Spider Woman's Daughter (3 page)

The room’s focal point was the lieutenant’s rolltop desk. She sat behind it, feeling like an intruder. He had piled a stack of books next to the computer monitor. She opened the top one,
From This Earth: The Ancient Art of Pueblo Pottery
, to a page Leaphorn had marked with a slip of paper and found a spread of photos of pots and potshards with geometric designs. She glanced at the other titles:
Anasazi Pottery
;
Ten Centuries of Prehistoric Ceramic Art
;
Pueblo Potters of the Four Corners Country
;
Ceramic Treasures of Chaco Canyon
. All from the Navajo Nation library. A research project, she guessed, for a client somewhere.

A dog barked, and then she heard a woman’s voice and an end to the barking. She wouldn’t like living so close to neighbors. She and Jim didn’t have a fancy place, but she loved the silence of their spot along the San Juan River.

She scanned the lieutenant’s desktop for the phone. Not there. She pulled her shirttail free and used it to open the top drawer. A neat pile of pens in one compartment. Pencils, all sharpened, in the other, along with an organized arrangement of letter-size envelopes, paper clips, and business cards wrapped in a rubber band.

She opened the large lower drawer next. She saw neatly labeled folders with old-fashioned paper tabs for alphabetizing, scores of files arranged behind pastel dividers. Nothing marked “death threats.”

She heard a vehicle approach on the gravel road and pull up into the driveway. Louisa coming home, she thought. As she pushed the drawer closed, her gaze drifted to the floor. She noticed a wastebasket with some torn paper worth investigating and a white cardboard filing box on the floor next to it. On top sat the phone charger. Empty. Darn it.

She hurried out of the office into the living room. She pushed back the drape before opening the front door and saw Chee walking toward the porch.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said. “Louisa here?”

“No. Not yet. I was hoping she’d show up so I could talk to her before you got here.”

“Come outside and take a look at this.”

She followed him, feeling the intensity of the sun through her uniform shirt. He stopped at the edge of Leaphorn’s driveway and pointed at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “What do you think?”

“Wheel tracks. A dolly? Maybe the lieutenant or Louisa was moving something.”

“Maybe one of those rolling suitcases,” Chee said. “Maybe that’s why we can’t find Louisa.”

“She’ll turn up,” Bernie said. “Hey, thanks for picking me up. I saw lots of files in the lieutenant’s desk drawer. The current stuff might be relevant to the shooting. And we ought to check the information on his computer.”

Chee laughed as they went inside. “I’ll get right on it. Just point me in the right direction. Anything else?”

Bernie ignored him, leading the way down the hall to the office.

“Look at that.” Chee examined the maze of wires dangling behind Leaphorn’s desk. “That computer must be twenty years old. I remember him talking about how slow it was and about how he was going to get a new one.” He shook his head. “It was one of the few things I ever heard him complain about. He didn’t complain much. Except about me.”

“He appreciates you, so he expects a lot from you,” Bernie said. “He just didn’t know how to show it. I mean, doesn’t know how to show it.”

“Tough as an old boot,” Chee said.

Bernie noticed that she hadn’t closed the large drawer completely. “The files are in there.”

Chee extracted latex gloves from his pants pocket and nudged the drawer fully open. He scrutinized the folders, then pulled one out.

“Leaphorn and I collaborated on this case. It fascinated me to see how his mind worked. We discovered a crazed scientist experimenting with bubonic plague. An old lady tending her goats helped us solve the thing.”

“Sounds like an adventure.”

“It started when a rich grandmother hired the lieutenant to find her granddaughter. The girl had a job as a college intern, working on a public health project on the reservation near Yells Back Butte. Leaphorn’s investigation overlapped a case I was on, a situation where it looked like a young Hopi had killed a Navajo cop.”

“Did the lieutenant find the granddaughter?”

“Her body. We found the guy who killed her, and it turned out he’d killed the officer, too. The Hopi guy was innocent, except for eagle poaching.” Chee added, “The lieutenant told me, ‘Good job.’ ”

She heard the catch in his voice. Although he’d never say it, few things pleased Chee more than the approval of the crusty old lieutenant. “So, how’s he doing?”

“We just got word that Leaphorn made it into Gallup.”

She heard something in his voice that made her ask, “What else?”

Silence. Then Chee said, “He’s too badly injured for treatment there. They called in a helicopter to take him to Albuquerque to the big hospital with the fancy trauma unit.”

“When he comes out of this, let’s help him get a new computer. A laptop he could take with him on cases, type his notes right into it. That would save him a lot of time.”

“You think he’d give up his little leather notebook? No way.” Chee turned back to the file drawer. “I’ll thumb through these quickly, see if anything jumps out at me. Then I need to get back to the office. Bigman is on his way. He can box these up for us and deal with the computer.”

“And will you look for Leaphorn’s phone?” she asked. “I’m going to check the rest of the house, see if there’s anything out of the ordinary. Maybe his cell will turn up, and I can call Louisa’s cell.”

She left Chee fanning through the folders. She noticed again how quiet the house was, how different from her cubicle at the station or the constant noise of her unit when she was on the road. The semiretired life might be nice, she thought, but kind of lonely.

She found Louisa’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Unlike Leaphorn’s room, it looked ransacked. Clothes tossed everywhere, drawers hanging open, shoes on the dresser top. She looked in the closet for a suitcase and saw empty hangers.

Chee’s voice startled her. “Some of these folders might be worth following up on, but they’re old. Bigman can look at the computer files, see what’s more recent. You ready?”

“I’m coming.” She told him what she’d found, and what she hadn’t found.

“Maybe Louisa keeps her suitcase in the garage or in another closet. Maybe she’s just naturally messy. Like your little sister.”

Bernie said, “I don’t think she’s messy. Look how neat the rest of this house is. I think she left in a hurry. Let’s go. You’ve got a lot to do.”

On the way out, she pulled a business card from her pocket and wrote “Louisa, call ASAP” on the back. She left it in the center of the kitchen table, along with Leaphorn’s truck keys.

Bernie slid into the passenger seat of Chee’s police unit, feeling the heat from the upholstery and a film of sweat on her upper lip. Chee maneuvered in behind the wheel and had just started the engine when Largo’s voice bellowed through on the scanner.

“Chee, is Bernie with you?”

“Yes, sir. We’re heading back to the Navajo Inn for her car.”

“Not yet,” Largo said. “We found a vehicle that could be the shooter’s. Bernie needs to give us an ID.”

3

“W
e’ve got the car,” Largo said again. “At least, we think so. At Bashas’. Bernie needs to verify that before it gets hauled in.” An officer at the scene in the parking lot was keeping an eye on the sedan until the tow truck came to deliver it to the impoundment yard, where the Arizona police investigators could go over it for evidence.

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Chee said. “By the way, Louisa may be missing.”

Largo said, “I’ll put the word out.”

Bashas’ grocery, on the main drag near the Navajo Nation fairgrounds, was always busy. Merchandise reflected the needs of customers, most of them Diné and many of them rural. Folks could buy basic items in bulk you might not see at a neighborhood grocery outside the reservation: animal feed, Blue Bird flour, granulated sugar in twenty-five-pound bags, gallon tubs of lard. The store stocked canned food in monster sizes, fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit. The sprawling bakery department made sheet cakes for all occasions. On any given day, a dozen women with children or grandchildren in tow populated the aisles.

The modern, well-stocked market was one of the best things about Window Rock, Bernie thought. She loved to stand in the produce section when the sound of thunder came over the speakers, followed by the mist that sprayed the lettuce and parsley. She could pick up a loaf of bread and a bottle of aspirin for her mother and get a sandwich for those long days when she knew she’d be close to nowhere at lunchtime.

They spotted the Navajo Police car near the back of the lot. Next to it Officer Brandon Wheeler stood in the hot sun, looking at a dark blue sedan. Bernie and Chee climbed out and headed toward him into a gust of fiercely blowing June wind. Grains of sand bounced off their pant legs and swirled in the hot dry air. Air-propelled plastic bags plastered the wire fence that surrounded the lot and hung like flags from the piñon trees. Bernie didn’t like the wind. It made her uneasy.

She walked around to the sedan’s right rear fender. It was dented, just as she remembered, and had picked up a coating of silver paint. She noticed a red bumper sticker, “UNM Lobos.” The University of New Mexico, her alma mater, a three-hour, 170-mile drive away in Albuquerque.

“This is the car,” she said to Chee. “I’m sure of it.”

“I saw it as I was driving in to help with the search,” Wheeler said. “No one near it. I’ve been keeping an eye on it. No one has touched it since I got here.”

Considering how old the car was—Bernie guessed the early 1980s—it was in remarkably good shape except for the dent. She looked in through the open window, noticed the wear on the driver’s seat and a patch of duct tape over the upholstery on the passenger side. The backseat was empty, the floors clear. Whoever owned this car took care of it. Except for some sand on the mat beneath the gas and brake pedals, it was clean.

Chee looked at Bernie, then turned toward Bashas’. “I’m going into the store, ask some questions. I’ll have the manager close it. You follow up on the Arizona plate check. When you’re done on the radio, watch the car so Wheeler can come help with the interviews.”

Chee had every right to tell her and Wheeler what to do, thanks to Largo putting him in charge of the investigation. Still, she bristled at taking orders from him. She climbed into his unit car, fuming but silent. She lowered the windows and tried to calm down before starting her assignment.

Wheeler said, “Let Bernie do the interviews. She’s better with people. I can follow up with the radio and watch the car.”

“Largo took her off the case,” Chee said. “She’s just here for the ID.”

Chee sprinted toward the building, nearly colliding with a rotund Navajo woman rolling her grocery cart toward them.

The woman with the cart advanced. She said, “You’re blocking my car.”

“You own this car?” Wheeler asked.

The woman glared at him, the look one might give a small, ornery child. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her hand.

“Yes. That’s why I’m gonna put in my groceries and head for home once you get out of the way.”

Wheeler said, “This car matches the description of a vehicle involved in a shooting this morning. We need to impound it and check it for evidence. The tow truck is on the way.”

The woman’s dark eyes widened. “Is this one of those TV shows where they play tricks on people?”

“No, ma’am.”

The woman said, “Not my car.”

“This is not your car?”

“This
is
my car. But my car was not involved in any funny business.” She rummaged in a red purse and held out her hand with a set of keys. The wind stirred her short, cropped hair. “Look, see here?” She switched to Navajo and said, “I need to get on home now.”

She pushed her grocery cart toward the car’s trunk. Bernie watched from inside Chee’s unit as Wheeler moved to block her.

“Because this car was involved in a serious crime, we have to check it for evidence,” Wheeler said in English. “Please step away from it, ma’am.”

“Lots of cars look like this. Do you think I’m a criminal?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m asking you to cooperate with us, ma’am. Please show me your driver’s license.”

The woman stiffened and stared up at his name tag. “Officer Wheeler, my Fudgsicles are melting. I didn’t have anything to do with anything bad, but I am not happy with you. This is what they call police harassment. If you keep talking like that, they might think you are crazy.”

Bernie picked up the tone of Shopping Cart Woman’s voice, sensed trouble in the making. Luckily, the license plate check was nearly done; the officer assured Bernie she would be able to retrieve the name of the car’s owner in another sixty seconds.

“Ma’am, I need to see your driver’s license,” Wheeler repeated.

The woman said nothing, but her defiant posture spoke volumes.

Two police cars, uniformed officers, and an angry woman began to draw a crowd. Chee had succeeded in keeping anyone from entering the market, so the would-be shoppers with time on their hands walked over to investigate the commotion. Several bystanders knew Shopping Cart Woman, nodded to her.

“He wants to arrest me for buying Fudgsicles,” the woman said. “That man has handcuffs. I can see his gun. He’s going to take me to jail for shopping at Bashas’.”

Bernie heard a low rumble of disapproval from the crowd about the same time as the name on the car registration came back. She hurried to the woman, greeting her in Navajo, introducing herself the traditional way, using maternal and paternal clans. The woman, Gloria Benally, did the same. Gloria Benally, the same name the DOT record search had given her as the car’s registered owner.

Bernie turned to the dozen people who had gathered to watch. “A good man was shot this morning, and we are searching for a person involved in a shooting. We will open the store when we can. If you can buy your groceries later, I’d recommend that. ”

She heard the siren of another police car. An Apache County sheriff’s vehicle pulled into the lot, drove past them and up to the front door of the grocery store. Two deputies raced from the car to the back of the building.

She turned to Wheeler, feeling the wind beat against her face. “You can help Chee like he asked. Tell him the car is registered to Mrs. Gloria Benally and we have her here. Nothing on her record.”

“You both get away from my car.” Mrs. Benally raised her voice. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

Bernie said, “Officer Wheeler and I are so sorry to inconvenience you, but we need your help on this case. The experts will have to look at your car for evidence that could tell us who shot the policeman. That’s why the tow truck is coming.”

“Tow truck?”

“The one who was shot was a retired officer, a brave man who worked for the Navajo people. The bullet went into his head. The person who shot him drove away in a blue sedan that looked like yours.” Bernie paused. “Exactly like this car. Exactly. Right down to the little dent on the fender and the red bumper sticker. I know this is true because I was there when that terrible thing happened. We need your help to find the person who did this before someone else gets hurt.”

Mrs. Benally waited to make sure Bernie was done.

“I’m sorry about that man who got shot,” she said. “But my car is innocent. I need my car to take home my groceries. What about my Fudgsicles?”

Bernie stared at Wheeler. “This officer will buy you some more when we’re all done.”

Wheeler looked puzzled. “I’m going to help Chee.” He trotted off.

Mrs. Benally smiled for the first time.

Bernie spoke to her in Navajo. “I can tell you are a smart woman and a good observer. We have a mystery here. Is it all right if I ask you a few questions?”

Mrs. Benally, as the story revealed itself, hadn’t parked the car at Bashas’. She explained that a friend had dropped her off. She told Bernie the story of how she met the friend at Window Rock Elementary when their sons were both in first grade there. Bernie listened, knowing that Mrs. Benally would eventually talk about the car.

“My son was sad when that boy went off to live with his uncle in Flagstaff,” Mrs. Benally said. “My son, he’s the one who drives the car here for me.”

The wind gusted again, blowing dust in Bernie’s eyes and grit in her teeth. It made the day seem hotter. Mrs. Benally had drifted into talking about her friend’s son, who was working at the Museum of Northern Arizona and going to school at Northern Arizona University.

Bernie interrupted her. “Forgive me for not being a better listener, but I have to find out about the car so we can begin to learn who shot the policeman.”

Mrs. Benally nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Ask questions.”

Some Navajos thought it rude to speak a person’s name, but Mrs. Benally hadn’t mentioned it, so Bernie had to ask.

“My son is called Jackson Benally.”

“Did your son drive the car today?”

“Yes.”

“Then why is the car here?” Bernie asked.

Mrs. Benally scowled. “He leaves it for me. He goes to study in Gallup with another boy who has a car. One of those littler ones that don’t use much gas.”

Mrs. Benally wasn’t sure when Jackson met his friend, only that he left the house about eight, and when she got to Bashas’ she found her car parked where he always left it. Bernie asked, “What does your son look like?”

“They say he’s handsome.”

“How tall is he?”

Mrs. Benally reached her hand a few inches above her own head. Maybe five-eight, Bernie guessed. The shooter hadn’t seemed that tall.

“Is he muscular? Fat? Thin?”

“Just right.” Mrs. Benally smiled. “Look here. I have a photo on my phone.” She reached into her red purse and pulled out a cell from the inside pocket. Pushed a button and flashed the phone toward Bernie. A slim, serious-looking young man wearing a button-down shirt. Short-cropped, thick dark hair. Jackson looked about the same age as Bernie’s sister.

“How old is he?”

“He’s nineteen. Jackson asked if he could put that sticker on there,” Mrs. Benally volunteered. “ ‘Go Lobos.’ He’s my first to go to college.”

“Teenagers,” Bernie said. “Sometimes some of them can make their parents worry.”

“I worried about him last year. You know. Gangs. We never had that when I was growing up.”

“Was he in a gang?”

Mrs. Benally shook her head. “Not my Jackson.” But Bernie knew children kept secrets, and so did parents.

“Do you know the name of the friend Jackson drives with?”

“He calls him Lizard.”

“Lizard?”

“Lizard.”

“Does Lizard have another name?”

Mrs. Benally thought about it. “Leonard. Leonard Nez.”

The wind pushed Mrs. Benally’s plaid blouse tight against her ample chest. The sun beat down, cooking the asphalt. Bernie pictured the Fudgsicles melting into chocolate puddles.

“Why don’t you and I sit in the car?” Bernie said. “Get some shade.”

Mrs. Benally looked at the patrol unit suspiciously.

“It will be more comfortable than getting sand-blasted,” Bernie said. “We can put your groceries in there, too.”

Mrs. Benally said, “Okay, if you roll down the windows.”

Bernie did better than that. She activated the air-conditioning.

She hadn’t been able to stop the shooter or return fire, but with the sedan found so quickly, Bernie thought, the puzzle of Leaphorn’s attack would be solved and the person who hurt him arrested. The idea that she’d helped made her feel a little lighter.

After Mrs. Benally had settled in, Bernie radioed Largo about Jackson and Leonard Nez.

“Manuelito,” Largo said. “You are off the case. Remember?”

“Chee assigned me to wait with the shooter’s car until the tow truck got here. Mrs. Benally and I were just talking, and I knew this was important.” Bernie watched an Arizona State Police SUV pull up next to Wheeler’s unit and then two groups of Apache County deputies arrive in pickups with horse trailers.

She updated Largo while the state cops parked at the McDonald’s that adjoined the Bashas’ lot. The vehicles outside the restaurant included rez cars and a tourist’s rental RV with advertising on the side. She heard deputies unloading the horses. If the suspect had taken off on foot through open country, he’d better have a good hiding place, or they’d find him.