Mourning Dove (6 page)

“So, will you join me for lunch?” he asked, as the server brought him two full plates, one with a stuffed sopapilla that covered the dish, and another heaped with chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and thick gravy. Teeny’s bulk demanded more meat than a college football team’s training table,
so he usually ordered two full meals just for himself.

“Wow, if I ate just one of those servings I’d explode.” She’d had dinner with the big man before, and it was nothing short of impressive.

“Big boys gotta eat big,” he said.

“Food looks good, though. Wish I could stay, but I’ve got someone to meet.” With a wave she left Teeny to his banquet.

Once back inside her cruiser—an unmarked SUV—Ella
pulled out into traffic heading west, then called Carolyn Roanhorse. Though Carolyn and she were good friends, thanks to their
mutually busy schedules, they rarely managed to find time to get together. When they did, more often than not, it was on business. Despite that, their friendship continued strong, mostly because of the deep woman-to-woman understanding that existed between them.

Ella
was considered
’alní
by many, a person who walked the line between two cultures—Anglo and Navajo. It was a hard road to travel, but Carolyn’s path was even more difficult. She helped the tribe by serving them in a capacity that no one else would have willingly chosen. Belief in the
chindi
would forever make their M.E. a pariah on the reservation. Yet her job was crucial to the tribe. It gave them
a good measure of autonomy over investigations that took place on the Navajo Nation.

Carolyn’s marriage to the Anglo doctor, Michael Lavery, had seemed perfect at first. Both were forensic pathologists working with law enforcement, though out of different offices. Michael had retired, allowing them to be together, but, in the end, maybe they’d been too alike and too used to living alone. Michael
was gone now, having taken up teaching, and Carolyn was alone again.

Ella finally connected with Carolyn on the phone. “Hey, I thought I’d come by, so we could have lunch.”

“That’s not going to get you the answers you want any sooner,” Carolyn warned. “But a preliminary report is ready. The victim died of multiple bullet wounds to the heart and lungs from at least two different handgun-caliber
weapons. The rounds I recovered are here waiting for you. They look like commercial ammo, nothing extraordinary. The man took multiple hits but those weren’t immediately fatal,” she said, then after a pause added, “He had a lot of bullet holes in him, Ella. I tested for powder burns on his hands, and got a positive on his right hand. He returned fire and it looks like he put up one heckuva fight,
judging from the results of the powder residue. And I’ve verified the T.O.D. He died around seven in the morning as I suggested earlier.”

“Except for the guns, that fits in with the M.O. of the carjackers. They strike early in the morning, trying to get people going to work on the less-traveled roads. Drivers are half asleep, not really thinking about anything except getting to where they’re
going.”

“There are a lot of commendable reasons for dying, old friend, but protecting your car is a really bad one,” Carolyn said.

“Yeah, and an insured rental at that,” Ella agreed, lost in thought.

“So, I’ll see you soon?” Carolyn asked, bringing her out of her thoughts.

“I’ll be there in a half hour at most.”

Ella was halfway back to Shiprock when her cell phone rang. Looking at the display
she saw it was Rose. Dreading the call, she pressed the talk button.

“Your daughter is heartbroken that you can’t come. Couldn’t you at least stop by the school and wish her luck before she steps out onto the stage?”

The comment made Ella’s chest tighten. She took a deep breath. Maybe a few minutes wouldn’t hurt. “I’ll do my best.” Ella had just convinced herself that a small detour couldn’t
hurt, when her cell phone rang again.

“It’s Justine,” the caller said. “You have a package waiting for you here at the station. And, Ella—get this. It’s from Jimmy Black-sheep.”

“Open it carefully and find out what’s in it.” Mail from a dead man took priority. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

E
lla called Carolyn, postponing lunch, then dialed her daughter’s school and asked that Dawn be brought to the phone.

Hearing her daughter’s excited hello, Ella smiled and the hard edges around her heart disappeared. “I just wanted to wish you luck, pumpkin,” Ella said as she raced to the station.

“You can’t come, can you?” Dawn said in a mournful voice.

“No,
I’m sorry. But my heart’s going to be right there with you.”

“I know, and you were with my class all day when we went to Narbona Pass. But still . . .” a tiny voice replied.

Ella almost made the turn that would have taken her to Dawn’s school. “I love you, sweetie. More than you’ll ever know. But the tribe needs me. I’ll be there next time, you’ll see.”

“Daddy’s here,” Dawn said. “He wants
to talk to you.”

Ella’s grip tightened around the phone as Kevin got on. “Don’t worry about anything, Ella. I’ll be sitting in the front row along with our daughter’s grandmother and we’ll be clapping louder than anyone else.”

His voice was cheerful and she knew he was speaking for Dawn’s benefit. “I’m glad you’re there,” she said.

“She needed one of us.”

He’d spoken in a matter-of-fact tone,
but the words knotted her stomach until it hurt.

“So what kept you from coming this time?” he asked pleasantly in that same tone of voice that told her Dawn was still close by.

She imagined landing a solid punch in his midsection and found some satisfaction in that. Then she took a deep breath. “Certainly not the same excuse that kept you away the last
two
times. Just listen to the news and
you’ll understand. I’ll talk to you later, but right now I have to get to the station.”

“I’ve already told Dawn that you’ll make it up to her by taking her on a special horseback ride. Maybe even this weekend?”

She would have shot him on the spot—had she been there. “
Why
did you say that without checking with me first?”

“I knew that horseback riding is something you two do together. And you
can work out the timing yourself, right?”

The next voice she heard was Dawn’s. “Mom, can we? Can we go for a picnic lunch? Or an early morning pancake breakfast?”

Ella swore that next time she saw Kevin, she’d reach down his throat and yank his tongue out. “We
will
go, I promise, but it may not be this weekend. I have to wrap up this case first. Your father will explain once he listens to the
radio, or reads the newspaper.”

“Oh.”

Her daughter’s small voice pierced her. “Pumpkin, you know I love you. As soon as this case is closed, we’ll take off on the horses and stay out for as long as you want. Just the two of us.”

“Breakfast
and
lunch?”

To Dawn, the ideal breakfast was pancakes and the perfect lunch, hot dogs, both over a campfire. “We can handle that,” Ella answered, giving
her daughter, the negotiator, a few points. “But I’ve got to go back to work now,” Ella said as she pulled into the station and parked.

“Okay. Someday I’m going to be an officer, too,” Dawn said, then promptly hung up.

The declaration stunned her. Ella sat in her cruiser staring at
the wheel, trying to gather her thoughts. The
last
thing she wanted for her daughter was a career in law enforcement.
She took a deep, steadying breath. She was taking it too seriously. Dawn had also mentioned wanting to be a basketball player and a rodeo star within the past six months. Two walls in her room, full of photos of two very different kinds of arenas, testified to those impulses.

As Ella walked into the station lobby, she started down the wrong hall before remembering her new office. Reversing directions
and noting that if the duty officer behind the counter had seen her lapse, he wasn’t showing it, she hurried on. The new wing still smelled of fresh paint, and seeing Ralph Tache in the hall, hoped he wouldn’t get queasy from the odor. He’d been out sick yesterday.

Ralph nodded somberly as he joined her, his eyes filled with questions, not answers. As she went by Justine’s office, her partner
came out through a new doorway to the lab and followed them. “I left the padded envelope on your desk,” she said. “What’s inside is a real puzzle.”

Ella saw the red and yellow envelope as soon as she entered her office. She studied the label. It had been mailed from an office supply store in El Paso with an express counter. She wasn’t familiar with the streets in El Paso, but a glance at a map
would probably indicate the big envelope had come from a store close to the military base. Jimmy Blacksheep listed his Shiprock area address, and a phone number she didn’t recognize. She hadn’t seen a phone at Jimmy’s home; maybe the number was for his brother, Samuel.

Confirming it with a quick glance at Samuel’s FPD business card, she returned the card to her pocket and put on a pair of latex
gloves. Then she carefully reached inside the already opened thin cardboard envelope and extracted its contents while her team members watched.

A handwritten letter was stapled to an article about an earlier case Ella had solved. Below that was what, at first glance, appeared
to be a short story using the animal characters that featured in the tribe’s creation legends and other names of people
and places she didn’t recognize.

Ella read the letter, then looked up at Ralph and Justine, who were understandably curious. “The victim said he knew me by reputation and my honesty was what prompted him to contact me. He said he was in danger and that if anything happened to him, this information would help give me what was needed to restore balance and protect the citizens.”

“Citizens
Dineh
, or people in general?” Ralph asked.

“Maybe the rest of the papers here will answer that question,” Ella said. “He wanted to be a writer someday, according to his brother.”

“His writing wasn’t there yet,” Justine muttered. “I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. “The obvious Navajo names like Trickster, sure. But not those like
Chopra
. Isn’t he that guru guy?”

“Yeah.” Ella studied the pages.
Paper-clipped together was what appeared to be mostly a Navajo story, handwritten in inks of various shades and using more than one kind of paper. The pages were numbered, using ink that matched the last section. The narrative itself, from what Ella could tell, had been written over a period of time. She could see the evidence of coffee stains and greasy fingerprints on more than one page.

Justine
stood and walked over beside Ella. “What do you think? It’s obviously in code and very confusing.”

“Did you both read it?” Seeing Tache shake his head, Ella read the story out loud. It was titled “What Mourning Dove Saw” and it was written in the first person, narrated by the animal character, Mourning Dove.

“ ‘A terrible storm began in a distant valley, and a large hole appeared in the ground,
trapping Big Monster. But when Big Monster disappeared from sight, smaller monsters appeared, preying upon the poor creatures still
alive. Sun, who had caused the storm, sent the Proud Tribe from atop the local mesas of the
Diné Tah
into the distant valley to protect the poor creatures. This part of the tale began in the fall.

“ ‘The Proud Tribe brought their own food—and were expected to share
their provisions, delivering firewood, food, and arrows among the worthy. The Proud Tribe also brought beasts of burden to carry the load. I did my part as well.

“ ‘Soon, I saw that, while most of the Proud Tribe was doing the work of Sun, a few from the Proud Tribe slipped into the shade, and became dark themselves. These Dark Ones decided that the rewards from Sun weren’t enough, so they decided
to trade for other things they coveted. As always, Trickster—Coyote—was with the Dark Ones, but he often went his own way. Others who became the Dark Ones were Gray Wolf, Stripes, and Gopher. As time passed, the Dark Ones found trading partners—Walpole, Mountbatten, Chopra, and Weigel were the ones that I saw and heard, and bartering was very profitable. The Dark Ones acquired Nails, Shoes,
Umbrellas, and even Gumdrops, and this made them happy, and greedy for even more. Other goods exchanged hands out of my sight, however, but were said to consist of mother of pearl, shiny quartz, and turquoise.

“ ‘Konik and Bula, of the tribe, were told to make hiding places in the saddles and beneath the blankets of the beasts of burden for storing bartered goods, along with the shells and turquoise.
After they did this, Konik and Bula unfortunately fell out of favor. A gray cloud came and they disappeared. I could not tell where they had gone, and why, though I suspected much.

“ ‘All the Dark Ones, and those in the Proud Tribe who also knew how Sun was being betrayed but did not
themselves barter, kept their secrets from Talking God, their earthly leader. They feared his stern discipline.

“ ‘Coyote—Trickster to those who knew him well—watched and remembered everything he saw, though he did not see
I
was watching him. He took the bounty of turquoise and shiny quartz to a safe hiding place, hiding them behind his big eyes. One time when he came back, Talking God became suspicious. Trickster was sent away, his tail between his legs.