Death and Desire (6 page)

He opened his mouth, but the phone on his desk buzzed to life. He looked from me to the phone.

“I'll see you later. You're busy.” I swallowed hard.

“Yes. Definitely.” He grabbed the phone. “Yazzie here.”

L
ouis looked up from his editing when I plunked the groceries on his desk. He pawed through the bag. “If you want corn pudding for dinner, Eric's gotta have some milk and cheese.”

“See, I knew Eric could cook up an old Scottish dish with these groceries! Frank wasn't doing much business.”

“You find out who the old woman is?”

“Yanaha. Frank Aguirre's going to put a word in for me. He's the old-timer who owns the post.” The video was edited and paused on the timeline. “You ready for my voice-over?”

“Ready. I used the second take of you opening the story. You got two places to voice-over.” He handed me the microphone and backed out, shutting the door.

Five minutes later the package was on its way to the server. I wanted to talk to Marty before he pulled it off and viewed it. I walked down the corridor rehearsing things to say to persuade Marty to run the story.

His office was a jumble of papers and pizza boxes. I shoved one of the dying potted plants on his credenza over and perched on the edge. His wife marched in every week or two with a new one to decorate his office. “Just sent you the story about the mine reopening. Chavez gave a good interview. He talked about leach-pit mining and the environment.”

“You get any evidence of pot hunting? Pot hunting is your story, isn't it?” he barked.

“Louis got footage back in the canyons showing scarring on the canyon walls. Most likely it's evidence of looted burial sites. You don't dig many holes in the canyon walls to grade a road bed.”

“You need more than that to run a story about looting.”

“I'll get it. Give me some time.”

“So what's this environmental crap you're spouting at me?” He put his feet up on his desk and crossed his hands over his ample belly. “Convince me, McWhorter, to keep you on the payroll.”

“I pull my weight around here,” I said easily. “I'm working three stories. The opening of the mine is an economics story because it brings jobs to the community.”

“You did that one. What else you got?”

“Uranium mining has some horrific effects on the environment and ultimately the health of the people who live around it.”

“Tell me about.”

“The uranium dust causes lung disease and people who are exposed to the radioactive isotope develop cancers.”

“What else you got?”

“The mine's got a side business looting burial sites and selling the pottery on the black market. Before you say ‘prove it,' I've a couple of good leads.”

“You're worth your pay, for now. Get me evidence your other stories exist.” He swung his feet to the floor. “You want to take one of these dying plants off my hands? The wifey doesn't get it—I'm no botanist.”

I selected a withered, crispy-brown plant and carried it back to my cubicle. Eric could resurrect it. He grew a riot of flowers in their yard. Louis was impatiently waiting for me.

“Marty give the go ahead?”

“Yes, after the usual bluster. The Chavez interview will run tonight. The other one, we should talk about someplace else.”

“Come over for a drink tonight. About seven, okay? Don't bring the plant. Eric's turned the house into a jungle like the yard.” He scratched his head and dropped his chin sheepishly. “Uh, Mac upsets Stumpy and we have a hard time getting him calmed down.”

“I'll be there without Mac.” I laughed. “I'm still sorry about that evening. How long has it been since you rescued that cat?”

“Eric rescued the damn cat, not me. Stumpy's still not a joy to live with. Believe me, no one wants to live with a twenty-five-pound Manx that lives on the edge of rampage. I still insist we close him out of the bedroom at night. I have nightmares about something as big as a bobcat at my throat.”

I did my best thinking when I ran. Mac loped along beside me, never straying far from the trail. Even the errant scent of game didn't keep him long from my side, and I felt safer running with him.

I slowed to a fast walk as I neared my house, thinking about my developing stories. Yanaha was an important key, but I needed to review that crash report, find the dozer driver's widow, and get in front of Gage Notah. I had to get Gage to talk to me. Plus Alison Garcia over at NAU was a renown southwest anthropologist—she'd know something about the black market. She provided provenance for the NAU museum and the Heard Museum down in Phoenix. She had to know something of the dark side of collecting.

Images of Trace Yazzie formed a slide show in my head and I quit totting up the work I needed to do and enjoyed the mind show. Sexy grin, broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips, and oh, my God, those hands. Hands that could heat up a woman's body. I shivered as I thought about his hands roaming
my
body. Sliding over my breasts, grazing my nipples . . . Oh, hell! Stop with the fantasies!

I leaned on the little fence surrounding my casita to catch my breath. Mac bounded over and nudged my hand for a pet
.
“We're a good team, boy.” The evening gloom gathered in the pines in the woods around my house. Nothing. Not one thing was out there.

The sight of my snug adobe home always pleased me. Inside, the living space had viga-beamed ceilings, and the rounded adobe fireplace cast a golden glow on a cool night. When I arrived in Flag, Louis had sent me to Eric, claiming he could find me the perfect house. He had. Better yet, it was walking distance from Louis and Eric's home.

I shrugged out of my running clothes, dropped them in the washer, and padded naked to my bathroom. I turned on the shower, letting the water heat to steaming, so it could knead my shoulders.

I towel dried my hair and pulled it in a low ponytail, dismissed the idea of wearing makeup, and put on my favorite pair of soft old jeans and an oversize white shirt. A Phoenix Suns baseball cap completed my look. Mac got a rawhide bone to work on in my absence, and I walked up the street to Louis and Eric's broad front porch and knocked.

Eric opened the screen door. “Any reason you've brought that dead house plant to happy hour?” He stepped back for me to enter.

“A hostess gift.” I shoved the plant in his hands. “You can make it bloom.”

“Ivies don't bloom.” Eric kissed my cheek. “But I'll nurse it back to health. The usual for you?”

“Yes, please.” We walked into their cozy keeping room. “You have been busy.” I motioned at the spread of food on the coffee table. Stumpy stalked over to me with his nubbin of a tail held straight up. I reached out to stroke his head and he wailed a protest and marched off.

“Don't mind the cat. In fact, ignore the cat. Damn thing only loves Eric. We have all this food because Eric cooks when he's nervous,” Louis teased.

“What's the problem?”

“I'm working with the house hunter from hell, but a nice commission waits if I just get her to buy any of the millions of houses I've taken her to.”

“Try that hot artichoke dip before it gets cold.” Louis scooped a big bite and popped it in his mouth.

“Here's your fave, one orange vodka martini,” Eric said.

Louis scooted closer to me on the couch. “Give me the scoop. What did you learn at the trading post?”

“Frank Aguirre had friends who worked in the mine. They died from lung disease and cancer. We'll use his info in the environmental story.”

“You sold Marty yet?” Eric asked.

“Marty's willing to give us some time to develop the environmental angle.”

Louis passed the bacon-wrapped fried cheese to Eric. “I don't see the story as any problem. Story's damn near going to tell itself.”

Eric took two of the food bombs. “So what do you have that incriminates Dinetah for looting?”

“The pictures Niyol sent and the video Louis shot. Maybe pot hunting is a bigger moneymaker than we think. Maybe Dinetah provides pieces to collectors all over the world.”

“That's a stretch girl. We got to find a shitload of evidence before we accuse Chavez.”

“Frank is introducing me to Yanaha. She's bound to have seen something, and there's a pottery expert over at NAU I'm going to talk to.”

“I'm concerned about your going out to Yanaha's by yourself,” Louis said cautiously.

“She's harmless.”

“It's not her that worries me.” He furrowed his brow. “I need to see you in action with that Smith & Wesson.”

“I thought you said I needed arrows dipped in ash,” I teased.

“You do. But you can rile up plenty ordinary humans hunting for evidence of pot stealing.”

“Range time,” Eric agreed.

I
n the clear morning light, we targeted paper silhouettes stapled to plywood. Louis took his ear protection off and came up behind me. “Good shooting. All within a four-inch range. Very good.”

We were the only three on the range. “How about you, deadeye?”

Louis held up a target with a perfect concentric circle of holes on the silhouette's center mass.

“I'm army good.”

“I'll save you the trouble of asking,” Eric said as he ambled up. He held up his target with a single bullet hole punched in the left thigh. “Say one word and there'll never be artichoke dip again,” he warned.

I smothered a grin. “You have other talents.”

My cell phone rang. Frank Aguirre told me Yanaha had been to the post and would talk to me. He kept talking, nattering on about a brief rainstorm, gabbing about the shearing season coming up, and who had been in lately to trade. I knew he was lonely and I didn't want to be rude, but I finally talked over him and said, “I can be there. Thanks, Frank.”

“You got word on seeing Yanaha?” Louis asked me.

“Yes.”

Louis pointed to the pistol. “Take care. See you at the station later.”

 

I parked the Rav on the county road and spread the topo map over the steering wheel. The next right should be the entrance to the canyon Yanaha lived in. I rocked the car onto the rutted path. This road saw enough traffic to be packed hard, and I'd be fine if I steered down the middle, staying away from the soft shoulders, and used four-wheel drive. I took the curve slowly, hogging the middle. I hated these narrow roads where one driver had to reverse to a wide spot for the other to pass. Backing up had never been my forte. When I rounded a corner, the tall canyon walls opened up into a stunning view of a stand of willows. Her hogan was nestled under their branches. Deeper in the trees sat an aluminum airstream trailer. I nosed the car past the hedgerow surrounding her home.

My feet sank in soft sand, making the walk to her door difficult. A wooden door was jerry-rigged into a battered doorframe, set into the hogan's thick walls. I knocked. Sheep bleated in the wooden corral behind the house.

A petite old woman dressed in the traditional long velvet skirt and loose blouse opened the door.

She extended her hands and grasped mine tightly as she scrutinized me. A heavy squash blossom of intricately set turquoise circled her weathered neck. Two heavy turquoise rings adorned her swollen fingers. Her white hair was tamed by a silver comb.

“
Ya-ta-hey
,” she greeted me. “You look as Frank described you.” She pulled me into the gloomy interior; the only natural light came from the open door, one tiny window, and cracks in the stovepipe vent in the ceiling. There was a cot on one wall and a weaver's loom with an unfinished rug strung on it. Near the black woodstove, two metal chairs, a small table, and a small chest completed her furniture.

She led me to the chairs. “Sit down, please.” Her smile lines deepened around her mouth. “I've made coffee.” She pulled an old enamelware blue pot off the camp stove and put a dented blue cup on the chrome table, topped with battered blue Formica. It was the classic round 1950s kitchen set with two chrome-legged blue vinyl chairs. Unlike the Galaxy's retro look, I was fairly sure she'd used these over sixty years.

“Thank you for seeing me. I'm sorry, I don't know your last name?”

“I am Yanaha, ‘one who confronts her enemy.' I am for the Bear Clan people. Please call me Grandmother.” She poured the coffee and set a pot of milk and sugar on the table between us. “The cream is from my best sheep, Betsy.” She held up the tiny pot, offering me the cream.

“Thank you, Grandmother.” I poured a slug in the coffee and added two sugars.

“Please, have a cookie,” she urged. She turned her head away and a deep, noisy, wet cough racked her chest. Her face flushed red from the effort, and her eyes teared.

To ask about her health so soon after meeting would be an affront to her Navajo reserve. Forming a relationship as an outsider would take more time.

“Excuse me.” She cleared her throat. “I'm afraid my lungs don't work as well as they once did. When the spring winds blow, I'm reminded of how old I am.” She seemed to be breathing better now that the fit of coughing had subsided.

“I wish you health.” I balanced an Oreo on my lap as I drank the coffee. If I hadn't known the cream came from sheep, it would probably taste better.

“Why have you come to see me?”

I was edgy for a moment. Surely, Frank had told her. “I'm a reporter for KNAZ and I wanted to talk with you about the mine.”

She caught me looking around the hogan for a TV. Her eyes twinkled. “It's in the trailer.”

“Of course. I'm sorry.” The serene old woman flustered me.

“Perhaps you wonder why I choose to live in my hogan? The warm days and nights in my hogan take me back to my childhood. The trailer is my snug winter home.”

“Did you live near here when you were a child?”

“Here.” She pointed at the earth floor. “The Bear Clan people have always lived in this canyon. I raised my daughter Kaih here.”

I placed my hand on her forearm. “Grandmother, I came to talk with you about the mine. You must see a lot of activity with the men building a road at the mouth of your canyon.”

“I see many things, Granddaughter. The name of my canyon is Kaih.”

“Named for your daughter.”

She nodded. “Kaih means ‘the willow trees.' She is here with me in my willows. I will be buried here with my Kaih.” She put her coffee on the tabletop.” What is it that you want to know?”

“Were you here when Naalish Tsosie worked the mine?”

“Yes, I was very young then.” Her gaze became unfocused as if she viewed a reel of old memories in her mind.

“Did the miners become ill?”

“The Leetso took many of them. My father's friends, my eldest brother, they all died.” She was staring at her cooling coffee.

“I'm sorry,” I murmured.

“Leetso came silently into the men's bodies. He wore them down. When they began to cough blood and their breath rattled, even we children knew the Yellow Monster had won.”

“I'm sorry. How old was your brother when he died?”

“Only thirty years. My father went back into the Bitsi Wilderness by himself for a month after my brother died. When he came home, he went back into the mine and my brother was never spoken of again.”

“How hard for you, to lose your brother and a part of your father.”

She nodded gravely. “Some of the children were born with horrible defects. Others had the cancer. There were many tears in our hogans. You see”—her hand trembled as she put her cup down—“it was the water. The mine poisoned the water. Every morning my job was to pull water from the well for my mother. We drank the poison. We didn't know . . .” Her voice trailed off. “And our hogans, we built our homes of poisoned rock tailings from the mines.”

“When the mine shut down, were people glad?”

“No.” She shook her head sadly. “There were no more jobs for our people.” Her smile was that of an old woman whose years brought her more wisdom than she wanted to bear, but no more than she could.

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

“You want to know what I've seen now that the mine is reopened.” She bustled over to her camp stove, picked the pot up, and refilled my cup. She sat down, smoothing the folds in her dusty skirt. “At night, I hear the rumble of their machines. I slipped into the willows one night, hiding, watching.”

“Did they see you?” I was alarmed for this tiny old woman.

She shook her head. “I was small in the willows. I saw their machines tearing great holes in the ancient ones' graves. They loot from our dead, steal the pottery, even the tattered cloth of the old ones' burial blankets.”

“You must careful.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “The dead's possessions belong with their bodies in the earth. Their spirits have gone on to the spirit world. When thieves disturb burial sites, the Chindi are disturbed.

“Who are the Chindi?”

“Evil spirits who inhabit the bones and possessions of the dead.”

“So it's not the spirit of the dead person who comes back?”

“No, they are in the spirit world,” she repeated. “The Chindi are tormenters. They bring illness to the mind and body. Much sadness is coming.” She stretched her shaking hand out and plucked at my sleeve. “Granddaughter, these men, they are not interested in uranium.”

Just as I was about to ask her what they were interested in, the rumble of a diesel engine stopped and a heavy door slammed. I looked at her with alarm. “Grandmother . . .”

She slowly rose and balanced herself on the edge of the table. “It's only my grandson,” she said to me over her shoulder. As she struggled with the old doorknob, Captain Trace Yazzie pushed through the door.

He peered into the gloom. “I didn't expect to see you here.” He crossed the short distance between us. I rose to face either his displeasure or his surprise; I wasn't sure which I was seeing.

His grandmother stepped between us taking his hand and placing mine in his. “She is my guest, Grandson. She walks in
hozho
.”

He kept a firm grip on my hand.

I turned to her in astonishment. “You're Yanaha Yazzie? His grandmother?”

“Yes.” An amused smile played across her face.

I pulled my hand out of Trace's. “I came to speak with your grandmother about the mine.”

Worry flashed across his handsome face. He dropped his hand awkwardly to his side. “Did she help you?”

“Yes.” I flashed Yanaha a warm smile. “Thank you for the coffee. I should be going so you can enjoy visiting with your grandson.”

“I would be happy, Granddaughter, for you to come back to see me.” She hobbled over to the one small chest in the room and proudly held up a cell phone.

“I didn't know you had service.”

She chuckled. “I don't yet. My grandson bought it for me when he heard we were getting service out this far.” Her eyes twinkled when she beamed at Trace.

I was touched by her obvious sincerity. When you grew old, even nosy reporters must be good company. I gently squeezed her work-hardened, gnarled knuckles. “Call me as soon as you get service.”

Trace cleared his throat. “Let me walk you out.”

He followed me out to my car. “How about a cup of coffee over at the Galaxy in an hour?” His dimple deepened when he smiled, and he was standing close enough for me to feel the heat wafting off him. Cologne scented the warm breeze. When he reached up to adjust his hat, his pecs strained his shirt buttons. Through the gap, I caught a glimpse of smooth brown skin. My gaze trailed down to linger on his flat belly.

“Can't be that hard to decide. It's just a cup of coffee.” He was staring at me.

I flushed with embarrassment. “I'll be there.” I popped the Rav's automatic lock.

“Good.” He grinned. “Glad I ran into you.” I watched him walk toward his grandmother's hogan. Nice ass. High and muscled. Oh, for God's sake, a cowboy cop wanted to meet for coffee in a diner in broad daylight. That was all. I had to stop drooling over his body. My sex life had been a big duh lately, but no reason to get all hot and bothered.

Guiding my vehicle through the wide part of Kaih Canyon was the easy part. The narrow road between Yanaha's camp and the county road was boxed in by sheer walls. I put the Rav in four-wheel drive when the canyon walls narrowed. A light breeze kicked up the loose sand. I closed the car windows and grabbed the wheel with both hands. Suddenly, the breeze turned into a howling wind that swirled great spirals of grit around me. I dropped the Rav in low gear and slowed to a crawl. The red sand blocked the sunlight, and the canyon loomed dark and menacing. The high walls shimmered with weird, black shadows. The wind keened, rocketing through the canyon, obscuring my vision and sandblasting my little SUV. I crept forward, straining to see past the end of the hood.

A ferocious blast of wind rocked the car and blew corkscrewing sand up the canyon walls. As quickly as it began, the shrieking wind stilled. Something was sitting in the middle of the road. I checked my mirrors for anything behind me. A large coyote sat perfectly still ten feet ahead of the Rav, staring at me. At least the damn thing looked like an animal. Dread seeped into every pore, and I shivered with the cold. Some corner of my brain shrieked,
Run over the damn thing
, but I stomped on the brake and idled. The wind had stilled and sand gently sifted out of the air to the earth.

The coyote turned and loped ahead of me, hugging the sheer walls. He looked over his shoulder with red, ferocious eyes. When he disappeared around a boulder into the narrowest part of the canyon, sand spewed from behind the boulder, funneling around the car. When the dirt settled, clear blue sky topped the canyon walls.

My heart hammered in my ears. I swiveled my head to catch any movement. I wasn't sure what had happened. Where was he? Behind that boulder? I no longer sensed his presence. I took a gulp of air and slowly eased the car door open. No sound, no sand, no wind, no coyote. A raven called in the stillness. I'd stopped sweating fear, and the doom had lifted. I was sure I was alone. I searched in the deep sand piled by the wall. There were no tracks by the rock face or in the middle of the road. I drove forward to the outcrop where he had disappeared, parked, and searched again. The sun shone in the brilliant sky, the wind was still, and the canyon floor held no sign of a coyote or its tracks. Only the caws of ravens pierced the silence.