Spider Woman's Daughter (2 page)

“Officer Manuelito?”

“That’s me.”

“Agent Jerry Cordova.” He showed her his shield. “Anything interesting out here?”

“Not unless you’re interested in fast food wrappers. Some cigarette butts, but nothing around where the shooter parked,” Bernie said. “No shell casings.”

“Let’s go inside where we can talk.”

He steered her to a quiet table in the rear of the restaurant. In his early thirties, she thought. Younger than the typical FBI guy who came to the rez. The FBIs stationed in Gallup were either on their way out or on their way up. Thick black hair, clear skin, a nice smile. Something about him told her he understood how the federal system worked and how to make the most of it.

“You want something?” Cordova asked.

Bernie smiled at the waitress. “A Coke would be great.”

Cordova ordered iced tea.

They sat quietly a minute.

“You know him?” Cordova asked.

“Yes. I met him when I first started here.” She’d left home and police work for a stint with the Border Patrol, missed Dinetah, the Navajo motherland, and rejoined the Navajo force.

The waitress brought the drinks, a plate of sizzling French fries, and a red squeeze bottle of ketchup. The round-faced, big-bellied Navajo woman had been at the restaurant ever since Bernie had been coming here. Nellie Roanhorse, Bernie remembered.

“I thought you could use something to eat,” Nellie said to Bernie. “The one who got shot, he liked our fries.” Bernie realized Nellie thought Leaphorn had died and was using the custom of not saying the name of the deceased so the malevolent spirit left behind, the
chindi
, wouldn’t think you were calling it.

“That man was alive when he left in the ambulance,” Bernie said. She saw the waitress’s face relax.

“Someone picked up your phone,” Nellie said. “They have it for you there at registration.”

Cordova said, “We’re going to be talking privately a few minutes. I’ll wave at you if we need anything.”

After Nellie left, Bernie sipped her Coke. “I wasn’t expecting the FBI to be here so quickly.”

“Luck. I had some interviews in St. Michael’s. Otherwise, I would have been in Flagstaff.” Cordova carefully tore the corner off a white packet of sugar and sprinkled it into his tea. “Have you ever been to that old mission? It’s really interesting.”

“Did you notice the typewriter they’ve got over there?” Bernie said. “It was the first one to be keyed for the Navajo language.”

“Impressive. A beautiful spot, too.” She watched Cordova empty three more packets of sugar into his tea and stir. She noticed his well-tended nails and gold wedding band.

“I heard Lieutenant Leaphorn could look at evidence and read it to discover stuff no one else saw,” he said. “I heard he could make a few phone calls to his contacts and shake things up. That he could take an investigation that had been long stalled and move it forward.”

“He’s special. We worked together on a cold case involving a missing woman,” Bernie said. “He found her body locked in one of those Quonset huts at Fort Wingate years after she’d disappeared. He has an amazing mind for detail. The lieutenant and my husband worked together on a bunch of cases a few years ago, so I knew him that way, too. He’s good at what he does, and he loves it.”

“That’s why Largo kept him in the loop even after he retired?”

Bernie nodded. “That why we call him lieutenant, not just Leaphorn.”

“I wondered about that.” Cordova took out a fancy tape recorder. “We’d better get on with this. Are you ready?”

“Let’s do it.” Bernie felt anxiety clutch her stomach, squeezing.

“Take a deep breath,” he said. She did.

“I’m not going woo-woo on you, but let your brain relax. Let your thoughts float. As I ask questions, see if any images come up. Don’t push, don’t hurry. Take your time to revisit the scene and study what’s there. You can close your eyes if that helps.”

She kept her eyes open.

She started in the lobby, watching the shooter open the door of the car.

“Tell me about the person,” he said. “Every detail.”

“Small,” she said. “Maybe five foot three. Hundred and twenty pounds. A black hoodie pulled up. Dark pants, dark hand on the gun. I remember a glint of something silver on the wrist.” She shook her head. “If only I’d moved faster, I could have had a real description. I never should have stopped my morning run.”

Cordova said, “Life is full of if-onlys. You look fit to me. Better than average.” He smiled at her. “But don’t let me discourage you from running.

“Take another breath. Don’t judge yourself, just tell me what happened. That’s all.” He asked about the car again, taking her over the same territory from a slightly different angle, searching for details. She remembered a glimpse of a red bumper sticker.

He asked about the gun.

A pistol, she said. Black. Too quick to see much else about it.

“Did Lieutenant Leaphorn mention getting death threats?”

She shrugged. “Not to me. He’s a private man. Keeps his thoughts to himself.”

“Any jealous husbands, angry neighbors, crazy kids, family feuds, stuff like that, on his plate?”

She shook her head. “He never talked about neighbors. Or about relatives. He shares his house with a lady friend, Louisa.”

Cordova raised his eyebrows.

“Louisa Bourebonette.”

“Bourebonette? A French Navajo?”

“Not Navajo,” Bernie said. “She’s a white woman, an anthropologist.” Bernie thought of the old joke from Anthro 101: Every Navajo family includes Mom, Dad, four kids, and an anthropologist.

Cordova made a note.

“She’s taller than I am, gray hair. Drives a white Jeep.”

Cordova sipped his sweet tea, glanced out the window that faced the restaurant’s back courtyard. “Is Leaphorn married? Any children?”

“No, and no kids. I can see where you’re going with this. Leaphorn’s wife Emma died about ten years ago.” Bernie picked up a fry, dipped it in ketchup, ate it.

“At this morning’s meeting, did Leaphorn seem worried about anything?” Cordova asked.

“No. Not that I noticed.”

“Sometimes shootings like this are random. Guys who hate cops, all cops, go berserk. Some poor officer ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. This might be one of those, and Leaphorn just happened to be the first guy out. But it doesn’t smell like one of those anticop cases. For one thing, Leaphorn wasn’t in uniform.” Cordova tried a fry. No ketchup. “Seems like the guy who did it parked out there, waiting especially for Leaphorn. ”

“That’s how I see it,” Bernie said. “And the guy could be a
she
. Our job is to find out who.”

“Cops make enemies,” Cordova said. “Comes with the territory.”

She knew he waited for her to say something else. “After he retired, Leaphorn started a PI business specializing in insurance fraud cases. He might have a disgruntled client.”

Bernie finished her Coke. Thought about asking Nellie for a box for the fries. Decided against it.

Cordova stood up. “I’ll be talking to you again.” He gave her his card. “Call me if you think of anything else, no matter how insignificant it might seem.”

“Whatever I can do,” Bernie said.

“Pleasure meeting you, even under these circumstances. I’m sorry about your friend.”

By the time she got back to the parking lot, the Arizona State Police crime team, called in by Agent Cordova and Captain Largo, was at work beside the Navajo officers. The looky-loos were still there, too.

“How’s it going?” she asked Bigman. “Any news?”

He rose from where he’d been examining the asphalt. “Nothing. The shooter didn’t leave a stray business card.”

Bigman stretched his neck, rolling it side to side. “We talked to the staff, and a tourist couple checking out about the time the lieutenant was hit. So far, you’re the only witness.”

Bernie nodded. “The FBI man, Cordova, had a lot of good questions.”

“I hear he’s sharp,” Bigman said. “Won’t be long until he moves up the food chain.”

“Did you learn anything about the lieutenant? How he’s doing?” She pictured Leaphorn as they waited for the ambulance. Remembered the pool of blood on the blacktop.

“Nothing yet.” Bigman took off his hat, rubbed his scalp. Put it back on. “This ticks me off big-time. The legendary lieutenant who wrote the primer on how to solve crimes on the rez. Taught a lot of us how to think like a crook, how to figure out why one and one don’t always make two. Now we get to use what we learned to solve his own case, figure out why someone would shoot a good man.”

“We’ll get whoever did this,” she said. “I promised the lieutenant.”

Bernie climbed into her Toyota, rolled down the windows to let the hot air out. She was glad the car didn’t have a thermometer. Seeing how hot it was would have only made her warmer. It was probably ninety outside, she reasoned, and warmer than that in the Tercel. She would have switched on the air-conditioning if she’d had any.

She pulled out her phone and hit recent calls.

Chee answered after the first ring. “Honey. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Largo told me what happened,” he said. “Did you get a look at the shooter?”

“Just a glance. He walked right up to the lieutenant. Fired one shot at point-blank range. The bullet hit Leaphorn in the head. He never had a chance. Then the shooter drove away.” She felt emotion welling up now. Shoved it down.

“It was awful.” Her words came faster now, tumbling out. “If I’d gone out there with him, things might have been different.”

“Things might have been different,” Chee said. “You might be dead now, Officer Manuelito.”

She heard the tension in his voice. She waited, partly out of ingrained Navajo politeness and partly because she knew the man. When he spoke again, his tone had a smoother edge.

“I could have lost you today. I was scared, sweetheart.”

She said, “I need to go. I have to meet with Largo. I can’t talk anymore.”

She hung up just as the damn tears forced their way out, rushing through the hairline cracks in her willpower.

2

W
indow Rock lives on government: offices for the Navajo Nation’s president, legislators, and their staffs, the court system and its support team, fish and wildlife, archaeology, fire and rescue, veterans’ affairs, tourism, and economic development. The state of Arizona’s bureaucracy provides jobs with departments for drivers’ licenses and social services. Federal offices perch along Navajo Route 3 and Arizona 264—the highway to St. Michael’s and Ganado, home of the historic Hubble Trading Post.

The Navajo Division of Public Safety headquarters occupies an assembly of low buildings on the edge of the mesa country that frames the town. The compound has a 1960s utilitarian, strictly-business feel to it. Most of the officers who serve are Diné—the Navajo word loosely meaning “The People.” Related or not, they treat each other like relatives, occasionally engaging in family feuds but, in times of stress, working together with a single focus. In addition to following police procedure, for the officers on the force, serving effectively means understanding relationships among and between the Navajo Nation’s extended families. The officers need to know who has a grudge against whom, who has problems with drugs or drinking, who might be a little crazy, born mean, or both. They need to understand who respects the Navajo Way and who is estranged from it. The roughly 230 men and women commissioned as officers work out of seven home-base locations, responding each year to an average of more than 289,000 calls for service spread out over the 17.2 million acres of the reservation.

Inside the police building, Bernie noticed an eerie quiet, the absence of the usual joking and carrying on, a stillness befitting he who had been ambushed. News travels fast in a place like this, and word that a famous old policeman had been shot down in cold blood moved like lightning.

Captain Largo paced in his office, door open. Bernie had never seen Largo agitated. She tapped on the door frame, saw him glance up, and walked in.

“How is the lieutenant?” she asked.

“The ambulance just got to Gallup. He made it that far.”

Bernie looked at her hands, discovering dried blood beneath her nails.

“You did just right out there. Good description of the car,” Largo said. “Sit down.”

She felt the cool metal of the straight-backed chair through her shirt. It was the only furniture in the office except for Largo’s roller chair and desk. He sat, too, looking across the piles of paper on the flat metal desktop. “No trace of the shooter yet.”

“I thought of some other details,” she said. “I told the FBI. Damage to the rear right fender. Whining sound, like a bad fan belt. The shooter was wearing gloves or had dark hands.”

“Cordova filled me in. He said you were a good witness.” Largo moved to the window. She glanced past him at the view of the parking lot, the sun glinting off the windshields. He said, “We’re having coffee, joking, and then, bang. It could have been you, me, any of us in that room, any week over the past whatever many years we’ve been meeting there. Any wacko with a grudge could have taken a shot.”

She felt the current of anger in his voice and noticed the lines of stress in his forehead. Largo seemed noticeably older than at breakfast.

“We’ll catch him,” Bernie said. “And we’ll find out why. I promised the lieutenant before he left with the EMTs.”

Largo sighed, sat down again. “I want you to take the next couple of days off. I’ve been involved in things like this before. They take a toll.”

“Sir, I have to work on this case.” She tried to keep her voice calm, not to let her surprise show.

Largo said, “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

“Put me in charge of this, Captain. I’ll work my heart out.”

“We’re all in this together. Everyone here feels just like you do.”

“You’re wrong about that, sir.” She didn’t remember ever being so furious, so close to exploding. “I saw him fall. If I’d walked out there with him, I might have gotten a shot off. I have to do this. I promised him. Promised to—”

Largo held out his hands, palms facing her. “Enough. What is it about ‘off the case’ you don’t understand, Officer?”

Bernie felt the room closing in on her.

Largo was standing now, speaking louder. “Not only were you the first responder at an incident where a fellow officer was seriously wounded, you may be the only eyewitness. You know the rules about this. Or if you don’t, you ought to.” He stepped close enough to touch her. “If you were a man, I’d treat you the same. Same as any officer who is there when a brother goes down. Don’t start thinking this is sexist or something. It’s normal procedure. Clear?”

The phone rang. He answered it. Nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Then he turned to her. “They’re done at the crime scene.” He picked up Leaphorn’s keys and put them in Bernie’s hand. “Go back to the restaurant. Get his truck and drive it to the house. Tell Louisa what happened. His records still have ‘Wife, Emma’ as emergency contact. We need to find some family. Do that for him. Then you’re out of here.”

She sat silently until she could trust herself to speak. “Emma had some brothers. I remember him talking about Emma’s sister, too, when we first met. I don’t know about anybody else, anybody closer.” Largo knew the rest, how Emma’s traditional Navajo family had assumed that Leaphorn would marry Emma’s sister after Emma died from complications of brain surgery. Leaphorn’s violation of that expectation had created a chasm.

“Find whoever we need to call,” Largo said. “Then start your leave. Chee will be in charge on our end, our liaison with the feds, reporting to me.”

“Chee?”

Largo frowned. “I know you, Manuelito. I know you’ll be involved. You won’t be able to stop yourself. But I don’t want to hear about it unless you want me to fire you. Now get out of here.”

She walked into the hallway outside Largo’s office and saw Chee standing there, a little pale, clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Hey you,” he said. Then he hugged her fiercely, without any more words, and she hugged back, forgetting she was in uniform, at work, with other cops around.

Finally, she raised her face from his chest.

“Largo told me to drive Leaphorn’s truck back to his house, see if I could find any names or numbers of relatives for emergency contacts. And then go home, off the case. Can you pick me up at Leaphorn’s place?”

“I’ll meet you there. I have to talk to Largo first.”

“He told me you’re in charge of the investigation,” Bernie said.

Chee nodded. “Yeah. That’s the second reason I’m here. I hope Largo knows what he’s doing.”

T
he parking lot at the Navajo Inn was virtually deserted now, police vehicles gone, yellow crime scene tape removed, trapped tourists on their way. Bernie parked her old Toyota next to Leaphorn’s white truck, one slot over from the spot the shooter had used. Someone, she noticed, had thrown dirt over the blood and swept it up. The dark spot baking into the asphalt beneath the Arizona sun could have been an oil leak. Bernie opened the unlocked driver’s door. She climbed up into the truck cab and struggled with the lever, finally managing to force the seat forward enough for her legs. Chee joked that instead of telling people how tall she was, she should tell them how short she was.

She removed the round silver sunshade from the windshield and felt the heat seep in. The truck, an early 1990s Ford, seemed like an extension of Leaphorn himself. Nothing extraneous. Not a fast food wrapper, discarded toothpick, or empty to-go cup in sight. She noticed his well-used blue thermos on the passenger seat and, next to it, a pile of mail and an open package of new manila envelopes.

The Ford started right up. She located the gas gauge—half a tank—and noticed the odometer: 180,432. Almost as many miles as her little Toyota.

She slowed the truck in front of Leaphorn’s house, parked in the empty driveway. She pushed the doorbell, waited for Louisa to answer, then rapped her knuckles against the wooden frame. When the house showed no signs of life, she tried the knob. Locked.

Returning to the truck, she picked up the thermos, the envelopes, and the mail. She propped the sunshade in the windshield and walked around the house to the back door. As she suspected, it was unlocked. She knocked and called, “Louisa?” She waited without getting an answer, opened the door, and stepped into the kitchen.

“Louisa? Are you here?”

Over the stainless steel sink, a moon-faced clock ticked loudly. Otherwise, the room was quiet and as neat as she remembered it. A water glass, a spoon, and a mug with the Arizona Wildcats logo stood in the drain rack near the sink.

The few times she’d been here, she’d come with Chee when he needed to discuss a puzzling case with the lieutenant. Louisa had served them coffee and store-bought sugar cookies at this kitchen table and offered an occasional opinion. The sessions prompted the lieutenant to question an odd fact or unlikely sequence of events, which inspired Chee to remember or reconsider something. The process left her smart, competent husband feeling like a schoolboy.

Bernie put the thermos and the mail on the table. Where was Louisa? Why was there one cup in the drain rack, not two?

The kitchen window faced the house next door. More Navajos lived like white people now, some in government houses built close to each other so they could have running water and electricity. When she was a girl, the nearest neighbors, her mother’s sister and her family, lived three miles away. Sage, rocks, and welcome emptiness lay between them. Because he was so much older, Leaphorn must have grown up somewhere with even fewer neighbors. After he got well, she’d ask about that, prompt him to tell her some stories from his childhood.

Fatigue washed over her as though she’d run a marathon with thirty-pound weights on her legs. If she had sprinted faster, she would know who fired the shot that took down the lieutenant. She’d eased up on her jogging after she and Jim got married. She used to rise at sunrise, no matter what the season. Run to greet the day. She’d grown lazy, and that might have let the person who hurt him go free.

I wonder if he’ll live through this, Bernie thought, but pushed the speculation aside. Her upbringing conditioned her to avoid negative thoughts, even as questions. Her Navajo name was Laughing Girl, but she didn’t feel like laughing now. She noticed the start of a headache. She thought of how the Holy People advised the Diné not to focus on conflict or sorrow. But evil surrounded her, too, some days as much as beauty. She saw the downside of humanity every day she worked as a police officer, in situations that ranged from petty arguments among clan members to four-year-olds fending for themselves while their parents cooked meth in the kitchen instead of dinner.

Why did the Holy People lead the Diné to a world with so much sorrow? Big sorrows, like a good man catching a bullet in the brain. Like her mother abandoning the loom she loved because arthritis crippled her hands. Like her sister Darleen, on the road to becoming a lost young woman.

A sound startled her, and then she recognized it: a row of ice cubes falling into the freezer box. Get on with it, she thought. Stop wasting time. She noticed the yellow phone on the wall. The missing Louisa must have a cell phone because of all the traveling she did. Bernie stood, scanned the list of numbers attached to the refrigerator with a magnet from the
Navajo Times
. Several doctors, a dentist, a car repair shop. Nothing identified as Louisa’s cell. The lieutenant must have had her number memorized or programmed into his phone. He complained about how you couldn’t get a reliable signal on the reservation and how cell phones interrupted the quiet, but he’d got his, he’d told her and Chee, to keep Louisa happy. He probably had the phone with him when the shooter attacked. But maybe he’d left it here. Worth a look. Find the phone, call Louisa, give her the news. And the logical place for the phone would be connected to a charger.

Bernie didn’t notice a charger in the kitchen, so she walked down the hall, passing the living room on the right. The lieutenant or Louisa had closed the drapes to keep out the heat, leaving the house in soft, dim light. Prowling made her edgy, unsettled.

She noticed an open door on the left, a bathroom. Neat, almost sterile. Just the essential towels, hand soap, and a box of tissues; not a toothbrush or a vitamin bottle in sight. It reminded her of a motel, except for the cat box near the bathtub. The electrical outlets were empty; no charger.

The room across the hall held a double bed with a masculine gray spread draped over it and a colorful Teec Nos Pos blanket on top of that. She ran her hand over the weaving. Smooth, fine work. She’d ask the lieutenant to tell her about this rug, who gave it to him and why. The round-topped alarm clock on the dresser reminded Bernie of the clock her grandfather had owned. On the simple wooden table next to it sat a book with a pair of black-framed reading glasses on top of it, and a gooseneck lamp. No phone, cell or otherwise.

She found Leaphorn’s office at the next doorway. Another large rug, this one woven to include deep aniline red yarn and the terraced diamond designs that marked the Ganado style, occupied part of the wooden floor. Among the books on his shelves, the lieutenant had intermixed brown-glazed Navajo pots, a small polychrome Hopi seed jar shaped like a flying saucer, an alabaster eagle, and an assembly of Zuni fetishes. A stuffed chair sat in the corner with a nearby table and a floor lamp. On the table, Bernie noticed a wedding basket and two framed photographs. She leaned down for a closer look at the smaller picture, a black-and-white shot of a Navajo woman holding the same basket, a young Leaphorn standing beside her, both of them smiling. She guessed the woman was his late wife, Emma. Next to it, the lieutenant had parked the color picture of Chee and Bernie on the white beach in Hawaii the week after their wedding, the vast deep ocean blue behind them. No photos of Louisa, his housemate, friend, and maybe something more than that for the past five years. No photos of anyone else, including those who might be relatives.