Death and Desire (18 page)

I
nosed the Rav through the unpaved lanes of government housing on the Nation. Each house was the same tiny three-bedroom, two-bath wood-framed rectangle painted an institutional shade of drab yellow brown. Red sand had sifted around the foundations. No trees or shrubs slowed the little kids out riding bikes through the dirt. Legs off the pedals and extended out to the side, they yelled as they soared down a small hill. Older kids laconically shot baskets at a hoop with no net. The whole place looked forlorn and depressing.

“Get drunk and you couldn't find which of these was your house,” Louis muttered, looking at both sides of the dirt street.

“Different paint colors on the front doors.” I pointed to a mustard yellow one. “Guess it's more homey.”

We pulled in front of number sixteen. A little boy in jeans way too big for his wiry frame was trying to ride his scooter on the patched concrete sidewalk. “You come to see my mom?” He clutched his scooter to his leg.

“We have. I'm Taylor. What's your name?”

He giggled. “Billy.”

I extended my hand, and he clutched it, peering up with big dark eyes.

Louis knocked on the front door. A beautiful woman in her early thirties answered. Her eyes were rimmed red and fresh tear tracks salted her checks. “Mrs. Dohi?” I held out my hand. “I'm Taylor McWhorter and this is Louis Dubois from KNAZ.”

A fresh round of tears streamed down her face. She motioned us in the door and pointed at a small sofa. It didn't look sturdy enough to hold us both. Louis whispered, “I'll stand.” Billy climbed up beside his mother, slipping close to her in the chair.

“Ms. Dohi, I am so sorry about Keith. I know you're worried out of your mind. Maybe we can help.”

“Captain Yazzie, he can find our boys.”

“He'll do a fine job. We want to help, too. We'll put Keith's picture on TV and we have success with people calling into the tip line. They may not even know they have useful information until they see the news story and it jogs their memory. Will you help us? Let us video the interview?”

She nodded her head and broke down sobbing in her hands. “My boy is a good boy. Keith made a mistake, one mistake.” Her lips quivered. “He was doing so good. My son—something terrible has happened.” Billy jumped off the chair and buried his face in her lap.

“Why do you think something terrible has happened?”

“He wouldn't run off. He was better, happier after he came out of the hospital. He helped me around the house and his father with the sheep. After they let him come home from the hospital, he made every one of his appointments with the doctors.”

“Did he have new friends?”

“I don't know. He didn't talk about anyone new. He and Danny spent time together. They're good boys,” she stressed.

“Did he have a cell phone?”

“Yeah, my husband got it for him.”

“Do you have it?” I asked softly.

“It's in his room. Captain Yazzie took it for a while, but then he brought it back to Keith.” She sniffled. “Keith always carried it, but his therapist told him he didn't even want the thing on him when he came in for therapy.”

“Ms. Dohi, do you have another picture of Keith you would loan me? A different shot from the one you gave the police? I promise I will return it.”

“Yes, I have his basketball-team picture.” She disappeared again down the short hallway.

Ms. Dohi held out the picture to me, but didn't let go. “You won't forget to return it?”

I could see she was reluctant to let anything go that was her boy's. “I will. I promise. Thank you. I'll put both pictures on the tip line.” I handed her my card and told her to call me if she thought of anything.

Billy clung to her skirt as we walked to the door.

Once we were back in the car, I quizzed Louis, “What do you think?”

“I don't think she knows anything. She's scared to death,” he replied.

“I think it's too damn bad Keith didn't have his phone on him when they went missing. He could have been tracked.”

The Kees lived only four houses from the Dohi's, a short walk for two boys. We knocked on their cherry-red door. Two girls' high, squeaky voices filtered out to the porch. I knocked again, more loudly. An old woman answered the door. “Ms. Kee? We would like to speak with you about Danny.”

“I'm his grandmother.” She stood in the doorway. Two little girls, no more than four, skipped down the hallway hand in hand and disappeared into a room.

“I'm Taylor and this is Louis. We're from KNAZ. We just spoke to Ms. Dohi.” I handed her my card. “May we come in?”

She motioned us into the tiny living room. “My daughter, she is not here. She works at the A&W in Tuba City. I keep my grandchildren.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

She pointed to two chairs and lowered herself slowly onto the sofa. Except for the furniture, the little house was a match to the Dohi's.

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. I know how worried you are.”

“No camera.” She waved her hand at Louis. “I will speak with you, but no camera.” Older Navajos believed that having your picture taken stole your identity from your soul. Tears slipped down her weathered cheeks, but her voice was firm. “My grandson Danny has never been in any trouble.” Her lip trembled. “I'm so frightened.”

“Why, Ms. Kee?”

“Keith,” she murmured so low I wasn't sure I heard her right.

“Who?”

“Keith Dohi. He was not a good influence on my grandson.”

I remembered them locked in the cell. Keith roughly silenced Danny when he wanted to talk.

“Has Keith been in trouble?”

“Always nosing around the edges of trouble. No bad thing stuck to him, but his heart is not pure. I don't think my Danny is alive,” she whimpered.

“I'm so sorry.” My hand covered hers. “Why do you think he's dead?”

“Danny would never worry his mother like this.” She snuffled and straightened her shoulders. “Danny needed some help.” She wavered before continuing, “He was in the special education at the school. He would be afraid to be out in the dark.”

“But they were good friends?”

“Yes, he followed Keith everywhere. My Danny, he was slow.” She dropped her head. “He wasn't ever going to be able to make it on his own.”

“Did Keith take advantage of him?”

“Yes.” She nodded eagerly. “Keith used him. Get this, go there. Danny worshipped Keith. He wanted the attention.” She pulled a used Kleenex out of her skirt pocket and mopped her face. “My grandson didn't know any better. He didn't understand he should be careful around Keith.” Her lips were quivering, and she tried hard to hold back the tears that eventually came.

“You think Keith made the plans to carry the meth?”

Her face contorted in pain. “Danny couldn't do that. He did what Keith told him and now he's gone.”

“Have you told Captain Yazzie your suspicions?”

Her head bobbed. “Dave Nez wrote it all down. Captain Yazzie, I have known him since he was a boy. He's good for our people.”

I patted her old hand. “I agree. Will you loan me another picture of your grandson so we may put his picture on TV and ask for help from anyone who may have seen him?”

She hesitated. “I don't think his mother will mind. Yes, I'll get it for you.”

She rose, steadied herself on the table by her chair, and shuffled down the threadbare carpet into one of the bedrooms. The twins giggled and waved from the safety of their room as Mrs. Kee made her way slowly back to me, clutching Danny's picture.

Louis looked up from his phone. “Found the number for the A&W. We're gonna have to give Danny's mom a call and get consent to show Danny's picture.”

Grandmother Kee gave me the picture and made no move to sit back down. The girls had disappeared from the hallway.

“Thank you, Ms. Kee.” I rose. “I'll return Danny's picture.”

Louis and I buckled up in the Rav. “We need some objectivity,” I said to him. “Let's go to the school and talk to the boys' teachers.”

I pulled into the visitor lot of the Indian school, a modern glass and brick building surrounded by basketball courts and playing fields. This late in the afternoon few cars remained in the lot. We went to the office and showed our IDs. “Could we speak to Danny Kee or Keith Dohi's teacher?”

The secretary gave us Danny's room number.

“All schools smell the same.” Louis sniffed the air. “A mix of crayons, gym socks, and too many sweaty little bodies. Brings back memories, doesn't it?”

The door to Danny's classroom was open. I poked my head in and a petite, middle-aged woman looked up. “May I help you?”

“Hi, Mrs. Cope?”

“Yes,” she replied, hesitant and looking from me to Louis.

“I'm Taylor McWhorter, and this is Louis Dubois from KNAZ.”

“I don't know that I want to talk with those poor boys missing.” Her voice softened. “Poor little Danny.” She shook her head and ducked her chin.

“We've just come from his grandmother's.” I paused, assessing her. “Did Danny have any close friends?”

She waited, her hands still holding the lined school papers she had been clutching when we walked in.

“Keith.” She noisily expelled a breath and shook her head. “And unfortunately, he was the only one.”

“What makes you say that?”

She looked uncomfortable. Finally, she shrugged. “Keith was a bully and Danny, poor thing, just lapped it up. Danny just wanted to
belong
. You think he's okay?”

“I don't know. I do know the police are doing all they can to find the boys. Did the boys ever talk about someplace they might have run to? Maybe some secret place to hide?”

“I know the Dohis had a sheep camp. I don't know about the Kees. The boys never talked about any special place around me. Most of these kids live over in the housing on the Nation and play around the school on the swings and the basketball court. I'm sorry.” She threw her hands in the air. “I'm not much help.”

“Here's my card if you think of anything else. Thank you for talking to us. You've helped us know the boys better. Can you suggest someone who would know Keith?”

“Mr. McCasland. He's the boys' coach. He knew Keith the best, and he's always here late.”

The coach was locking the dressing room doors when we found him. I hurried through the introductions and explanations. “No practice today?”

“No. Keith was our star forward. And by tomorrow,” he said bitterly, “we'll be covered up in news vans.” He had the decency to look uncomfortable.

“What were your impressions of Keith off the court?”

“On the way to more trouble.”

“More trouble?”

“He had a problem with authority. If you said ‘sit,' he'd stand just for the hell of it. He was a problem for the team and his attitude isn't going to help him get a job.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “If Keith ever makes it into the work force.”

I waited for him to continue.

“He didn't have the discernment to understand how people interact. It's like he couldn't connect with people. He was an angry kid. Sullen, too. He talked about dropping out before graduation.”

“He talked to you a lot?”

“More than anyone else here, I guess.” He stretched his neck to his shoulder. “I don't think he was getting much attention at home. I told him he needed a skill to get a job. I talked with him about going the vocational route here in high school and enrolling for a certificate program at the VoTech Community College.”

“Was Keith receptive?”

“Nah, he sloughed it off. He bragged he ‘knew how to get by.' If you're asking me if I thought Keith had a future—no. And that boy who followed him around under his thumb? Not him either. Keith was going to drag him down with him.”

“Do you know someplace the boys might be hiding?”

“No,” he said gruffly. “Most of these kids haven't ever been out of Tuba City.”

I looked at my watch. “Thank you, and I wish you well with handling the media and your team.” I handed him my card.

“You cut that abruptly, don't you think?” Louis asked as we were leaving the school.

“He told us all he knew. Ms. Cope did, too.”

We cut most of the interviews, keeping the sound bite of Mrs. Dohi sobbing and claiming the boys were good boys. We finished with the hotline number set up by the police and ran it under their pictures.

W
ith the story safely logged for the newscast, I called Trace. My call went straight to voice mail, so I left him a message that we were running new pictures of the boys on the tip line.

I found Louis in an edit bay. “We don't have time for a road trip to Phoenix. This thing is moving too fast. It's time to call Gerald Winston.”

“Let's go back to my place and make the call,” Louis suggested.

At his dining room table, we huddled over a legal pad making lists of questions we wanted to ask the DA, crossing some out, rewording others. When we had a list we both agreed on, I called his off ice.

“US Attorney's office,” a woman answered.

“This is Taylor McWhorter with KNAZ in Flagstaff. I have a phone appointment with Gerald Winston, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Winston is expecting your call.”

“Taylor, good to hear from you.” Gerald's bombastic voice had me glad I had the phone away from my ear and the speaker on.

“Thanks, Gerald, for making time for me on such short notice. I have you on speaker with my field producer, Louis.”

“That's fine. Hello, Louis. What do you have going on?”

“I'm looking into Dinetah Mining and Engineering here in Flagstaff. They're taking in a lot more money than they earn from selling uranium. Plus there's evidence they are trafficking in stolen Anasazi pottery,” I answered.

“Tell me the story.”

“Sancho Chavez bought the right to mine on the Navajo reservation. Mateo Chavez is his brother.”

There was a silence on Gerald's end before he cleared his voice. “I know Mateo Chavez. He was caught up in that money laundering scheme through that racetrack in New Mexico. He raced his thoroughbreds there.”

“Was he indicted?”

He sighed exasperatedly. “Hell, no. Way too slick.”

“Was he a member of the Zeta cartel?”

“That whole Ruidoso operation was Zeta,” he equivocated.

“Could you link Mateo specifically to the Zeta organization?”

“We couldn't even find enough evidence to get a grand jury to indict him for spitting on the sidewalk. Layers and layers of obfuscation. The little guys—they took the fall for Mateo.”

“But you assume he is a Zeta, right?”

“I don't deal in assumptions. They're like feelings. They're not facts.”

Louis scribbled on the legal pad and held his message up to my face,
What the hell?

“Tell me about the Zetas.”

His voice relaxed. He was on more familiar ground. “A bunch of deserters from the Mexican special forces worked for the Gulf cartel before they splintered and started calling themselves Los Zetas, pronounced,
‘setas'
in Spanish, after the letter Z which is the Mexican military's radio code for a drug raid,” he said.

Louis wrote on the legal pad,
A freaking history lesson?
He underlined
history
for emphasis. I held up one hand, urging patience.

“When they split with the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas left a trail of beheadings and assassinations of politicos, cops, and
journalists
,” he stressed. “They created a culture of terror by dismembering their victims while they were alive before beheading them. They sent a bloody message to anyone thinking about crossing them from Texas to the Pacific Ocean.”

We could get all this on the Internet.
Louis thrust the pad before me to read.

Gerald continued, “The Zetas are known for funneling millions to Mexican politicians and law-enforcement officials in bribes. We know they launder money. They smuggle thousands of tons of drugs into the US, and that cash has to be rinsed. We cut the head of the hydra and another takes its place. I've never heard of them being in the artifacts business, but who knows?”

“How do they get the money across the border?”

“Human mules. We turned one of them, and he gave us great intel until his charred remains were found in a car outside Nogales on the American side of the border. The Zetas specialize in retaliation so they killed his whole family. If you're investigating Sancho and Mateo, watch your back.”

“Thanks, Gerald,” I said wryly. “We'll do that.”

“Ah shit, Taylor,” he said disgustedly. “Most days I want to stand on the street in downtown Phoenix yelling, ‘To hell with al-Qaida. We got a badass enemy lurking on our southern border!' But if you're not living on the southern border, you don't give a shit what's going on down here.”

More subdued, he added. “Send me what you got. And hey, I know a guy in the DEA you might talk to—Ramon Gonzales, he's actually up there in Flag near you.” He hung up.

Louis fumed. “Nice fed speak until the end there.”

“He threw us Gonzales's name. I'll call the DEA guy tomorrow, and if we haven't heard from Madler, I'll goose him, too.”

Louis stretched. “Stay for happy hour?”

“No, thanks, I'm going home to bed.”

 

I let myself in the kitchen door, fed Mac, and got myself a Dos Equis. Once I was comfy on the sofa, I called Trace again. “Hey there. You still at work?”

“Yeah.” Trace sounded exhausted. “It was good seeing you today even if we were both working.”

“Laying eyes on you is always good. First thing Louis asked back in the car was if having the hots for you was going to hurt our investigation.”

“You told him no, and he's the hottest cowboy cop I ever met, I hope.” Trace laughed.

“Absolutely.” I smothered a laugh. “We ran the boys' pictures and tip line all day. I hope that helps.”

“Thanks. We don't have much else to go on right now. What are you doing tomorrow? Any chance you can come by the condo in the evening? I hope to make it there at a decent time.”

“I'll be there tomorrow evening.”

“Good. God, I've missed you and it's only been a day.”

“My day is better when you're in it.”

I heard someone call, “Captain Yazzie?”

“Have to go. I'll see you tomorrow.”

By nine in the morning, Louis and I were ushered back into the subdued office of Mr. Madler.

“Money laundering is a complicated business of layers of subterfuge and leaves behind reams of convoluted bank records,” he pontificated. “I've been a forensic accountant for the FBI and the DA's office. He waved his manicured hand at the papers spread over his desk. “It takes more time than I have had to completely untangle a trail like this one here.”

Louis rolled his eyes at me when Madler turned his back to us to pick more papers up off his credenza.

“Can you give us an opinion about the legitimacy of the Tri Ore transactions?”

“Yes, I think the mining company's dealings with Tri Ore look sound. Of course, I'm only looking at less than a quarter of a year's data,” he vacillated, “and you do realize there is much more money mixed into this business than they are making from the sale of uranium. You couldn't keep the operation running on the amount of uranium they're mining.”

“Yes, I can see that. The multiple deposits to First Bank and Southwest Desert Bank—”

He interrupted. “It's called ‘smurfing' in the money-laundering business. The Bank Secrecy Laws of the 1970s require banks to report any deposit over ten thousand dollars. So the bad guys just deposit less.” He shrugged one elegant shoulder. “My guess is the bank in Phoenix is a shell company owned and operated by the launderers. I can't find any record of ownership or the date banking operations began.”

“Why haven't they been caught smurfing?”

“The IRS and the banks run computer programs to ferret out multiple small deposits made regularly.”

“Then why haven't they caught the mining company?” I asked.

“They haven't been caught
yet
,” he emphasized. “Eventually, they will be discovered, which leads me to believe that Dinetah Mining didn't think they would be in business long enough for the IRS to track them. Or Dinetah is going to change its tactics. They do that, you know. Switch around the ways to launder the cash to stay under the radar.”

“Anything else?”

He leaned back in his big chair. “I would imagine with the amount of cash they're taking in, they are smuggling it across the border to wash it in the currency exchange between Mexico and the US. I worked another case with the FBI where mules were smuggling US dollars through Mexican banks in Nogales. Easy enough to do. Slip a few bribes to Mexican bank officials.” He righted his chair and looked hard at me. “You are, of course, going to alert the authorities?”

It was really more of a demand than a question from Mr. Madler.

“Of course.” I smiled.

“The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, estimates that over five percent of the global economy is involved in money laundering. The amount of untaxed secret revenue worldwide is staggering. And it's only going to get worse if Bitcoin is widely accepted. I can't emphasize enough the importance of turning this matter over to the FBI.”

“Consider it done. Is Bitcoin a factor in this case?”

“It's not. But if the bad guys start using Bitcoin, the authorities will find it very hard to catch them.”

“Why?”

“It's a virtual currency, a peer-to-peer transaction that is perfect for illegal activities. It'll be a game changer in the money-laundering business. And the cartels are very forward-thinking businessmen.”

When we were in the car, Louis turned to me. “Madler's gonna rat us out to his buddies in the FBI, and they will subpoena those records if we don't share.”

“I know. I'm giving them to the Navajo police first. The mine is on their land. They'll funnel it to the FBI since it's a transborder problem and the DA's office and Gerald will get their piece, too.”

“Translated, you're going to Trace.”

“Yeah, I am.” Louis made no noise about coming with me.