Mourning Dove (19 page)

“Up ahead’s where my brother went,” Samuel said, cutting into Ella’s thoughts. “It’s halfway between the cliff and the
water, right between those big willows, next to the uprooted salt cedar.”

They hiked the rest of the way double-time. Then, at the outside edge of the bosque, Ella saw an old, traditional Navajo structure. Sweat houses, different from dwellings, were made to resemble a tripod at first. Then other sticks were added until the structure became airtight. Ella noted that the blanket that covered the
front was tattered. Her best guess was that the small hogan had been standing since the mid 1900s.

“My great-grandfather built this. It was here for the ones who came back from World War Two, Korea, then Vietnam—and now Iraq. Blacksheeps have fought in all the wars. Our clan’s returning soldiers would first come here, build a fire outside, then put heated rocks in the center and purify themselves
before meeting their families,” he said. “But unless Jimmy added several more blankets to that entrance, I’m not sure how much of a sweat bath he had the other day.”

“Plunging into that cold river afterward must have been an exercise in willpower,” Justine said and shuddered.

Samuel laughed. “Agreed, but it’s a tradition with the warriors in our family.”

He sang one of the verses of their sweat
bath song, and it took Ella a while to understand his Navajo, which wasn’t very good. But she got the last part which ended with, “An everlasting, peaceful world.”

Ella still felt the power of the song—power that came from tradition as much as belief. She smiled, remembering her mother telling her once that the heart of a traditionalist often beat inside the most adamant modernist.

“Those look
like Jimmy’s tracks,” Samuel said, pointing down
as they reached softer ground. The tiny hogan was about thirty yards ahead now, just past a low ridge. The river was about fifty feet away, down a bank, and wouldn’t rise even close to the hogan except at flood stage, which was rare.

Ella caught Justine’s eye, and motioned toward Samuel, reminding her partner to stick close to him. They continued
on, Ella leading the way when, without any warning, a sudden burst of gunfire erupted, kicking up tufts of sand all around them.

Ella dove into a thicket and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Justine and Samuel duck beneath the overhang of the bluff, into the shadows. Hidden among the brush, mounded by sand that provided some actual protection in addition to cover, she tried to determine the
location of the sniper. But every time she raised her head, more shots whistled past her.

E
lla had her pistol out now, but from the sound, the sniper was using a semiauto rifle or assault weapon. They were outgunned. “Anyone spot him?” she called out, scrunching up against a fallen cottonwood for more protection.

Several rounds hit the sand just beyond, kicking dust up. Ella twisted around, watching for the sniper as she felt for her radio, then cell
phone. Neither was working from their current location. “I can’t get a call through,” Ella hollered.

“Me, neither,” Samuel yelled back. More gunfire erupted, breaking off chunks of hardened mud above where he and Justine had sought cover, but too high to do any damage.

“Either he’s at the wrong angle to hit us, or he’s just trying to pin us down,” Ella yelled. “If we can zero in on his position,
I want you two to cover me while I make a move.”

Ella strained her neck, trying to peer from behind cover. Either their assailant was a bad shot, or he was just playing with them.

Four more shots struck, two in the sand between her and the two others, then two more into the overhang where they’d hit before. More chunks of dirt fell. “I think he’s . . .” Samuel yelled but his voice was drowned
out by an enormous thump that shook the ground like an earthquake.

Ella could feel the sudden rush of air strike her chest like a hand, then debris and dust dropped from the sky like an urban hailstorm. She kept her face down, covering her head with her arms as various objects bounced off of her and rattled all around. The air was hot and choked with dust, and she started to cough.

After about
ten seconds, the shower of dust and debris finally stopped. Spitting dust, pieces of wood, and leaves from her mouth, Ella raised her head slightly, brushing away the long shreds of cottonwood fibers that had been ripped away by the force of the blast. Now that the dust was settling, she saw a small crater on the other side of the ridge. All that was left of the sweat hogan was rubble.

Aware
that they were no longer being fired upon, Ella rose to her knees. Acrid white smoke was beginning to billow from the log fragments, now splintered and shattered, wood ablaze from the heat of whatever had just detonated inside the hogan.

As she stood, her phone signal reappeared. “I’m going to call it in,” Ella said. “Samuel, Justine, keep an eye out for the sniper in case he reappears.”

“Cover
me so I can go back to my unit,” Samuel said. “I’ve got a tactical radio that’ll reach halfway across the state. I’ve also got some serious firepower stored in the trunk.”

“Go,” Ella said, then glancing at Justine as her partner came out of cover just enough to get a better field of view, she added, “Stay sharp.”

Both remained low and among the brush, watching for movement around them as Samuel
sprinted back up the trail toward their vehicles. “As soon as we can move freely, I want this area processed with a fine-toothed comb,” Ella said. “I can still see Jimmy’s footprints in places, though the explosion took care of everything close to the sweat house. But maybe we’ll get lucky and some things were blown clear.”

“The sniper’s tracks will be obscured,” Justine said.

“For the most
part, yes, but some of his tracks should still remain,” Ella answered. “It’s unlikely that he managed to obliterate all of them. But we’ll have to work hard.”

Samuel came back up the trail carrying an assault rifle resembling an M-16. He positioned himself in a covering position, then signalled Ella. “I can cover both of you from here, but I don’t see any movement in or around where the sweat
lodge used to be.”

“Just keep watch,” Ella called back, “and every once in a while take a look behind yourself as well. We’re going in from the flanks.”

With Justine circling to the right, slightly, Ella edged to the left, then made her way over the low ridge that had shielded them from the main force of the blast and the flying debris. “I think the shooter’s long gone,” Ella said. “There are
tracks leading west. His goal was to keep us from getting to the hogan—and he succeeded.”

“This wasn’t the kind of thing a nut job does for fun, so maybe there was evidence in there he didn’t want us to see,” Justine said.

They passed beyond the remnants of the smoldering hogan, and were able to see the ground clearly on the far side. Ella nodded as Justine crouched down and pointed to the ground.

“Three men were here,” Ella noted.

“That explains the high rate of fire keeping us pinned, even when the charge was being set. What the heck are we dealing with?” Justine muttered, not expecting an answer.

Ella waved at Samuel. “Anyone around?”

“No. All clear. I’m coming in.”

The call for emergency backup was quickly canceled, but soon Tache, Justine, and Neskahi, the tribe’s crime scene team,
were there processing the evidence.

Leaving them to their work, Ella motioned for Samuel to join her over by the river. “The presence of these three people, along with their weapons and explosives, wasn’t coincidental. They
made it here just ahead of us, obviously, or the sweat house would have been destroyed hours, maybe days, earlier. So my question is why now? Someone—maybe you—has been watching
and monitoring us. Are you certain that you have
no idea
what we’re dealing with?”

“No one outside my family knew about this place. And I haven’t discussed it with
anyone
. I don’t know why the perps struck now. And, for the record, I’m
not
holding out on you,” he said firmly. “I want whoever killed my brother—more than you do.”

“Did you tell anyone you were coming here?” Ella asked.

“Just Dispatch.
And my sergeant,” Samuel added. “Had to because it’s out of my jurisdiction and I’m on duty.”

“Include directions to this place?”

“In general, yes. But someone could have just followed us,” Samuel pointed out.

Ella bent down, picked up a pebble, then threw it out into the river, watching the splash. Then she glanced over at him. “Tell me something—did your brother send you packages from Iraq,
or once back in the States? Mail, boxes, luggage, clothes? Anything at all, even a postcard,” she pressed, wondering, even hoping, that Jimmy had sent him a duplicate of the story he’d mailed her or the rest of it. That knowledge would go a long ways in establishing trust between them.

“No, there’s been nothing,” he said firmly. “Not even a damn postcard. Just a few e-mails or quick phone calls
at the beginning, then the one I already told you about when he returned.” He gazed at her, studying her expression, then added, “My brother’s death is not just the result of some punk carjackers screwing up, is it?”

“I hadn’t ruled it out completely—until now. Blowing up that economically worthless sweat lodge places what happened to your brother in an entirely new level of investigation. I
think Jimmy made some serious enemies. They killed him, tried to make it look like a carjacking, and are now trying to obliterate any trail, even a hint of one, that might lead back to them. Jimmy came
to this place before he died—and brought knowledge with him that they feared—maybe the identity of his killers. They couldn’t risk the possibility that we’d find a message he’d left us, or evidence
in that sweat hogan. So they blew it to hell.”

He nodded slowly. “It makes sense and ties in. He wrote about the sweat lodge in one of his old stories, and maybe even had a drawing or two.”

“And someone stole them from his house.”

“It would explain how they were able to find it, and maybe if they knew we were coming here now. . . .”

“They had to make sure they got here first so we wouldn’t
find anything they’d overlooked,” Ella concluded.

“I’ll poke around and see what I can find out,” Samuel suggested.

“No, that’s
my
job. What I need from you now is information you’ve been holding back on. I want to know who Juanita is and what part she played in the rift between you and your brother.”

Samuel averted his gaze, and stared off across the water, his jaw clenched. “That was a low
point in my life.”

“No more games, Samuel. I need answers,” Ella pressed.

He nodded once, then began slowly. “My brother and I were close when we were kids but, by the time I graduated from high school, we’d stopped being friends and hanging out together. He went his way, me, mine. We had nothing in common.”

Samuel cleared his throat, looking back for a moment at the officers working the crime
scene. Then, he continued. “He’d been gone for about three months when Juanita Betoni came to see me. She wanted to break up with my brother, but wasn’t sure if she should tell him while he was still over there. She was afraid he’d do something crazy and get himself killed, or get distracted and careless. My brother had been talking marriage in his e-mail letters and phone calls and making all
kinds of plans for both of them. Juanita didn’t want to lead him on, and wasn’t sure how to handle things, so she asked for my advice.”

“What did you tell her?”

“After seeing Jimmy’s letters, I suggested she tell him that they needed to slow down and wait until he returned before discussing anything serious.”

“Not break up, just slow down?”

He nodded. “I figured Jimmy would get the message
without losing face. Juanita appreciated my help, so we kept in touch after that. She didn’t really know any of the girlfriends or wives of the other soldiers in Jimmy’s unit, so she started coming over to my house to visit and talk, and share the news. One thing led to another. . . .”

“How did your brother find out?”

“I still don’t know, but he did. Maybe Juanita inadvertently told him. I got
an e-mail from him a few months later where he called me a few choice names. He accused me of betraying him, and moving in on his woman. Turning her against him. I guess in his shoes I would have done the same. But the truth is what he had with Juanita was over before I came into the picture.”

“Where can I find Juanita?”

“She lives in Kirtland, but works at the hospital in Shiprock. She’s a
nurse.”

“Okay, thanks.”

As Ella turned, he added, “Let me work with your crime team. Every extra set of eyes helps.”

Ella shook her head. “No, thanks. My people are used to working as a team, and you’ll just get in their way. Go home for now and try to write down anything and everything you know about your brother’s activities overseas and his duties and associates in the Guard. Call me if
you discover anything that seems important or out of place.”

Samuel walked back to his own vehicle, and Ella joined Justine, who was studying a set of footprints. “There were three men here recently, but only two of them today,” Justine said, “not three as we’d previously thought. The third set is older, and after
comparing them with those we saw originally, I think they’re a match to the deceased’s.
Now, after the explosion, we know why they pinned us down without really trying to kill us. There must have been something in the sweat house that they were afraid we might find. A hidden message?”