Earthway (14 page)

As he hurried to the north parking area, Ella
pulled out her cell phone and contacted Ford, arranging for him to meet her near the bicycle rack in front of the science building. Using her simple telescope, she remained in the shadow of a Navajo willow and kept watch on the man. Almost as if he’d been warned by a sixth sense, he put on a pair of sunglasses.

Ford pulled up a minute later and Ella climbed behind the wheel as he slid over. Her
mark had jumped into a large
black Ford pickup. The only distinctive thing about the older model vehicle was that the license plate was obscured, despite the relative absence of mud elsewhere on the vehicle. It was a cheap trick, but an effective one.

The truck slowly approached one of the exits. The driver suddenly made a left turn onto the highway without signaling, raced down a block, then
made a right onto the next side street. The road was virtually deserted, so had she followed him, they would have been spotted for sure.

Her only advantage now was her knowledge of the area. Ella took a right at the highway, then cut left into a side street, knowing it paralleled the road the suspect had taken. Soon she saw the black truck passing through the intersection to her left.

Turning,
she sped forward, made a left, then came up to the stop sign just as he passed through the intersection. Ella purposely allowed two other vehicles to pass, then turned and followed, staying well back.

“He’s had some pursuit and evasion training,” she muttered, thinking out loud. “I’m going to need help. I’m getting Justine in on this.”

When their mark headed north on the road leading out of
Shiprock, Ella made arrangements for Justine to get ahead of him on the Cortez highway. They couldn’t pull the man over now without blowing their chances of identifying the others working with Dr. Lee. Yet they had to know who he was, or at least get a good look at him.

“Set up a quick roadblock just past the last stoplight and start stopping cars for a driver’s license and registration check,”
Ella said. “I’ll come up from behind in case he decides to veer off.”

Ella continued following the truck up the hill onto the mesa, staying three cars behind. Eventually, their mark stopped at a light behind another car. Then, without any warning, he whipped around the car in front of him, and
made a hard left, running the light and nearly getting struck by an oncoming car. Ella pulled out to
follow, but had to slam on the brakes to avoid a car turning toward them from the right. They slid forward, barely avoiding clipping the sedan on the driver’s side. Another car behind that first one slammed on the brakes, nearly rear-ending the vehicle she’d almost hit broadside. Both drivers started honking their horns, and the one she’d almost hit flipped her off.

Ella waved both cars on, then
made the left turn and pulled over to the side of the road.

“He made you. But how?” Ford said, running an unsteady hand through his hair.

His voice was a pitch higher than normal, yet, considering that they’d barely avoided a major accident, he was handling things remarkably well.

“I had a feeling I was dealing with a pro, but I never saw that move coming,” she answered. Ella turned back out
into the street and entered a residential area that had once included a large boarding school and faculty housing. “Help me check the roads north and west for that truck. It couldn’t have gone far, and we can now bring the driver in for traffic violations without blowing everything.”

Ella called in extra patrol units, and, dividing the area into sectors, mounted an intense search. Staying off
the main highway, which was covered by other units, she headed along the north side of the river into a farming area less developed than the one where Dr. Lee lived.

“Why did you choose this particular route?” Ford asked.

“In his shoes, I would stay off the main roads, knowing most will be watched, and go someplace where I could find other transportation—something innocent looking.”

After several
minutes of searching, they found the man’s truck abandoned about a quarter mile from a farm building, hidden from view until they got up close. The driver had gone down into a dip in the road where the path crossed an
arroyo. The door of the pickup was open, and the engine was still running. Ella called it in, then studied the tracks where the driver had exited the cab. Ford stood back, not wanting
to erase any of the marks, and remained silent, allowing her to concentrate.

“He’s about five foot eight or nine and wears a size ten shoe, but that doesn’t tell us much we didn’t know already.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to lift some prints from the truck,” Ford answered.

“Judging from the way he drives, he’s a professional, maybe at stealing cars. My guess is that this truck’s stolen, too, and
the only prints we’ll find will belong to the owner and his or her family. But at least for now, our suspect’s on foot.” She walked a little farther past Ford, toward the road, then stopped and cursed.

“What now?” Ford asked, not bothering to pass judgement on her language.

“Someone picked him up. There was another vehicle here, and they took off cross-country to the highway.” She pointed toward
the road in the distance, where they could make out several vehicles heading north and south.

“What about a roadblock?” Ford asked.

“The man’s probably ditched the cap and jacket, so we have no idea who to look for. All we could get is a long list of names, and there’s no sense tying up our officers like that.”

Ella called Justine and updated her. “Process the truck, and then the tire imprints
of the second vehicle. Then we’ll see what we’ve got.”

Ford’s gaze remained on Ella. “Don’t worry. There are other possibilities. I may have something for you once I go through the materials I downloaded.”

She nodded, lost in thought. “I’ll drop you off at Teeny’s as soon as I finish here.”

“While you’re working, I’ll power up my laptop,” he said.

Justine arrived ten minutes later, and although
they managed to find and lift several prints from the truck, Ella wasn’t optimistic.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, partner,” Justine said. “If not from the prints, the way the truck theft went down might give us a lead.”

“I hope so.” Ella grabbed her cell phone, and ordered Marianna Talk, who’d returned to the station, back to the college so she could keep a discreet eye on Dr. Lee again.

After plaster
casts and photos were taken of the footprints and the second vehicle’s tire imprints, Ella glanced around and realized that Ford was not in her SUV. After a quick search, she found him sitting in the shade of the overhang from the arroyo, working on his laptop. The hard, angry look on his face surprised her. Those weren’t emotions she’d ever associated with Ford.

“Ford?” she called out, but he
didn’t respond. “Ford!”

He looked up. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

“What’s up?” she asked, crouching beside him.

“When I tried to access one of these files, it erased itself. I have rescue software that can retrieve almost anything, but I haven’t been able to call it back.”

“Maybe Teeny can help you with that.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s my fault. I should have searched
harder for hidden triggers like those, but I got impatient. Maybe I’ve been out of the game for too long.”

Her heart went out to him. He wasn’t used to failure—no more than she was. “We all make mistakes. I nearly got someone hurt back at that red light.”

“You’re good at what you do, Ella. But I got sloppy. I’m doing too many things and none of them well.”

She could relate to his frustration,
she’d been there herself. “These days no one does just one thing, Ford. I’m a mom and an investigator and both are full-time jobs. When I make
a mistake, I dig in, fix it, and keep going. That’s the only thing we can do.”

“You don’t understand. I love being a preacher, but I also needed . . . more,” Ford admitted in a barely audible whisper. “Nothing could have stopped me from taking this job
for the Bureau. The fact that they came to me was one heckuva rush. I’ve missed the challenges of pitting my mind against a terrorist’s or a criminal’s.”

“You’re benefitting others with your work. Isn’t that what you’ve told me your God expects of you?”

He looked at her in surprise, then smiled. “You might have something there, Slim,” he drawled.

Ella laughed.

Forcing her focus back on the
case, she gestured to the tribal SUV. “We’re almost done here, so get ready to leave. We’ll be heading back to Teeny’s in another few minutes.”

Once they were on the road, Ella tried to push back her frustration. So far, she’d been outplayed, but she was determined to change that.

“If that file you tried to open is irretrievably lost, then she’s got some fancy equipment. That tends to support
our contention that she’s got something to hide,” Ella said, for his benefit as well as her own.

“If there’s
any
way to bring that file back, I’ll find it. I intend to ask Bruce for his help, too.”

That was another thing she liked about Ford. Most men would have rather cut out their tongues than ask for help. Ford didn’t share that affliction. “Teeny’s the perfect person to go to with a problem
like that. He loves a puzzle and dinking around with computer problems. He’d give up sleeping and sit at a keyboard twenty-four/seven if he could.”

“There’s an incredible feeling of satisfaction connected to this type of work when things go right. But it has another side, too. When you work hour after hour and get nowhere, it feels like you’re drowning one inch at a time.”

“My work’s like that,
too,” she answered. “Take this case, for example. I want answers, but each time I get close, they slip right through my fingers.”

“You expect too much from yourself—more so than anyone else does,” Ford said. “We’re barely out the starting gate.”

They arrived at Teeny’s fifteen minutes later. Once in front of the computer, both men became completely engrossed in what Ford had downloaded from
Dr. Lee’s laptop.

Ella watched them for several minutes, then realized that neither of them would have a quick answer for her and there was little she could add to their conversation. Moving away so as to not distract them, she contacted Justine.

“Were you ever able to follow up on the rat poison or the capsules?” she asked her.

“The poison was stolen from Garner Feeds, as Bruce discovered.
The capsules are tougher to track. They’re sold over the counter at almost every pharmacy in the area, not just health food stores. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

“Nothing about this case is easy. Marianna’s keeping Dr. Lee under surveillance, but I’ve realized that we need to double-team the professor and combine short- and long-distance surveillance.”

“If you need my help,
I’ll squeeze in some extra hours.”

“Good. Let’s work up a schedule. I’ll see you at the station.”

Ella and Justine met twenty minutes later in the station’s parking lot. They’d just entered through the side door when Big Ed motioned them into his office and asked for an update.

Ella told him about her plan to double-team Dr. Lee, but as she finished speaking, Big Ed shook his head. “Use Joe
Neskahi. Justine fits in easier with the student population, but a lot of people know Justine’s your partner. I doubt Dr. Lee has ever seen Joe unless he’s pulled her over in traffic.”

“Good point.”

As they left his office, Justine glanced at her. “Guess he’s right. Joe’s a better choice.”

Ella was about to answer when her cell phone rang. One look at the caller ID told her it was Ford. Ella
started to say hello, but he broke in immediately with news.

“First we backed up everything I’d downloaded so we’d have a duplicate copy. Then we retrieved part of an e-mail exchange she’d deleted last week. It was an automatic delete, but it was still there because it hadn’t been overwritten,” Ford said.

Ella could hear Teeny in the background giving Ford information in that clipped voice of
his that told her they’d found something important.

“We’ve learned that Dr. Lee bought a revolver from Jake Rowley—actually Rowley’s Pawn Shop in Farmington. What we still don’t know is if she’s picked it up already,” Ford added. “One more thing. She had Jake work on the pistol so she’d have a smoother trigger pull.”

“Like a hair trigger?” she asked, thinking out loud.

“Could be,” Ford answered.
“But why a professor would need something like that . . . well, that’s the real question isn’t it? All of a sudden she’s thinking self-defense?”

“A background check should have been made, but come to think of it, I doubt that her misdemeanor arrests in past demonstrations would be enough to deny her the purchase. I’ll check with Blalock and see if the Feds have the application on file,” Ella
said.

Teeny’s booming voice came over the phone a moment later. “Don’t count on it being a legitimate purchase, Ella. Rowley does a lot of business under the table. When you go talk to him, watch your back, too. The Farmington PD has arrested him several times, but the charges never stick. He’s half-weasel and half-cutthroat, and word has it that
he’s greased a lot of pockets to keep his firearms
dealer permit.”

“Good to know. Thanks. Rowley’s outside our jurisdiction, so Blalock will ride along with me,” she said. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“The stuff that’s in the pawn shop is run-of-the-mill. Rowley generates the bulk of his income by offering special services. It’s said that he can get any weapon a customer requests, then modify it to suit. I understand that he knows how to
convert a variety of weapons to full automatic, and that he makes quality silencers.”

“Thanks for the intel,” Ella said. She then called Special Agent Blalock and gave him the details. “See if you can find any record of a background check.”

Ella drove to Blalock’s office on the mesa as they spoke. Ten minutes later she sat across his desk in a building that held mostly tribal offices.

“Give
me another minute, Clah,” he said, hitting the print button on his computer, then collecting the pages as they came out.