Death Walker (12 page)

Ella glanced at the Navajo man. “Please, go ahead.”

“I know that man from the Rez, and after being assigned to
watch him, I’ve learned what makes him tick. He’s a born actor. He’s aware of the stories about him, and he plays to his audience. He doesn’t want to be approachable; he remains more a mystery this way.”

“So you think it’s all a good act?” Ella pressed.

“No, not at all. It took more than that to accomplish the things he did on the Rez. What I’m saying is that he’s very intuitive about people.
He knows how to manipulate situations that are already there so that people end up believing and doing exactly what he wants them to.”

Ella nodded slowly, then shifted her gaze down to the yard. To her surprise, Peterson Yazzie was looking up. He seemed to be staring at her, but that was impossible. This was one-way glass. Her breath caught in her throat when he smiled and waved.

The eye contact
was direct. It wasn’t a matter of looking in her direction; he was looking straight at her. “He knows I’m here.” She snapped her head around and looked at Kring.

Kring shrugged. “Not by seeing through this, he doesn’t. And you didn’t give us any advance warning you were coming. He may be doing this because he knows a fourth guard is always watching from here.”

Logical, but Peterson had looked
at
her, not in the direction of the guard next to the window. Her body prickled with unease. He
knew.
She was as certain of that as she was of her own name. She tried to recall who else she had seen on the way upstairs. The orderly, Kring’s secretary, and perhaps one or two doctors and nurses in the hall.

“Who’s spoken to him in the past fifteen minutes?” She glanced at the guard.

“No one, and
he’s been out there with three guards and two other inmates for a half hour now. You’ve seen for yourself. Nobody goes close to him.”

Still, somebody had signaled him, somehow. There was an explanation if she had the time to find it.

“He has only one confidant, his lawyer,” the guard assured her. “And if you ask me, that guy’s scared shitless of him too.” He cleared his throat. “Pardon my language.”

Ella considered the information as she accompanied Kring back to his office. “When’s the last time Yazzie’s lawyer was here?”

Kring stopped by the secretary’s desk and picked up the log for Peterson again. He flipped to a section near the back and handed the notebook to Ella. “I’ve had my secretary note the dates of each contact he’s had with his attorney, including letters Yazzie mailed out
to him.”

Ella studied the list. A letter had preceded the bombing attempt at the station by three days. “Do you happen to have his lawyer’s address handy?”

Kring returned with Ella to his office, flipped through an address file on his desk, then copied the information onto a sheet of notepaper. “Here you go. His name is Bruce Cohen and he lives in Farmington. I’ve only got his office address
and number, but you shouldn’t have any trouble tracking him down.”

Ella went back to her car. The memory of Peterson’s soulless stare as he looked directly into her eyes still made her skin crawl. It was all trickery, of course, but there was no doubt the man was a master of deception.

Ella picked up the radio mike and reported in. Justine was away from the station reinterviewing students and
would be out of touch most of the morning and early afternoon. The area of the Rez she’d be in made reliable radio communications nearly impossible.

Ella gave Big Ed a sketchy report, then racked the mike. As she continued on to Farmington, she speculated on what approach to take with Peterson’s attorney. She’d met Bruce Cohen during the trial. He was young and inexperienced, but a very hard
worker. He’d also been the only public defender willing to take Peterson’s case without being coerced.

When Ella walked into the public defender’s office twenty minutes later, she realized just how overworked Cohen was. His desk was a foot deep in file folders, and other records were stacked in a cardboard box on the floor.

He glanced up through red-rimmed eyes that looked like road maps to
hell. “Make it fast, Special Investigator Clah. I’ve got two defenses to put together for preliminary hearings this afternoon.”

Ella pulled up a wooden chair from against the wall and sat across the desk from him. “You know why I’m here.” She decided to make him assume she knew more than she actually did.

Cohen cleared his throat and broke eye contact. “I have no idea,” he lied badly. “And I’m
much too busy to play games.”

Ella leaned back, deliberately allowing a stretch of silence to fill the air. “Peterson Yazzie, your client, is getting into more legal trouble, Counselor. This comes at a time when he’s already been charged with almost every major offense on the books. And you may have the opportunity to share in that—but not as his attorney.”

“Is this a threat of some sort?” Cohen
challenged with a bravado that he couldn’t quite carry.

“Counselor, look at the facts. Your client has very little contact with the outside. You’re it, actually. So let’s talk about the letters.”

“If you’re censoring my client’s mail without due process—”

“Not yet, but I could arrange for him not to be given any writing materials at all.”

“What letters are you referring to? What was in them?”

“I received an interesting letter from Peterson, Counselor, which someone was kind enough to mail out for him.” Ella then decided to do some bluffing of her own. “We were able to lift one fingerprint. It’s not Peterson’s. I think it’s yours. You might find it tricky to explain to the review boards, not to mention the courts, why you’re smuggling threatening letters out for your client.”

Bruce
Cohen leaned back in his chair, and for a tiny moment she knew what he’d look like as an old man. “You don’t know what I’m dealing with here. This isn’t an ordinary client.”

“What I know is that you’re scared to death of him.”

“You would be too, if you had any brain cells at all,” Cohen snapped. “Yazzie’s a monster. He’s not like you and me. Hell, he’s not like anyone at all. He belongs in that
institution. His freedom is virtually nonexistent, yet he can still make things happen on the outside.”

“Like what?”

Cohen stood. “Yazzie is insane, but he’s not stupid. Far from it.”

“Has he threatened you?”

“Me, personally?” Cohen shook his head. “Yazzie wouldn’t touch me. He wants me to file an appeal.”

Ella felt a dozen questions rush through her mind as she considered his reply. “Your
family?”

Cohen walked to the window, looked around, then returned to his desk. “It’s not what he says, but what he lets me know indirectly.” He shrugged. “I’m starting to sound as loony as he is.”

“No. Not to me. Remember, I know him too. I was the one who put him behind bars.”

Cohen gave her a long, thoughtful look. “You have no legal right to stop my client’s mail. We both know that. If you
push it, you’ll lose.”

“If your client wins, neither one of us does.”

Cohen’s eyes narrowed as the message struck home. “What would you have me do? Stop mailing his letters? You have no idea what you’re asking.”

Ella acknowledged the admission with a nod. “I don’t want you to stop doing anything. I want to continue getting the letters he sends me.” If Yazzie was really tied to the murder somehow,
it could provide her with information on the case. “What I need from you is information. Who else is he sending things to?”

“So far, no one.”

“Next time he asks you to mail something, I want you to let me know.”

“All right,” he conceded. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”

Ella returned to her car and started the drive back to the reservation. She felt genuinely sorry for Cohen.
He was in way over his head with the likes of Yazzie.

Twenty minutes later, she approached the turnoff that led to her home. Ella decided to stop and make sure everything was all right there. She wasn’t expecting trouble, really, but it would give her one less thing to worry about. As she went up the road, her gaze darted around the sagebrush and junipers, searching for any sign of threat. Everything
seemed normal and quiet, but she couldn’t help but remember Haske’s warning.

When she finally pulled up in front of her home, she saw Dog asleep on the porch, belly up, and her brother’s pickup parked by the kitchen door. She was glad Clifford lived nearby and that he visited often. It reassured her to know that her mother was seldom as alone as the terrain around the house seemed to indicate.

Ella opened the front screen door a moment later. She heard her mother and brother in the kitchen and went to join them. Rose glanced up as Ella came in, and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting you home so early.”

“I can’t stay. I was on my way to see Big Ed and thought I’d pop in and see if there was anything you needed.” She shot Clifford an inquiring glance. His calm expression told her nothing was
wrong.

“Your brother came for the same reason,” Rose commented absently, and Clifford finally smiled. “You two aren’t worried about me, are you? There’s no need to be. They will never attack
my
home again.”

There was no hesitation or doubt in Rose’s tone. Although she knew her mother’s intuitions could be trusted implicitly, Ella didn’t feel comfortable dismissing a possible threat so quickly.
“We always worry about you, Mom, just like you do about us.”

Rose nodded. “Well, that’s what family’s for. We care too much to do otherwise.” She poured both her children a glass of her special herbal tea. “I’m going to spin some more wool. You two visit. You really don’t spend enough time with each other.”

Ella waited until her mother was out of the room before saying anything to Clifford.
“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Trouble?” He looked in her eyes questioningly.

She told him about her unnerving experience with Peterson at the hospital facility. “I honestly believe he knew I was there.”

“I don’t doubt that he did. He used to be a cop. He knows how to search out the little signs, just like you do. Maybe he heard the sound of your Jeep coming up the road, or your voice through a vent.
Also, you’ve got to remember that he does have one big advantage over you. As a skinwalker, he knows all about misdirection. Peterson can use tricks you’ve never thought of.”

“That may be so, but I’m a better-trained cop than he ever was. I can still throw him a surprise or two.” She saw the skepticism on her brother’s face, but decided to ignore it. “Keep an ear out for Peterson’s buddies. If
any of our people are still in league with him, I need to know who they are. You can bet they’re going to take any opportunity to spread as much fear as possible, linking the bus accident to the murder, and all of that to the power of the skinwalkers. In the meantime, I’m going to request additional patrols around Cohen’s home and office. Nothing obvious, just a way of making sure his family’s not
being physically threatened. I have a bad feeling about that.”

“Peterson is capable of anything. Nothing he could ever stoop to would surprise me.”

Her brother stood and walked to the door. “I’ve got to go see a patient across the Rez. Be careful and take care of yourself,” he said.

After he’d left, Ella, too, got under way. She was certain that Cohen’s fear of Peterson was real, but how far
would Cohen go to maintain the safety of his family? Although she doubted Cohen would do anything more than mail a few letters for Peterson, she wasn’t really sure. The minute she got back to the station, she’d do a background search on the man.

As she headed down the highway, Ella got a radio call from Justine. Patty Ben was having a group of women over, to demonstrate native dyes that could
be used to tint wool. With summer starting and sheep-shearing season at its height, this community class was bound to attract women from all over the reservation.

“I thought you might like to come,” Justine said. “We could meet there and I can bring you up to date after we get a chance to mingle and hear what people are saying.”

Ella noted the directions to Patty’s. “I’ll be there in thirty.”

Gossip was a favorite pastime on the Rez, and what better place than a gathering like that. As they worked, the women would talk. Ella could learn the latest news, people’s fears or concerns, and all the while enlarge her circle of contacts. Certain that was Justine’s strategy, she found herself looking forward to the meeting.

Ella drove east out of Shiprock and turned onto the dirt track leading
to the Ben residence. She noted the many vehicle tracks that had recently disturbed the wide ruts. Half a dozen or more cars and pickups would be there already.

The first thing Ella saw as the road led her down off a bluff was an empty sheep corral. The thick woolly
churro
sheep had been sheared close and now wandered about, grazing on the thin desert grasses. Women sat in the shade of a windbreak
made out of cottonwood branches and brush while Patty dipped samples of wool into vats filled with indigo, red, and yellow dyes.

Ella walked around, staying toward the back, and saw Justine. Her young cousin was taking an active part, taking notes about the composition and preparation of the dyes.

Uncertain what kind of reception she’d get, Ella kept a low profile. When Patty’s demonstration
concluded and everyone gathered for refreshments, Ella was glad to see the women welcomed her.

Patty came up to her and handed her some of the dry, freshly tinted blue wool. “Will you take this to your mother? She was interested in this new dye.”

As Ella agreed, two more women joined them. They were both dressed in jeans and cotton blouses, though one was in her twenties and the other in her
fifties. Although they said little, they seemed to stay near Ella expectantly.

“What do you think of our class?” the younger asked. Her tone indicated she was only making polite conversation, but the light of curiosity in her eyes told far more.

Ella smiled politely. “I think it must be wonderful to make such beautiful things,” she said, gesturing to a woven shawl Patty had draped over a chair
for all to see.