Enemy Way (3 page)

Just before the hovering copter touched down, Ella jumped out. As promised, the two civilians were pinned by the spotlight, trying to shield their eyes.

Ella circled, keeping below the road bed as much as possible. The sagebrush was taller downslope, fed by runoff from the asphalt. As she got close, she could see that the figure on the road was just a stuffed dummy made out of old clothes, and
the blood was probably red paint or something like tomato sauce. Ella stepped out onto the road behind the pair.

The engine noise and prop wash from the chopper was drowning out the sounds she was making, but Ella still approached cautiously, her weapon out and ready. The civilians were both looking down toward Neskahi, and at the same time trying to shield their eyes from the glare of the spotlight.

“Why in the hell doesn’t he turn off that light?” The person on the left, a woman, yelled. Ella recognized the voice from earlier that day. It was Barbara Baker.

Neskahi, who’d avoided looking at the helicopter with its blinding light, turned toward the voice, and saw Ella standing less than ten feet behind the couple. He avoided any expression of recognition, but his body tensed, a signal to
Ella. “Maybe it was something I said. Why don’t you set down your weapons and surrender now?”

The man cursed, bringing a sawed-off shotgun out of his jacket. Neskahi leaped up, grabbing the man’s weapon and yanking it up into the air as he kneed him in the groin. The shotgun went off with a roar and the man lost his grip on the weapon.

The woman yanked a pistol out of her pocket, but before
she could bring it to bear, Ella was there. She kicked the weapon out of the woman’s hand, spun around, and knocked the surprised woman down with a well-aimed kick to her sternum. When the woman looked up again, she was staring into the barrel of Ella’s nine-millimeter pistol.

“Don’t move. Don’t even breathe,” Ella hissed, her glance darting over to Neskahi, who now had the shotgun aimed at the
woman’s partner. The man lay groaning on the pavement. “You okay, Sergeant?”

“No problems here.” The sergeant retrieved his own handgun from the man’s jacket pocket, then handcuffed him and hauled him to his feet.

Ella turned and gave a thumbs-up toward the helicopter.

“Get that damn searchlight off me, will you?” The man turned his head away from the helicopter, which had finally shut down
its engine.

“We should have known they were up to something,” the woman complained as Ella handcuffed her wrists behind her back. “Your plan really sucked, you know that?”

“You were happy to tip my car over, Barb,” he said, biting off the words.

Hearing the woman’s identity confirmed brought a smile to Ella’s lips. She quickly informed the two of their rights. “You’ll be glad to know, Mrs.
Baker, that your husband is going to recover. He’s decided to end his life of crime and tell us everything, too.” She glanced at Shepherd. “We already know, for example, that you’re the one who put the Bakers up to this job, Mr. Shepherd,” she added.

“Me?” Jim Shepherd’s eyes grew wide. “Wait a minute—”

“Shut up, you moron,” the woman yelled. “They’re playing mind games.” She gave Ella a hard
look. “Nice try, but you’re not getting any information from us.”

Ella chuckled. “I have a hard time believing that. The only real question in my mind is which of you three is going to volunteer first to testify for the D.A. in exchange for reduced charges.”

“They wanted Angel Hawk so they could fly to the hospital and rescue the perp you nailed at the bank,” Neskahi said as they escorted the
prisoners to his patrol car.

“Barb is Joey Baker’s wife. He told us she’d come for him. Baker, in fact, told us a great deal. This guy is Jim Shepherd. They’ve all served time for armed robbery as part of a losing team.”

“Joey ratted us out! That piece of—” Shepherd leaned forward in his seat, cursing.

“Shut up, you idiot. If you keep talking, you’ll send us all to prison until we’re too old
to chew solid food.”

“Lady, you’re headed for a cell no matter what he says,” Ella said calmly. “But a little attitude adjustment of your own might help you reduce that sentence.”

After they canceled the backup that was still on the way, Ella saw Jeremiah Crow and the young medic standing near the figure on the ground. Crow glanced over at her and shook his head in disgust.

Neskahi caught the
gesture. “That’s how they lured me into stopping. The woman caught me completely off guard with her little act. She was crouched down low, faking CPR on the dummy, yelling her head off like it was dying. From a distance it’s hard to tell that’s just a bunch of old clothes stuffed with weeds.”

“Where was Shepherd hiding? In the brush?”

“He was beside the car, playing dead. It wasn’t the same
vehicle described in the robbery, so I thought it might be legit.”

“They either hijacked this car or had it hidden on a back road, planning on making a switch after the robbery. Most Navajos could never afford one of these imported models,” Ella said.

“Well, Sergeant, looks like you just caught yourself two bank robbers.” Jeremiah Crow smiled.

“How did you know?” the woman asked Ella from inside
the car. “I was listening to the officer’s call, and he never gave us away.”

“Oh, yes he did. In cop-speak he told us plenty,” Ella answered, letting the robbers continue to wonder.

Ella walked with Jeremiah Crow and his medic back to the helicopter. “You guys can return now. I’ll drive back with the sergeant and the prisoners. Thanks for your help and cooperation. And the ride.”

“No problem.”
Jeremiah cracked a smile. “It was … interesting.”

Ella stood back as Angel Hawk took off and quickly disappeared into the dark. In another minute, all she could see were the blue and red running lights, and then they, too, faded away.

Neskahi was already behind the wheel when she returned to the vehicle. As her gaze drifted over the somber pair in the backseat, she felt an incredible sense of
satisfaction. It was at times like these that she realized how much she loved police work. It was a rush to know that she’d helped rid society of a few predators, if only for a few years at a time.

Although the trip back took half an hour to cover the distance that had taken ten minutes in the chopper, it was a lot quieter and easier on the stomach. Five minutes from Shiprock, Neskahi’s radio
crackled to life.

Hearing her call sign, Ella picked up the mike and depressed the button on the side. “Go ahead, PD.”

“I’m patching through a transmission from Angel Hawk. There was a ten–forty-five the chief wants you to know about directly from the source. Go Channel six for this one.”

Ella felt her skin grow clammy. A 10-45 was an auto accident with injuries. “Go ahead, Angel Hawk,” she
said, clutching the mike so hard her fingers tingled.

“Shortly after you released Angel Hawk, we were dispatched to transport an accident victim south of Shiprock on Highway Six-six-six.” Jeremiah’s voice was low, but clear. “Rose Destea is at the hospital now, getting prepped for emergency surgery. She’s your mother, right?”

Ella couldn’t breathe. It was as if her throat had suddenly locked.
She fought a momentary feeling of vertigo. “What’s her condition?” she managed in a whisper thin voice.

“Critical.”

“I’m on my way.”

Ella glanced at Neskahi as she replaced the mike. “Drop me off at the hospital on the way in. Then take these two on to the station.”

“Done.” Neskahi pressed down on the accelerator, and switched on the emergency lights and siren.

Collecting all the willpower
she could muster, Ella forced her body to stop shaking. Her mother … in a traffic accident. Critical. Her mind raced, creating one hideous scenario after another.

She struggled to push the images away and succeeded. Yet, as her thoughts became still, fear, black and encompassing as the night surrounding them, engulfed her.

TWO

Ella paced in the waiting room outside the ER, unable to sit for even a minute. On the badly tuned television set a late-night talk show host told jokes to a half-dozen empty chairs. Ella wasn’t listening. This hospital visit was personal, and the minutes passed slowly, each marking their own eternity.

If only someone had been able to locate her brother Clifford. Ella knew that it would
have meant the world to her mother to discover that her son had done a Come-to-Life ceremony while she lay unconscious. But Clifford was out of touch, off visiting the Sacred Mountains. He’d gone to teach his son about the four peaks that guarded and bordered their world. Each was alive and individual but, together, they acted as one, defining the borders of the land given to the
Dineh
by the
gods. Since each peak was at a different point of the compass, and Clifford hadn’t checked in, it was impossible to send out a search party to locate him. The Rez was larger than several of the smaller states.

Ella still hoped, however, that somehow she’d be able to tell Clifford about the accident before he heard about it from someone else. It would be hard enough news for him to face coming
from family. At least she didn’t have to worry that her brother would fight their mother’s hospitalization. Although he was a traditionalist, in every sense of the word, Clifford was also a practical man. He was one of the tribe’s most sought-after
hataaliis,
or medicine men, but like more and more of the followers of the old ways he had discovered they really could co-exist with the new. The
People often went to doctors for surgery and for medical treatment, but then went to the
hataaliis
for help in mending the mind and spirit. A patient who’d been through surgery would often request a Life Way to restore the harmony that would heal his body. Clifford had played a major role in supporting such choices.

Ella forced herself to sit down, wishing Carolyn was there to keep her company.
Doctor Roanhorse, Ella’s best friend, had purposely stayed away out of respect for Rose and Clifford. Many of the
Dineh,
The People, believed the tribe’s ME was contaminated with the
chindi,
the evil in a man that stayed earthbound after death. Even though Rose was tolerant of Ella’s friendship with Carolyn, it was no secret that her mother was also a traditionalist.

During unconsciousness, tradition
held that a person’s ‘wind breath,’ or soul, was temporarily lost. No one was supposed to approach the body for fear of driving that living spirit away, and this rule applied even more strongly to someone like Carolyn whose work brought her in contact with
chindis.
Although Rose was in the operating room, Carolyn had even refrained from going to the observation post the interns used, or being
anywhere in the area while the surgery was taking place.

In deference to her friendship with Ella, however, Carolyn had come by with coffee and for brief visits in the waiting room twice already. It was that support that had helped Ella deal with what haunted her thoughts.

As Ella stared across the room, lost in thought, she saw Officer Michael Cloud appear. The barrel-chested cop and his family
were longtime friends of her mother.

“Any news?” he asked, reaching over and turning the sound down on the television set.

“Not yet. She’s still in surgery. Do you know what happened? I haven’t received any reports yet.”

Michael nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I thought you’d want to hear this directly from me, since I was the first officer at the scene.”

Ella sat up. “Go ahead.”

“Dispatch
sent me after a waitress at the Totah Cafe called the station. She saw a car veer over into the wrong lane and strike another vehicle, your mother’s car, head on.”

Ella felt the blood draining from her face. “Was it a murder attempt then?”

He shook his head. “DWI. The other driver was Leo Bekis, a tribal attorney. The breathalizer showed he had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system.”

Anger darkened Ella’s spirit, and she began to lose control. If Bekis had been there right now, she might have shot him. “You mean that my mother’s fighting for her life because of a drunk driver?”

Michael nodded once.

“Was the drunk killed?”

“Minor cuts and bruises.” Michael averted his gaze. “They’ve been keeping him under observation, just in case. He passed out on the way in, and they aren’t
sure if it was just the alcohol.”

Ella’s rage buzzed around her like a swarm of bees, overwhelming the flash of disappointment she’d felt for a second after learning that the drunk had not died. As she looked at Michael she noticed he was staring down at his boots. He was holding something back. A second later, she knew what it was. “Bekis has been arrested before for DWI, hasn’t he?”

“Twice.
Seems he always manages to make bail after a few hours in the tank, and avoid a suspended license.”

Ella caught sight of a man being led out of an examining room by a police officer. A bandage was on his forehead and the back of his hand, and he had a black eye. He was barely able to stand on his feet. “Is that him?”

Michael nodded. “I remanded him into the custody of another officer as soon
as my backup arrived at the scene. I didn’t want to see this thrown out of court for any reason.”

Ella started across the hall, and Michael put a hand on her shoulder, holding her back.

“Don’t, Ella,” he said. “You’ll only make it easier for him in court.”

“Why was that piece of garbage still driving a car?” she managed through clenched teeth.

“He’s a lawyer with friends who are also lawyers—and
judges. The most he’s ever been forced to do is pay a fine and do a few hours of community service.”

Ella looked at the man who had walked over to stand beside Bekis. It was Robert Kauley, who was known for accepting cases that a maggot couldn’t stomach. It seemed particularly fitting in this situation. “I’m going to have a few words with Kauley.”

“Why don’t you cool off first—” Michael said,
then stopped as a nurse hurried over to tell Ella that her mother was coming out of surgery.

Ella hurried down the hall, arriving just as the doors to the operating room swung open and Rose was wheeled out on a gurney.