Shooting Chant (30 page)

“Thanks, Mom. I’m glad I held on to my old pair. I’d forgotten how soft and comfortable they were. Can I help you with breakfast?” Ella moved to the counter, where Rose had placed a plate with two baked potatoes.

“Just chop up those
potatoes into cubes, then get the cheese and green chile salsa out of the refrigerator. The tortillas are already on the table.”

A half hour later, Ella was finishing her second burrito and sipping a glass of milk when the phone rang. “That’s probably for me, Mom. Maybe there’s been some news about the kidnapping.” Ella reached for the phone on the wall, suspecting from the early morning hour
that it was probably Big Ed Atcitty.

“Shorty, we’ve just got a call from the tribal offices up on the mesa. It looks like we can add Ernest Ben to the list of kidnapped people. Go straight there. I’ll have the other people on your team meet you.”

“I’ll be at the scene in fifteen minutes or so, Chief. Who else knows about this?” Ella asked.

“Just the maintenance man at the tribal office for
now. The kidnappers left their calling card there, so to speak. You’ll see when you get there. This will all become common knowledge soon when the rest of the staff show up for work, so get going. I’ve already had someone check the Ben residence, just to make sure this wasn’t a hoax and he wasn’t there. But, on the plus side, there were no signs of violence either. He’s recently divorced so we checked
with his ex, but she hasn’t seen him either.”

“I’ll call Blalock and fill him in,” Ella said, then hung up.

“Did they find the senator? Your expression suggests bad news. Is he dead?” Rose asked.

“No, at least I don’t think so. But we probably have another kidnapping. Keep it to yourself, though, until I can confirm it. We don’t want to frighten his family if this turns out to be a false alarm.”

“Who’s missing?”

“Ernest Ben, head of the tribe’s economic development.” Ella stood, took another swallow of milk, then checked to verify her handgun was in place. “Gotta go. Thanks for the great breakfast.”

“Come by for lunch if you get the chance, Daughter. Oh, wasn’t the man you’re going to check on involved in the altercation with the Fierce Ones at the tribal offices?”

“He was there, all
right,” Ella said, remembering. “That makes two people connected to that incident who are now missing.” Ella regretted her words almost instantly knowing that her mother was going to be worrying about Clifford now. “You know that officers are going to be talking to the Fierce Ones again, don’t you, Mom?” Ella asked gently.

“I was just thinking of that. Will you be questioning your brother yourself?”
Rose asked. “You know how people will talk if you do, especially after everything that’s happened already.”

“Maybe Justine can take care of that. Everyone knows she works on my team, but it still might take some of the edge off the gossip.” Ella put on her jacket, and started out, hoping today would be a better day than yesterday.

“Take care of yourself. Your daughter needs you,” Rose said.

The words rang in her ears as she left the house, and got into her Jeep. The sun was rising over the hills far to the east, illuminating the Jeep in a strong light, and forcing her to lower the visor. It would be a few more minutes before the valley below felt the warmth of the morning rays but, by then, she’d be on Highway 666, speeding north toward Shiprock. As she drove down the dirt road, she
noticed an old woman herding goats. The woman, her attention on the animals, never even turned her way.

*   *   *

“That’s where I found them,” Andrew Tallman pointed up at the aluminum flagpole halfway between the curb and the front door of the brick tribal office.

“The pants were hanging by their belt loops from the snaps on the flagpole rope, flapping in the morning breeze. Right?” Ella asked,
verifying the facts. Andrew Tallman, in his late sixties, was obviously a man of few words, and it had taken nearly fifteen minutes to determine he really didn’t know much about Ernest Ben at all, except for what was in the note.

“And when you took down the pants you noticed the belt with his name on it. Is that right?” Justine pressed. She looked half asleep, but Ella was glad that her assistant’s
brain had already woken up.

Andrew nodded once. “I found the note in his pocket, read it, and called the police.” The custodian/maintenance man cleared his throat. “I didn’t think about fingerprints until it was too late. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about that anymore, Mr. T.,” Ella said. She was glad that Tallman had eventually placed the note between the pages of a novel he’d been reading so that
the workers, who’d arrived before the officers, wouldn’t touch it as well. Maybe they’d still be able to find some useable fingerprints besides Tallman’s.

“May I go? I have a lot of work to do,” Tallman said, his English slow, but sure.

“I’m finished with all my questions now, Sir,” Ella told him. “Thanks for your help.”

He walked off, visibly relieved to finally be able to raise the U.S.,
New Mexico, and Navajo Nation flags.

Justine got Ella’s attention again. “I’ll check the note for fingerprints when I get back to the lab and can fume it with ninhydrin. In the meantime, I hand wrote a copy of the note’s text so we can work with it.”

“Read me what it says again,” Ella said.

“Okay, here goes:

To tribal officials and representatives of the
Dineh: Hosteen
Ben has been selling
out to the Anglos. We will keep him and
Hosteen
Yellowhair until the Navajo Nation is ‘owned and operated’ by The People alone.

There’s no signature,” Justine said.

Ella shook her head. “It’s consistent with the way a traditionalist would talk, using ‘
hosteen
’ instead of mister. The tone and wording is similar to the Yellowhair message, too. Check with the linguists and handwriting experts Blalock
has access to and see if they think the notes were composed by the same person.”

“I’d bet on it,” Justine said. “Speak of the devil, here comes FB-Eyes now.” Justine pursed her lips to point toward the approaching light blue government sedan.

“Let him send the note to the Albuquerque bureau lab for prints, if he volunteers.”

“We can get a faster turnaround if you let me do the work here,” Justine
reminded Ella.

“Do you really expect to find any prints?”

She hesitated. “Not if the note came from the same kidnappers,” Justine admitted, “and based on what we’ve seen, that’s a pretty good bet.”

“Then let Blalock and the bureau be the ones who spend the time and money not finding anything out. We have a kidnapper or two to track down,” Ella said.

“And that’s why you’re in charge around
here not me, right boss?”

“Right. Now let’s brief Blalock while we have something to eat inside. The lunchroom usually has snacks available, and all this investigating has made me hungry. I wonder if they have any fruit rolls or granola bars?”

SEVENTEEN

Blalock insisted on having a quick look around while Ella briefed him, and that effectively squashed Ella’s plan to get something to eat. Meanwhile, Justine, Harry Ute, Ralph Tache, and Joseph Neskahi searched the grounds and immediate area for anything the kidnappers might have left behind.

A while later, Justine joined Ella who, along with Agent Blalock, had managed to find a box
of doughnuts. Ella gestured to a doughnut and a Styrofoam cup of coffee she’d set aside for Justine.

“What’s next, boss? You don’t think Ben was kidnapped from this location, do you?” Justine asked.

“Not really. His vehicle still hasn’t been found. I’d vote he was taken after he left work last night. That’s more in keeping with the kidnappers’ MO. We have officers on the lookout for his white
Dodge Ram pickup but, unless we get some evidence of a struggle when we find the truck, we’ll be back to square one,” Ella said.

“Give me a good photo or two of the victims, physical descriptions—height, weight, and the usual. I’ll have a thousand flyers made up that we can circulate,” Blalock said.

“We can distribute some of those among the Four Corners law enforcement agencies and blanket
the entire state using local newspapers and the media,” Justine said.

“Somebody, somewhere, must have seen Ben or Yellowhair just before or after they were taken,” Blalock said. “And if either of those men is being held in this area, a neighbor or postman could end up giving us the lead we need.”

A call came through on Ella’s handheld radio, interrupting them. “Dispatch to SI Clah. Officer Cloud
has found Ben’s missing vehicle on a side street north of the tribal offices. Please see the officer at 1288 South Fifth.”

“10–4, dispatch.”

Ella looked at the others. “If the MO for the kidnappings has remained the same, Ben was taken from his truck just like Yellowhair. Let’s get over there and see what we can find.”

Ella returned to her unit and switched on her flashers. At least now they’d
have a chance to search for physical evidence that might lead them somewhere.

*   *   *

Some time later, they gathered by Ben’s truck. “He made a normal stop,” Justine told Ella and Blalock. “There are no dents or scrapes on the vehicle, and the road shows no skid marks.”

Tache and Harry Ute were going over the cab itself, which contained an unopened six-pack of beer sitting on a water-soaked
seat, and the receipt from a liquor store not far off the Rez. Ben’s jacket was over the seat, as if placed there casually.

“I think that Ben left work, drove east toward Farmington far enough to reach the liquor store, bought some cold beer at the time printed on the receipt, then started back toward his home,” Blalock said.

“But something made him pull over, and that was when he was kidnapped,”
Ella added. “I could think of only a few things that would make someone pull over that time of night.”

“An ambulance,” Justine suggested.

“Or a cop.” Blalock added.

“Or a car with someone in it that Ben knew,” Ella said.

“When you do the background on Ben, check and see if he has any radical friends or associates, will you?” Blalock asked.

“Such as the Fierce Ones?” Ella felt her muscles
tighten from the tension. “The problem with any theory involving them is that we still don’t have
any
physical evidence against that group.”

“Which means we have to start putting some serious pressure on the Fierce Ones,” Blalock said, “but you guys will have to handle that without me. They’d never talk to the FBI about anything. I’d just get the runaround.”

“Get started on those flyers, Dwayne,”
Ella said. “I’ll have all the personal data I have on Ben and Yellowhair faxed to your office so it’ll be waiting when you get back to Farmington.”

“We should all pray that we break this case soon,” Blalock said, walking over to his car. “I can feel the heat coming from politicians already, and it isn’t ten
A.M.
yet.”

“That’s nothing compared to the heat we’re gonna get from the tribe,” Justine
mumbled.

“That’s a fact,” Ella said.

Leaving Justine and the crime scene team at the site, Ella returned to the station and walked directly to Big Ed’s office. He was on the telephone, but waved her to a chair.

When he finally hung up, Big Ed took a minute before speaking. She could tell from what she’d heard of his side of the conversation that the chief had just been leaned on heavily by
the tribal president.

“You know who that was, Shorty, and you can guess what’s bothering him. The head of our tribe wants action on these kidnappings, and he wants it yesterday. You and I both know kidnappings can take either a few hours to solve, or years. But when the Navajo Nation’s president is under pressure, it’ll come back on me. And when it comes to me, it goes to you. Now tell me what
I need to know.” Big Ed picked up a big mug shaped like a pig, and swallowed a mouthful of coffee. Grimacing, he put it back down in disgust.

“It looks like the work of the same kidnapper or kidnappers as before. The MO was pretty much the same: taking the victim at night from their vehicle, and leaving a note for us to find.” She handed him the copy Justine had made of the text, and he skimmed
it. “That’s the newest. The original is going to the FBI lab.”

“‘Owned and operated,’ huh? That seems to fit with the demands made when Yellowhair was taken. Any theories about the identity of the kidnappers?”

“None except for the obvious, and it bothers me because I know that’s precisely what we’re supposed to think. We do have some ideas about the actual kidnapping strategy, if you want to
hear them.” Seeing him nod, she continued. “The victim apparently pulls over for the kidnapper’s vehicle, and that sounds like it’s either a police or emergency vehicle, or a person the victim recognizes and trusts enough to stop.”

“We’ll have to check out our own people to see who’s sympathetic to the Fierce Ones, or worse, if somebody is a member of those vigilantes. Personally, I don’t think
that will pan out. I’d like to think our cops are above that, but I’ll check that out myself.” Big Ed leaned back in his chair, rocking back and forth while he spoke.

“Personally, I lean toward the notion of somebody posing as a cop,” Ella said. “That would be easy to carry out. All you’d need is a similar model vehicle to the ones we use here and a red emergency light or, in the dark, and with
a spotlight, just the flashers would do.”

“So, the victim pulls over, the spotlight blinds them, and when they roll down the window to greet the officer, they get a gun in their face. It would be pretty simple,” Big Ed agreed.

“And that would tend to rule out Blueeyes from the list of suspects unless he had someone working with him,” Ella said. “I think if he was going to do something illegal,
he would act alone. The fewer witnesses the better for a man like that.”

“No definite word on his whereabouts?” asked Big Ed.

“Not yet.”

“Okay. Then take that new theory of yours to the next level. Go see if anyone in the area where the kidnapping occurred remembers seeing flashing lights around the time the crime went down,” Big Ed said.