Stolen Lives : The Lives Trilogy Book 1 (7 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Although one year younger than his brother, William could have been George’s twin.  Their builds and temperament were about the same, though William tended to be a bit more lanky.  George was more traditional than William, who didn’t care for the old ways.  He cared more for the white –
biligaana
world.  His only concession to his Indian-ness was his longish black hair under a beat up cowboy hat.

In intense heat, the desert smells like nothing anyone could name, but it smells just the same.  William was used to the smell of the desert, just as George was.  And just like George, he was used to the smell of sheep and horse.  His quick eyes picked out a jackrabbit perched under some sage, sniffing at the air, testing for danger.  The sheep either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the diminutive interloper.  They continued to graze or rest under the scorch of the sun. 

Like his brother, William sat in the same spot in the shade of the pine at the top of the hill in the rocks shaped like a recliner as he watched for rustlers.  Ever since the murder of the boy on their land, he and George were wary, nervous when they watched their sheep.  Neither found they could relax like they once had.  Ever since that day, the rifle lay across a lap and not in a scabbard on the roan William usually rode or the black stallion, Nochero, that George rode. 

William was envious of his brother, who just that afternoon was picked up by a helicopter.  George was nervous about the trip, but William wouldn’t have been.  He would have looked forward to it. 

One day . . .

William took a drink of warm water from his canteen and swatted at a fly buzzing near his face.  He combed his sweaty hair with his fingers and shoved his hat low on his brow.  Just as his brother, he wore a pair of dusty blue jeans and a leather vest, but no shirt.  In the desert, the boys knew enough about heat and dehydration to keep drinking liquid, yet he was hot.  In other climates, sweat would pour out of you, but not in the desert.  You could never tell, until sometimes too late, that you were over-heating.  Beyond hot and wary and nervous, he was bored and uncomfortable.  

His roan lifted his head and stamped a front leg.  The sheep bellowed and moved further down the hill.  William sat up slowly, looking towards the road.  Nothing.  No cloud of dust indicating a vehicle making its way towards the sheep.  He gripped his rifle tightly, his index finger light on the trigger.  He pushed his hat back on his head, and he stood to get a better look.

It was when he stood that he noticed the smell.  A burnt smell.  Something burning.  He couldn’t see anything off in the distance, yet the roan stamped and whinnied, the whites of his eyes showing.  The sheep called to each other nervously.  Gun shots caused William to jump.  The shots startled both sheep and his horse.

He worked his way through the pine to look out over the other side of the rise, towards the ranch.  He saw smoke and a lot of it.  With one hand on his hat and other wrapped around the rifle, William squinted towards the ranch, trying to see what had happened.  Then, remembering the binoculars, he started for the horse tied to a tree.  That was when he heard it.  He couldn’t see it, but he could tell it was coming closer and was almost on top of him.

His first thought was that George might be back already.  His second thought was that it couldn’t possibly be George, because it had only been several hours since he had left.  If it wasn’t George, who was it, and why was it so close?  He squinted up towards the sun. 

Because of the glare, he couldn’t see, even though the helicopter seemed to be right on top of him and getting closer.  That was exactly what the men in the helicopter had wanted- for the boy to be blinded by the sun.  While the boy stood transfixed, squinting upwards, trying to see what was happening, the helicopter hovered as its door slid open.  A man aimed a high-powered rifle at the boy and carefully squeezed off two shots, nearly ripping William in half.

“Got him,” one man said through his headset, still squinting through the sight.

“Make sure,” his partner said.

The man with the rifle squeezed off two more shots into the lifeless body, making the body of the boy on the ground wiggle.

“That should do it.”

The helicopter hovered a moment or two longer, then banked and flew off to the south, satisfied that the boy, along with the members of his family were dead. 

All dead.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The heat and humidity of Wisconsin in late June was so much different than late June in the desert of the Four Corners Area.  George found it oppressive, like being smothered in a warm, wet blanket.  Breathing was difficult.  Worse, swarms of little black flies, gnats, hovered around his face, his nose and his ears.  Several times he found he had walked through a thick swarm of them. 

He itched. 

Rivers of sweat ran from under his arms and down his chest.  His long black hair was wet and uncomfortable.  He wished he had something to tie his hair up with.  He wanted to take off his shirt, but he wasn’t going to until James or Roz told him he could, and he wasn’t about to ask.  About taking off his shirt, George wanted to be proper and respectful and didn’t know if, under the circumstances, he should do that.  For the hundredth time, he ran his hand through his hair and wiped his face with his sleeve. 

George sighed heavily.  He was thirsty, and he wanted some water to drink.  Yet, he would not ask for any.  He would be patient.  That was the Navajo way, the way of his people.  Also, he didn’t know if that would be the proper thing to do either.

George finished marking the last of the footprints, using the last of his flags James, or Skippy as Pete called him, had given him.  He stood up and looked for James or his partner, and not seeing them, walked carefully to the death scene.  He had recognized the two men at once and had confirmed that these were the two men he had seen murdering the boy in Arizona.  James and Roz were squatting over the dead boy, talking quietly when he walked up to them.

Chet had downloaded a digital photo into the laptop, and sent it to The Center for Missing Children.  It took them less than one-half an hour to ID the boy and faxed the data sheet along with a photo of a smiling dark-haired boy with brown eyes back to the north woods of Wisconsin.  The boy turned out to be Ryan Wynn from St. Paul, Minnesota.  He’d been missing for nineteen months, last seen playing a pickup basketball game on a school playground with some friends.  Thirteen at the time.  He never showed up for dinner that night, or for that matter, many other dinners.

Without looking up at George, James said, “How many sets did you come up with?”

“Agent Pete, Agent Summer, the sheriff, the father, the older boy, the other two FBI agents, the skinny man, the fat man, this boy, and one other.  Not counting yours, your partner’s or mine.  Eleven total.”

James smiled up at him.

“That’s what we came up with.  Nice job.”  He looked back down at the dead boy and said, “What do you see?”

George, the Navajo, didn’t really want to get close to the boy, but George, the one-day policeman, squatted down next to Roz and squinted at the boy and studied him.

After a bit of silence, George said, “This is the way the boy looked in Arizona.”

Patiently, James said, “We know that.  What do you
see
?”

George looked at the boy closely, not saying anything.  Not really sure what to say.

James said, “We assume the boy had sex with someone.  With that assumption, we’re going to use a Victim PERC or rape kit, and hopefully the boy will help us identify whoever did this.”

George glanced at Dahlke, and then at Roz.

“We’ll get some preliminary samples from the boy here and more detailed samples as we work with the coroner.”

James stared at George, wondering what he was thinking.  George was about the same age as the dead boy.  This was George’s second dead body in less than a week.  The perps who executed the boy in Arizona lay dead not ten yards away.  Both shot unceremoniously.  Of course, James didn’t give a shit about them, other than to catch the asshole who had shot them and the boy.

He had already assumed that neither of the dead men had shot the boy.  There didn’t appear to be any powder trace on their hands, though to make sure, they’d run the test for GSR.  Also, there was no weapon at the scene.  The third person, more than likely a male judging from the footprints, probably took the weapon, a .38, with him when he left the scene in what looked to be a van, judging by the type of tire tread and depth of the imprint in the gravel. 

Dahlke had worked on a couple of dead bodies from boating accidents, a couple of hunting accidents and even a hiker or two.  He had only worked a murder scene a dozen times or so and never anything this sick or gruesome. 

Like most of America, he watched CSI and nodded with approval at their technique, lusted for their equipment, not to mention their budget, and laughed at how quickly loose ends were tied up.  In the real world, at least James’ world, fingerprints didn’t pop up on a computer screen in seconds.  In fact, with the current backlog and with any kind of luck, fingerprints didn’t pop up for two or three weeks.  With a “rush” on them, fingerprints still took five to seven days.  DNA?  Two to three weeks at the earliest, but usually longer.  A “rush” might get you a week and a half, but that would be pushing it.

Roz was pretty new to the Wausau lab.  Eventually, she would develop the thick shell most cops and coroners end up growing in order to deal with the ugliness of their work.  She might even numb out with alcohol.  He often wondered if she would last, and if so, for how long.  Hell, he wondered if he would last.  Dead kids in the north woods of Wisconsin, executed with their hands cuffed behind their backs wouldn’t provide him with pleasant dreams in the dead of night.  It certainly wouldn’t be the stuff of telephone calls to his dear old dad and mom, Jeff and Rachel, living in Sturgeon Bay. 
‘Hey Dad, Mom.  Guess what I saw today?’

Hell, he knew he wouldn’t talk to anyone about this.  He only hoped he could forget what he saw and did on this hot summer afternoon near Goodman.

Not likely though.

*                                          *                                          *

Leonard Bucky ran his cruiser as fast as he dared, dodging potholes and ruts caused by rain runoff, fishtailing as he went.  The smoke was easy to see against the Robin’s egg blue sky and knowing the direction from which it had come, he was nervous.  The closer he got, his nervousness changed to dread.  A helicopter flew at him low on the horizon.  This was unusual.  Planes at a normal height, yes, but usually not helicopters, at least not on this part of the reservation. 

It buzzed fast over his head.  Leonard stopped and craned his neck out the window, trying to get a better look at it, but from his angle, he couldn’t see any markings.  It was white with red on it.  Nothing else remarkable.  Ignoring it for the time being, he stomped on the accelerator, kicked up gravel and dirt and shot ahead.  He braked as he came up over the rise leading to the Tokay ranch and gasped at the destruction.

The blaze was nearly out.  The small, wooden house, the barn and the out-buildings were gone, nothing more than charred ruins.  He drove carefully into the yard and pulled to a stop.  He yanked a handkerchief out of his back pocket and covered his mouth and nose and surveyed the damage.  He saw the bodies.

He ran to the old man first.  He was shot at what appeared to be close range by something powerful; rifle, maybe a large caliber handgun.  A portion of his head was missing.  He walked carefully over to the two women.  George’s grandmother and mother were shot where they had hugged each other.  Near them were the bodies of George’s youngest brother Robert and his younger sister Mary.  They had died holding hands. 

Missing was George, who had flown to Wisconsin earlier that day.  Also missing was William.  He skirted around the property with one hand holding the handkerchief and the other on the butt of his gun.  Not seeing William anywhere, he got back into his car and drove through the opening of the fence and into the field and up towards the butte where he knew they tended their sheep.

As he drove, he thought about calling the Window Rock station to report what he knew thus far.  The Tokay family had been murdered, and the small ranch leveled by fire.  He wanted to know about the helicopter.  He wanted them to do some checking on it and to ask for backup and the coroner.  He decided to wait until he checked on his younger cousin, William.

Leonard saw the horse first.  It was near the edge of the pine just on the ranch side of the crest of hill.  As he drove nearer, it stamped its front hoof, flared its nostrils and raised his head.  Getting out of his cruiser, Leonard saw the whites of its eyes.  Clearly, the horse was scared or angry or both.

“It’s ok, boy,” Leonard whispered soothingly.

He unholstered his gun and hammered it back, not knowing what he might find in the stand of pine trees.  Carefully, he stepped up to the horse and stroked its neck.  He slapped the horse’s behind, sending it towards the ranch and down the road from where he had just come. 

He stepped lightly, watching for small sticks that might alarm anyone waiting on the other side.  As he knelt behind a tree, he saw William on his back, rifle and binoculars dropped to the side.  He had almost been cut in half.  This was definitely the work of a high powered rifle; two, three shots, maybe four.  Someone had wanted to be very, very sure.

It clicked, and he made the connection.  Whoever it was had come looking for George.  They must have stopped at the ranch first and then came for William, thinking he was George.

Whoever it was wanted George.