Naked Edge (19 page)

Then Kat slowly, reluctantly pulled away. "I ... I should go."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Don't you want breakfast? Rumor has it that even reporters need to eat."

She couldn't help but smile. "Thanks, but I want to get a good look at the land around the butte before I head into Denver."

He frowned. "What?"

She walked over to the table and tucked the police report back in the correct file folder. "Looting leaves certain signs. You can see it all over the rez--little holes dug here and there. If there's looting going on at Mesa Butte, I'll be able to tell."

He took a step toward her. "And if you catch someone pinching pots, what then?"

"If I catch anyone in the act, I'll call nine-one-one." Kat took her coat from the back of her chair and slipped it on, her back to him.

"You'd damned well better hope the cops arrive in time." He sounded angry. "If Red Crow's death is somehow related to looting, then what's to keep whoever killed him from killing you?"

"What do you want me to do? Should I just stand by while people say things about Grandpa Red Crow that I know aren't true?"

"And what if you find out that they
are
true?" His words hung in the air.

Kat's fingers fumbled with the zipper of her coat as she forced herself to consider the unthinkable. And some part of her wondered whether she'd be making things worse if through her hard work she managed only to prove that Grandpa Red Crow had been a pot-pinching alcoholic who'd simply staggered off a cliff.

She looked up at Gabe, found him watching her intently, his jaw set. "I'm a journalist. Either way, I have to find out the truth."

"All right. Fine." He set his mug down. "But you're not going there without me. I get off at four. I'll meet you there."

THE DAY TURNED out to be one of the most difficult in Kat's life.

It started out well enough. She called the Denver police immediately after the I-Team meeting to report the death threats and spent nearly an hour answering the detective's questions, while Sophie sat at her desk, pretending not to eavesdrop, a slow smile spreading over her face when Kat told the detective where she'd spent the night.

"We'll need your permission to access your cell phone records," the detective told her. "If we can find the pay phones this person used, there might be surveillance video that can shed light on his identity. In the meantime, we'll increase patrols on your street. If you don't already own a gun, now might be a good time to buy one."

No sooner had the detective walked away when Sophie strolled over to Kat's desk. "I'm sorry you're going through this, Kat. Those calls sound really terrifying. If you don't mind, I'm going to tell Marc about this."

Kat had known Sophie was going to say that. "I'm not sure there's much he can do, but thanks, Sophie."

Then Sophie lowered her voice and smiled. "Is this, um ... the same ranger who rescued you last summer, the one who intervened when the sweat lodge was raided, the ranger Marc met?"

"Yes, but it's not what you think. He and I ... we're just friends."

"Ah." The smile on Sophie's face as she walked back to her desk told Kat that Sophie didn't believe her.

And then came the moment Kat had been dreading. She forced herself to read through Grandpa Red Crow's autopsy report, trying to steel herself against her own emotions and failing. Seeing him reduced to a collection of body parts--a brain that had been weighed, genitals that had been examined, subcutaneous body fat that had been measured--seemed to dehumanize him. But worse than that were the toxicology tests that showed him to have alcohol in his stomach--and a blood-alcohol level just below the legal limit for drunk driving.

She didn't want to believe it, couldn't believe it. She'd never once smelled alcohol on his breath, and she'd certainly never seen him under the influence. Yet the proof was right there in black and white. The disappointment she'd felt had been so overwhelming she'd spent a half hour in the women's room crying and the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how she was going to do her job as a journalist without betraying the memory of someone she loved.

SHE WAS STILL struggling to pull herself together when it was time to make the trip to Boulder and Mesa Butte. She arrived to find Gabe waiting for her at the top of the access road. Still in uniform, he met her at the tailgate, his gun holstered against his hip, the wind ruffling his hair.

He frowned at her from behind his sunglasses. "You okay?"

She shook her head, feeling tears prick her eyes, but willing herself not to cry. "I read the autopsy report, but I ... I really don't want to talk about it."

"I'm sorry." He reached out, took her hand, held it in the warmth of his own. "Did you contact the police about those calls?"

"Yes."

For a moment, he said nothing, as if expecting her to tell him more. "So what exactly are we looking for?"

Kat tucked her keys and digital camera in her pocket. "Looters leave little holes and trenches. You can see them all over the rez--small pits dug with trowels or shovels. Looters usually don't waste time trying to cover up what they've done. They just grab whatever they find and take off."

"Rape and run."

Kat drew her hair back and tucked it into her coat to keep the wind from blowing it in her face, then looked about, trying to put aside her unsettled emotions and get her bearings. The sun hung over the mountains, a thin layer of cirrus cloud stretched in ripples across the sky. A handful of crows played in the gale, one moment struggling forward against the current, then tumbling backward, beak over tail feathers like airborne acrobats. To the west, the distant peaks gleamed white in the autumn sunshine.

Thankfully, there seemed to be no one else at the butte, her truck and Gabe's SUV the only vehicles in sight. Even so, a sense of uneasiness had come over her. Maybe it was the sight of the sweat lodge standing cold and empty. Or maybe it was the fact that Grandpa Red Crow had died here.

She shivered, drew her jacket tighter around her shoulders, her gaze coming to rest on the place where Grandpa Red Crow's pickup had last stood, an ache swelling inside her chest. She turned away, swallowing the lump in her throat. "I ... I've never seen any signs of looting when I've been here, but then it's always been dark."

She felt Gabe's hand on her shoulder, as if he knew what she was feeling. "Well, looting wouldn't happen up here would it?"

Kat looked over at him. "What do you mean?"

"If ceremonies were traditionally held up here, Nativepeople wouldn't have lived here because it's sacred. That means they wouldn't have made pots or hunted or had their trash dumps up here, either, so the artifacts wouldn't be here."

"Oh. You're right." Kat couldn't help wondering why she hadn't thought of that. She was the Indian, after all.

A grin tugged at Gabe's lips. "Hey, I paid attention during my cultural-resource training. The actual butte is on the far west end of the Mesa Butte property. Any encampments would've been east of here--on the plains."

GABE LED KAT around to the east side of the butte. In contrast to the west side, which was a sheer cliff, the east side sloped steeply downward until it leveled out into xeric tall-grass prairie. He was glad to see most of the snow had melted.

Even so, the hillside was steep enough that he was afraid Kat might slip and reinjure her leg. Wearing a long denim skirt and cowboy boots, she wasn't exactly dressed for this kind of terrain. "Watch your step. The grass is slick. I don't want you to fall and hurt--"

She gasped, her feet sliding out from beneath her.

"I've got you." He caught her before she could fall, helping her regain her balance. Then he turned her so that her left side faced downhill. "Walk sideways like this. Let your left leg do all the work."

He sidestepped down the steepest part of the hillside, keeping one hand on her waist just in case, his gaze on their surroundings. If there was any chance that looters were operating here, he didn't want to be taken by surprise. But there was no one else as far as the eye could see. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement--a lone coyote loping its way south at the base of the hill below them.

Beside him, Kat froze, her body suddenly rigid, her gaze fixed on the coyote, an unmistakable look of fear on her face.

"It won't bother us. Coyotes are pretty shy around people."

But she didn't seem to hear him. Her hand found his, held it tight. Then she whispered something, words he didn't understand, her gaze still fixed on the coyote.

"Easy, Kat. I won't let it hurt you."

"I left my corn pollen in my truck," she said at last. "If we cross its path without making an offering, it could bring bad luck."

"Bad luck?" They hadn't covered Native myths or superstitions in their training. "I've got a loaded Glock forty-five semiauto that's guaranteed to reverse most bad luck with a pull of the trigger. But if you want to turn back--"

Her chin came up, her gaze meeting his. "No."

GABE WATCHED AS Kat knelt down beside the plundered earth, rage on slow boil in his gut. She traced her fingers over the deep tread of frozen tire tracks, a stricken look on her sweet face. The tracks came from the east and ended at this spot, where a trench perhaps two feet deep and ten feet long had been gouged in the soil, earth heaped up carelessly on both sides. And it wasn't the only trench. Several more had been dug nearby, some deeper and longer than this one.

"How could anyone do this?" Kat's voice quavered. She reached out, picked up a small potsherd that Gabe hadn't noticed, turned it over in her palm. "They're so desperate to get to the artifacts that they're destroying things."

He squatted down beside her, looked down at other tracks frozen in the mud, their treads farther apart. "Whoever they are, they're using machinery, probably a compact excavator like a Bobcat. This sure as hell wasn't dug with a shovel."

Farther into the trench, they found several more potsherds, as well as a clump of fibers woven together in what looked like a flattened bit of basket, part of a beaded cradleboard, and a small broken shaft of wood that Gabe couldn't identify, but which clearly meant something to Kat.

She held it reverently, turned it over, tears spilling onto her cheeks.
"Chanupasinte.
A pipestem."

He watched as she set the broken artifact carefully back where she'd found it, then moved to the next trench and the next, where the situation was much the same--the ground strewn with potsherds and pieces of things too old and broken to identify, each of them made by a human hand long ago.

"Son of a bitch! Dammit!" Gabe had known that Mesa Butte was rich in artifacts, but he'd had no idea how rich. There was a fortune buried here--enough to make someone very wealthy.

Was it enough to make someone kill?

"This isn't just looting. It's industrial-scale larceny." He squatted down and picked up a tattered bit of buckskin decorated with what looked like very old and worn porcupine quills--a remnant of someone's clothing. He put it back, stood, and glanced around them, feeling more than a little uneasy. "Time to go. I need to get you the hell away from here and report this."

"I need to get pictures first." She sniffed, wiped the tears from her face, then drew a small silver point-and-shoot camera out of her pocket. "I have to be able to prove this is happening."

And then it hit him. "You're planning to write an article about this."

"Yes." She held up the camera.

"I can't let you do that." He reached out, took the camera from her, and stepped back out of her reach.

"What are you--?"

"I know you're just doing your job, but if you tell the public what's here, this place will be swarming with assholes carrying shovels and buckets. If you care about this place, you're going to have to keep what you've seen here to yourself, at least for now."

"This isn't just about my job. It's about Grandpa Red Crow." She reached for the camera. "If he--"

Gabe heard the rifle's report and had no time to do anything but react. He threw Kat to the ground beneath him as two more shots rang out, hitting the frozen earth beside them and sending up a spray of dirt and bullet fragments.

An AR-15 with .223 rounds, maybe three hundred yards away.

Shit!

Silence.

Kat stared up at him through wide, terrified eyes, obviously in pain and struggling to breathe.

Dread caught in his chest.
Oh, Christ!
"Are you hit?"

She shook her head. "You ... knocked ... the breath ..."

Relief, sweet and pure, rushed through him. But it wasn't over yet.

"Hang on." Knowing he might have only seconds before the shooter took a new position and sighted on them again, Gabe slipped his arm beneath Kat and, holding her tight against him, dragged her deeper into the trench.

"Stay down!" He rolled off her, drew his gun and his cell phone, tossing the phone to her, then racking the slide on the Glock. "Press nine and hold it for dispatch."

Leaving it to her to call for backup, he dragged himself on his elbows to the edge of the trench and looked back toward the butte where the shots had originated, but saw no one. The shooter was probably firing from the cover of the trees high on the butte itself, which meant that he stood between them and their vehicles. He had greater range and God only knew how much ammo, while Gabe had only what was already in his pistol and one spare service magazine--twenty--six rounds. Worse, with the shooter holding the high ground, there was no place for them to run.