Coyote's Wife (20 page)

“The news frightened her,” Ella answered simply.

Dawn said nothing for a long time, riding Wind in silence. At long last, she answered. “
Shimasání
doesn’t understand that you can’t stop doing what’s right just ’cause the bad guys want you to.”

Momentarily at a loss for words, Ella turned her head and looked back at her daughter.

“It takes a lot to stand up to bullies,” Dawn added
quietly.

Ella suddenly understood that Dawn was correlating what had just happened to them with what she’d experienced at school several months back. When Dawn had defended a kid who was being picked on, the bully had turned on Dawn. Her daughter had asked the kid to walk away, but when he didn’t, she’d kicked him in the groin.

The teacher, who’d seen the incident through a window but rushed
up too late to intervene, had given Ella the details. Ella had been proud of her daughter’s courage, and Rose had, too, though she’d mumbled a lot about the similarity between Ella and Dawn.

“
Shimasání
’s wrong, Mom. Sometimes, there isn’t another way except to fight back, and you can’t wait for someone else to do it for you.”

Ella told Dawn once again how proud she was of her. “You’ve shown
all the qualities I’ve always respected and admired.”

Dawn beamed.

By the time they reached home, Rose was waiting for them by the corral. Although Herman was working on his
old pickup, Ella could see his thirty-thirty lying on the running board within arm’s reach.

Rose held on to Wind’s reins as Dawn got off, her careful gaze checking her granddaughter for any injuries. Then she glanced at
Ella, who’d replaced Chieftain’s reins with a halter before tying him to a post.

“Did either you or my brother happen to spot that red truck going by?” Ella asked her.

“No, daughter, and all three of us were looking.” Rose waved in the direction of Herman. “A police patrol car has already come down the road and back since you called.”

She had no doubt that Big Ed had dispatched a cruiser as
soon as he’d heard her story. Before she could comment, Herman, who’d closed the hood on his pickup, came over and took the horse brush from Ella’s hands.

“I’ll take care of this for you,” he said. “You’ll have business to attend to.”

The look he gave told her without a doubt that one of his nephews, either Phillip or Michael Cloud, must have called and told him exactly what was happening. Ella
thanked him, then, after giving her daughter a quick hug, hurried inside to change clothes.

She was on her way less than ten minutes later in the department vehicle, driving up the road leading to the spot she and Dawn had been ambushed. When her phone rang, Ella picked up the call.

“Is Dawn okay?” Justine asked quickly. “I heard about the firecrackers.”

“Yeah, she’s fine, but she got thrown,
and I had to fight to stay on Chieftain. My kid could have broken her arm, or worse. I want those guys, partner.”

“We all do. Did Big Ed tell you that they took out my tires, windshield, and the driver’s side window? My pickup wasn’t new, but it was new to me. I’ve only had it three months.”

“Sorry about that, but it could have been a lot worse. At least you weren’t hurt.”

“Yeah, you’re right,”
Justine answered.

“What’s next on your agenda?”

“I’m at my place now taking photographs and doing a walk around. I’ve got one bullet hole that went through the right hand corner of my windshield and the driver’s side window. It was at least a thirty caliber high velocity round. I’ve checked the trajectory and narrowed down where he must have been in order to make that shot. From the distance,
I suspect he was using a rifle with a scope, but he still would have had to have been a fairly decent marksman. So which site do you want me to process first—the one here at my house, or the one where you and your daughter were attacked?”

“Gunfire takes priority over firecrackers, so stay where you are. I’m on my way back to the spot where they came after me and my kid. I’ll get what I can there.
Have you heard from Tache?”

“He’s processing his own scene. He was targeted five minutes before me. I just spoke to Joe and he’s on his way over to help him finish up. When they’re done there, they’ll join me.”

“Did Joe mention anything about Arthur Brownhat’s whereabouts this morning? I asked him to check on that.”

“He spoke to the officer who had Arthur under surveillance and he’s been home
all morning working on his truck with one of his brothers.”

Ella continued to where the perp had parked his red pickup. She took photos of the tire tracks and footprints, which were not the Nikes she’d hoped they were, then followed them back to the spot beside the arroyo where the firecrackers had been thrown. After locating the smoothed out marks on the earth where the perp had gotten down
on his knees to stay low, she photographed them, then checked
for any matches he might have used. Of course it was always possible that the perp had used a lighter.

A quick search of the bed of the arroyo revealed fragments of exploded firecrackers, and three that hadn’t gone off for various reasons. Those she promptly bagged. She then circled outwards from the spot where the perp had struck,
searching in a widening spiral for any other evidence that might give her a lead.

As she worked, what bothered her most was the timing of the events. There was no doubt that they were dealing with multiple assailants—at least two of them snipers. The only way Justine and Ralph could have been attacked by the same person was if the perp had traveled by helicopter—and a fast one at that.

Ella
was still searching the ground, bagging a few more firecrackers that hadn’t gone off and might hold prints, when she heard an approaching vehicle—a geared-down pickup, judging from the sounds. Knowing Justine was nowhere near, Ella ducked against the shallow sides of the arroyo, reaching for her holster.

Soon the area around her grew silent. From the cloud of dust, Ella could tell that the vehicle had stopped farther down, around a curve in the arroyo.

She waited, scarcely breathing. With luck, it would turn out to be whoever had thrown the firecrackers, returning to gather up evidence he’d left behind. There was nothing she would have liked better than
arresting the dirtbag who’d endangered her daughter.

“Clah, I saw your vehicle. Where you hiding?”

It was Agent Blalock’s voice. Ella recognized it instantly. Taking her hand off the butt of her weapon, she called back to him. “Over here, around the curve. How did you find me?”

“Big Ed, then your family,” Blalock said, coming down the hill to join her. “Big Ed filled me in, and once I got to
your house, Mr. Cloud and your daughter gave me directions on which road to take.”

Ella nodded, meeting the tall, broad-shouldered Anglo agent halfway. Blalock was wearing a warm-looking navy blue Bureau jacket and baseball cap, really dressed down compared to the first time she’d met him, years ago. Dwayne
Blalock had come to terms with his assignment in the Four Corners. While he wasn’t really
considered a friend of the tribe by most citizens, he’d gained enough respect not to be considered an enemy. That was an improvement.

As they walked to the area where she’d seen the perp, she filled him in on the details. “If my kid had been seriously hurt…,” she said, not finishing the thought. Remembering how her daughter had handled the experience, she smiled to herself.

“I know that grin.
You’re thinking of rearranging his face when you catch up to him?”

Ella laughed. “Not exactly, but that thought improves my mood, too,” she said, then told him about Dawn.

He smiled. The gleam in his eyes, one brown and the other blue—hence his very unofficial Rez nickname of FB-Eyes—showed he was sincere. “She’s a chip off the old block,” he said, helping her complete a close survey of the
surrounding area.

They found a few more fragments of firecrackers, and a wooden match, freshly used. Each was bagged and tagged, and Blalock took photos of the scene with his own camera.

After they’d gathered all the evidence they could find, Ella motioned in the direction of the road. “Let’s go join Justine at the other crime scene,” she said.

He fell into step beside her. “I wanted to ask
you about the cases you’re currently working on. Is there one in particular that might have precipitated these attacks?”

Ella told him about Ervin Benally and StarTalk, then about the vigilante efforts of the Fierce Ones. “But the Fierce Ones wouldn’t have endangered my kid. They want approval from the Navajo Nation. Endangering an elementary school child with a stupid stunt like the one the
perp pulled doesn’t have their signature. They would have come at me directly.”

“I agree with you,” he said. “If I’d been on that ride with you instead of your daughter, maybe. I’m far from their favorite person. The Fierce Ones consider the Bureau, and me by extension, their enemy.”

“The Fierce Ones want total control. We stand in their way so we’ve all become their enemies,” Ella answered.
“But right now they’re even more dangerous than usual,” she added, giving him the details about their power shake-up as she walked with him to his pickup.

Ella drove the tribal SUV to Justine’s home, Blalock following, though he knew the way. Justine was standing at the end of the dirt road that led to her pitched-roof, ranchstyle home, farther downhill. Parking about fifty feet away, Ella and
Blalock walked over, looking at the ground, careful to avoid destroying any possible evidence.

“Is this where the shooter was positioned?” Ella asked as they came up.

Justine, who was standing beside the dirt road studying tire tracks, nodded, then adjusted the strap of her camera, pushing it farther up her shoulder. “From the trajectory of the bullet holes in the windshield, he would have had
to have been in this general area, but I haven’t found any footprints or casings yet, just these vehicle tracks.”

Blalock looked down at the pickup that was parked in front of the house. “That your truck parked way over there?” Seeing Justine nod, he added, “to shoot from three hundred yards with any degree of accuracy takes skill. Former military’s my guess, or someone who spends a lot of time
on the shooting range, like a gun club member. But
where
are his footprints?” he added, mostly to himself. “And the brass? They would have been ejected.”

“Don’t see any,” Ella answered. “Maybe he took the shots from inside his own vehicle. He undoubtedly used a rest of some kind to steady his rifle.”

“If he took the shots from his vehicle, we should be able to find him. He’s the newly deaf guy,”
Justine snapped.

“You have a point,” Ella said with only a trace of a smile. She knew when her partner was seriously pissed off. “Let’s look for the rounds, then. From this height, those bullets would have hit the ground somewhere down there.”

After verifying that the shooter hadn’t conveniently left any shell casings at the scene, they marked the area where they’d guessed the shooter had been
with a small mound of rocks, and rode down to Justine’s home.

“Was Emily home when this happened?” Ella asked Justine, who was riding with her. Emily Marquez, Justine’s roommate, was a sergeant in the county sheriff’s department.

“No. She’s off on vacation, hiking and rafting somewhere in the Rockies with a tour group.”

Once they arrived, they searched around the area of the pickup, but were
unable to find any bullets, only two small impact spots where the low angle of the bullets had caused them to ricochet off the packed gravel driveway. Next, they lined up the bullet holes through the windows, and soon had a section of ground farther away to search for impact marks. Although they scoured the area carefully, after thirty minutes they’d still found nothing.

“The bullet might have
ricocheted from here again. That means it could be hundreds of yards from here, and maybe at an angle as well. We’ll need a good metal detector and remarkable luck to find anything at all,” Blalock pointed out.

Before Ella could respond, her cell phone rang and she recognized Ralph Tache’s voice immediately. “I’ve found one of the slugs,” he said. “It’s too deformed to be linked conclusively
to any particular weapon, but the base of the bullet is intact, and I measured it. It’s a jacketed hunting round from a .270 caliber rifle.”

Ella conveyed the news to Blalock. “Ralph lives about fifteen miles away, and the timing of the incident here and the one at his place makes it clear they were carried out by different suspects, and with different weapons.”

“Have Neskahi and Tache join
me here with the metal detector,” Justine said. “Maybe we
will
get lucky.”

Shortly afterwards, Big Ed called and ordered Ella to the station. She glanced at Blalock. “If you can give me a ride into Shiprock, I can leave the tribal unit here for my partner. She’ll need it to get to the station.”

“Good thought. I need to meet with Big Ed myself.”

They drove back to the station in Blalock’s pickup,
a tense silence stretching out between them.

“What’s on your mind, Ella?” he asked at last. “Something’s bugging you.”