Spider Woman's Daughter (26 page)

Davis looked through some tools, placing a few in a box. She pushed a button to stop the screeching violins, put the cassette in a box, and examined the stack of tapes.

“By the way, letting Leaphorn suffer turned out to be better than killing him. Suitable punishment for what he did to Randall. Thanks for the updates on his condition, Bernie—you were a world of help.” She poked Chee in the side with the toe of her boot. “Thanks to you, too, Handsome. Without our conversation about Cuba, I wouldn’t have thought of this place. I wasted a lot of time looking at lockers in Farmington.”

Davis walked away again, and Bernie heard the Lexus start up and the sound of tires on cement as the car moved out of the garage. When Davis came back, she unzipped the duffel and took out an orange extension cord, a brown electric cord, and a white box. The box was a timer, Bernie realized.

On one end of the box, Davis plugged in an electric cord that looked as if it had once belonged to an old lamp. She had stripped the wire covering off the end and twisted several small strands of copper together. She plugged the long orange cord into the other side.

“I knew someday I’d find Ellie again, and then I’d find her records. When that happened, I knew I’d need a way to destroy all the old paperwork. So I fixed up this little igniter, kept it and the extension cord in my car. You cops aren’t the only smart ones.”

Davis fiddled with the dial. Then she picked up the Taser again and aimed at Bernie.

“Move yourself over, next to Chee.”

Bernie inched along on her back, noticing the way the bungee slipped slightly against her pants with the friction of the floor. She stopped at the edge of the mattress.

“Get up there.” Davis nudged Bernie in the ribs with her boot, finding the spot that hurt the most. “Quickly now. You know I’ll use this.”

Bernie maneuvered to lie next to Chee. Her ribs burned.

“How sweet,” Davis said.

She walked to the back of the garage, returned with the two red gas cans. Put them down.

“I could gag you, but you’ve been such a good girl, I’ll put on this old Janis Joplin cassette in case you get an idea about screaming for help. It was one of Ellie’s favorites from our Chaco days. Good music to die with.”

Davis punched the button. The scratchy sound of Joplin’s voice filled the room. She raised the volume until the music reverberated off the block walls and cement floor. Davis took a gas can to the table where she had piled up the papers, photos, old newspapers, and cardboard boxes. She put the turquoise purse in the middle of the paper pile, opened and poured gasoline inside, saturating the purse and the papers, letting the gasoline pool.

“Purse?” Bernie asked.

“You’re a cop to the end, aren’t you? I had Ellie leave her purse in my car when we got to Chaco. In case I had to kill her, I didn’t want to make things too easy for the cops. Her ID came in handy, and she had the key to the unit’s padlock on her key ring.”

Davis began to pour gasoline from the second gas can onto the mattress, on Chee’s and Bernie’s jeans and shirts. Bernie felt the moisture on her skin. The fumes stung her eyes and expanded her headache.

“Don’t do this,” Bernie said.

“I’ve set the timer to let me get the pots out of here safely and to give you both a moment or two to think about the havoc you’ve wrought. Think about how my Randall must have suffered because of your fine lieutenant. Think of how he forced me to kill Ellie. Not that she didn’t deserve it, too, for the lies she told about Randall hurting her.”

“Wait,” Bernie said. “Stop. Please.”

Davis stretched the extension cord out the garage door as she walked. “All that’s left to do is to plug in the cord and put on the padlock.”

Davis lowered the sliding door. The room grew instantly dark. Against the din of the music, Bernie heard Davis’s voice.

“Guess what, Bernie? Your backpack is out here. I’ll put it in the Lexus for safekeeping. Gives me a place to put your gun.”

Bernie listened to the car door slam and the tires rolling against the pavement.

“Use the toe of your boot to help get my legs out of the bungee. Then I can kill the timer.” She yelled over the music as she moved her legs on top of Chee’s, then scooted down. After three tries, she caught a loop of the bungee in the toe of his boot. As Chee pushed down, she felt him shudder with pain. The bungee moved, stopped. The cord tightened at the top, cutting into her calf like a tourniquet.

“Again,” she said. “Again. Again.”

She felt a loop slip off her shoe and the coils loosen. She squirmed her legs free.

Bernie lurched to standing, light-headed and queasy, hands still bound behind her back. She wished that Chee’s mouth wasn’t taped shut so he could speak, help her figure this out.

When the room stopped spinning, she moved through the darkness toward the timer. Something caught her right foot. As she fell, her shoulder hit the table and it crashed down on top of her. She landed sandwiched between it and the concrete, facedown. She tasted hot salty blood and the bitter gasoline, struggled to breathe.

Chee grunted.

“I’m okay.” The hideous Joplin tape blared on. The fall had cost her valuable time. She used core muscles she didn’t know she had to shrug the table off her back, then powered herself to sitting and, with more effort, maneuvered her aching body to standing again.

She remembered where the timer had been, but the fall had changed that. Where was it now? She would find the extension cord, let it lead her to the box, probably buried beneath gas-soaked debris.

Bernie tapped her feet, still numb from the bungee, like a blind person using a cane, feeling for the thick, rounded cord and wishing the soles of her shoes weren’t so firm. She listened for the timer’s ticking. Heard nothing over the whine of electric guitars and the pounding percussion.

She moved into the clutter that had crashed off the table. With her feet as probes, she discovered the box of clay, the bucket filled with potshards. The cloying, pungent smell of gas made her stomach churn. She pushed back against tightening terror.

Through the cacophony of the music, she heard something new, rhythmic bashing against the metal garage door. She couldn’t see him, but she knew Chee had shifted himself to the back of the room, doing what he could to keep them from going up in flames.

Then she felt something roll against the bottom of her right shoe. Lost it, found it again. Pressed against it, felt it move. The extension cord. She slid her foot over it, moving toward the timer quickly. Felt her foot slip off and lost time finding the cord again.

She realized that her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness. Despite tearing from the fumes, she could see the cord, an orange snake on the floor against the lighter newspapers. She followed it to the white box and found it. Facedown in the gasoline. She used her feet to push the soaked newspapers off the box. They might live! She let the thought hang a split second.

Now, to unplug the power cord. Bernie lowered herself to kneeling and reached for it with the dead fingers behind her back. She couldn’t make them work. A third Joplin song had started. Eight minutes, more or less, since Davis left. Chee’s banging forced her to think.

The old lamp cord at the other end of the timer was smaller, more impossible to disconnect. Could she stomp the timer out of commission? Doubtful, especially with her unsteady balance.

Something tickled the back of her brain. She pictured the timer as Davis had pulled it from the duffel. It had a dial, which she had set to start the fire, and a switch to turn it on or off. Instead of trying to break it, she could turn it off. Or, if she guessed wrong, she could turn it on, creating the spark to incinerate them.

She sat and scooted through the gasoline and rubble. Used her foot to flip the box faceup. She could hear the timer ticking now despite the music and Chee’s racket. She moved her face close to the switch, straining to see if she should push up or down. But the writing was too small, her eyes too irritated by the fumes, the room too dark. The clicking had grown louder, as rapid as her heartbeat. Up or down? On or off?

The Joplin song blared toward its climax. She wrapped her lips over her teeth and grabbed the switch. She pulled down with all her strength.

21

T
he ticking stopped. She exhaled.

She hollered to Chee, “I did it. I’ll get my hands loose and then I’ll help you.”

It took a lifetime to scrape enough of the duct tape from her wrists against the edge of the metal garage door frame to pull her hands free.

She punched the button to silence Janis Joplin’s howling and found a sharp metal pottery tool in the rubble beneath the table.

“What first? Hands?”

He shook his head no.

“Mouth.”

He nodded.

Her fingers had gone from numb to excruciating pain, but she pried enough tape off the skin at his upper lip to grab an edge. “This will hurt.” She yanked hard, removing the tape as though it were a big, ultra-sticky Band-Aid.

She felt him flinch.

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’ll make it.”

He kissed her, ever so gently. “Good thing I didn’t have a mustache. Now I never will.”

She cut the tape from his hands and left him with the tool to undo his legs while she looked for a stick or a pole to force up the garage door. She found Ellie’s gasoline-soaked purse. Ellie’s phone, in an outside pocket, still worked. Bernie called 911. Told the dispatcher to contact Agent Cordova, gave her their location. After that, she called Captain Largo.

Finally, Bernie heard a siren. The noise came close, closer, stopped. She heard a car door open, footsteps running toward the locker.

“Cuba police,” a male voice yelled. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah, fine,” Bernie shouted back. “Glad you made it.”

“The manager is right behind me, and he’ll have the lock off in a second. We’ll get you out of there. Need an ambulance?”

She looked at Chee, and he shook his head. Several times.

“No ambulance. Be careful. This place is full of gasoline.”

She heard the grate of metal on metal. A second siren. She heard more voices, probably the other renters, looky-loos attracted by the police commotion. Finally came the happy creaking of the garage door being raised.

The dry air had never smelled so fresh, or the sun’s light seemed so wonderfully intense. She helped Chee stand up, swaying, and steady himself.

“The FBI crime scene folks are on the way,” the deputy said. “I know they’ll want to talk to you.”

Bernie said, “The main thing is to catch the woman who did this.”

“Everyone’s looking for her,” he said. “You can’t shoot Joe Leaphorn and try to fry up a couple more cops without getting some attention.”

“Not only that,” Bernie said. “She stole my favorite backpack.”

The manager looked at Bernie. “I never would have made you for a cop.”

“Did you call for help?” she asked him. “It took long enough.”

“That what I was trying to tell you when you ran off. The office phone doesn’t work, so I had to go over to the gas station and have them call.”

The deputy studied Bernie’s wrists and Chee’s pallor. Chee said, “I’m fine. Really. Just a little shaky.”

Bernie said, “With all the times Davis must have Tasered you, it’s a wonder your heart is still beating.”

“You. That’s why.”

C
ordova arrived within the next half hour, taking charge of the scene efficiently and, Bernie noticed, with a touch of humility. “Guess I was wrong about Jackson Benally and Leonard Nez,” he said. “We found Nez at a rodeo in Crownpoint. He didn’t even know we were looking for him. When we talked to him, it was clear he didn’t know Louisa, Leaphorn, anything about the shooting. Or much else except bronc riding.”

They walked through the gate, back to Louisa’s Jeep. Bernie extracted the keys from her pocket and clicked the doors open. Chee climbed in the passenger side. She started the engine and rolled down the window. She drove across the street to the service station, pulled up in front of the closest pump. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Need anything?”

“An aspirin or two would be good.”

When she got back, Chee was standing next to the car, his hands on the roof, taking some deep breaths. “Those fumes,” he said. “I never want to smell gasoline again. Or get Tasered, either.”

He noticed that instead of the blouse she’d been wearing, Bernie had on a clean blue T-shirt with the yellow New Mexico state flag on the pocket.

She handed him a T-shirt and a package of baby wipes. “Those will help with the gas smell. No pants in there, but I got lucky on these shirts. On sale for five bucks.”

“I got lucky,” he said. “You saved my life. You solved the case.”

“I should have figured it out sooner,” she said. “All the clues were there.”

He took off his white shirt and saw the bloody places where the Taser probes had penetrated his skin. “I loved this shirt,” he said. “My best one. You think you can get it clean again?”

She looked at it. “Don’t worry about that now.”

When he was done, they climbed back into Louisa’s Jeep and Bernie pulled out a big bottle of water, a bottle of extra-strength ibuprofen, and a package of beef jerky from the shopping bag. “Here, I brought you something else.”

He took the pills and the water and gave her back the meat. “You have it,” he said. “My stomach isn’t there yet.” He smiled at her. “Davis took your backpack. How did you buy all this? And the gas?”

“The guy who runs the store just gave it to us when I told him my wallet had been stolen with my backpack. He’s the one who called for help. And I think he wanted me out of there quick because of the way I smelled.”

Chee took a sip of water and closed his eyes.

How odd, Bernie thought, to have no electronic communication. No phones. No police radio. They were halfway back to Santa Fe to pick up Chee’s truck and return Louisa’s Jeep before she felt like talking. Chee stared out the open window at the Rio Puerco Valley, the sandstone cliffs, and then the flatter, more desolate landscape that framed the sprawling community of Rio Rancho.

“If you’re up for it, we ought to make some notes about what happened back there,” she said. “Cordova is bound to have more questions.”

“I’ll start with what a fool I was to let her overpower me with that Taser at the museum. I knew she was guilty of something, I just hadn’t figured out what.”

“And I thought she was concerned about Leaphorn when she asked how he was doing. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to recover enough to tell us what had happened.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “
M
is for
Maxie
.
M
is for
murder
.”

T
he nurse had messages for them on the way to Leaphorn’s room.

“Officer Chee? Agent Cordova from the FBI has been trying to reach you. Needs you to call him. He said to tell you, ‘We got her.’ You know what that means?”

“Yes,” Chee said. “It’s good news.”

“And here’s another message. I wasn’t sure I understood it, so I wrote it down.” She handed Chee the slip of paper. “What happened to your face?”

“Long story,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. I won’t have to shave for a year.”

The nurse looked at Bernie. “You look like you had a fall.”

“Yeah, I tripped over something,” Bernie said. “How’s the lieutenant?”

The nurse paused. “Not much change from this morning.”

In addition to Louisa, they found a middle-aged Navajo man in pressed jeans and a dress shirt in the lieutenant’s room. He introduced himself as Austin Lee.

“I’m the one you called for in Farmington,” he told Bernie. He pointed toward the hospital bed with his lips. “He’s been good to me. I’ll see if I can help him, working with his lady here.”

Leaphorn seemed about the same, Bernie thought, tied to the maze of tubes, lying still as death on his back.

“You both look kind of tired,” Louisa said.

Bernie said, “You look exhausted yourself.” Bernie had never thought of Louisa as old, but she seemed ancient today, used up.

Louisa told them what the doctor had told her. Leaphorn’s vital signs were slowly declining as a result of the pneumonia. Nothing dramatic or exciting, but a natural progression that often led to death. She started to cry. “I’m going to go outside for a minute or two, maybe get some soup or something.”

Austin Lee joined her.

“Take your time,” Bernie said. “We won’t leave until you get back.”

“I want to hear the details of where you’ve been and what happened,” Louisa said. “But later, okay?”

After Louisa and Austin left, Chee took the lieutenant’s hand and spoke in Navajo, telling Leaphorn how much he respected him, how much he had learned from him. “Not only about how to be a policeman. About how to be a man. How to walk in beauty despite the evil and disharmony that the world gives us. I thank you for all that.”

Bernie listened. Her husband was more than her friend and lover. He was the man she needed to remind her of what life was about—how to make a difference in the world and how to live with honor.

Bernie stood across from Chee and put her hand on top of the lieutenant’s chest. When Chee finished, she spoke. She called Leaphorn Uncle now, not Lieutenant. She told him she was grateful to him for encouraging her to follow her heart, and for somehow knowing that her heart would lead her to accept the love of Jim Chee.

She stopped talking and looked at Chee. The tears in his eyes matched her own.

Chee said, “I wanted you to know that Bernie found the woman who shot you. She found out why. It had to do with revenge and with greed.”

The lieutenant opened his eyes and looked at Bernie, then at Chee, then back at her. He made the sign again for a pencil.

Bernie found one that Louisa had been using and a slip of paper.

This time the lieutenant drew more slowly. A smaller picture. This time, it looked exactly like a heart. Then he closed his eyes. They stood in silence for a while on each side of his bed, watching his chest move up and down in the struggle to breathe against the force of pneumonia.

Then Chee started to sing, softly at first. The Bluebird Song, the song that traditionally greeted the day, the song that mothers taught their little ones. Bernie sang, too, surprised her voice cooperated. They didn’t care who heard them.

Leaphorn opened his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling and then to the left, toward Chee, and the right, toward Bernie. Then he gently closed them.

W
hen she returned, Louisa said, “You two should get home. I’m staying here until, um, until it’s time for me to leave. I’ll call you with updates.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone here,” Bernie said.

“I’m not alone,” Louisa said. “Joe’s here. Austin Lee will be back. I’m surrounded by the staff. And by all your love.”

“Well, then,” Bernie said. “We’ll take care of your cat until you get back.”

“She’s not really our cat,” Louisa said. “She’s a stray. Joe started feeding her, then she figured out how to get in the house. Last week, he let her lick his bowl when we had vanilla pudding. That sealed the relationship.”

Chee said, “I’m sure she’s very annoyed at not being fed for twenty-four hours, but I left her plenty of water.”

“Chee bought an ice cream maker,” Bernie said. “He’s been threatening to try it out on me. When he does, we’ll invite you and the lieutenant and the cat to join us.”

Bernie reached in her pocket and handed Louisa the Jeep keys. “I parked it close to where you left it. I hung up that handicapped sign. I’m afraid I lost your gun, but we’ll get it back.”

“Don’t worry about that. After everything you did for Joe when I . . .” Louisa’s voice started to shake. “You’ll never know how much . . .”

Chee put his finger on her lips. She was crying now, and he wrapped her in his strong arms.

The nurse let Chee use the hospital phone to call Cordova.

“We arrested Davis back at the AIRC,” Cordova said. “Found the pots. Bernie’s backpack was in the Dumpster behind the place. Davis seemed really surprised to see us.”

“Did she resist?”

“We didn’t give her much chance after what happened to you two,” Cordova said. “Can I talk to Bernie a minute?”

Chee handed her the phone.

“John Collingsworth at the AIRC asked me to thank you,” Cordova said. “And I want to say you did great. Both you and Chee. Tell Chee I said so.”

“I will,” she said.

“Take care of yourself. Be safe out there.”

“Good advice,” Bernie said. “Same to you.”

Chee jiggled his truck keys. “Let’s go home,” he said.

“Your truck is still at the AIRC.”

“Nope,” he said. “I forgot to show you the message the nurse gave me.”

Chee extracted the note and read it to her: “Mark Yazzie says west lot last row near Dumpster.”

“What in the world?”

“I get it,” Chee said. “It’s a guy thing.”

They found the truck where Yazzie had parked it with a note inside: “More police came to the AIRC. They didn’t arrest me either. I saw your truck. Thought you might need it.”

Bernie laughed. “How did he break into it to drive it over here?”

“That is one of the beauties of an old truck,” Chee said. “Or one of the problems, depending on what side of the break-in you’re on.”

“One more question. What was that drawing about? The heart?”