Shooting Chant (13 page)

“Not a thing. Just be careful.”

Ella drove off in her mother’s truck and, on her way to the station, called Justine. “Anything new turn up on any of our pending cases?”

“We tracked down the van that ran you off the road. Sergeant Neskahi learned that it had been stolen earlier
today. Then one of our cruisers found it abandoned about three miles from the site of your accident, partially stripped. We have it in impound now.”

Ella muttered a soft curse. “Fingerprints?”

“We’re going to focus on that next. The sergeant is there now, and I’m on the way.”

“When you’re done, check into the criminal cases Tolino’s involved with and see if there’s anyone who might be out gunning
for him,” Ella said. “Then ask for his cooperation on his civil cases.”

“I’ll take care of it.

“Did you get a chance to bring in any of the people involved with the livestock killings?”

“Joseph Neskahi worked on Nancy, and I took Mary Lou and Norma Sells. I think we rattled them a bit, but not enough to make a difference. We didn’t get anything useful out of any of them, and nobody changed
their stories.”

“Keep on it.”

“10–4.”

Ella was nearly to the station when she saw thick black smoke billowing from the Sells Feed Store storage barn. Ella called it in as she pulled off the road to see if she could help. Norma Sells was fighting the blaze in the sheet-metal building with a handful of Navajos who’d come to help, but it didn’t take a professional to see that it was already too
late. Even if the fire department arrived right now, the supplies inside were doomed. What they had to do now was keep the flames from spreading to the wood-framed store not twenty feet away.

As Ella jumped out of her vehicle, Norma handed the garden hose she was using to another woman, then jogged over to her. “I hope the police will finally do something now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I gave Officer
Goodluck a written statement. I
told
her to go arrest Nancy Bitsillie, that she was the one who killed Mary Lou’s goat, but she said they couldn’t without a witness or proof. Then my barn was trashed, and I had to throw out half my feed. Later on, after someone spread
our
premium goat feed all over Nancy’s corrals so that her goats ate it instead of the traditional forage and hay, she came here
and accused me of a lot of things. She’s crazy, I’m telling you. Just plain crazy.”

“So, you think Nancy was the one who made the mess in here before, with the manure and all, then came back and set this fire?”

“Who else? I’m telling you, she lost it when Mary Lou’s goat won. She’s one of those traditionalists who thinks anything modern is evil and should be destroyed. That doesn’t seem to keep
her from driving a pickup, though.”

“I’ll check out everyone’s story, but first, what can I do to help here and now?”

Norma shook her head. “Nothing. I’ll just have to let the fire burn out. We’ll just keep wetting down my store so the fire won’t spread. But you can throw Nancy’s butt in jail. At least I’ll know she can’t get at me again.”

Ella called in her report, then drove directly to Nancy
Bitsillie’s home, which was down near the bosque east of the river. The trailer house with a roofed over porch wasn’t quite the hogan the usual traditionalist might have, but as was typical, they’d constructed a six-sided log and mud ceremonial hogan in the back. Ella saw Nancy and her two brothers standing on the porch as she parked and walked up.

Nancy stepped off the porch as Ella came up.
“That crazy woman is blaming me for the mess in her feed store, isn’t she?”

“Someone set a fire there a short while ago. I think you’ll agree that things are getting out of hand. I’d like to ask you a few questions and maybe together we can figure out what’s going on,” Ella said, keeping her tone nonconfrontational. She wanted Nancy’s cooperation, not another battle.

Nancy glared at her. “I
knew
you’d side with her though. You come from a family of traditionalists and you should know better. Your problem is that you spent too much time on the outside and it corrupted you.”

“My sister was here all day yesterday,” Wilbur called from the porch. “She’s not guilty of anything. If anything new has happened, it still couldn’t be her. All three of us were stacking hay until just an hour
ago.”

Ella saw the anger in the pair’s eyes as they came closer. There was more going on than anger over a goat being killed. Things had escalated way beyond that, and she wasn’t sure how to stop it now. “Who do you think ruined all the grain and hay at the Sells Feed Store?” Ella pressed.

“You’d like to blame the traditionalists for everything, wouldn’t you?” Nancy said.

“I just want everybody
to stop losing their tempers. Nobody needs this kind of tension here. We have to stand together, not split ourselves apart.”

“As it always is with those who’ve abandoned our ways, you talk out of both sides of your mouth. Maybe you should listen more to your brother instead of turning against him and arresting him. He
knows
who he is.”

“I have
not
turned against my brother,” Ella said, her anger
spilling to the surface. Realizing what was happening, she stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m not getting into this with you.” She met Nancy’s gaze. “Where were you during the past hour?”

“I told you—” Wilbur began.

Ella gave him a sharp look. “I want her answer, not yours. When I want to hear from you, I’ll ask you the question.”

He glowered at her but remained silent.

“I was here, making
some mutton stew after putting away the hay, just like my brother said,” she answered, her voice taut. “Now unless you plan to arrest me, please leave.”

Nancy stepped back into the trailer house, leaving Ella standing there with the two brothers.

Ella gave them a curt nod, then went back to her vehicle. As she passed by their pickup, she reached out and felt the hood. It was cool and no noise
ticked from a cooling engine. If they had set the fire, they hadn’t used this truck as transportation.

Ella climbed into her SUV, thinking about what had just transpired. Nancy’s words had cut deep. She and Clifford were being seen as each other’s enemies, though it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Yet, because of the legacy, she knew that everyone would be watching them carefully now
to see what would happen between the two of them next. The prospect made her uneasy.

She arrived at the station fifteen minutes later and Sheriff Taylor came out the side door.

“I was here looking for you, and heard about the truck accident.” he said, coming up to her. “I didn’t think you’d be back to work so quickly.”

“There’s a lot to be done,” she said simply, and saw the look of recognition
on his face. A kindred soul—she was sure he knew exactly how she felt about her work because he was the same way. “What brings you here?”

“I think I’ve spoken to all the LabKote employees that live off the reservation except for Walter Morgan, and you’ve done that. I’ve also interviewed the two Anglo supervisors who live in my jurisdiction. Their stories are almost identical—word-for-word identical.”

“So it looks like they’ve had time to rehearse.”

“Yeah, which doesn’t exactly make me trust them. But I’ve got nothing really new, either. I also spoke to the two Navajo workers who live off the Rez, but their stories are vague. About the only thing they seem to have noted about Hansen was that he was very depressed when his ex-wife refused to reconcile with him. One of the women thought he was
really sweet and very much in love, though the other one called him ‘pathetic.’ She said that he was always whining about his wife.”

“That makes a case for suicide,” Ella said. “But why do it in the parking lot at LabKote? And if someone helped him off himself, they’re guilty of murder themselves.”

“I don’t buy the whole suicide angle. I got the impression he still hadn’t given up on the idea
that he’d eventually win her back.”

“Let’s continue to look into it and see what other people have to say. Who’s next on the list?” Ella asked.

“There’s Leonard Bidtah and his wife Bertha. Also Wilma Francisco. They worked the same shift as Hansen. The rest of the employees, according to one of the supervisors, wouldn’t have seen much of Hansen except coming or going, since his work kept him
isolated.”

“I know the Bidtah’s. They don’t live too far from here. We can go there now. Wilma may be more of a problem. She lives with her parents and they’re traditionalists. But let’s take it a step at a time.”

Ella drove the sheriff in her tribal vehicle, leaving her mother’s truck at the station. As they reached a residential section of the Rez and she saw Taylor looking around, she tried
to see things through his eyes. The beige, cookie-cutter modular homes weren’t stacked next to each other as she’d seen in other housing projects, but there was a lot of clutter in several of the front yards.

Old vehicle carcasses left to die where they’d stopped were now children’s playhouses and targets for stones. Dogs and kids played in the midst of poverty, oblivious to their status as they
ran up and down the streets. To her, it was home, and to the ones living there, it was just life. To an outsider, places like this probably spoke more of hardship and stagnation, and strangers living on the edge of disaster.

“You were in the FBI, Investigator Clah?”

Ella nodded.

“Why didn’t you stay with the bureau?”

In other words why had she chosen to live here, of all places? She could
read the question on his face as clearly as she could see his pale blue eyes and weathered features. “You see a never-ending cycle of poverty here, don’t you? I see that, too, but there’s another side of the Navajo Nation someone who wasn’t raised here probably won’t ever see. That’s why I’m here.”

EIGHT

As they entered another area of mobile homes, Taylor mulled over her words. “You mean intangibles, like your culture? Is that why you returned?”

“It’s more than that. It’s what we call the
hózhq.
It means all that’s good, orderly, and harmonious. It’s a feeling I find only here, and what makes us one with the land and gives us an identity that’s more than the name Navajo. To be honest,
I didn’t always see that myself. It’s one of those things that you don’t miss until you’re no longer around it.”

“It sounds a bit like a cowboy and his boots,” Taylor said, nodding. “I was offered a job back East years back. I packed up all my things and left, intending to start a new life, but it didn’t work out for me. It was pretty enough with the green and all, but I like it out here, with
the sagebrush, bare mesas, and dry river beds. My boots, my hat, my horse, and even my pickup truck are a part of me. I couldn’t see trading them in for taxi cab rides and air so thick you can see what you’re breathing in.”

Ella parked in front of a new-looking double-wide mobile home. Trash had accumulated in a pile by the side of the house, ready to be burned, if it didn’t blow away first.
A tricycle lay on its side beside a chicken-wire fence that held several hens. An old dog looked up, but didn’t bother to growl or bark as they climbed up the three wooden steps leading to the front door.

“Here it doesn’t matter but, at the Francisco’s, we’ll have to wait in the tribal unit until we’re invited in,” Ella whispered.

As Ella brought her hand back to knock, a middle-aged woman opened
the door.

“Ella, I haven’t seen you since last year’s tribal fair in Window Rock. How have you been?”

“Fine, Bertha. Working hard.”

Bertha nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, don’t we all. At least there’s a new place to work here in Shiprock. Leonard and I both have good paying jobs for the first time in years.” She gestured for them to sit. “But tell me, what brings you here?” She looked at Sheriff
Taylor. “We don’t get that many
bilagáana
—white—lawmen on the Rez except for the FBI. What’s going on?”

“Sheriff Taylor and I need to ask you and Leonard a few questions about an employee from LabKote,” Ella said.

“Oh, you mean the one who killed himself?” She didn’t wait, but continued. “I heard that you were looking into that.”

Ella didn’t bother to ask for more of an explanation. “Can we
speak to Leonard, too?”

“I can help you now, but you’ll have to wait to talk to my husband. He went to the store.”

“Okay. That’s not a problem,” Ella said, taking out a notepad from her jacket pocket. “I already know you worked the same shift, but how well did you know the deceased?”

“Better than Leonard did, I’d bet, but we weren’t really friends or anything. I was his secretary. I compiled
and bound his reports, placed orders for shipping supplies, kept expense accounts, and stuff like that. He wasn’t easy to get along with, but he liked talking to a woman, I think, because we tend to be more sympathetic.”

“What did you two talk about?” Ella asked, “aside from business matters, that is.”

“We spoke about his wife a lot. He loved her very much. I didn’t mention Leonard too often
to him, though, because it just reminded him that his own marriage had broken up. He also wasn’t too happy with his work, and sometimes he’d let off some steam.”

“What was wrong with his job?” Taylor asked. “I understood he had a pretty important position.”

“He did, and he was well paid. But he was always finding things wrong.”

“Like what?” Taylor pressed.

“Oh, the processing machines that
sterilized the labware didn’t operate at the level he wanted, or shipping was taking too long for something, or not long enough. With him, it was always something. That was just his nature, you know.”

Ella nodded. “How was his overall job performance?”

She considered it for a long time before answering. “Good, I’d say, but I know that Doctor Landreth and him had some problems getting along,
mostly because Doctor Landreth wouldn’t let Mister Hansen breathe without looking over his shoulder.”

“Why do you think he was doing that?” Taylor asked.

Just then the door opened and Leonard came in. “I thought I recognized your Jeep, Ella. Are you investigating Hansen’s death? I’d heard that the police didn’t believe it was suicide.”