her place in it. Prove to them that she'd become a woman. That she was stronger than they had thought.

Now, here she was. Back home. And the little girl inside her trembled.

 

 

 

 

Maxim's silver Audi sped down the 89 as the last of the sun disappeared behind the mountains. He hated the drive through Chino Valley. The land was arid, flat, and boring. But the state road was in decent shape and the TT made quick work of it.

The detective had called ahead and spoken with the dentist. The man's workday was over but he had agreed to examine the X-rays at his home. It would be quick and simple. With any luck, the first twenty-four hours of the investigation would confirm the ID of the victim. Maxim would close the day with good headway and he would have time to relax with a beer.

Maxim sobered at the thought of having to notify Doka's family. It occurred to him that he wasn't familiar with any of them. He knew of a brother from word of mouth but that was it. He also knew of a man with priors, Hotah Shaw. Both of them were possibles for mixing it up with Clint the night before. They were also part of the Yavapai mercenary outfit. While Carlos Doka had been a biker who liked to associate with the Seventh Sons, the rest of the Indians didn't follow suit. Maxim would need to familiarize himself with them now.

Several billboards along the way broke up the drive. One showed a grand tower with a wide foundation of buildings, shining brightly like a beacon. It said, "The Jewel of Prescott." Another showed an Indian woman wearing a headdress. Face paint extended down her neck and led suggestively to her breasts, which were out of frame. "Overload Your Senses." It took until the third billboard before Maxim realized they were ads for a new casino on the same reservation he was headed to.

The detective played poker a bit. Especially a few years earlier when Texas Hold 'Em had been all the rage on TV. Maxim preferred to play the game with friends. As a detective, he liked to think that he could read people well, that he picked up on things that others didn't, but the math of the game was his weakness. He didn't have a head for quickly calculating the odds. For realizing if he should call or fold. Still, he enjoyed the games, the time spent drinking with friends. The games eventually broke up and discontinued. Maxim thought about trying to resurrect them sometimes, but he didn't have too many friends since his wife had died. There were the other officers, of course. And he'd started to get friendly with some of the Seventh Sons, but in light of recent events, maybe that wasn't such a good decision.

Maxim sighed. Maybe he could see if there was any action at the casino.

Almost immediately upon entering the Yavapai reservation, a police car pulled up behind him. Maxim hadn't been speeding and there was no checkpoint. Access to the land was free and open. For a minute he was hoping the officer was just doing a routine check, but as soon as he flipped on his reds-and-blues, Maxim knew he had been singled out.

The detective didn't drive a marked car. He should have blended in with the other luxury sports cars. There was no reason for him to be pulled over and the Yavapai-Prescott Tribal Police were likely not in the habit of hassling reservation visitors. It was clear the local PD already knew about him. Maxim wondered what they would do.

He pulled over to the dirt and waited as the patrolman recorded his plate. The detective rolled both windows down, turned on the overhead dome light, and readied his badge. It was departmental courtesy not to pull over other officers knowingly, but courtesy went both ways. If it happened, polite cooperation was expected. Maxim didn't have anything to hide, so he waited patiently.

A minute later, a man in a uniform approached his car on the right. He was about Maxim's age, but worse for wear. He looked like an overstuffed scarecrow, the seams of his pants and shirt pulled taut. At the same time, the man had a barrel chest and long legs, giving him an imposing height. While he wasn't exactly in shape, the man could serve as a good cop. Nobody would easily overpower him, anyway.

The officer leaned forward and stuck a sweaty face in the passenger window. His blond hair was slick and bristling in the wind. It was cooling down outside so Maxim guessed the officer's squad car needed AC work. From appearances, what he really needed was a new car. It made Maxim happy that he had finally splurged on the TT.

"You're the detective, right?" the man asked.

Maxim nodded and showed his badge. "Detective Dwyer. That's me."

The officer suddenly opened the door and fell onto the seat. "You don't need that," he said casually as he tried to squeeze his knees past the dashboard. The Audi was a small car that rode low. It wasn't built for large men with sasquatch legs. Maxim watched half-stunned, half-entertained as the man shifted his position several times. Finally, he just sat sideways with his legs outside the car and twisted around.

"I hear you're doing a death notification?"

Maxim contemplated him awkwardly. Entering the vehicle was presumptuous, but Maxim didn't feel threatened. Just uncomfortable. Maybe it was how they did things down here.

"Yeah," Maxim answered, "and maybe confirm something for myself."

The officer nodded. "I'm Officer Winston. But you can call me Chuck." He raised a fat hand in greeting.

The detective took it and suddenly felt bad about being so formal earlier. "Maxim," he said, trying to match the man's hospitality.

"Maxim," he repeated. "You're the one that was in the news some time back. The Paradise Killings, right?"

"In the flesh."

Chuck shook his head. "I don't really believe what the media reports."

Maxim didn't know how to respond. He wasn't even sure what the officer meant by that. Did he not believe that a bunch of bodies had been dumped in Paradise Tank? Did he not believe that Maxim had killed Deborah Holton, a woman instrumental in the killings? "Okay," was the best answer he could come up with.

"You're aware you need to give us a courtesy call before proceeding with any investigation on the reservation, right?"

"Did Marshal Boyd not do that?"

"He did," answered Chuck. "But we prefer more of an in-person visit."

"Ah," said the detective. "Well, thanks for saving me a trip to the station, Chuck. That was nice of you."

The officer's face tightened. He hadn't meant this as a sincere courtesy, but he had in fact made things easier on the detective. Still, Maxim didn't know if Chuck was going to let it go at that. After a moment passed, the officer relaxed and began chewing a piece of gum that Maxim hadn't noticed was already in his mouth.

"No problem," said Chuck. "It beats doing the rounds at an empty casino. I'm not just some security guard, you know."

Maxim nodded. Chuck obviously had some issues, but who could blame him? The tribal department was small, like the marshal's office, but there was much less to do. Crime on the reservation was notoriously low. Maxim always figured it had to do with the mercenaries. They were the ones running the show, probably even running the police. But Chuck was a white guy. He didn't seem to have overflowing love for the Yavapai. Maxim wondered if he was even part of the tribe.

He considered asking about those details before something else Chuck had said stuck out to him. "Wait, what do you mean empty casino?"

"The new one," answered the officer with aplomb, as if the casino was the biggest thing in the news. In Prescott, it probably was. "There's an opening ceremony tonight."

"Oh," said Maxim. He knew there was another casino or two on the reservation, but they were old. Outdated. The new one was the casino of the future to replace them all. Maxim had no idea it was just opening. "Maybe I'll head over there after I talk to the family."

Chuck shook his head emphatically. "It's a soft opening only. You can't go without a personal invitation from somebody important."

The detective beheld the officer with obvious amusement. "Well it's a good thing I know you, Chuck."

Officer Winston worked his jaw hard on the gum in his mouth. Maxim figured it was a stress reliever or something. Finally, Chuck reached for the roof of the car, pulled his frame halfway out, then paused. "Maybe I can work it in after we do the rounds."

"Rounds?"

Chuck winked. "The notification to the family. I'm coming with you."

Maxim didn't want an escort. He still had to check for a match with the dentist. "Hey, Chuck. That's another nice gesture, but it's really not necessary."

"Yes, it is," he said, struggling to pull free from the bucket seat. When Chuck was finally on his feet, he slammed the car door and turned away. "You and me are gonna be real good friends."