Authors: Anne Hillerman
“Thanks for the information.”
Haskie rose to see him out. “You know, I probably shouldn’t have wasted your time with this. I bet whatever happened here has nothing to do with what you found.”
That was likely to be true, Chee thought.
He went back to the station, typed up his report, and was ready to head back to the movie camp to interview Turner when his phone buzzed.
“Hey there.” Paul’s voice rang with exuberance. “Good news, bro. I booked more customers for the tour. You’re bringing me luck.”
The tour. He needed to get back to fix the People Mover. “That’s great. Is it still at sunset today?”
“No. Sunrise tomorrow. That’s better. Not so hot.”
“Are your clients more Norwegians?”
“No, these people sound like they’re from Texas. Do you think I could give them bologna sandwiches in the morning? They’re traditional, right? You and I grew up on them. Breakfast of champions.”
“Let me think on that.” Chee hung up and finished his notes, rehashing the session with Haskie. He considered the phony registration, the commotion, the bloody towels, and the unclaimed necklace. Suspicious? Yes. Criminal? No evidence of that. Would someone commit murder in a hotel room and then take the time to bury the body? Highly unlikely, especially considering that a backhoe was involved. And if this happened in the spring, say three months ago, would the backhoe tracks have survived?
He thought again about Melissa and the way they had discovered the grave. Tsinnie was right. It was too coincidental. Chee stood and stretched. He needed to get this silly thing settled and get back to Bernie. He had hardly spoken to her, between the spotty phone service in the valley and his focus on his work. Missing her, he called her cell phone. It rang until her message came on.
Finally he called the movie office, asked for Turner and learned that he was unavailable.
“Would you give me his cell number?”
The receptionist hesitated. “He usually doesn’t answer his cell. Mr. Turner is due here for a meeting in an hour. I’ll have him call you if I see him.”
Chee doubted that Turner took orders from his secretary.
Cordova opened the door for Bernie and sat behind Largo’s desk. Bernie settled into her usual spot, the folding chair.
Cordova smiled. “Nice to see you again, Officer. You’re looking well.”
“Thanks. I’m surprised that you’re here. I thought we’d be dealing with the DEA on this.”
“It was a multi-agency operation.” He didn’t elaborate, but Bernie knew the FBI had been working on human trafficking and credit card fraud. “I want to go over your traffic stop to make sure we don’t miss anything.”
“Great. It’s been on my mind ever since it happened.” Cordova had interviewed her before, and she remembered how thorough he was. “I assumed the whole encounter was on tape. The record light came on, but Largo told me the equipment wasn’t working.”
“Stuff happens. Maybe it was the universe’s way of putting me back in touch with a beautiful woman.” He took a slim recorder from his pocket and spoke into it, setting the place, date, and time and specifying that he was interviewing Officer Bernadette
Manuelito of the Navajo Police. Then he placed the machine on the table between them.
He started by asking Bernie to recount what happened, noting that he would interrupt her for more details from time to time. He stopped her when she mentioned that Miller stepped out of the car to go with her to get the gun. “Tell me more about his demeanor.”
Bernie thought about it. “His coordination was good and his speech clear, no slurring. His eyes looked OK, not watery or bloodshot, and the pupils normal. Before he got out of the car, I noticed perspiration beading up on his forehead and that he was fidgeting. He grew more nervous later.”
Cordova got to the handgun. “Where was it in the glove box?”
“Right on top.”
“Did you see anything else suspicious in there?”
She thought about it. “No.”
“Elsewhere in the car?”
“I looked on the seat and the floor. Nothing unusual, nothing worth sweating over.”
“Did he say what he was doing out there?”
“He said he was driving from Albuquerque to Gallup, with a detour to see Ship Rock.”
“That’s a long detour. Did he give a reason?”
“He told me he could never be in the Four Corners area without seeing it.”
“Really? Did you follow up on that? Ask him why he liked Ship Rock so much?”
The moon was bright, Bernie remembered, and Ship Rock had resonated with beautiful mystery that night.
“No.”
The look Cordova gave her said he thought she’d made a mistake.
“Go back to the conversation. Tell me everything you remember, even if it seems irrelevant or inconsequential.”
“He mentioned Northern Arizona University.” Bernie tapped a finger for each point. “He told me about his dog. He talked about staying at the Comfort Suites in Gallup.”
Cordova interrupted. “Did he mention any other specific places he had been?”
Bernie thought about it. “No. Oh, wait. He said he’d been in a meeting in Albuquerque. Mostly he talked about Flagstaff. Told me he worked in construction, mentioned that the town had a good brew pub, said he liked to walk with his dog around there. Nothing that seemed noteworthy.”
Cordova’s questions became less routine, more interesting. “At what point did he offer you a bribe?”
“Before he opened the trunk.”
“He offered you five hundred?”
“First a hundred. Then five hundred.”
“That’s right.” Cordova smiled at her. “Why?”
“Two reasons, I guess. I didn’t respond when he made the first offer. Maybe he would have offered more, but he said that was all the cash he had. After I saw the rifle in the trunk, he told me I could have that, too.”
“Anything else stand out from the encounter?”
“Before he offered me the bribe, he asked how I found out.”
Cordova looked up from his notes. “Found out about what?”
“That’s what I wondered. Why are you guys interested in Miller?”
Cordova clicked off the little recorder and placed it gently in his pocket.
“I can’t tell you. But we’re glad you stopped him. It looks like you did everything by the book.”
“Tell that to Largo. Everyone at the station is giving me grief about confiscating two boxes of dirt.”
“Gives them something to talk about. Our man is examining the recorder. If nothing else, he can get it working for next time. I’ll be in touch. Let me know if something else occurs to you.”
“So has the crew looked at Miller’s car yet?”
“They went over it yesterday.”
“What did they find?”
“It was clean.”
“Clean?”
“Well, besides the dirt you found, there was a bunch of dog hair.” Cordova grinned at her. “I can’t say much except Miller is on our radar, and your instincts about him being up to something are probably correct.”
“Did your guys look at that dirt? It could have been contaminated. Miller told me he was in construction. Maybe someone hired him to cover up some illegal spills, chemical dumping, uranium tailings, stuff like that. Did you have it tested?”
Cordova sighed. “You don’t give up, do you? I’m not sure exactly what tests they did on the dirt, Manuelito, but don’t worry about it.”
“They might have missed something. You could—”
He shook his head before she’d finished the request. “They did whatever was required. End of story.” Cordova stood, letting her know the interview was over. “Tell Largo he can get rid of that dirt. Unless you want some as a souvenir.”
After Cordova had gone, Bernie wondered what to do next. Maybe one more look at the evidence would inspire her.
Sandra gave her the key again, then picked up her water bottle and took a sip. The dispatcher was on a new water diet. The idea was that if you drank enough, your stomach would be full
and you wouldn’t be hungry. As far as Bernie could tell, it also worked by requiring you to use energy in more frequent trips to the restroom. “I guess that guy was a rock collector or a dirt collector or something.”
“Are you going to give me a hard time about this, too?”
“Not really. I think you’ll catch enough grief without me.”
The boxes sat on a table next to the cabinet, lined up side by side. Bernie leaned over to examine the first one. It was maybe four inches deep, with “Foodclub” printed on the outside, the kind of container canned goods came in for stocking in grocery stores. Someone, probably Miller, had shoveled in dirt to fill it halfway. Now that she had better light, Bernie spotted grayish sticks, a shiny beetle carapace, partially disintegrated paper, a few tiny cacti, eroded lava rocks the size of the jawbreakers she liked as a kid, and black specks that looked like seeds. She put her face close to the dirt and inhaled deeply. No chemical odor she could detect.
She looked at the second box, spending another ten minutes with it, finding similar contents and nothing that smelled odd. The mystery remained unsolved. She relocked the room, turned in the key, and came up with an idea.
Largo looked up from his computer when she rapped on the doorframe.
“How did it go with Cordova?”
“Well, I learned that Miller is some kind of untouchable the feds or DEA or somebody has on their radar. Bribing a tribal officer is small potatoes. Even if I’d had it on tape, I think Cordova would have dismissed it.”
“Don’t let it bother you.”
“Cordova says they’re done with the dirt, but I have an idea, sir.”
“Somehow that does not surprise me.”
“I’d like to have the soil tested for contamination. You know—oil spills, uranium debris, chemical leaks. Stuff like that.”
“And you know what the budget is like. And the feds already cleared it.”
“Cordova gave me the impression they just looked for drugs.”
Largo hesitated. “You can’t let it go, can you?”
“It bugs me.”
“If you can talk someone into doing the tests for free, go ahead. I wanna keep you happy, Manuelito.”
“Would you mind if I took some of those little cacti home? Maybe I can get them to grow.”
After making a few calls, she found a contact at the San Juan County extension office who knew someone who could do the soil testing as part of another batch of samples he was working on. He’d come by for the dirt that afternoon. If the boxes didn’t contain anything special, she would stop obsessing about them. If she came up with something and outsmarted Cordova—well, a little humility might be good for the man.
When she went into the break room to get cups to put the plants in, Bigman was alone at the table with a sandwich in front of him. “I hear that was some haul you came up with the other night. If it had been me, I would have made that scumbag tell me where that dirt came from and drive out there and put it back. Did you ask him to empty out his shoes and take off his socks? Maybe there was some sand lurking between his toes.”
“You bet I did. You can’t be too careful.”
“Speaking of lurking, when is your husband coming back from zombie duty?”
“I don’t know. Not soon enough. I miss him.”
“Seems like a cool assignment. Hanging out with the stars.” Bigman looked at the sandwich, offered Bernie half. She declined.
“How famous do you have to be to get a job as a zombie?”
“I heard that Rhonda’s in the movie.” Bigman took a bite of his lunch.
“Rhonda who?”
He chewed, swallowed. “Rhonda Delay. Even you must have heard of her, Manuelito. She’s everywhere. TV, ads, on the Internet. She has a new record out.”
“I’ll ask Sister. She keeps up with that stuff.”
“How’s that girl doing?”
Bernie wondered if Bigman had heard of Darleen’s latest predicament. “Now she wants to go to art school. She’s looking into that one in Santa Fe.”
“The IAIA?”
“That’s it.”
Bigman rewrapped what was left of his sandwich. “And your mother?”
“She’s OK.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Bernie grabbed a pair of Styrofoam cups for the cactus plants and got the evidence room key one final time. She scooped up some of the gravelly dirt and gently moved several of the little cacti to a new temporary home. She left them on the table; then she told Sandra about the man coming to pick up the boxes.
The late June heat must have made criminals lazy. Her afternoon’s assignments ranged from tedious to downright boring. As she drove toward Shiprock High School to check a vandalism report, she heard an electronic chime. It seemed to be coming from the backseat of her unit. The noise continued for several cycles and then stopped. When it started up again, she pulled to the shoulder, killed the engine, got out, and opened the back door. She saw nothing, so she raised the lid of the trunk to investigate. Nothing unusual there, either, but she knew she hadn’t imagined the sound. She checked the rear seats again, more closely, then squatted down to peek beneath the front seats.
This time, she found a slim black cell phone.
One of the technicians checking for drugs must have dropped it, she thought as she picked it up.
Then she looked at it, and radioed Captain Largo.
“Remember that guy I arrested? The one Cordova talked to me about?”
“Miller. Go on.”
“I found his phone on the floor of my unit.”
“How do you know it’s his?”
“When I touched it, the screen lit up with a picture of him.”
“I’ll mention it to the feds. Remember to drop it off when you get in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Bernie, we saved those cups with the dirt for you when the guy came in to get the boxes. They’re on your desk.”
She looked at Miller’s phone again. The home screen displayed several missed calls. None were familiar, but two of the numbers that came up more than once showed a 505 area code. That meant her part of New Mexico—Sheep Springs, Shiprock, Newcomb, Sanostee and also beyond the reservation, as far out as Albuquerque and Santa Fe. She made a note of those numbers, and several other frequent connections.
Then she touched the camera icon. The pictures were mostly shots of the landscape. She saw several views of Ship Rock, some sunsets, pictures of the Grand Canyon, blooming flowers. No photos of people, but about a dozen shots of a large, hairy black dog.
She would have checked the phone into the evidence room before she left for the day, but Sandra had gone home, and Largo was out. Instead, she locked it in her desk drawer for the evening, finished her paperwork, and drove to her trailer along the San Juan River.
Bernie wasn’t used to being home by herself. Since their marriage, she and Chee spent their time off together except when she
needed to sleep at Mama’s. The place felt empty without him. She straightened up the house and then went to the deck and moved the cacti from the white cups into small flowerpots, using the same gravelly dirt. Since the plants were only three inches across, she’d assumed they were babies, but now she noticed tiny dried flowers. They must be full grown, some sort of miniature barrel cactus. She’d look them up in her cactus guide when she got a chance. Something else to keep her mind off her missing husband.
She checked the refrigerator and remembered that she and Chee had done a good job of eating everything before they left for vacation. Oh, well. She didn’t have much of an appetite anyway. She turned on the TV and turned it off again. Picked up her book, but found herself staring out the window instead of reading. When the phone rang, she wished it would be Chee, but it was Darleen.
“Drive out and eat with us. Mama says the
atoo’
is even better now. And I want to talk to you about that school idea.”
“I don’t know. It’s hot. I’m tired.”
“It’s as hot there as it is here. Hold on.”
“Wait. Don’t put Mama—”
Mama’s voice came on the phone. “Come over now, daughter. I need to give you some of this food. It’s too much for your sister and for me. And she wants to say something to you.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“And bring the Popsicles.”
Then Darleen was back. “We’ll wait to eat dinner until you get here. Just because Cheeseburger isn’t there doesn’t mean you can feel sorry for yourself.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t be grumpy. And hurry up.”
Her appetite had returned by the time she got to Mama’s, and the stew smelled wonderful. It was always better the second day.
After they ate, Mama put some in two containers. “One for the Cheeseburger. One for the one who got shot.” Bernie put them in the freezer, along with what was left of the Popsicles.