Spider Woman's Daughter
Read Spider Woman's Daughter Online
Authors: Anne Hillerman
Spider Woman’s Daughter
Anne Hillerman
“I
get this call, out of the blue. A woman. First, she reminds me that I saved her life. Then says she wants me to do her a favor . . .”
Navajo Police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, paused for effect, pushing away the plate of toast crumbs and empty packets of grape jelly so he could rest his forearms on the table. “Wouldn’t you think she’d be offering to do me a favor?”
A couple of the cops sharing the table chuckled. “Musta been one of those rich white ladies you’ve been doing insurance work for,” Officer Harold Bigman said. “You better not tell your Louisa.”
Officer Bernadette Manuelito said, “What was the favor?”
Leaphorn smiled. “I don’t know, Bernie. She set up a lunch date so she could ask me, and stood me up.”
More chuckles. “Maybe she wanted to find out how good a PI you really are,” someone tossed in.
“It turned out all right,” Leaphorn said. “While I was waiting I ate an excellent BLT, enjoyed the quiet. And she gave me a reason not to drive in to Santa Fe that day on another case. I’m getting too old for all this stuff.”
The waitress refilled coffee cups. The Navajo Inn had been a favorite meeting place for cops long before Bernie joined the force, back when Leaphorn worked full-time as a detective. Back when he first earned his reputation as one of the brightest minds in the extended, tightly knit community of the Navajo Nation police force.
Captain Howard Largo said, “Okay, folks, let’s get to business. Leaphorn, you’re welcome to stay as always.”
Leaphorn had a standing invitation to join these Monday breakfast sessions, ostensibly to brainstorm about unsolved cases before the meeting switched to routine matters of budget and staffing. Sometimes they just shared jokes and coffee. Leaphorn and Largo went way back.
In addition to his leadership team, Largo rotated a younger officer into the group each week. Today would have been her day off, but Bernie had put on her uniform and driven an hour from her home in Shiprock, honored to be included. The brainstorming hadn’t generated any warm ideas on cold cases, but it had been fun. She’d watched Leaphorn pull out the little brown notebook that lived in his jacket pocket, jot down a few things. In a day or two, if he stuck with his standard pattern, he’d call in with a good lead, a clue to follow.
Bernie felt her cell phone vibrate. Jim Chee, fellow cop and husband who had been annoyed with her that morning, calling from his office at Shiprock.
“Gotta take this. I’ll be right back.” She stood, all five foot two of her, and headed to the lobby. Leaphorn scooted his chair back. “You guys have boring bureaucracy to deal with. I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks for the breakfast.”
Leaphorn strolled into the lobby, nodding to Bernie, cell phone at her ear. “Say hi to Chee for me,” he said. She watched him head toward the parking lot, noticing that he was limping a bit. She knew he had a touch of arthritis in his knee. She should have asked him about that. And about Louisa.
“Hello, beautiful,” Chee said. “Done with the meeting?”
“Not quite. The lieutenant had some good stories. Now the humdrum stuff looms on the horizon. Your timing was perfect.”
Through the lobby window, she saw someone climb out of the blue sedan backed in next to Leaphorn’s white truck. She watched Leaphorn walk toward the truck, extract the keys from his pants pocket.
“You still grumpy?” Chee asked. “I got off to a bad start this morning.”
The person extended an arm toward the lieutenant. Bernie saw a gun. Heard the unmistakable crack of the shot. Saw Leaphorn stagger back, falling against his pickup. Crumple to the asphalt.
She dropped her phone as if it were on fire, Chee still talking, and ran. Pushing the restaurant’s heavy glass doors open, she raced toward Leaphorn, reaching for her gun. She watched the shooter scramble into the car and heard the sedan’s tires on the asphalt as it sped away, keeping the car in her peripheral vision as she reached the lieutenant. Squatting down, Bernie pressed her fingers beneath his jaw, feeling for the thread of a pulse against her fingertips.
His beautiful dark eyes stared at her, through her. Blood flowed down his face from the hole in his forehead, onto her hands.
“Stay with me,” she whispered. She spoke to him in Navajo, the language of her heart. “Don’t die. Please don’t die.”
She heard others running up behind her, caught the blur of their brown uniforms at her eyes’ margins while she kept her focus on the lieutenant. She recognized Largo’s voice, taking charge, barking orders.
Bernie said, “He’s alive. Two-door blue sedan. Arizona plates. Headed west on 264. Driver was the shooter. A black hoodie.”
Bernie noticed the lieutenant’s skin growing paler, blood pooling beneath his head. She’d never been squeamish; from the time she was old enough to walk, she’d watched her grandmother kill a chicken for their dinner and occasionally slaughter an old sheep. But if Leaphorn died, she knew his
chindi
would be restless, looking to cause trouble as they all did, as was their nature. It wouldn’t matter that she loved him and he, in his gruff, official way, loved her.
She spoke in Navajo. “Help is coming. Hang in there, my uncle.” She moved closer to him on the asphalt, the side of her body now against his prone shape, held his hand. She wanted to put his head in her lap, but her training stopped her. She knew moving a head injury victim could cause more trouble.
She felt the deep rumble of police units roaring to life. A siren wailed, followed by another.
Someone asked, “You okay, Bernie?”
“Yeah.”
She felt Leaphorn’s body shudder. “Stay with me,” she told him. “I promise I’ll find out why this happened and who did this to you.” Who would try to kill such a valuable man? An old man now. Where was the blue car?
Then she heard a different siren, the howl growing louder as it approached. She looked up from his closed eyes as the ambulance parked and the attendants ran to her.
“One bullet hit him,” she said before they asked. “A head wound. I saw him collapse. I haven’t moved him.”
An EMT lowered himself next to them. She smelled the sweat from his uniform.
“You hit?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Who is he?”
“Leaphorn. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn.”
“No kidding? I’ve heard of him,” the man said. “I need you to move, Officer, so we can get to work here.”
She squeezed the lieutenant’s hand and stood. The EMT spoke to Leaphorn as he felt for a pulse, watched for signs of a reaction to his questions. The other man rolled the gurney out with portable oxygen, a neck brace, more.
“Are you all right?” the second EMT asked her.
She nodded. “Just focus on him.” She noticed a flash of metal on the ground. Leaphorn’s keys. She wiped the blood from her hands onto her pants, then put the keys in her pocket.
They loaded the gurney into the ambulance. She thought about the blue car. Everything was different now. She saw Largo at his unit, radio in one hand. He noticed her, put the radio down and walked to her, put his hand on her shoulder. They watched the ambulance drive away, lights flashing.
“I didn’t get much of a look at the shooter,” she said. “Small. Dark clothes. A single shot. I didn’t get the plate number, but it was Arizona.”
“The FBI is on the way. They will need a statement from you. You know how these things work.”
She knew how it worked. In any serious crime in Indian Country, including attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, investigation fell to the FBI. Leaphorn was still deputized, even though he was retired. The Navajo Police worked in conjunction with the feds, which usually meant they took the role of stepchild. But every cop hated a wannabe cop killer. When it was personal, the rules could bend, meaning the Navajo Police could have a bigger role. She knew Largo would make sure of that.
“Stay put, help Bigman secure the crime scene until whoever’s coming gets here. When you’re done with that, come talk to me.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “This stinks.” She reached in her pocket and handed Leaphorn’s key ring, with a woven leather fob on the end, to Largo. “I picked these up over there. I should have just left them at the crime scene. I’ll let the guys know where they were.”
Largo said, “I’m glad nothing happened to you.” He turned his broad back toward his car, then faced her again. “Chee called. I told him what happened. He wants you to call him.”
T
he town of Window Rock, the capital city of the Navajo Nation, gets its American name from the red sandstone arch, a low eye in the sky, a graceful portal from heaven to the earth. Formed by wind and rain, it’s known as Tségháhoodzání in Navajo. Beneath the arch, a natural spring bubbles up, a source of healing water and a tangible blessing in desert country. The spring gives the site its other Navajo name, Ni’ ‘Alníi’gi
.
Bernie couldn’t see the arch from the parking lot of the Navajo Inn. Instead, she looked at the white pickups and SUVs of the Navajo Police Department, more officers than she’d ever seen at a crime scene. But there had never been a shooting of one of the Navajo Nation’s best-known policemen in broad daylight outside a busy restaurant, with a table full of other cops just a heartbeat away.
The assemblage of officers and chorus of sirens alerted the peaceful people of this largely Navajo town of about three thousand to the fact that something serious had happened. Restaurant patrons left bacon and eggs in the dining room to watch the commotion; travelers heading west from Gallup, New Mexico, or east from Ganado, Arizona, slowed down to gawk. No doubt they talked about it as they drove—probably good for at least ten miles’ worth of conversation.
She watched Largo fold himself into his unit and head to police headquarters to coordinate the search for Leaphorn’s attacker. Other officers, she noticed, had cordoned off the place where he had lain bleeding, along with the rest of the parking lot. It was still early, but the day promised to continue the hot, dry June. Typical early summer weather waiting to be broken by the start of the thunderstorm season was still weeks away.
In addition to curious locals, the growing crowd included the
bilagaana
tourists, visitors from California, Texas, and elsewhere who parked at the Navajo Inn for a bite to eat and a cruise through the gift shop. The crime scene meant a change in their schedules.
Officer Bigman stood next to a white man poured into a T-shirt that hugged tight to his beefy shoulders. “Phoenix . . . a flight tonight . . . ,” Bernie heard, and she noticed that the tourist’s face was an unnatural shade of pink. Even before he took that step toward Bigman, she’d sized him up: belligerent and obnoxious, personality characteristics amplified by being told no.
“We had nothing to do with any of this. I won’t stand for it.” Pink Face was yelling now, staring at her as she walked closer. “This is police harassment.”
She saw Bigman’s shoulders stiffen and felt her own blood spike with adrenaline.
“You need to calm down, sir,” Bernie said. Her voice was louder than she’d intended. Good. She stared hard at Pink Face. “We’ll have your car to you as soon as we can.”
She saw him look at her hands and arms. He opened his mouth. Closed it. She kept her gaze on him, steady as an eagle.
“The one who got shot was a fellow officer,” she said. “A friend of ours, too. We’re doing this right. You don’t want to get in the way of that. Trust me.”
“How long before my wife and I can get our car?”
“As long as it takes,” Bernie said.
“We’ll let you know,” Bigman added.
Bernie noticed the man staring at her again. “There’s blood on you.”
“Why don’t you go inside, sir, get out of the sun.”
The man opened his mouth to speak. Closed it. Headed for the air-conditioned restaurant.
Bigman exhaled loudly. “Largo says you got to him first.”
“Yeah. He was still alive in the ambulance.”
“It’s tough being first,” he said.
She remembered that Bigman had happened on the scene when an officer from Fort Defiance, a friend he’d gone to high school with, took a bullet in the chest from a drug-crazed gangbanger.
“I’ve got an exciting job for you,” Bigman said. “Help us search the parking lot for shell casings, cigarette butts, whatever else we can find.”
“Sure,” she said. “I need to hang here until the feds come. I’ll be back as soon as I wash off.”
She walked through the lobby, now crowded with customers waiting for their cars and Navajo Inn staff watching the excitement. In the restroom, she ran cool water over her hands and arms, watched as it flowed pink down the drain, then, finally, clear. She added soap. Noticed she was shaking. Examined herself in the mirror as she washed her face with a damp paper towel. Smoothed her hair. Then went back outside to work.
The day had grown from warm to hot when the sleek black Crown Victoria with tinted windows pulled up to the Navajo Inn’s front door and parked in the loading zone. Unlike most cars in Window Rock, it had a dust-free car-wash shine.
A man in a gray suit, pale blue shirt, and deep blue necktie climbed out, moving like a person sure of himself. Bernie recognized him before he said a word.