Shooting Chant (22 page)

As she drove away, Ella checked in with Justine, giving her the code word that would decode the files.

“I’ll try that right away,” Justine said.

“Any other news?”

“Not yet.”

A peculiar restlessness gnawed at Ella. She wanted answers,
but none seemed forthcoming. As usual, their investigation was becoming an exercise in patience. A phone call to Sheriff Taylor only confirmed what she already knew. After agreeing to keep in touch, Ella disconnected the call.

She was halfway to the station when she caught a glimpse of an old truck behind her. There were no other vehicles on this stretch of road at the moment, so it was easy
to spot.

She passed two more turnoffs, but the driver stayed with her. If this was a tail, it was such an obvious one that it couldn’t have been a pro in the truck behind her.

Deciding to check it out, Ella slowed her vehicle down, then drove up a dirt track. There was a canyon ahead that she could use to turn the tables on him.

The thought that perhaps Big Ed had assigned someone to follow
and back her up occurred to her. He’d done it in the past. Ella considered the possibility then discarded it. No cop would have been that sloppy, and they would have signalled her by now.

The other driver followed her up the dirt track, then slowed down as she disappeared into the canyon. He passed her position cautiously, still searching for her. Ella bided her time, then pulled out behind him.
Unfortunately, he was still too far away to ID.

Spotting her, the driver suddenly tried to turn around, found he couldn’t, then floored the accelerator pedal, heading straight into the desert. The only thing out in the direction he was going was the local landfill.

Ella stayed in pursuit and called it in on her radio. She didn’t think she’d need backup, and that was just as well since no one
would be available for several minutes anyway.

The beat-up truck in front of her stayed on course, though it was a rough trip, even for a four-wheel drive. They were going forty, but with all the bumps and uneven terrain, it felt as if they were on a wild, uncontrollable, roller-coaster ride.

As they drew closer to the landfill, the terrain cleared to low, scattered brush. Ella saw the massive
bulldozer ahead in a scooped out basin, burying refuse, and pressed down harder on the accelerator. The last thing she wanted was an innocent caught up in this.

Suddenly, the driver pulled to a stop, leaped out, and disappeared behind a pile of rubble.

Ella was only seconds away from where his truck was parked, when one shot rang out. Every instinct she’d perfected as a cop told her the story.
The bulldozer operator had come face-to-face with his destiny. There was a killer on the loose now and, like predatory animals, they made cunning adversaries when trapped.

TWELVE

Ella reached for her shotgun, called in a situation report, and requested an EMT unit. As she left the Jeep, she was careful to stay behind the protection of the engine block. Experience and training took over now, and she knew what she had to do.

The foul-smelling landfill resembled a large crater, with the bulldozer and several mounds of refuse lining the high earthen rim. Ella waited
for an eternity, but everything was still. Even the crows, ever-present residents of the landfill, began to land and resume searching for scraps.

She crouched, moving forward low to the ground, shifting her vantage point from trash mound to trash mound, then searching for the shooter before moving again. A few birds took flight, but most remained, not seeing her as a threat.

Directly ahead,
about halfway to the bulldozer, she saw a small mountain of discarded furniture. It would do for cover. Ella sprinted toward an upended sofa, expecting to be shot at for the few seconds she was exposed, but nothing happened.

The cry of the crows, their feeding interrupted, distracted her, but she fought to concentrate on the man who’d brought her here. As Ella moved around to one end of the sofa,
she saw a body lying on the ground, bleeding from the chest.

She drew near cautiously and recognized Rudy Joe, the dozer operator. He’d told her once that he worked out here at the landfill because he liked the outdoors all year round. Who’d have thought that statement would turn out to be his epitaph.

Ella crawled over to Rudy and felt for a pulse. He was still alive, having been shot in the
chest, but well to the side and below the heart, catching a rib. The blood loss, however, was heavy. Maybe it was kinder that he’d passed out. To be aware of what was going on, under these circumstances, would have been torture.

She remained quiet, but still the shooter remained hidden either behind the dozer or another heap of trash. The rim of the crater was too steep to climb easily at this,
the low end of the landfill. Did the man expect to get away if he just didn’t reveal his position? Surely he must have surmised that if he left, he’d have to try it on foot, because to reach his vehicle he’d have to get past her, and that would never happen. The man was connected to one or more of her investigative trails, and she had no intention of letting him escape.

Ella moved forward again,
looking all around her. As she maneuvered closer, the bulldozer’s engine suddenly came to life. With a powerful roar, the machine lurched forward, crushing everything in its way.

She had to make a quick choice. If she tried to run to either side to flank him, she’d put herself in the open and he’d shoot at her. But if she stayed where she was, she’d be buried under tons of garbage or crushed
by the machine’s massive steel blade or steel treads.

Ella fired off three shotgun blasts in rapid succession, but the buckshot either ricocheted off the blade, or passed over the head of the operator, who was using the blade like armor plate. The bulldozer kept coming at her, and she was forced to give ground. If she couldn’t get to one side soon, he’d trap her with her back to the wall of earth
that bordered the pit.

To survive, she’d have to disable the machine or hit the driver. As she tried to get into a better firing position, she suddenly realized that this had all been a setup. She’d been manipulated into coming out here where she’d be all alone.

Angry that she’d made such a tactical mistake, Ella grew even more determined to turn the tables on her enemy. She would
not
die out
here. She had a future, and this man would not rob her or her baby of that.

Hearing the wail of a siren over the sound of the bulldozer, she smiled. She was no longer by herself. A heartbeat later, she saw Officer Philip Cloud up above at the rim of the pit. As the bulldozer bore down on her, Ella gestured for Philip to move to his left. She’d run to the right, and if one of them was quick enough,
they’d outflank the driver and get close enough to shoot.

The driver had seen the police car arrive and slowed the bulldozer, suddenly aware of Philip. When the officer slid down into the crater, the bulldozer quickly turned in its tracks and roared toward him. Philip tried to move laterally to the machine, but the dozer was agile and continued to keep him in its path.

Ella had wanted to capture
the man alive, but now the life of a fellow officer took precedent. With only seconds before the bulldozer trapped Philip, she raced out and took a position behind cover in line with the side of the machine.

Ella dropped the shotgun and pulled out her pistol. It was more precise and she was better with it. Bracing her hands combat style, she aligned her sights, held her breath, and squeezed off
one shot. The man dropped to his right, falling out of the bulldozer onto a pile of rusted out car parts.

The dozer slowed immediately, ran into the wall of earth that surrounded the landfill, and climbed almost to a forty-five-degree angle before the engine died. It slid back three feet, then stopped.

Ella swallowed the bitter taste at the back of her throat. Another corpse, another face that
would either keep her awake, or haunt her dreams for months.

While Philip checked on Rudy Joe, she picked up her shotgun, checked the bore for debris, then moved forward slowly and cautiously, though she knew the man was dead. Few ever survived a bullet behind the ear.

The first thing she did as she drew near was kick the gun well away from him. Then she crouched down and turned the body face
up. She’d expected a Navajo, this was their land after all, but the light-skinned man before her was no one she recognized.

Philip jogged up and glanced down at the man. “Do you have any idea who he is, and why he did this?”

“Not a clue.” She reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “There’s a Colorado driver’s license with the name, Thomas LaPoint, but no LabKote ID,” she said, surprised.
“I assumed…”

“There are other Anglos working on the Rez, and other Anglo run businesses,” Philip said. “The highways bring many people through our land.”

“Yeah, I know, but LabKote was fresh in my mind. I just came from there.”

“Things are never what they seem to be around here. Have you ever noticed that?” Philip said in a hushed tone, then walked back with Ella to tend to the wounded bulldozer
operator.

*   *   *

Rudy Joe was stabilized about ten minutes later and transported to the hospital. While her team processed the scene, Ella stayed with Dr. Roanhorse while she continued her preliminary examination of the body.

“I’ll do an autopsy and find out if he had any drugs in his system that affected his judgment, or if there was any medical reason for his violent behavior. Suicide
by cop seems to be a modern favorite, but, from what I’ve seen here, I doubt that was what he was trying to do. Judging by what you and Officer Cloud told me, he wanted you dead, not himself.”

“What I can’t figure out is why he set up this one-on-one confrontation. If he wanted me dead, he should have stacked the deck.”

“Be thankful for his bad judgment.”

“I wish I could figure out what this
was all about,” Ella said. “When I can’t, it usually means I’m missing something, Carolyn, and whenever that has happened in the past, it ends up costing me.”

“Do you have any idea who this guy is?” Carolyn asked, gesturing to the corpse, “other than the name on his toe tag?”

“No, do you?”

Carolyn shook her head. “If I were you, I’d go talk to people at the mine, at LabKote, and over at the
hospital. All those places hire quite a few Anglos. Of course, he could just be someone from off the Rez who was here visiting or just looking around. We have a lot of curious people who come and do the tourist thing, then leave.”

“All I have to go on for now is a name and address on the driver’s license and this motel room key we found in his pocket.” Ella walked over to the perp’s vehicle.
The old truck looked as if it were being held together with superglue and rust. The doors didn’t match the paint job, the fenders were dented, and the entire body seemed misaligned on the frame, undoubtedly the result of a hasty repair after the vehicle had been involved in an accident.

Justine joined Ella and, together, they processed the interior. While Justine dusted for prints, Ella checked
out the contents of the glove compartment. Except for some melted candy bars, there was nothing there.

Ella continued to look around for a LabKote ID. She’d been heading back from the plant when she’d spotted the tail, and it seemed a logical tie-in. She checked the floorboards, and between the seat cushions, but there was nothing to be found.

“I ran the plate through DMV, and the tag is stolen,”
Justine said. “There is no registration either. Are you looking for something specific?” Justine asked.

Ella explained why she suspected a possible link to LabKote.

“I’ll keep looking,” Justine said.

After going through the interior completely, and verifying again that there was no LabKote sticker in the truck, Ella took a deep breath.

“We should go check out his motel room,” Justine said.
“We may find something there.”

“Take the team over and get started on that as soon as you can,” Ella said, “but leave the motel staff to me. I’ll interview them.”

Justine took the key, which was labeled Sagebrush Motel. “Okay, boss. First I’ll make arrangements to have this vehicle impounded, then make sure it gets to the garage where I can process it completely later.”

Seeing Tache taking
photos, and Ute working the perimeter, Ella knew her team had things covered. She could do more from the office now than by staying here. “I’m going back to the station,” she told Justine. “I’ll file my report, then go interview whatever staff I can find at the motel.”

“I’ll meet with you later then,” Justine said.

Ella glanced back and saw what was irreverently called the ‘croaker sack’ being
loaded into the back of Carolyn’s van. A shudder ran up her spine. The aftermath of killing another human being, even in a righteous shooting, was never easy. The dead always exacted their revenge, carving a place for themselves in the nightmares that would haunt her for as long as she lived.

*   *   *

The first thing she did once she got back to the station was check with the armament officer
and sign out an extra long kevlar vest. No questions were asked, especially after the latest incident.

Ella spent the next thirty minutes running the dead man’s ID through law enforcement and other databases. At first, there was nothing unusual, except that Tom LaPoint, a Colorado resident according to his records, hadn’t had any priors and what he’d done today seemed completely out of character.
But then things began getting really strange. According to the records, Tom LaPoint had died in a car accident four years ago in Denver.

After accessing his photo through the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles she finally found an answer she understood. The man she’d shot was not Tom LaPoint, and the listed address was a phony. The photo on the computer screen showed a completely different person
than the individual who’d tried to kill her. Her attacker had assumed the dead man’s identity.

She leaned back in her chair, trying to mentally review everything she knew and come up with more answers, but a rational explanation eluded her. It now seemed unlikely that the gunman had come from LabKote, so maybe he’d been parked somewhere nearby, waiting for her.