Power of the Raven (20 page)

“No wonder Bud countered my accusation so quickly. He was afraid I’d screw up his sweet deal—marriage to a rich widow.” She bit her bottom lip, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “But where does that leave us?”

“I like the way you said ‘us,’ because I’m not going anywhere till we solve this and the man after you is behind bars.”

Stunned, she leaned back in her seat. All her life she’d encouraged people to think she was a free spirit, hiding the truth even from herself. Yet, the truth was that she wasn’t ‘free’; she was just afraid of getting hurt. Having no expectations, she couldn’t possibly be disappointed by anyone or anything.

Now she was at a crossroads. If she surrendered her heart and things went wrong, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to put the pieces together again. Yet not taking a chance also would exact its own share of pain and, worse—a lifetime of what-ifs.

“Today at work, try hard to remember any incident that could have made someone angry enough to come after you,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “Will you do that?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

As he pulled into the DMV’s parking lot, he saw it was already crowded. “Go in through the front like a customer. Don’t use the employee entrance.”

“Got it.”

Gene parked and watched her get out. “I’ve got your back. If there’s trouble, I’m only a phone call away.”

Gene waited until she walked inside the building, then drove off. Had the choice been his to make, he wouldn’t have let her out of his sight today. Learning that Harrington couldn’t have been the man stalking her had left him with a bad feeling.

He brushed those nagging thoughts aside. It was probably partly due to lack of sleep. All-nighters were harder on him these days than they’d been at one time.

Needing a jolt of caffeine, he stopped at the Chrome Dipstick, his favorite truck stop diner, and went inside. He’d have some of their world-class coffee in the big white mugs and maybe a sliver of their pecan pie, his favorite. If that didn’t reenergize him, nothing would.

Gene went straight to the counter, which was topped with plate glass over a collection of old license plates from every state and some Canadian provinces. A second or two after he sat down, a familiar face came out from behind the café’s double doors leading into the kitchen. Mrs. Nez was an elderly Navajo, a long-haul trucker’s widow who’d worked here as far back as he could remember.

“I see you’re still hard at work, Irene,” Gene said, greeting her.

“Keeps the engine running,” she said with an easy smile. “Now what can I get you, young man? The usual?”

He nodded. “I need some pecan pie and a mug of black coffee.”

“Leaded or unleaded?” she asked.

“Make mine leaded. I need to keep my eyes open.”

“Coming right up.”

She returned moments later with the pie and coffee. “I’m glad you came by, Gene. I’ve been wanting to tell you how sorry I was to hear about your foster father. His absence will be felt, and not just by the
Diné
.” He noted how she’d avoided saying his name, a custom among Navajos who didn’t want to call the
chindi
. Belief in the
chindi,
the evil side of a man that was forced to remain earthbound while the good merged with the universe, was strong even among Modernists. “We all miss him.”

“It’s just too bad that he never took on an apprentice. That Navajo widow sure had her sights set on becoming a medicine woman, but I guess he turned her down.”

“Huh?” Mrs. Nez gave him a surprised look. “I thought you boys knew about that. Rita something was her name, and she was crazy about your foster dad. I guess he didn’t feel the same way about her,” she said. “Maybe he never got over his wife.”

Gene knew about
Hosteen
Silver’s wife, though she’d passed away a few years prior to their arrival. Their foster father had seldom spoken about her, but it was clear that he’d loved her deeply. He and Dan had speculated that part of the reason
Hosteen
Silver had invited all of them into his life was to fill the void her death had created.

As Mrs. Nez moved away, he finished eating. The coffee had stirred him into alertness. As he thought of
Hosteen
Silver, Gene realized that there was still much they’d never known about him. Their foster father’s focus had always been on who they could become, not on who they’d been, and with that in mind, he’d also not spoken of his own past.

Gene remembered the questions Daniel had raised about their foster father’s death. Perhaps there was more to
Hosteen
Silver’s story than they’d ever realized. Then again, the same could have been said for just about everyone, including Lori. People’s lives were seldom as simple as they appeared to be on the surface.

As he thought about Lori, he smiled. Funny how his thoughts always returned to her. The connection between them seemed to grow stronger with each passing day. Then again, maybe the intensity of the chase was scrambling his brains, and once that highly charged situation was resolved, their feelings for each other would dissipate like morning fog under the sun.

Leaving a large tip for Mrs. Nez, he headed back out to the parking lot.

As he drove through town, he passed a familiar place. The Zuni man who’d carved fetishes for him and all his brothers had his shop here in Hartley. Gene turned, circled the block, then parked at the curb in front of the store.

Pablo Ortiz, a small, rotund man with gray hair and smiling eyes, greeted him from behind the old oak-and-glass counter, a relic itself probably a hundred years old. Gene said hello, then hung back as Pablo finished waiting on another customer. Passing the time, Gene searched beneath the glass, studying the stone fetishes resting on a rich velveteen cloth.

“It’s good to see you, Gene,” Pablo said at last, coming to join him. “So what can I do for you today? I saw you looking at my hand-carved fetishes. Did one catch your eye?”

“I’m trying to choose the right one to give a good friend,” he said, “and that’s turning out to be tougher than I’d thought. She’s a complicated person.”

“Tell me a bit more about her.”

Gene paused, considering his words carefully. The right match was essential. “She’s a woman of courage, but the past weighs her down, and those shadows keep her dreams shackled to the ground.”

Pablo considered it for a long time, and Gene didn’t interrupt him.

“I know which one,” Pablo said at last, then opened the cabinet and brought out a small carving of a black bird. “Raven isn’t one of the original fetishes our people carved, but an important lesson came to light as a result of its wisdom.”

“Will you share the story with me, Uncle?” Gene asked, using the title to show respect, not because they were related.

Pablo looked around the store and, seeing they were alone, nodded. “It was at the time of the beginning,” he said in a soft, compelling voice. “Raven and her friend were sitting on top of a mountain and, using their magic, began playing a game. They freed their eyes from their mortal bodies and sent them to specific points across the desert floor in a race of sorts. Mastery over all aspects of sight was part of Raven’s magic, and one with their natures.”

“So through their game, they honored who they were,” Gene said with a nod.

“Exactly,” Pablo said, “but Coyote was nearby, watching. After a while, he insisted that they teach
him
how to play. He refused to take no for an answer even though they repeatedly warned him of the danger. The Ravens eventually consented, but after plucking out his eyes, they flew away. Coyote waited in vain for his eyes to return, but that magic wasn’t a part of him. Forced to do something at long last, Coyote replaced the eyes he’d lost with cranberries, which is why coyotes have yellow eyes and why their sight is poor.

“The lesson, of course,” Pablo continued, “is that Raven’s magic is not to be taken lightly. Raven brings the power of transformation to those willing to nurture their dreams. Raven lives in the inner world, a place of protection for that part of us that’s most often injured by pain and rejection. Raven is a powerful ally who teaches us how to embrace the shadows, because they’re also part of who we are.”

“That’s the perfect fetish for her,” Gene said with a smile. “She’ll take good care of it, too.” Pablo wrapped it in a small box, but not before sprinkling a bit of corn pollen on it—a symbolic feeding.

After a short visit, Gene said goodbye and headed back to his brother’s sedan. He knew Lori would love it and, not wanting to wait to give it to her, decided a quick visit to the DMV was called for. Raven would help her as she faced today’s challenges.

It would also give him an excuse to reassure himself that everything was okay. He still hadn’t managed to get rid of that uneasiness, of the feeling that not all was as it should be.

Dismissing the thought, he headed over to the DMV.

Chapter Eighteen

As Gene approached the DMV’s parking area, his blood turned to ice. One police car was in front of the entrance and a second in the alley, which was blocked off with yellow crime-scene tape. People were milling along the sidewalk and standing in clusters around the front of the building.

He recognized several people gathered around one of the police officers. They were all DMV employees.

Gene parked quickly, looking for Lori as he did, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Farther down he could see three more DMV employees gathered around another officer, but Lori wasn’t with them, either.

Leaving his brother’s sedan, Gene hurried over to the closest police officer.

“What’s going on?” Gene asked, noting the familiar face.

“I wondered when you’d show up,” Sergeant Chavez said, then called to a third officer who’d just arrived, asking him to keep watch over the alley and the back door of the office. Finally turning to Gene, he said, “I suppose you heard that Lori Baker’s been kidnapped?”

Despite the sudden storm threatening to erupt inside his brain, he managed an exterior deadly calm. “I didn’t know, not until this moment. Who did it—and how?”

“Sorry, I thought that’s why you were here. Come inside with me. Take a look at the evidence and see if you have any theories.”

Gene, trying to maintain his cool, followed the sergeant through a waist-high gate in the main counter that gave access to the employee area. Walking past several desks, they approached a small room at the back of the building. The wooden door to the lounge or staff break room, judging from the furnishings inside, had been badly damaged after being forcibly opened.

“This is as far as we can go. You can look from here, but nobody goes in except for the detectives and the crime-scene unit,” Chavez said, holding up his hand to block Gene.

“How much do you know so far?” Gene asked, shifting to look past Chavez. There were signs of a struggle, with two metal chairs upended and the small table askew. At least one cup of coffee had been knocked onto the floor, and there was lipstick on the foam cup, Lori’s shade of pink. At least there was no blood anywhere that he could see.

“From what the staff says, Ms. Baker came in through the foyer wearing a wig today, but it obviously wasn’t as good a disguise as she’d hoped,” Chavez said.

“How did it go down? Did he come in through there?” Gene said, pointing to the steel door marked Employees Only Exit on the back wall of the break room. From what he could tell, it opened into the alley. There was a keypad for an electronic lock above the sturdy handle, but neither it nor the door itself showed any sign of damage or tampering.

“According to the staff, Ms. Baker took her break around ten-fifteen. She was in here alone, door closed, for about five minutes. Then one of the clerks heard what sounded like a yelp, a cut-off scream maybe. Two employees rushed over, but the door was jammed shut from the inside, with a chair against the knob. They forced it open, but that took almost a minute, and by then Ms. Baker was gone. Strangely enough, her purse is also missing.”

“So she was taken out of here through the alley, which is why you have that area taped off.” Gene sniffed the air, detecting an unusual odor. “What’s that smell? It’s chemical and familiar to me....”

“It’s ether. It’s used by truckers to help start cold engines. You can get it in most auto shops, and in a few high school chemistry labs, probably. We think Lori Baker was rendered unconscious, though she put up a struggle,” Chavez said, gesturing around the room.

“Are there any surveillance cameras with a view of the front or the alley?”

Chavez shook his head. “Cameras are only in the service areas and the front parking lot. We’ll be checking the feed for possible suspects—people who were outside or leaving the building around the time she disappeared.”

“But right now you have nothing?” Gene pressed, his voice hard as he fought to keep his emotions buried.

“We don’t have a suspect, if that’s what you mean by nothing,” he snapped, “but we have preliminary information. The rear door wasn’t forced, so either she let a stranger in, which isn’t likely, or she knew her kidnapper or kidnappers. It’s also possible that someone knew the code and entered from the alley before or after she went on break. In that scenario, either the code was compromised or it was an inside job.”

“Have you questioned all the employees and the customers here at the time?”

“We’re in the process of doing that now, but so far, nobody saw anyone but Ms. Baker go into that room. A customer said that she saw someone in a white van racing out of the alley a little after ten, but she didn’t notice the vehicle tags.”

“Is there any chance that one of the outdoor cameras caught it?”

Chavez shook his head. “Wrong angle.”

“What about coverage from a business across the street, or maybe down the block?” Gene said, continuing to press.

“It’s being handled.” Chavez met Gene’s gaze with a stony one of his own. “Let’s get something straight right now. I
know
my job. I’m cutting you some slack and telling you what’s what because your brother is with the department, but make no mistake. This is
our
case, and you need to back off and let us do our job.”