Coyote's Wife (2 page)

“I guess it’s time for these,” Justine said, opening the first aid kit and bringing out some latex gloves. “Sorry, I only have one pair for each of us.”

“It’ll do until Tache arrives with the crime scene van.” As a Navajo, touching anything that had been in direct
contact with the dead was repulsive to her. Unfortunately, that would invariably happen when she stripped off the latex gloves, unless she’d worn two pairs. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the
chindi,
the evil in a man that remained earth-bound after death. It was more of an ingrained reaction. Illogical, but as natural to her as avoiding the number thirteen or walking under a ladder was to an
Anglo.

“Suspicious death, right?” Justine said, reaching for her cell phone.

“Yes, until we know otherwise, so get Carolyn, too. We’re going to need the tribal ME’s expertise on this.”

Justine turned away, preferring not to look at the body while making the calls.

Ella, wearing her latex gloves, pulled out the victim’s wallet and examined it. The victim was George Charley, a forty-five-year-old
Navajo man who worked in Shiprock.

Ella returned to Justine’s truck and emptied the paper bags they’d used for snacks. With the victim’s wallet in hand, and the bags in the other, Ella walked back to where the body lay.

Justine, who’d completed the calls by then, took the
paper bags from Ella. After taking a close look at the wallet, she placed it into the cleanest-looking bag and labeled it
with the time and her signature.

“If the address is current and my memory is correct, the victim lives—lived—near Long Lake.” As a sign of respect, Ella avoided mentioning Mr. Charley by name. “There’s not much of anything out that way until you reach Naschitti, and no phone service. At best, he’s several hours’ walk from there, so unless he was drunk and wandered off, he must have gotten here
either by horse or vehicle. The employee ID says he worked for that new high-tech company, StarTalk, in their Shiprock warehouse. Check at the station and see if we can get a location on his next of kin.”

Justine called in and, after a few minutes, hung up and looked at Ella, who’d finished searching his pockets. “He’s got a wife. She’s apparently not employed and lives at the address on his
operator’s license. Also, as you suspected, there’s no phone service at his home.”

“We’ll process the scene first. Once we’re done, we’ll go by the residence and notify his wife.”

“What do you think, was it an accident of some sort? Or do you think someone cut him and hijacked his vehicle?” Justine asked. “I didn’t see you pull out any car keys from his pockets.”

Justine, petite and young-looking,
but with a seasoned hardness in her eyes, stepped closer and looked down at the body again. “I don’t see any obvious wounds on his torso. There’s that gash on his forehead. But his arm…that much blood means a severed artery.” Justine pointed to the deep, jagged cut that Ella had noted earlier.

“More than a knife did that,” Ella said after further visual examination. “His skin was ripped apart,
not sliced. Either he cut himself on a saw blade in a freak accident, or someone came at him with a chain saw and that’s a defensive
wound. There’s also that cut on his head, but that looks more like he bumped himself, judging from the swelling.”

“This reminds me of what happened to a friend of mine who worked at a lumberyard,” Justine said. “One day he caught his sleeve on the blade while trying
to brush away some sawdust. He’d turned off the saw, but the blade was still spinning. It pulled his arm right into the jagged teeth. Poor guy nearly died, even with the hospital just five minutes away. This might have been a similar type of accident, except this guy was alone and too far from help. He couldn’t stop the flow on his own, and just ran out of time—and blood. That would be my guess
for the cause of death.”

“Carolyn will have to make that determination,” Ella said. “But I think you’ve probably nailed it. Notice the sawdust all over his shirt and glued to his hands? He may have been out gathering firewood, cut himself with his saw, then panicked and ran. But you’d think he would have run to his truck,” Ella added. “You don’t hand carry wood this far from home. You haul it.
And losing that much blood, I doubt he could have walked too far from the accident site. Check the area, but stay close enough not to let the body out of your sight. I’m going to backtrack using the blood trail. His vehicle has got to be out here someplace.”

“And the chain saw or whatever he cut himself on,” Justine said, then added, “I’ve cancelled the EMTs, by the way.”

“Good. Keep an eye
out for anything that might be evidence, just in case this wasn’t an accident.”

Ella followed the trail of blood and mostly dragging boot prints up a steep hillside, finding a place where he’d obviously fallen before leaving the road. George Charley must have either become disoriented, or decided to take a shortcut.

Back on the dirt road, the victim’s trail, lined with drops and puddles of blood,
made a path that wound back and
forth, much like that of a drunken man. She was amazed that the victim had been able to walk as far as he had. He must have been in shock as he headed off in search of help.

Then she found deep tire tracks in the road, angling off to the side, downslope. The blood trail continued, so she followed. A late-model pickup had crashed through a sapling, dropped down
into a stand of low junipers, running them over, then struck a sturdy piñon head on. From the damage to the front she guessed the victim had probably been alert enough to brake somewhat, but not enough, obviously. It was the tree itself that had finally stopped the forward motion of the vehicle.

The scenario appeared obvious at first glance. For some reason Mr. Charley had swerved sharply and
ran over whatever vegetation had been in his path. After coming to a stop, the rear tires had dug holes in the soft ground, explaining why George Charley had taken off on foot. The big Dodge Ram, with its powerful Hemi engine that could outrun most sedans, had become stuck.

The blue paint on the side of the late-model Dodge was scratched and the door was dented, evidence of his collisions after
leaving the road. It seemed pretty clear that George had lost control, dizzy from the blood loss. The windshield wasn’t broken, but the rearview mirror was askew, and there was a small amount of blood on it.

The door was open and, as she approached, Ella could see a blood trail that extended into the cab on the driver’s side. She looked inside, careful not to smudge the single set of boot prints.
Nothing in there could account for what had caused the wound on his arm. The keys were still in the ignition, and the red light on the instrument panel showed that the engine had died, the gears still in reverse. To her, it appeared that George had been racing to find help, had passed out, and run off the road. The crash had probably caused the
bump and cut on his head, the result of being thrown
forward and striking the rearview mirror. Stuck and unable to back out, he’d left the vehicle and set out on foot. That had only hastened his fate.

Ella stepped back and examined the bed of the truck. There was no sign of a chain saw or any woodcutting tool inside, or anywhere around on the ground. The tailgate was down, and the bed was a third full of firewood, many of the pieces showing evidence
of having been freshly cut. Firewood farther up toward the road showed that some of the load had shifted and bounced out.

Ella reached into the cab and pulled out the keys, careful not to make contact with the blood, which was evidence. She then wrote down the vehicle tag letters and numbers for the New Mexico plates, and walked back up to the road. Following the tire tracks and trail of firewood
that had bounced out of the truck, she hoped to find the place where George Charley had met with his fatal injury.

After walking for about a quarter of a mile, Ella found the spot where the truck had originally been parked just off the road. Up slope, about fifty feet, was a chain saw on the ground beside two halves of a freshly cut pine log. Dirt had been kicked up, as if the chain had still
been running when it hit the ground. As she got closer, Ella saw the dried blood on the bar, pieces of flannel cloth and bloody dirt, plus chunks of something she didn’t want to even think about on the chain.

Ella methodically took in the rest of the scene. Several pine branches, freshly sawn, were resting on the ground beside a red plastic gasoline container. A double-bladed axe was leaning
against one of the bigger logs, and beside it, a bow saw. Right next to that were six beer cans, three of them unopened, three apparently empty.

“What an idiot!” Ella muttered. The man had been drinking while cutting wood.

Ella reached for her cell phone as she studied the ground where the truck had been parked. From the dug-out exit marks, she could see that George had driven off in a hurry.
Blood had also collected on the ground on the driver’s side where he’d paused to open the door.

Unable to get a cell phone signal from her current location, Ella walked back to the road. There, she discovered a second set of footprints that, judging from the pattern, had come from Nike athletic shoes and didn’t match George’s boots. Someone had come up to within fifty feet of where the victim
had been working, but no closer.

Noting that one of the shoe prints was on top of an arrival tire track, but partially erased by George’s hurried departure, she walked back down toward where the truck was parked. Though she searched carefully, she was unable to find any more of the athletic shoe prints. Either the person hadn’t gone that far, or maybe the trail had been permanently obscured when
George had driven away. Of course there was also a third possibility—maybe the tracks had been deliberately erased. Yet the more likely explanation was that someone had walked over out of curiosity, seen George cutting wood, maybe even had a conversation, then left. She’d have the beer cans checked for prints in case the visitor had been offered a drink.

Ella returned to the road, then followed
the athletic shoe prints, which went in the opposite direction. They disappeared next to a set of fresh tire tracks which were clearly not from the big Dodge. From the signs, the person in the athletic shoes had climbed into a vehicle at this location.

After sketching the shoe and tire pattern onto a page of the small notebook she always carried with her, Ella jogged back down the road to join
Justine. Thoughts of the second person somehow causing the accident from a distance
seemed pretty unlikely, but she still wanted to follow up on the identity of whoever had come by.

She’d been away for nearly forty minutes by the time she joined her partner again. Minutes after Justine had moved her pickup off the road, they heard the sound of vehicles coming up the mountain. Ella watched the
crime scene van and the ME’s unit come into view.

While Officer Ralph Tache climbed out of the van, Justine waved Carolyn to a spot beside her, then went to help Tache. Carolyn, wearing a long, white lab coat, climbed slowly out of her vehicle, then grabbed her medical bag from where it had been resting on the passenger’s seat.

Dr. Carolyn Roanhorse, a Navajo, was an exception to normal procedures in New Mexico,
where nearly all suspicious deaths were the responsibility of the state Office of the Medical Investigator. The Navajo Nation had been granted special status because they’d been able to provide their own highly qualified medical examiner.

Carolyn had been a full-sized woman for as long as Ella had known her, and she made no apologies or excuses for it. As a doctor, she knew the dangers of being
overweight, but she liked herself exactly as she was.

Unfortunately, a few months ago her knee had begun bothering her. Ella had heard a rumor that Carolyn had finally decided to go on a diet but, from where she stood, Ella could see no traces of its effectiveness.

Carolyn gave Ella a nod, motioned for her to stand back,
and approached the victim, her entire focus on the body. As she crouched,
Carolyn gave out an agonized yelp. Ella took a step forward, but Carolyn shook her head and gestured for her to stay back.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “It’s just this idiot knee of mine.” Concentrating on her work, she brought out the small audio recorder she carried in her black bag and began recording her initial impressions.

Ella instructed Ralph Tache, the third member of their Special Investigations
Unit, to work here with the ME. Then she and Justine loaded some evidence containers and equipment into her pickup and drove up the road to process the other two relevant scenes. A few minutes later they approached the spot where George’s truck had gone off the road. Ella gave Justine a few minutes to observe and take photographs before they moved in closer.

“Maybe he saw an animal and swerved
trying to avoid it, or he could have just passed out for a second. He was probably feeling really light-headed,” Justine suggested.

“Add to that the three beers he’d already powered down,” Ella said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. The empties are right next to his tools, which suggests he was the only one imbibing. Could you check out the cans for prints, though, just in case George shared? Let’s
check out the truck, get photos, collect anything relevant, then go on farther to where the incident occurred.”