Tracking Bear (14 page)

Justine waved at them, catching their attention, and gestured for them to come inside. A moment later George stepped into the office, but Marie remained in the outer room.
“Are you satisfied now that I’m playing it straight with you?”

“Your cooperation says a lot for you,” Ella said. “But I have a question for you now.” Ella pulled out a printout of the file that had listed all of NEED’s known opponents. “How come you didn’t include Redhouse in this list? I understand the councilman was against NEED.”

He shook his head. “That’s not entirely true. Billy was still
undecided, which means we had to keep lobbying for his support. I studied his political record personally, so I understood his tactics. Whenever he was trying to decide on an issue, he’d challenge both sides to convince him that they were right and then hammer them with questions. One weekend he debated with a pro-NEED advocate and went after him with everything he had. Then the following Saturday
he did the same thing with someone who’s against NEED. Putting both sides on the defensive until he made up his mind was just his way of doing things.”

“Do you think Redhouse’s support was for sale? Would he have been open to getting some money under the table?” Ella decided to speculate out loud and see where it led.

“No one associated with NEED would have the money to bribe an official. Even
if we wanted to do that, we couldn’t.” George said forcefully. “Every supporter we get has to be convinced, not purchased.”

Ella nodded. “Did you know the councilman personally?”

“I only met him once when I went to his office to drop off some pamphlets,” George replied.

“Okay, then. We’re finished here,” Ella said.

“Then come on. Let’s finish this. You can follow me home and have a look there,
too.”

Ella walked out with Justine to the parking lot. Either George Charley was a man with nothing to hide, or he was extremely clever. She toyed with the badger fetish around her neck, but it was nothing more than cool stone at the moment. Knowing that her intuition had never failed her, she searched her feelings but, this time, she found no answers there.

The drive took them east toward the edge of the reservation. North of the river on the mesa above were scattered small homes surrounded by very dry land capable of supporting only a few animals per mile. Most of the corrals they saw, constructed of split wood taken from felled cottonwoods along the bosque, contained
a horse or two. Often a half dozen lean-looking goats could be seen scratching for grass along a low spot or within an arroyo.

Hogback was a few miles away when George turned off onto a narrow path to the left, north, and they continued on to a fifty-foot-long single-wide mobile home sitting beneath several elm trees. The branches were bare this time of year, and the ground hard.

Two minutes
later they were at the door of the faded blue-and-white trailer, on a wooden step comprised of stacked pallets ingeniously bolted together.

“I rent the place from René Capitan,” George said, opening the door after a brief struggle with an uncooperative lock, a worn key, or both. “His family was allotted this land, but they’re not interested in raising livestock. He and his wife work at the coal
mine that feeds the power plant over there.” He pointed toward the tall smokestacks, visible for miles along the river valley and from adjacent mesas.

Ella looked around the small living-room-kitchen-dining area. The place was impeccable, and there was no clutter anywhere, even on the kitchen counter, which held a small built-in microwave and a coffeemaker, There was no sofa, just an easy chair
and a long wraparound desk with three computers. Beneath and beside the central computer was a two-drawer file cabinet. A small television sat on a shelf above the window at the front end of the mobile home.

Casually Ella looked along the bookshelves, which began above the desks and continued all the way around and above the door. All the books appeared to be in alphabetical order by title.

“You’ll find that I like order and neatness. My files—personal and business—are all alphabetized in that cabinet. Look through anything you want, but put things back the way you found them. I’ll go outside.”

“You’ll freeze,” Ella warned, pointing out the window. “It’s starting to rain. Make that sleet.”

He nodded, then sat down on the easy chair and stretched out his legs, looking down at his
boots.

Justine concentrated on the file cabinet while Ella looked along the desk and associated drawers and built-in cabinets above. On the lowest shelf above the left-hand computer, beneath a black stapler, Ella saw a Farmington dry cleaner’s ticket dated that day. “This says that pants and a shirt were dropped off to be dry-cleaned this morning.”

George came over and stared at the ticket in
surprise. “I use that dry cleaners, but I haven’t dropped off anything there in a couple of weeks.” He paused. “And, more to the point, I didn’t put that ticket there.” He pointed to a bulletin board attached to a partition serving as a divider between the living room and kitchen areas. “All pending business is tacked up so I see it every time I come in. That way I don’t forget.”

Ella picked
up the ticket by the edges. “Do you mind if I take this? If you’re sure it isn’t yours, I’d like to examine it for prints. I’m also going to go to the cleaners and see what I can find.”

“Knock yourself out,” he said.

Ella reached for an evidence bag, placed it inside, then handed it to Justine, who labeled the bag with a permanent marker.

“I want to go with you to the cleaners,” George said.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about all of this. First you come and tell me that my car may have been used to commit a crime, ask me about a pistol I don’t own, and now a claim check comes out of nowhere, dated today, for clothes I’m not having cleaned.”

“Could someone you know have planted that ticket on your desk?” Justine asked.

“I have people over all the time, but I haven’t been home since
yesterday.”

“Who else has a key to your place?” Justine asked.

“No one.”

“Not even Marie?” Ella asked.

“She doesn’t need one. I keep one at the office—” He stopped speaking and cringed. “It’s on a hook, but it’s not labeled,” he added quickly. “And it was there this morning.”

“Are you sure?” Ella asked.

He nodded. “If it hadn’t been there, I would have noticed. I’m always aware of things
that are out of place. It’s possible someone took the key before now and made a copy, but I can’t imagine that happening without either Marie or me noticing.”

Justine went to the front door and checked the doorknob. “It’s pretty beat-up,” she told Ella. “Someone could have jimmied the lock, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Do you have any explanation for how the ticket got there?” Ella asked him.

“Someone obviously found a way inside while I was gone.” George looked around quickly. “I wonder if anything is missing.”

They searched the small mobile home, but there was no sign of a break-in anywhere else, and nothing grabbed Ella’s and Justine’s interest. George, following behind them, couldn’t find anything missing or that didn’t belong there.

At long last they left his home and headed
to the dry cleaners, George following close behind them in Marie’s car.

“There’s something really weird going on,” Justine said, watching George’s car in their rearview mirror. “This guy’s not stupid, nor the kind to rob the Quick Stop or kill a councilman for a roll of cash. I know you suspect that it was a hit disguised to look like a robbery, but even so…”

“I agree with your instincts. Too
many coincidences keep popping up, and that makes me distrust what we’re seeing. But we have to follow all the leads and act upon whatever we find.”

“To me he seems more like a crusader than a murderer, you know? He’s not rich—not by any stretch of the imagination, yet he’s apparently willing to put his future on the line to get a power plant built that could really ease the tribe’s burden. I
think that’s admirable.”

Ella smiled at her. “Hey, are you getting the hots for this guy?”

“Oh, please.” Justine rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying he’s got a lot of courage. These days people generally aren’t willing to go out on a limb for anything.”

“Noted,” she said with a nod. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s being set up. I know what it’s like to be framed, so I’m going to cut him all
the slack that I can.”

When they arrived at Romero Cleaners in Farmington’s west side mall, Ella showed the young Hispanic clerk the ticket still inside the evidence bag.

“I remember Mr. Charley’s order,” he said. “I was in the back, helping Shirley, when he came in. He took one of our pads and made out his own ticket for a shirt and pants. He also scribbled us a note asking that a stain be
removed off the shirt. He’s a regular, and I recognized his car as it was pulling away, so we took care of it right away.” Glancing over Ella’s shoulder and seeing George Charley come in, he smiled. “Your shirt and pants are ready. Those bloodstains on the sleeve of the shirt were difficult to get out, but they’re gone now.”

“Bloodstains?” Ella asked.

The clerk nodded. “We do our own cleaning
on-site, and we’re very good with stains,” he answered. Shifting his attention away from her, he pressed a button and a carousel-type of mechanism brought the shirt and pants right to the clerk. “Oh, and we repaired a small tear on the sleeve, Mr. Charley.”

George Charley stepped around Ella and looked at the clothes. “These aren’t mine. I admit they look like they’re my size, but I don’t own
dress slacks like those. Nor do I have a wool shirt. Sweaters, yes. Shirts, no.”

Ella met the clerk’s gaze. “Did either you or Shirley get a glimpse of the person who dropped these off?”

“I just saw Mr. Charley’s car pulling out. Shirley never came out of the back at all.” He looked at George. “You didn’t write the note or leave these clothes?”

George shook his head. “Has anything else been
dropped off in my name?”

“Just these slacks and that shirt, that I know of. You sure it wasn’t you this morning?” he insisted, puzzled.

“It wasn’t me,” George assured.

“Do you still have the note with cleaning instructions that you said the customer left here for you?” Ella asked quickly.

The clerk looked at them and shook his head. “No. We added the instructions to our portion of the ticket,
then threw the note out.”

“Where’s your trash?” Justine asked.

“I took it to the outside bin. But the truck has already picked up the trash for today. It’s long gone.”

George Charley looked at the clerk. “That figures. From now on, if I didn’t drop it by personally, don’t accept it.”

“What would you like us to do with these clothes?”

“Give them to Goodwill, or the Salvation Army. Or throw
them away, for all I care,” George said.

“I’ll take them,” Ella corrected, handing the man a business card with her number on it. “If anyone comes in to claim them, just say they’re not ready and give us a call.”

After taking the pants and shirt from the clerk as evidence, Justine got a quick sample of George’s fingerprints. Finally, they headed back to Shiprock.

“I don’t think I’m going to
be able to get any evidence out of clothing that’s been dry-cleaned. But I should be able to match the fabric to what we found at the crime scene—or rule it out altogether.”

“Good. I’ll also want to know ASAP if there are any prints—in particular, George’s—on the claim check. If it’s not his ticket, and he’s never handled it, then his prints shouldn’t be on it. If they are…” She shrugged. “Well,
that’ll mean we’re closer to solving both murders.”

The remainder of the day went by slowly. Justine was working in the lab. Ralph Tache was conducting a search of the Redhouse home, with Emily looking over his shoulder, and later would be searching Billy Redhouse’s office.

Unless something turned up in the lab work or from those searches, like a stash of payoff money, for instance, they
still didn’t have much to link a particular suspect.

Too restless to sit around catching up on the paperwork while the rest of the team was in the field, Ella decided to check with her brother, Clifford. Maybe he’d heard something that could help her.

Ella had only gone a short distance south from Shiprock when she got the distinct feeling she was being tailed. Looking back in her rearview mirror,
she saw nothing suspicious, just an eighteen-wheeler coming up behind her, obviously in a hurry to get to Gallup. The company logo on the spoiler matched a big chain superstore she knew had recently opened in that near-reservation city.

The badger at her neck began to feel hot against her skin. Unwilling to disregard what had always been a reliable warning, she studied the area. There was a vehicle
about a quarter mile ahead, and she remembered it having pulled out before her west of the San Juan bridge about five minutes earlier. She considered it for a moment. If someone wanted to keep an eye on her without raising her suspicions, it would have been smart to lead the way and simply keep an eye on the rearview mirror.

Ella decided to go in for a closer look, but she moved slowly so she
wouldn’t tip off the driver in case her suspicions were right.

Ella gained a little ground, but then lost it again as the vehicle, a light yellow sedan, matched her increased pace. It had New Mexico tags, but she was too far away to read them.

The fact that the driver was keeping his distance sent a warning bell off in her brain. There was a chance it was all coincidental, of course, but she’d
acquired a suspicious mind after all her years in law enforcement.

Ella got on the radio and called Dispatch. “This is SI-One, Dispatch. Do we have any officers with a twenty south of Shiprock on 666?”

“Negative, SI One, but we can send a unit from Window Rock, if you need backup. ETA about forty–fifty minutes.”

Ella had already suspected she’d be on her own for some time. Window Rock held
police headquarters, but it was southwest of her location, just inside the Arizona state line. Having another unit intercept the car ahead of her would be possible, but only if she factored the delay into her plan.

She quickly weighed her choices. The car ahead was exceeding the speed limit slightly, but was the driver really a threat to her, or was she getting paranoid? Taking meager tribal
resources and manpower for what could turn out to be nothing more than an eccentric motorist would be pointless. On the other hand, the payoff could be big if it led to the killer or killers.

“Dispatch, send that Window Rock unit to 666 and have the officer inform me when he’s in position.”

Dispatch confirmed her instructions as Ella slowed her own vehicle, allowing the eighteen-wheeler to overtake
and pass her within the next three or so minutes. Once the big truck was ahead of her, she increased speed again and used it as cover to conceal her location.

Ella kept the sedan under surveillance, checking its position whenever the road curved. Within a few minutes, she realized the driver of the sedan had increased his speed to match that of the eighteen-wheeler behind him. Had the driver
been keeping an eye on her, he would have let the semi go past him, too.

A little less concerned, she decided to change the rules and see what the driver would do. If it turned out to be nothing, she’d save the unit from Window Rock a wasted trip.