Moonlight Water (23 page)

Red gave up on making sense of life. He held the .45 ready. Something to restore order.

She darted around sagebrushes and pounced on the body. “Are you all right?” She was screaming and bawling at the same time.

The body sat up. It was brown, black-haired, and young-faced, not Wayne Kravin at all. From the single braid in back a big feather, painted blue, dangled from a thong.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm okay,” an irritable male voice said.

He rolled onto his knees, stood up, and nearly fell down.

She grabbed him by the shoulders. She hugged him. She held him at arm's length. She shook him. She hugged him some more.

“What's going on?” Red said, half-voiced.

The stranger flexed arms and legs, making sure they still worked. He looked at Zahnie angrily and then warily at Red.

“Damon,” said Zahnie, “this is Red Stuart. Red, this is my son, Damon.”

*   *   *

Now Red understood the hugging followed by shaking followed by hugging followed by cussing. The usual response of every parent to every teenage kid.

Damon's response was simpler. He clammed up. Young fellow couldn't have shut his mouth tighter if his mother had read him his rights. He sat in the shade of the Bronco, drank their water, and ate their trail mix, but he wouldn't say a word. Even “yes” and “no” for water and food were so soft and sullen Red saw the words instead of hearing them.

Zahnie went to work, whipsawing from Zahnie the cop to Zahnie the mom.

“Why aren't you in Santa Fe?”

A flat, bored look.

“Dope easier to get here?”

More flat and bored.
Sheesh.
Red remembered feeling just like that once.

Zahnie reached out and thumbed an eyelid up.
It's illegal search and seizure for a cop,
Red thought,
but not for a mom
. “You're stoned out of your mind right now. Your pupils are blown up like black balloons.” He was a stoner, all right, body covered with tattoos. Red had never seen a tattoo on a Navajo before.

Damon shook Zahnie's hand off. Red knew exactly where the boy was coming from. He ached for both son and mother.

Zahnie snatched in a breath and held it, and for an instant Red felt her grief and fear. But her voice came out hard. “Damon, what are you doing in Lukas Gulch?”

No answer.

Yeah, if Red were Damon, he'd stonewall her, too.

“How'd you get Wayne Kravin's ATV?”

A scared look flitted across Damon's face right then, but he shook his head and said nothing.

“You working with Wayne?”

The kid shook his head no, which was an improvement.

“You steal the ATV?”

The kid shrugged. Red didn't know what that meant.

“What are you doing in Lukas Gulch? I think Wayne Kravin is looting somewhere around here. I pray it isn't something worse. You said you'd never come back to Moonlight Water. What are you doing here?”

Bored silence. An act, but a good one.

Now her tone softened. “Damon, I try to put you out of my mind. Every day I'm scared what trouble you're going to get into. You're going to get busted. You're going to OD. You're going to end up dead. If I dwelled on it, it would kill me.”

The kid just hung his head.

“Now it looks like you're in big trouble. If you don't tell me, I can't help you.”

Damon tried to hide his face and wagged his head no.

“Damon?” A big tear slid down from one of his eyes. Then another went wavery down from the other eye. “Damon?”

The kid's chest heaved upward, a sob burst out, and he collapsed forward onto Zahnie's shoulder. She held him with both arms and rocked him. The sobs came loud and hard and racking, with a worrisome undertone of panic.

“Damon, what's going on?”

He raised his face to hers and, half-blinded by tears, said, “I'll take you there.”

*   *   *

“There” was about half an hour up the gulch, bumping along at a pace a cripple could have walked. Red sat in the back to put Damon and his mother together. Not that Damon seemed to notice his mother, or Red, or anything else except the dread and fear he was floating in.

Red stuck his head out the window to dry the sweat off his face and neck, and for some reason he looked up. Overhead a buzzard circled. For no reason at all, he thought,
Ed. If Damon climbs further inside himself, Ed will lead us where we need to go.
Red kept watching Ed. In many circles, with great patience as he waited for the slow human beings, Ed was arcing up the canyon with them. Red drew his head in for the sake of the shade. Ed was on the job. That fantasy actually made Red feel better.

Suddenly, without a word, Damon pointed off to the right (with his finger, Red noticed, not his lips in the usual Navajo way). Zahnie frowned slightly and forced the SUV cross-country in that direction.

“Stop.”

She obeyed. They sat in front of a huge red boulder that seemed to be mirroring heat at them. Damon got out, slammed the door loudly enough to cause rockfall, slithered to the side of the boulder, and again pointed with his finger.

Zahnie and Red got there at the same instant. She sucked in air so hard she made a little shriek.

Red had never seen a body ripped open by gunfire. The hole in Dr. Nielsen's chest was huge, red, and hot, like a volcanic crater. His life's blood had blasted away, lava from a living heart, now splattered on his clothes and in the dust, desiccated.

By clamping down, Red kept his breakfast.

“What happened?” said Zahnie softly.

“They killed him,” said Damon, his voice squeezing out of a throat tight with fear. “He … Never mind. They killed him. They're looking for me. They'll be back soon, and if we're still here, they'll kill all of us.”

*   *   *

Zahnie said this was a crime scene, so they couldn't touch the body, much less bury it, or even cover it with rocks—had to be left as-is for the investigating officers. But Red knew it wouldn't stay the way it was. He looked into the sky for Ed. There the buzzard was, riding a thermal in big circles around their little group. Ed might hold off, but his colleagues and other critters wouldn't.

Zahnie tried to get a GPS reading and cursed. Without hope, she tried the radio. “The canyon walls are blocking our angle on the satellite,” she said. “Can't report the crime.”

Damon pleaded, “Crime scene, my ass, it's a murder scene, and we're the ones gonna get murdered. Please, let's get the
fuck
out of here.”

That gave Red's brain a good kick in the tail, and instinctively he felt for the .45. Zahnie frowned but jumped into the Bronco and gunned away, leaving James Nielsen's body behind. Half an hour later they passed the ATV. Zahnie spoke her determination through her foot on the gas. She also read Red's mind, for she said, “Hell, we left all sorts of tracks. The bad guys will know someone was there.”

She paused and looked across the bench seat at her son. “Damon, who exactly are
they
?”

The boy just stared out the window.

Lonely. Alone. Miserable about it.

Thought Red,
Like me, a lot of times.

Damon made refusal into a palpable force. Once in a while, Zahnie would demand, “Damon, exactly who are they?” Damon would answer with stone-heavy silence. Zahnie would hold her breath in anger, glare at Damon, and then sigh. Five minutes would pass, and Zahnie would ask, “Damon,
exactly
who are they?” Again the teenager would whack her upside the head with the rock of muteness.

It went this way until Zahnie suddenly said, “This is far enough.” She didn't let Damon protest. “I'll radio in the crime, we'll have lunch, and we won't go back until we've got some cops on the scene.” She punched some buttons and gave the sheriff their present location. Then she got the cooler out, pretending not to notice how antsy Damon was.

“Okay, they are looting in Lukas Gulch. Are you part of them?”

No answer.

The kid concentrated fiercely on opening his cellophane package of crackers.

For the first time Red really scoped out the kid physically. First glance you'd think he was older than seventeen, slender, and with a handsome, sculpted face. Second glance said he was truly a kid, wanted to pull attitude but couldn't. The only incongruity was that he wore a necklace with some polished inlaid stones in a setting of silver (Red later found out it was Zuni, and way expensive). He wore his shorts and tank top in a nonchalant way, but he made them look good. With his build, style, and sultry expression, he might have been a very masculine male model.

“What were you doing up there?”

He was stonewalling his mother, hard.

“Are you looting too?”

Stonewall, stonewall.

She handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and said what had to come next, trying to conceal the hint of quiver in her voice. “Do you know you're headed for a murder rap? Accessory, at least.”

Damon looked at her with stony eyes. “Goddamn you,” he said, quiet and hard.

Then he hid his expression by staring down at his sandwich.

Zahnie glared at him.

“Be right back,” he said. He rose smoothly and walked the twenty steps to the SUV, opened the passenger door, and slipped in.

Suddenly, Red realized what was happening. He jumped and ran for the Bronco. Damon cranked the engine and made it roar. The Bronco threw up dust and jerked forward.

Red hurled himself at the passenger door, caught both arms in the open window, and clamped on.

The Bronco shot ahead. Damon looked at Red and yelled, “I can't go to jail!” He wiggle-waggled the Bronco. Red held on, but he was going to need his teeth to keep it up. “She has her radio,” Damon hollered, “and I'll radio in your location.”

He wiggle-waggled the Bronco harder, left and right and then hard left.

Red lost it and sailed for the sagebrush. He slid and rolled through branches that scraped and poked him. He got his breath back and sat up.

Zahnie was standing in the middle of the road, screaming at Damon.

The Bronco stopped a hundred yards away. The driver's door opened. Damon got out, opened a rear door, set their packs and a big water container on the ground, looked toward his mother for a long moment, got back in, and drove off in a spurt of dust.

 

28

UGLY BUSINESS

Don't eat from a pot that is still cooking. You'll starve to death someday.

—Navajo saying

 

This wasn't Red's big fantasy.

She looked at him and said stonily, “They'll get right out here.”

She led the way to the shadow side of a tall boulder. He wanted to take her hand, but it wasn't the time.

Red's mind was on what had happened between them the night before. His heart was playing in keys he hadn't remembered in years. Maybe she felt the same. Maybe not all the tears in her eyes were bitter or angry or grieving. He sought her gaze, but it was turned inward.

Murder will do that,
Red said to himself. Especially when your own kid is implicated.

After a few minutes she relaxed. “Look here,” she said. She sketched with a finger in the air and he saw. A drawing of a horse was incised into the boulder. She reached higher. “And another.” She pointed to the lower left corner of the rock with a boot. “And one more. They're horses,” she said. “What does that mean to you?”

Red shrugged. “Don't know.”

“They're Navajo, and after the Spanish came. No horses in the Four Corners until Europeans brought them.”

“No whirlybirds, either.”

He'd heard the copter an instant before she did.

She kissed his cheek lightly. “Now it's all business.”

*   *   *

Damon was wearing cuffs. “Sorry, Zahnie,” said Sheriff Rulon Rule. “He was easy to spot, and he knows enough not to run from a gun.”

Circling, the copter managed to trail the SUV to the crime scene, landing at the junction of the two tracks, so the wind from the rotors wouldn't disturb any evidence. Two deputies scouted, one armed with an automatic rifle, the other with a shotgun.

Rulon Rule's voice was hard. “What's going on, Zahnie?”

She led the way behind the boulder.

Rule's voice was tinged with emotion now. “James Nielsen shot to death.”

Finally, Rule huffed his breath out and looked around. “What's Damon got to do with it?”

“Nothing, except he found the body.”

Being hopeful,
thought Red.

“That man?” Rule inclined his head toward Red.

“Nothing at all. This is Red Stuart. He was camping with me.” She walked over and took his hand.

The sheriff gimlet-eyed Red.

“In fact, please let Red take the Bronco back to Tony's.”

“You sure he was camping with you at the time of the shooting?”

“Beyond sure.” She added a look that clued the sheriff in.

The sheriff nodded. “Okay.”

Zahnie leaned her head against the front of Red's shoulder. “Take the Bronco home. Don't know when I'll be back, maybe half the night. I'll meet you in the Granary. In bed.” Red eased out the air he was holding in his chest.

“Let's do what we have to do,” the sheriff graveled at the coroner. To the copter pilot he hollered, “Take this boy in and put him in Holding.”

“Mom!” Damon's voice was sharp. Zahnie and Red turned to him.

Damon drew both of them aside and spoke softly, pleadingly. “If I go to jail, they'll kill me.”

“Tell what you know and I'll do everything I can.” Compassion and toughness knit oddly in her face.

“Just keep me out.”

“Probably nothing I can do when you're a murder suspect.”

“Mom, don't you get it?
They will shoot me, too.
”