Enemy Way (30 page)

“Okay, just let me go tell my mother everything is all right. I also need to let dispatch know the same.”

Ella was back in three minutes. She went to the kitchen cupboards and looked inside. They were barren except for a dozen or so cans of vegetables and fruits, mostly sliced peaches. “There’s
not much here. How about putting these in one of the boxes with the clothes?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Ella looked inside the small built-in pantry. Except for one plastic bag of herbs, and an unopened can of coffee, there wasn’t anything else in there. Curious about the herbs, she opened the bag and sniffed the contents. The sickeningly sweet aroma seemed to squeeze the oxygen right out of her lungs.
Closing the bag quickly, she clung to the door for support.

“These herbs,” she asked, managing to find her voice, “What is this stuff?”

“Oh
that!
Throw the bag out. It’s one of Lisa’s home remedies, a blend she made up. She was convinced it was good for everything from poor circulation to indigestion, but it tastes like swamp water when it’s brewed. She made tea for me with it every time I came
over. The stuff is foul, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

Ella placed the coffee can in one of the boxes, then put the tea in the trash. Herbs were common on the Rez, and people who knew enough to mix their own teas usually had their own specialty blends, like her mother. Rose, in fact, had her own blend for just about everything. With the exception of her mint tea, though, most of it
tasted and looked like water that had been scooped out of a mud puddle.

“Okay, the food is in the boxes,” she called out, and then went to join him. “I better go now, though. Mom’s still waiting in the Jeep. She’s finally gotten released from the hospital today.”

“Why didn’t you ask her to come—” He shook his head. “I’m not thinking. I was about to make a very dumb suggestion.”

“When she heard
you were here, she insisted on coming to check on you, before I could even get a chance to drop her off. She was worried about you. We both were.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been by the hospital for a visit, but I don’t think I could cheer anyone up right now.”

“Then just come out and say hello to her,” Ella suggested.

Wison shook his head. “Not when I’ve been handling the personal effects of someone
who’s passed away,” he said.

“Normally, I’d agree with you, but I think she’d like to see you anyway, just so she could confirm that you’re okay.”

Wilson shook his head again. “I have to finish this now, while I still can. Some other time. Do you have anything new to tell me concerning the crime?”

“We have a dead gang member we think might have been one of the killers, but we still haven’t
been able to confirm his identity. Once we do that, we hope to find out who his partner was. I’ll let you know when we make an arrest.”

“Thanks. I just hope whoever it was doesn’t kill someone else in the meantime.” Wilson’s voice was starting to take on that harsh edge again, and Ella knew it was time to leave.

“Promise you’ll give my mother a call soon, or come by. I think it would be good
for both of you.”

Wilson agreed.

When Ella finally joined her mother back in the Jeep, Rose seemed more tense than ever.

Rose gazed at the house in silence, then looked away. “There’s something bad coming from that woman’s house,” she said, avoiding the mention of names. “You must have felt it, it’s so strong.”

Ella nodded. “I know what you mean.” The feeling had been strong, all right, though
she wasn’t sure she’d attribute it to anything more than the knowledge that a particularly violent crime had occurred there.

“How’s your friend? He really shouldn’t stay in that house.”

“He’s packing up his fiancée’s things,” Ella answered.

Rose shook her head. “He should walk away from it all,” she said. “It’s not our way to handle things that belonged to the dead, and he knows that, whether
he’s a progressive or not. This house should be abandoned, too, or sold to an Anglo. Wilson is behaving very dangerously because of her. I knew that woman was trouble when she started keeping Wilson from visiting his old friends.”

“You mean when she didn’t let Wilson see
me,
” Ella clarified for the sake of logic. “It really was understandable. Everyone thought that there was something going on
between Wilson and me, and she must have heard the gossip. Under the circumstances, I don’t blame her for not wanting Wilson to visit with any of us.”

Rose shook her head. “It was more than that. I’m sure of it now. There’s evil in that house.”

Ella considered her mother’s words as she drove down the highway. “If you want to know the truth, that entire neighborhood gives me the creeps. You wouldn’t
believe what we found in the pocket of one of the murdered teens,” Ella said, then explained about the bone fetish.

Rose looked down the road for a while, then finally spoke. “You know enough about the gifts our family possesses to trust your instincts. It’s only when you ignore what you can’t explain that you get into trouble. Take Clifford back there with you and have him check that woman’s
house and yard for things associated with witches. A
hataalii
can sense evil and knows what signs to look for. He may be able to help you recover objects that she’s kept hidden from everyone, including your friend.”

“You’re that sure there’s something there to find?”

Rose nodded slowly. “I think you know that, too, but for whatever the reason, you’re blocking the thought.”

Ella considered it.
Maybe she had shied away from this aspect of it for personal reasons. She still hadn’t questioned Wilson about Lisa’s religious beliefs, as she’d told her team she would. She didn’t want to find out that Lisa was involved with skinwalkers, or worse,
was
a Navajo witch. Learning that the woman he’d loved had been no more than an enemy casting a spell against him would destroy Wilson.

“I’ll take
my brother over there as soon as I can,” Ella said at last, as they pulled in front of their home, noting from Clifford’s car and the interior lights that he was waiting for their arrival.

Ella wasn’t at all sure how Wilson would react if he happened to still be there when she returned to Lisa’s home with Clifford. If he thought about it, he’d guess the reason for sure. Once, the three of them
had put their lives on the line, standing together against the skinwalkers. This time, the line between enemy and friend would not be as clear.

Two ran up and barked furiously the moment he saw Rose. When her mother opened the car door, he jumped up on his hind legs, licking at her face furiously.

“Two, no!” Rose laughed, then gave the dog a big hug before pushing him down off her lap. “Have
you been feeding him on schedule? He looks a bit thin to me.” She gave Ella a stern look.

“He’s fine, Mom. He even sleeps with me at night.”

Ella stood by in case her mom needed help. Rose maneuvered herself out of the car and onto her crutches without much trouble. As they approached the house, her eyebrows rose. “You never told me how bad the attack was.”

Ella looked at the pockmarks, clearly
visible because the stucco used to patch the wall was a shade lighter than the old. “It looks worse now, because the new stucco doesn’t quite match the faded old stucco,” Ella said, minimizing the incident, though she knew her mother hadn’t been fooled for one second.

As they entered the living room, Rose sighed contently, leaning on the crutches as she turned slowly around. “I’m home, I really
am,” she whispered to no one in particular.

Clifford emerged from the kitchen, Loretta half a step behind him. “Mom called from the hospital before you left. We’ve been waiting forever. I thought you two were coming straight home,” he said, glaring at Ella. “Julian is asleep on your bed. He just couldn’t stay awake any longer.”

“I wasn’t planning on a detour, but things got a little complicated,”
Ella said.

“I asked Ella to make a stop,” Rose said, putting an end to the discussion before it became an argument. “Now, why don’t you two go off and talk, while my daughter-in-law and I get something fixed for dinner. Later, Loretta can show me my grandson when he wakes up from his nap.”

As if sensing that his mother’s words were not a request, Clifford gave Ella a puzzled look, and followed
her into the next room. “What’s going on?”

Ella filled him in on their mother’s intuitions about Lisa’s home. “Mom thinks you’d be able to sense and maybe locate things the lab techs and I missed. She may be right. You want to go over there with me now?”

“Let’s get Mom settled in, then we’ll go later this evening, when we can be sure Wilson has left. I hate the idea of going where someone has
died, especially their home. But this is for our friend, and I can do that for him.”

*   *   *

It was dark when Ella and Clifford arrived at Lisa’s home. “Where are the gangs?” Clifford asked. “I didn’t see any teenagers at all hanging around here tonight. Have you arrested everyone?”

She shook her head. “Some are in jail, but most are hiding out. They’re afraid they’re easy targets out in
public these days, not just from the police, and they’re right.”

As they left the vehicle, Clifford stopped and looked up and down the street. “There’s fear here, a lot of it,” he murmured. “It hangs over this area like a dark cloud. The neighbors don’t even look out their windows to see who we are.”

They went inside Lisa’s house, using a duplicate key Ella had picked up at the station. She
stood back and allowed her brother to walk through the house, room by room. Wilson had emptied the closets, and most of the things that he could give away were now gone, but the place still smelled of death. Ella tried to block it from her mind as she followed Clifford into the kitchen.

Clifford walked past the trash, and seeing the discarded bag of herbs, picked it up and opened the cellophane
bag. Before Ella could warn him, he sniffed the contents.

His face suddenly contorted into a deep scowl.

“Oops. Sorry, brother. I should have spoken faster. That stuff stinks. It made me a little sick.”

Clifford face was set. “I know this foul concoction. It’s a evil mixture that’s supposed to be given to confuse and control an enemy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t you remember the smell in the
tunnels where the three of us fought our old enemies? The herbs they used were similar to this. Separately, these herbs aren’t harmful, but together, mixed to a certain strength, they induce a sense of complacency. It’s much like a powerful sedative. In fact, one of the herbs is valerian.”

“I’ll take it to Justine and have it analyzed.”

“You’ll find nothing spectacular. It won’t help you make
a case, I don’t think, except against one who is already dead. They’re common herbs. The effectiveness of the mixture is completely dependent on the skill and knowledge of the person making the infusion. I’d advise you to bury it. Give it back to Mother Earth to purify.”

“This was prepared for our professor friend on a regular basis,” Ella said, avoiding the mention of names and watching Clifford’s
reaction to the news.

His eyebrows rose and he expelled his breath slowly. “Then the bone fetish you recovered may have come from here, too.”

“We found a small, empty metal treasure box the day of the murder. I wonder if she kept the fetish in that. The box, I think, was what triggered the attack on her. She may have been fighting over it.” Ella paused, trying to recall the details. “Our friend’s
fiancee managed to burn one of her assailants. Then later, when we found the body of one of the murdered Many Devils, a kid we know only as Shopper, the ME’s report confirmed that the body had been burned with some kind of powder. Are you familiar with a chemical capable of doing that?”

“The burning powder sounds like something the witches use. Remember that they learn to distill all kinds of
powders from plants and minerals. It’s part of their bag of tricks. You’ve encountered some of those in the past yourself. Remember the red powder the witches used against us in the tunnels?”

Ella nodded slowly. “I strongly suspect that they are searching for a particular item of power that was taken from the metal box I mentioned.” She looked across the room lost in thought. “Whatever it is,
it’s got to be fairly small.”

“An item of power could be just about anything,” Clifford said, walking around the room. “including something taken from an enemy’s body.”

Ella considered that. “There’s another possibility in all this. Maybe our friend’s fiancée was under someone else’s influence,” she said, and reminded him about the cane prints she’d found.

“And you haven’t been able to find
the one who has been leaving that trail?”

“No, and not for lack of trying,” Ella heard a slight rustle in the bushes outside the house. Quickly she opened the back door and ran outside. The yard was empty.

Ella glanced around, searching the area with her flashlight. As she aimed the beam at the place beneath the window nearest to where they’d been standing, she saw a fresh trail left by someone
using a cane. Ella followed the tracks until they disappeared on the pavement, a dozen yards away.

She muttered a soft curse. “I can’t track anyone down an asphalt road on a moonless night,” she said, glancing at Clifford, who’d come outside.

Clifford crouched, studying the tracks. “If you find the person who was here, you’ll have the answers that have been eluding you. I’m sure of it.”

“Whoever
it was is gone now.” Ella leaned back against the side of the house. “You realize that we can’t discuss any of this with Wilson. The suggestion, without solid proof, that he was about to marry one of the tribe’s mortal enemies, would destroy what remains of our friendship with him.”

“That’s exactly the type of plan you’d expect our enemies to come up with. It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy,”
Clifford said.

Ella exhaled softly. “Once I do have evidence to back up my suspicions, I’ll talk to Wilson. No matter what the consequences, I’ll have to warn him. His life could depend on his staying alert. But here’s another thought. If he was being set up, and his fiancée was part of the plot, you can bet we’re also targets. We’d all better start watching our backs. Our enemies specialize
in treachery and deceit, and those are powerful weapons.”