Bad Medicine (11 page)

“Like surveillance cameras?” Blalock glanced down at the open page of the photo album. “These remind me of the photos our guys take at funerals and parties when we’re tracking criminal activities.
Except in this case, Navajos seemed to have been singled out.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. I’d like to make a note of all the Navajos pictured in there. Any objections to my tagging it and taking it to our lab? We can make copies there of any interesting-looking photographs, then return them to you.”

“Go for it, but I’ll need it all back ASAP.”

Ella handed the album to Justine. “Give it top
priority. Go.”

Blalock’s face was grim. “When will you have the final paperwork on Bitah’s death?”

“I’m not sure, but I can call our M.E. and find out.”

He handed her his cellular.

Ella dialed, then waited. She spoke to Carolyn briefly, then handed the phone back to Blalock. “She has it ready now.”

“Have her fax me a copy as soon as possible. If we don’t clear this case right away, the Bureau
is going to send someone to
help
us. With all the press hate groups like this have been getting, it’s a very touchy subject in the Bureau. The higher-ups won’t want another front-page story. Get my drift?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.” She knew from experience that having two agencies involved in one case only made it murkier.

“I’ll see if the local narcotics teams or the DEA have anything on peyote
dealers that would help us out. The Yellowhair girl was getting her stuff from someone around here, I’ll wager. Maybe from one of the gangs, or else one of those churches that uses peyote in their rituals. You might check out whether she was a member,” Blalock suggested.

Ella gave him a steely look. “Already on it.”

*   *   *

Ella drove back to the reservation, her mind filled with speculation.
If only she could rid herself of the certainty that the worst was yet to come. As the sun slipped below the horizon, she could feel the power of the night. It was as if something was holding its breath out there, the darkness resonating with a pulse of its own.

Ella raced along the nearly deserted highway, taking comfort from traveling at high speed. It forced her to concentrate on the road and
helped her forget her troubles. Funny how danger could soothe her at times.

By the time she reached the hospital, she felt focused and ready to work the case again. As usual, the elevator going down to the basement was infernally slow, making Ella wish she hadn’t taken the lazy route and had opted for the stairs instead. Waiting was always the hard part for her.

As the door slid open, she saw
Howard Lee talking to someone down the hall. Automatically, she noted the orderly’s name tag. What was Nelson Yellowhair doing down here, talking to Carolyn’s student assistant? As soon as Yellowhair spotted her, he stepped into the stairwell, disappearing from her view.

Ella felt her skin prickle with a coldness different from that familiar to the basement. Brushing the sensation aside, along
with her usual distaste for the morgue, she forced herself to look confident and waved at Howard. “Wait up.”

Howard looked reluctant, but did as she asked. As she drew near he glanced at a clock on the wall. “I’m in a terrible rush. If I’m late one more time, Dr. Roanhorse is going to have my hide.”

“Let’s go, then,” Ella said, quickening her steps. “We can talk while we walk. What was Nelson
Yellowhair doing down here?”

Howard shrugged. “Not much. He was on break and came down to talk.”

Ella watched Lee, certain the man was lying but not knowing why. “How long have you been friends with Yellowhair?”

“Friends?” Lee shook his head. “I wouldn’t call us friends exactly. We’re coworkers. He comes down here every once in a while because his supervisor wouldn’t be caught de … well, he
can take a break here without anyone bugging him.”

Carolyn came out of the autopsy suite just as Howard and Ella arrived. “You’re late,” she said, glancing at Lee. “I’m not going to stand for this nonsense.”

“Doctor, the detective needed—”

“Save it. Get the tissue samples I left for you and prepare those slides. Let me know when you finish.”

“Right away, Doctor.”

Ella watched Howard Lee scurry
away like a dog who’d been caught up on the master’s favorite chair. “I didn’t hold him up.”

“Yeah, I figured that. This guy isn’t going to make it through med school unless he gets his act together.” Reaching into the top drawer of her desk, she pulled out the autopsy reports on both Bitah and Angelina Yellowhair. “Everything’s pretty much the way I reported in my preliminary. Sorry there’s
not much new to add,” Carolyn said, then reached into her pocket. “Oh, Justine just called. Here’s her message.”

Ella glanced at the note. “Interesting. According to Justine, Bitah was a member of a splinter group of the Native American Church called the Native Justice Church. The Native American Church is very pacifistic while the Navajo Justice Church is militant in the extreme. They don’t
operate under the same strictures, but they’re able to use peyote legally for religious purposes under the same legal umbrella that protects the NAC.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t explain where Angelina Yellowhair got her peyote,” Ella continued. “She didn’t attend either church, or any other according to what Justine has been able to find out.”

Ella leaned back against the desk. “By the way,
have you heard anyone, patients or staff, talking about a pro-Anglo organization called The Brotherhood?”

Carolyn’s eyebrows furrowed. “No, I can’t say I have. You want me to keep my ears open?”

“If you could.”

“By the way, there is one thing that may help you. I found out Bitah had a girlfriend on staff here. Her name’s Judy Lujan.”

“Thanks. I appreciate the tip.”

“How are things going with
you and FB-Eyes?” Carolyn asked, offering her a cup of coffee.

Ella took a sip. “It’s hard to say. Sometimes I think we’re working well as a team, but I still have trouble thinking of him as someone who’s on the same side I am.”

“Ingrained interagency competitiveness, you think?”

“That’s part of it, sure. I hate relying on the Bureau. The tribe hired
me
to produce results because of my added
training, and I want to be able to deliver the goods without calling in outside help. Big Ed, in particular, has taken a lot of flak on my account. I’d like to justify the trust he’s placed in me.”

“When someone shows faith in either of us we tend to go overboard repaying them. That says a lot about us, you know, though I’m not always sure if that’s good or just pathetic.”

“I’ll pass on that
question.”

Reports in hand, Ella went back upstairs to try to find Judy Lujan. It took awhile to track the woman down. Ella finally found her sitting alone in the staff lunchroom, nursing a cup of coffee.

As Ella introduced herself, the round-faced, high-cheeked woman in her mid thirties looked wearily at her. “I’ve been expecting you to come by,” she said without inflection. “But I wish it
hadn’t been today. I just lost a patient. Tuberculosis—that strain that nobody can do anything about because it’s resistant to antibiotic therapy. Medicine has come very far, but sometimes it just loops and takes us back to where we started.”

“I need your help. I wouldn’t bother you if it could be avoided, but we have to find your friend’s killer,” she said, avoiding mentioning the dead man by
name in case Lujan found it offensive.

“I know.” She stared down into the coffee cup as if searching for answers in the thick blackness. “I dated him, but there never was anything serious between us. I think he liked me because I never asked him any questions he couldn’t answer easily.”

“Were you aware of his activities outside work?”

She nodded. “I know he was fighting The Brotherhood, but
not the particulars about it.”

Ella held her breath. This was an unexpected break. “Do you know who any members of The Brotherhood are?”

“No, but neither did anyone else. That’s what my friend and his friends were working to uncover. They needed to find out who their opponents were before they could handle the problem.” Judy held up her hand. “And, before you ask, no, I never asked how they
planned to take care of the problem.” She leaned back in her chair. “I can tell you this, though. My friend helped form his new church because he believed in using violence to fight violence. That attitude was the major reason our relationship was at a standstill. I told him I had no intention of becoming the widow of a crusader.”

“You believed his work would jeopardize his life?”

“When people
use violence as a means to an end, they often end up its victim. In my opinion, that’s exactly why he’s dead now.”

“Who was your friend close to?”

“That’s easy to answer. Billy Pete and Kevin Tolino.”

“I know Billy,” Ella said smoothly, “but what can you tell me about Kevin?”

“Kevin is a Navajo rights advocate and an attorney for the tribe. He handles all cases pertaining to discrimination
on and off the reservation on behalf of tribal members.”

“Thanks. I’ll talk to him.”

“One more thing?”

Ella stopped near the door and glanced back. “Yes?”

“Don’t tell anyone that I helped you. I don’t need any more problems. I’ve got enough of my own.”

“Are you afraid of our own people?” Ella asked, surprised.

Judy seemed to consider the question. “Let’s just say that I’m not sure if I
should
be afraid of them or not.”

Ella’s mind was spinning with speculations as she walked out to the parking lot. If the
Dineh
were afraid of the Navajo activists, as well as leery of The Brotherhood, then the problem was even bigger than she’d realized.

She had almost reached the Jeep when she heard her name being called. Turning her head, she saw Carolyn rushing toward her.

Ella turned back
to meet her. “What’s going on?”

“I just saw the evening paper. Have you?”

“No, I haven’t had a chance.”

“Here. Take my copy. I think you’ll find it interesting.” Pressing the paper into Ella hands, Carolyn glanced back. “I better get back before that student of mine screws up every slide.”

“See you.”

As Carolyn jogged back, Ella opened the Navajo newspaper, grateful as always that it was
written in English. Her Navajo was as rusty as an old horseshoe nail left in an arroyo for a decade or two.

As she unfolded it, three headlines competed for her attention. Bitah’s murder was one, the other two were about the Yellowhair family. The final story described how Senator Yellowhair had been in a motel with his aide, a bosomy young woman half his age, when the police had found him and
delivered news of his daughter’s death.

Her call sign on the radio interrupted Ella’s reading. She picked up the mike and identified herself.

“I’ve got IDs on some of the Navajos in the shots,” Justine informed her. “It’s a pretty mixed bag. Even that medical student of Carolyn’s, Howard Lee, is in one photo. Apparently Lee works one shift a week in the First Aid Center at the mine for college
credit. I’ve already tried to talk to the regular mine workers I know who were in the pictures, and I’ll get to all the others. Not everyone has been cooperative, especially because many didn’t know they’d been photographed in the first place. I did learn that Anderson liked taking photos as a form of harassment. It would be annoying to have someone taking photos of you if there was nothing you
could do about it without starting a fight.”

“I have a lead or two of my own. Meet me for breakfast tomorrow morning at seven at my mother’s house. Mom will fix your favorite: fry bread with honey, and eggs.”

“I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss your mother’s fry bread for the world.”

Ella folded up the newspaper and decided to head for home. It had been a long day. She’d read the rest of the paper
there later, along with the full autopsy reports on Bitah and Angelina Yellowhair. Things just weren’t adding up right. A kid experimenting with drugs would have done that in the company of others, not alone in a car. Finding out Bitah had also had peyote in his system certainly had given rise to many questions, but fewer answers than Ella had hoped. Bitah had been twice Angelina’s age and a member
of a church where peyote was part of the sacrament. It seemed unlikely that he would have associated with Angelina unless she had attended his splinter church which, according to Justine’s research, hadn’t happened.

As Ella sped down the highway she decided to take a detour. Maybe it was time to have a talk with her brother. Though the NAC was based on different beliefs and came from different
roots, they both emphasized the spiritual. As a
hataalii,
Clifford might know more about it than the cops did.

Ella turned off onto the road to her brother’s new home. After the trouble with the skinwalkers, and the threat to their baby, Loretta had insisted on a new start. Her brother had spent months building this new house on high ground, a few miles from her mother’s, but in a nearly inaccessible
area bordered on three sides by dry arroyos, and rock outcroppings.

As she approached, Ella stared at the gray stucco house. To her it would always look like a bunker she’d once seen in a photo of the Maginot Line, but Loretta was happy here and the baby, well, he would be happy anywhere as long as his family was with him.

She moved closer slowly, putting the vehicle in low gear and hoping that
the headlights would help her spot anything on the unpaved road that could damage her vehicle.

Light flowed from inside the house, bathing the porch in a soft glow. Ella passed the house and parked by the sturdy log hogan beside it. The blanket that covered the east facing door billowed as a breeze blew against it. She caught the flicker of firelight inside.

Ella switched off the engine and
waited. A minute later her brother came to the entrance, pulled the blanket aside, and waved an invitation for her.

“What brings you here so late? Is Mom all right?” he asked quickly.

“As far as I know. I came here to pick your brain, big brother.”