Spider Woman's Daughter (7 page)

After an hour, she crept out of bed and went back to the kitchen to work on the files. By dawn she had reviewed them all, made lists of possible suspects and their connections to Leaphorn. None of the criminals in the old cases except for Delos looked especially evil, motivated to shoot a man in cold blood. In fact, they all should be grateful to Leaphorn for attempting to reboot their lives.

She put on her Nikes when the sky had changed from black to gray with hints of pale peach, and quietly opened the front door. She ran to greet the dawn.

When she came back, she smelled the sizzling bacon. She saw Chee, phone in one hand, spatula in the other. She could tell from the tension in his body that whatever news he listened to wasn’t welcome.

6

C
hee put the phone down.

“I’ve got to go in early. The report is back from the shooter’s car.”

“So, did Mrs. Benally do it?”

Chee laughed. “Well, her prints are there, along with lots of others. Some are probably Jackson’s. The rest? Who knows. So Largo and Cordova, the FBI guy, want me to check the names tied to the prints. We can compare them to the suspect list we made last night. See if there’s any link to the lieutenant.”

“I added a few names this morning,” Bernie said. “I’m surprised the FBI isn’t taking the lead here. That Cordova seemed pretty sharp.”

“They’re leaving the Navajos to us,” he said. “Largo told me the FBI seriously wants to talk to Louisa. Couldn’t reach her last night.”

Chee cracked eggs into the hot pan. “Four or five sets of the prints they found match prints on file, but none were names I recognized from the lieutenant’s work. The feds are still searching for matches to the others.”

“Wow,” she said. “That car was a taxi.”

“I thought of something else,” Chee said. “That Delos guy? I remember that the Jicarilla cops found a body in an unmarked grave a couple years ago. Turned out to be his.”

C
hee left right after breakfast. She did dishes, then called the Window Rock office to learn they’d heard nothing more about Leaphorn’s condition. She thought about wearing jeans, but put on a clean Navajo Police uniform out of respect for the lieutenant.

When she started her car, she noticed Leaphorn’s unmailed envelopes, including the brown one addressed to the man in Santa Fe, the one that needed stamps.

Bernie drove first to the post office to send Leaphorn’s envelopes on the way. She saw the empty parking lot and realized the counter didn’t open until eight; she was half an hour early. She dropped the smaller ones in the mailbox and headed on, southeast to Santa Fe. She’d find a post office along the way.

She passed a Laundromat. Quik Stop stores. A big truck loaded with hay bales, horses grazing. The junction for the tribe’s Flowing Water Casino. She noticed the plume of steam rising from the Four Corners Power Plant. She turned on the radio, 94.5 FM Navajo-language KYAT. She didn’t mind country music, at least in small doses, but she listened for news coverage of the lieutenant’s shooting. She noticed a homemade green “Tire Repair Open” sign along a fence and then the “Leaving the Navajo Reservation” notice. Circle W pawnshop. A car wash. A big American flag fluttering outside a mobile home.

She slowed as a truck hauling a trailer pulled onto the highway from a dirt road, noticing that the sedan in the left lane sped past her about ten miles faster than the limit. The radio was advertising jewelry supplies you could order online as she came to Fruitland, the little settlement west of Farmington. Traffic was heavier now, the area populated with a mixture of oil field workers and farmers, Navajos, Mormons, and retirees looking for nirvana in the fabled Southwest. She passed a block-long wrecking yard filled with generations of cars and pickups, even some heavy equipment. Farther along, she saw lots full of new minivans and trucks, windshields shining in the summer sun, tempting drivers to take on debt in exchange for a better ride.

Finally, the view she loved, the San Juan River south of the highway, flowing between rows of towering ancient cottonwoods.

Traffic was heaviest between Shiprock and Bloomfield, with fleets of oil and gas trucks making hatchbacks like hers seem tiny. After that, the number of vehicles conveniently dropped off as the scenery grew more spectacular. Her heart soared as she saw Huerfano Mesa, one of the sacred places in the origin stories, the spot where Changing Woman gave birth to the Hero Twins who made the world safe for people. Leaphorn should be here in Dinetah, not in a hospital in Santa Fe, a rich-white-person town.

Bernie had been to Santa Fe three times before. Once when her Shiprock High School team played a basketball game at the Santa Fe Indian School gymnasium. Once to accompany her mother when she had a booth at the Indian Market. And most recently for a training session at the New Mexico State Police headquarters. The town didn’t resonate with her, but she’d go where she had to for the lieutenant.

O
fficer Jim Chee had never been much for paperwork.

Now, as he sat at his desk half done with the tedious job of checking the names from the prints against the lieutenant’s caseload, he was grumpy.

He wanted to be out finding the Benally kid, not leaving it to the Gallup Police. He wanted to ask the young man why his car had so many fingerprints, where he was at the time of the shooting. Instead, he’d spent two hours comparing names of Navajos linked to the prints in the Benally car with names in the criminal reports database, and then with the names of people Leaphorn might have arrested. Looking for someone other than suspect number one, in case, as Bernie believed, Jackson Benally lacked a motive to shoot Leaphorn. Looking, but coming up with nothing except other fingerprints for which there was no match and no obvious tie to Leaphorn.

Chee walked outside, away from the confusion, looked at the Shiprock substation parking lot and Shiprock itself, a black lava thumb against the blue sky. The wind had already started to blow, a soft breeze now, but a bad sign for more dust in the air as the day heated up.

He went back to his desk, checked his e-mail, watched a brief video of a dog on a surfboard that his friend Cowboy Dashee had sent. Just when he could think of nothing else to delay resuming the inevitable, he felt the cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Bernie. He pulled out the phone, smiling, then remembered Bernie was driving to Santa Fe, passing through lonely country not defaced by cell phone towers. He looked at the number. Darleen.

“Hello there,” he said. “How are you?”

“Terrible. I can’t get Bernie on the phone,” Darleen said. “Did she take Mama somewhere?”

“Bernie’s off to Santa Fe. There’s bad reception on that road. She’s by herself as far as I know. She wouldn’t take your mother, because she was going to see the officer who got shot.”

“Mama’s gone,” Darleen said. “Mama’s gone.”

“Gone? Did she pass away?”

“Oh my God, I didn’t think of that. She could be dead. Maybe whoever kidnapped her killed her. Should I call the police? You are the police!” The words came in a torrent.

Chee said, “Calm down. Tell me what happened. Start at the beginning. But first, take a breath or two.”

Darleen rushed ahead. “Mama’s disappeared. Totally gone. She’s like nowhere. I looked all over the house, around outside, in the closets, in the bathroom. Everywhere, dude, every stinking where. Called for her really loud, screaming my stupid head off. Then I got in my car and drove around the neighborhood, yelling out the window like a madwoman. Nothing. She’s nowhere.”

Chee thought about it. “Was she there when you got home last night?”

A pause. “I guess she was asleep in her room. Ah. Um. I got in kinda late and then I did some drawings.” Another pause. “I didn’t feel so good this morning, so I didn’t get up until just now.”

“Did you see her last night?”

“Not exactly. The door to her room was closed. When I looked in this morning, her bed was empty, already made. She’s missing, dude. Missing. Person. Who would wanna kidnap an old lady?”

“I don’t think she was kidnapped,” Chee said.

“Maybe she just went for a walk and fell down somewhere,” Darleen said. “You think that coulda happened? The dog packs are bad out here.”

Chee had handled cases in which feral dogs had attacked cattle and horses and killed sheep and lambs. He’d dealt with some incidents of wild dogs charging and biting people, too. “Is your mother’s walker there?”

“Yes.”

“Darleen, I’m going to give you some suggestions, places to check. Take your phone with you. Call back when you’re done.”

He hung up, went back to his fingerprint files. Darleen’s distraction was good luck; he uncovered something interesting—a possible suspect.

His phone vibrated ten minutes later.

“Mama’s okay. I went to the Darkwaters’ house, like you said. She spent the night with Mrs. Darkwater. They were eating breakfast when I called over there earlier and had the radio on so loud they didn’t hear the phone in the other room or me hollering for her.”

“I’m glad it worked out,” Chee said.

“Me too.”

“Next time Mama goes on a sleepover, ask Mrs. Darkwater to leave you a note,” Chee said.

“Um. Actually, they did. It was on the table, but I didn’t see it. One from Bernie there, too. I was lucky that you answered the phone. I’m glad Bernie wasn’t around for this.”

“Me too,” he said.

He waited for her to say “thank you” but she didn’t.

S
anta Fe’s Christus St. Vincent hospital has numerous entrances, different doors for accessing its many services. Bernie headed for large sliding glass doors that looked like a main entrance. They led to an imposing lobby and another sign, “Information.” The receptionist glanced up. “May I help you?” As she stared at Bernie’s uniform, Bernie noticed the dark bags beneath her eyes.

“I’m looking for Lieutenant—I mean Mr. Joe Leaphorn. He was admitted yesterday.”

The woman typed the name.

“He’s in CCU.”

“Is that Spanish for something?”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Critical care unit.” She told Bernie the room number.

“How do I get there?”

“Down the hall on this floor. Follow the signs.”

Bernie walked past a waiting area, noticing a young blonde in tight jeans pacing back and forth and an elderly couple sitting on a couch.

The critical care unit was a short hike from the entrance around several angled corridor junctions. The confusing layout had not been designed with consideration for a person already under stress. She checked the overhead signs at each intersection to make sure she stayed on the right path.

The door to the CCU had a sign with visiting hours posted. Her timing was off, but she walked in.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m Officer Bernadette Manuelito. I need to see Lieutenant Leaphorn.”

The nurse shook her head.

“Sorry, but that’s impossible. Doctor—”

“It’s police business.” She stood taller, steeling herself for an argument. “The lieutenant’s shooting is under investigation.”

“I didn’t know that,” the nurse said. “I came on duty this morning.”

Bernie waited.

The nurse looked up from her computer screen. “Before you interrupted me, I was going to say it’s impossible for anyone to see Mr. Leaphorn right now. Dr. Moxsley, the neurologist, is with him, running some tests.”

“How long will that take?”

“Hard to say,” the nurse said. “We have a waiting area for the CCU just down the hall. You’re welcome there.”

“I also need to talk to the doctor.”

The nurse hesitated. “He’s got a crazy schedule this morning.”

“He needs to make time for me,” Bernie said.

“Is this part of the investigation?”

She paused. “Not exactly. The lieutenant is my—” She used the Navajo word that means one-who-acts-as-leader or one-who-is-respected as a teacher
.
“He and Mrs. Leaphorn never had any children, and so now I—” She left the sentence unfinished, hoping the nurse would fill in with the assumption that Bernie was the closest thing Leaphorn had to a daughter.

The nurse gave Bernie a friendlier look. “It must be tough to investigate your relative’s shooting. I’ll ask Dr. Moxsley to find you in the waiting room.” She handed Bernie a pile of papers from a folder on her desk. “While you wait, perhaps you can help us with some of these forms.”

The CCU waiting space was tiny and crammed with furniture. A girl younger than Darleen with dark hair and a shattered complexion held an infant and walked back and forth, back and forth, in front of the windows. She glanced up when Bernie came in, then looked away. A woman with a plump, lined face and a man with a bushy mustache sat close, talked quietly in Spanish. Everyone wore worry and fatigue like a second skin.

The best thing about the waiting area was the patio. Bernie took her free cup of aged coffee out where she could see the sky. A chunky man in a black jacket sat at one patio table, a Bible in his lap. She sat at the other.

Bernie believed in science, but she also believed that human life was more than anybody could keep track of with machines and computers, or put down in equations and reduce to numbers like cholesterol ratings and blood pressure scores.

The last time she had been in the hospital was in Gallup with Jim’s uncle, Hosteen Nakai. The man had a mind as clear and fast as a mountain spring and a generous heart. She remembered his kindness to her, even before she had decided that Jim Chee would be her husband. He told her, “One day my nephew will be a finer man, a better person than he can see himself being. It will be good for him to have the help of a strong woman. Of one who isn’t afraid of his power or of her own power.”

In the two years of their marriage, Chee had blossomed into his own gentle power. She saw his fierce sense of brotherhood with his fellow officers and his dedication to the people they all served. Some policemen grew cynical with the exposure to so much evil, but Chee became more determined to make things right. To save the good citizens of the Navajo Nation from those who had lost sight of the Beauty Way. He took the responsibility to help restore the land and its people to harmony seriously. She wished Hosteen Nakai had lived to see the man his nephew had become and was still becoming.