Authors: David Thurlo
Tribal Police Investigator Ella Clah stood next to her department’s cruiser, a dusty, white SUV that had more miles on it than a Two Grey Hills sheep dog. As she stood beneath the shade of the Quick Mart station’s island, watching the dollar amount shoot past fifty as the pump fed regular into the tank, her second cousin and partner, Justine Goodluck, was busy cleaning the windshield.
“It’s been so quiet lately,” Justine said. “I hate slow days. I’d rather be up to my ears on an investigation than catching up with paperwork. It’s nine in the morning and it already feels like we’ve been on duty all day.”
“I hear you,” Ella answered. “At least we’re not behind a desk.”
Justine stopped working on the windshield and looked directly at Ella. Although among Traditionalists that
would have been considered extremely rude, tribal cops had learned to walk the line between the old and the new, adapting to a reservation in transition.
“What’s eating you, partner?” Justine asked. Seeing Ella shrug, Justine added, “Don’t try to tell me it’s nothing. We’ve known each other too long.”
There were many advantages to working with a close partner but the ability to second guess
each other was often a two-edged sword. With some partnerships, familiarity bred contempt, as the old saying warned. Yet Justine and she had found a middle ground. Though they weren’t what Ella’s daughter would have termed BFFs, they’d become attuned to each other in a way that gave them a distinct advantage out in the field.
Ella was still thinking of how to answer that when a call came over
their radio. “S.I. Unit One, see the clerk at the First United Bank on Highway 64, east of the bridge. He reports a man posing as Chester Kelewood is trying to cash a two hundred dollar check. The clerk will try to stall the subject until you arrive.”
Ella hung the gas nozzle back onto the pump and reached inside the open window to pick up the mike. “Unit One responding,” Ella said as Justine
paid the bill.
“We’re less than a mile from there,” Justine said, slipping behind the wheel. “How do you want to handle this?”
Ella began accessing information on the MDT, Mobile Dispatch Terminal. As her partner eased out into downtown Shiprock traffic, she answered. “Chester Kelewood has been on our missing person’s list since last June 2
nd
, and in these situations the bank always flags their
accounts. Let’s go in silent and try to get next to this scam artist before he catches on.”
A few minutes later, Justine dropped Ella off near the bank’s front door, then headed for the closest parking slot. As Ella approached the entrance, an anxious looking man stepped outside—not Kelewood, judging from the image she’d just viewed on the terminal. She hesitated, wondering if this was the suspect
or just another patron.
His gaze shifted to the badge clipped to her belt and a second later, he spun around and bolted down the sidewalk.
“That’s him!” A man in the foyer yelled.
Ella raced after the man, who darted around the corner of the building.
Although he’d only had a slight lead, the man moved like the wind, fear of arrest undoubtedly motivating him. He reached the back corner of
the bank, then disappeared down the alley to his left.
Just as Ella appeared in the alley, he reached a six foot cinder block wall. Seeing her closing in, he scrambled clumsily over the top.
Ella followed, jumping up, then over. This was a lot easier than the ten foot barrier at the county police academy’s obstacle course. Dropping to her knees to absorb the shock of landing, she searched the
perimeter and quickly spotted the suspect. The Navajo man was hightailing it down a dirt road.
She hit Justine’s speed dial number on her cell phone, slowing just enough to make the call. “Justine, I’m in pursuit. Drive down the ditch road and try to cut him off. He’s heading north through the brush.”
“Roger that,” Justine replied, then hung up.
Ella continued pursuit into the
bosque
, the wooded
area that lined the river banks. She knew she couldn’t match his sprint speed in a 440 or less, but she was sure she could wear him down cross-country, providing she could keep him within sight or track him. Even as she processed this thought, the man raced fifty yards down the road, then cut right and disappeared into a clump of twelve foot high willows, red and gray-green from their early
summer growth.
Less than ten seconds behind, she ducked in after him. Ella could hear his labored breathing and the thump of his boots on the sand as he ran parallel to the San Juan River, here only about a hundred yards wide. Although there were steep bluffs on the opposite shore, on this side there were many possible exits back along the north bank. She’d have to be careful he didn’t slip back
into town. Hopefully, Justine would see him if he crossed the ditch road.
The path the suspect had chosen kept him close to the river. The chase required constant swerving and twisting to avoid getting whipped by the long willow branches or tripping on a tuft of salt grass. Ella found herself constantly ducking and throwing up her right or left arm to avoid being, literally, bush whacked.
She’d
already eased into her long distance running rhythm, two strides, inhale, two strides, exhale. She knew from her regular conditioning runs that she’d be able to keep up this pace for miles. Even with the heavy ballistic vest she always wore under her shirt, she’d catch up sooner or later. Unfortunately, the moment he realized that, he might turn on her, so she’d have to be ready.
Still on his
tail, she remained alert, forcing herself to keep her breathing smooth and regular. Even if she hadn’t been able to hear him crashing through the brush like an enraged bull, his tracks were easy to follow. Soon she noticed that he was angling steadily toward the river. The bluffs a quarter mile farther down were lower and receded from the banks, leaving easier access to the shore and possible escape.
Maybe he’d decided to swim for it next—though it was probably more of a deep wade or wallow unless he dropped into a pool or undercut in the bank.
Suddenly Ella stopped hearing his footsteps. She slowed to a brisk walk and listened carefully. Almost instinctively, she reached up to touch the turquoise badger fetish hanging from a leather strap around her neck.
Her brother Clifford, a medicine
man, or
hataalii
as they were known to the
Diné
, the Navajo People, had given her the Zuni made fetish years ago as a gift. Since that time, she’d noticed that the small carving invariably became hot whenever danger was near. Right now it felt uncomfortably warm. Though she’d never been able to explain it, she suspected that the heat it emitted might have something to do with her own rising body
temperature in times of crisis. Either way, she’d learned to trust the warning.
Ella stopped and slowly turned around in a circle, detecting the acrid scent of sweat—not her own. Before she could pinpoint it more accurately, a man burst out from behind a salt cedar, yelling as he swung a big chunk of driftwood like a baseball bat.
Ella ducked and the wood whooshed over her head, missing her
skull by inches. Before he could take another swing, Ella drew her weapon and aimed it at her assailant.
“Drop the stick, buddy, now!” she ordered.
The man dropped the branch, but dove to his right, rolling into some tall grass. Then, leaping back to his feet, he sprinted away.
“Crap!” Ella holstered her gun and took off after him again. No way this jackrabbit was going to get away from her.
Running out of steam, the panting suspect tried to leap a fallen cottonwood branch, but caught his toe, or misjudged the jump. He fell to the sand, face first.
Ella caught up to him a second later, but he swung around, still on his knees and dove for her feet. He grabbed her boot and twisted her leg, trying to knock her down. Ella broke free and recaptured her balance just as the guy leaped up
and lunged.
Ella kicked him in the chest with her heavy boot.
The impact stopped him in his tracks, and he gasped, wobbling back and forth, but somehow he stayed on his feet. He took a step back, then held up his fists, waving them back and forth like a fighter working out in a gym as he took a bob and weave defense.
Ella kept her fighting stance. “Stop. I’m a cop. Don’t fight me. You’ll go
down.”
“You wish,” the Navajo man yelled, his face beet red from exertion.
“Have it your way,” Ella said, and reached for the canister of Mace on her duty belt. She had it halfway up before his fists suddenly opened up. Showing his palms and outspread fingers, he took a step back.
“No, stop! I’m allergic to that stuff. Really. I give up.”
Ella immediately spun him around and cuffed him. “If
you run for it again, I’ll Taser your ass.”
Taking him by the arm, she informed him of his rights as she guided him east toward the dirt road that paralleled the bosque along the irrigation ditch. As he stumbled along she asked him for his name, but all she got was a request for an attorney.
By the time they reached the road a patrol cruiser was waiting, having come from the north. Justine was
inching up from the south in her unit, less than fifty yards away. Ella looked at the uniformed officer climbing out of the cruiser. She recognized Mark Lujan, a young cop with about four years on the tribal force. “Thanks, Lujan, but I’ve got him now. My partner and I will take him in,” she said, seeing Justine climbing out of the SUV.
“Let the officer take him, boss,” Justine said, leaning
her head out of the SUV. “We’ve got another call.”
“What’s happening, partner?” Ella asked, climbing into the vehicle.
Justine turned the SUV around, then spoke as they drove toward the highway. “A Navajo crew was replacing fenceposts on the Navajo Nation side of the border, just the other side of Hogback, when they found a body.”
“On tribal land—they’re sure of that?” Ella reached for a tissue
from the glove box, then wiped away the perspiration from her brow with one hand and redirected the air conditioning vent toward her face and neck.
“Yeah, from what I was told. They called 911 and dispatch called us immediately.”
There was no direct route to the site. When they passed through the wide, river-cut gap in the Hogback, the long, steep sided outcrop towering above the desert for
miles, Justine had to continue east off the Rez. Their intended route required them to circle back to the northwest along the old highway, which came much closer to the spine-like ridge.
There was a dirt track that ran along the north-south fence line through an old field and former marsh, and the ride was extra rough. Trees and brush dotted the area, thickly in some places, and it took a while
to spot the tribal truck, which was in a low spot. The tailgate of the oversized pickup was down and the bed filled with coils of wire and fence posts.
“Where’s the crew?” Ella asked, looking around.
“Way over there,” Justine said, gesturing with her chin, Navajo style, toward a shady spot beneath an old cottonwood at least a hundred feet northwest of the pickup.
Ella wasn’t surprised. As a
detective on the Navajo Rez, she usually didn’t have to worry that a murder scene would be contaminated by the Navajo public. Whether they were Traditionalists, New Traditionalists, or Modernists, fear of the
chindi
was a fact of life here.
The
chindi
, the evil in a man, was said to remain earthbound waiting for a chance to create problems for the living. Contact with the dead, or their possessions,
was a sure way to summon it to you, so avoidance was the usual strategy.
The foreman, a short, muscular Navajo in jeans and a pale blue tribal issue shirt, came to meet them as they parked and stepped out of the SUV. His yellow straw cowboy hat was stained with dust and sweat. It was getting hot already here in northwest New Mexico. “We called you as soon as we realized what we were digging up.
You can see what’s left of a human hand down there. It’s over by that spot where we were taking out some fill dirt.”
“Thanks. We’ll handle it from here,” Ella said.
Justine joined Ella and they approached the location he’d pointed out. A shovel had been left beside the area where sand had been scooped out, probably to fill around a newly planted fence post about ten feet away. The original ground
had been eroded by heavy rain and the old post still lay nearby, the wood badly rotted away.
Ella and Justine moved carefully, stepping only in the fresh shoe and boot prints left by the work crew and making sure no other potential evidence was disturbed.
“Our crime scene team is on the way,” Justine said, looking down at the dark, leathery looking, dried out remnants of what was clearly a human’s
right hand. “Benny’s driving the van. Ralph Tache wants in on this too. He said he can’t dig—doctor’s orders—but he can collect evidence and document the scene.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ella said, giving Justine a look of concern. “I’m not sure Ralph’s ready. This could be labor intensive, and we’ll have to do it all by hand. We can’t bring in a backhoe, and all that bending over…”
“Ralph’s
had a lot to deal with after all those surgeries. That pipe bomb incident at the college did more than just put him in the hospital. But he’s spent months in rehab, and needs to get back to work, Ella. His doctor’s given permission for him to resume field duty, and the chief agreed. Let him have this assignment. He’s not cut out for a desk job, and we need our best personnel on this.”
Ella nodded.
Although Ralph had already made it clear he wasn’t ready to take up his bomb squad work again, he wanted to get out of the station and take part in field work.
“After all those months of recovery and therapy, I thought for a while he’d just take an early retirement and go on to consulting work,” Ella said. “He was a veteran cop when I joined the department.”
“I think police work’s in his blood,
Ella, and he needs to reconnect.” Justine glanced down at the missing joint on her index finger, recalling the brutality of her kidnappers years ago. “We all pay a price for what we do, but police work’s a calling. That’s why we’re drawn to it so much.”