Bad Medicine (2 page)

“Hang on. I’m going to get you out!” Ella yelled, hoping the driver was still conscious and able to understand her. The more she thought about it, though, the less
likely that seemed. The woman hadn’t appeared coherent before the accident. Whatever she had been on had definitely erased reality from her mind.

Ella carefully swept aside the gravel, blocking out her fear that the gas tank would explode taking the driver and her with it. Precious seconds turned into minutes as she worked, but at least the smell of gasoline didn’t grow any stronger.

She stopped
abruptly, her fingers scratched and raw, as she heard a woman’s voice from inside the car. “Hello! Hang on!” Ella shouted, then listened intently. A moment later, she realized the voice she’d heard had just been the radio.

Finally she caught her first glimpse of the driver through the broken side window. The body, held upside down in the seat belt harness, was slumped in a peculiar rag-doll fashion
against the deflated air bag. Blood matted the victim’s long, dark hair.

Ella reached inside, avoiding the broken glass, and switched off the ignition. Then, taking a deep breath, she tugged at the door, struggling against the weight of the gravel and damaged hinges, until it opened halfway.

“Take it easy,” Ella said quietly, though she strongly suspected the woman was beyond the reach of such
assurances now. Fearing the worst, she reached for the pulse point at the victim’s neck, and found none.

Ella sat back on her knees and looked the body over closely. Despite the numerous shallow cuts, there didn’t seem to be any clear cause of death. The air bag had deployed, protecting the girl from impact with the steering wheel and windshield. Fortunately, determining the cause of death was
not her job. That task would fall to Carolyn Roanhorse, the tribal M.E.

Ella stood up and moved away, aware of the smell of death that was already permeating the interior of the car. It was an odor distinct and separate from the acrid smell of gasoline and hot oil she’d detected outside the car. It wasn’t decomposition either, it was death, pure and simple. Carolyn would have argued that it was
Ella’s imagination, but it was an argument that Ella would have never conceded. Death itself
had
a smell.

Ella crouched down and reached for the young woman’s purse, which lay beside the dome light of the inverted vehicle. She extracted the driver’s license and, as she read the dead woman’s name, her stomach tightened into a knot. “Angi” was Angelina Yellowhair. Now the fancy car and prestige
plate suddenly made sense. State Senator James Yellowhair served on several powerful government committees. From what Ella had heard, the politician doted on his daughter. This news would hit him hard.

Ella knew she couldn’t remove the body from the vehicle alone, so she climbed back up the embankment to get her evidence kit and camera. She’d photograph the scene while she waited for the emergency
personnel she’d called to arrive. Everything here would have to be carefully documented. The victim’s erratic driving and behavior was bound to raise questions nobody, especially a powerful politician running for re-election, would want to answer.

As she went to her Jeep, she heard the wail of a siren as a tribal police vehicle flew around the curve. Ella waited as the patrolman pulled up and
climbed out.

Joseph Neskahi, recently promoted to sergeant, strode up to her. He was as he’d always been, Ella observed, a packet of compressed energy shaped like a safe—square and hard. “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “I was checking out a vandalized irrigation pump down by Waterflow and almost got stuck getting out of there. What have you got?” He looked down the embankment at the overturned
car and shook his head in disgust.

She gave him a quick rundown while he wrote notes rapidly on a small notepad. As soon as she passed him the victim’s driver’s license, Neshaki looked up. “That’s going to make things interesting around here.”

“I didn’t have a chance to photograph the scene yet, so make sure you cover the entire site. We’ll need every detail. Also, tell the EMTs about the convulsions.
I’m not sure if she was on something, or just ill, but they should take that into account when they handle that body. After you’re finished here, try to locate the person who phoned in the report about the drunken driver. I have a feeling the senator’s going to have a lot of questions, and I’d like someone else to corroborate what I saw prior to the accident.”

“You’re not sticking around?”

“I can’t. I was enroute to a probable ten-twenty-seven south of Morgan. I’d like to get there as soon as possible.”

Joseph Neskahi nodded. “I heard the patrolman’s call earlier today.” He looked around, gazing at the mesas thoughtfully. “You picking up any vibes about what happened over there at that crime scene?”

His tone and his worried expression made it unnecessary for him to elaborate. The
problem the tribe had experienced with skinwalkers in the recent past was never far from anyone’s mind. And almost everyone, including Neskahi, had heard about Ella’s “intuition.” Her hunches had a tendency to be disturbingly accurate.

She looked around again. The only vibes she had now were centered here. But she had nothing to base them on. Still, she was honor bound to do whatever she could
to protect a fellow officer. “I’m not so worried about what I’ll find at that other site as I am about what is here. This case is going to raise lots of questions. Be careful out here. Watch out for the scene … and for yourself. If you need me, you know where I’ll be.”

As she drove away, Ella felt her hands grow clammy. Trouble was brewing. She could feel it as clearly as the air blowing through
her open window.

It took Ella twenty minutes to get to the scene of the murder: a small, steep arroyo running parallel to the Four Corners power plant access road and the largest open-pit coal mine in the west. By the time she arrived, the crime scene unit and the tribe’s M.E., Dr. Carolyn Roanhorse, were already there. Unfortunately, so was Dwayne Blalock, the FBI agent assigned to this jurisdiction.
Things had changed in the last few years, more of this kind of investigation was placed in the hands of the tribal police, but the FBI’s presence remained. Murder on the Rez was still a federal crime.

Ella approached Detective Ute, the officer in charge of the scene, and stepped aside as Sergeant Tache, working with Blalock at his shoulder, photographed each piece of physical evidence in place.
“What have you got?”

Ute held out the clipboard where he was writing a narrative description and showed her the name, “Stanley Bitah.” “Have you heard of the victim?”

She nodded, respecting the tribal custom not to mention the deceased by name, particularly here where he’d met his death. “He’s an activist in this area. I’ve seen him mentioned in a few newspaper stories. Who found the body?”

Detective Ute shrugged. “The helicopter pilot who inspects the power lines spotted the body as he flew over at noon.” Ute gestured toward the steel towers standing in a row all the way to the horizon, like armless giants.

“What else can you tell me?” Ella continued.

“The deceased worked as a mechanic, helping maintain the heavy equipment at the mine. He was most likely beaten to death with some
kind of club. I’ll know more in a while.”

Officer Justine Goodluck, Ella’s petite young assistant, came out from behind a small stand of junipers. “We’ve really just started focusing on identifying and protecting the physical evidence. Even FB-Eyes over there is helping out.” Justine nodded toward Blalock, who was placing small, wire and plastic flags beside footprints for Tache. The agent had
received the nickname from Navajo officers because one of his eyes was blue, and the other brown.

“I can tell you a little more of what we’ve learned so far,” Justine continued. “Okay, Harry?”

Ute nodded and looked back down at his narrative. Ella followed the youthful cop/lab tech toward an area filled with scuff marks, footprints, and droplets of blood. “Clearly, a struggle took place here.”

Ella studied the ground. “From the spray patterns of blood on the ground, and the other signs, I’d say the murder also occurred here.”

Justine nodded. “That’s what Detective Ute and the others concluded, too.” She crouched by Ella, and pointed. “Four people were present, and one—not the victim—ran away down the arroyo, escaping, maybe.”

“Do you know where the others went?”

She shook her head.
“I was just about to follow up on that when you arrived.”

They followed three sets of tracks, which ended abruptly at the highway. Black tire marks indicated a vehicle had taken off in a hurry. “This is a bit of luck,” Ella said. “These tracks are really clear. Ask Tache to take several shots and see if you can identify the type of vehicle they belong to. Blalock might be able to hazard a guess
on the spot, so make sure you ask him. He told me recently that he was becoming an expert on tire patterns common to the area.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“I’m going to talk to Dr. Roanhorse,” Ella said, glancing up and seeing that the medical examiner was working alone, as usual, talking into her tape recorder as she examined the body.

As Ella went up to her friend, she couldn’t help but sympathize.
Nobody ever hung around Carolyn for long. Fear of the
chindi,
of contamination by the dead, was always present among those of their tribe. Even the kids, who seemed to go out of their way to discount other traditional Navajo beliefs, stayed clear of the M.E.

As she approached, Carolyn switched off her tape recorder. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”

“I had another emergency call on the
way. I’ll tell you about it in a little bit, since it’s going to end up on your desk, too. But first, do you have an opinion on how this all went down?” Ella looked at the victim, and had to force herself not to cringe. The murder had been particularly brutal.

“In layman’s terms, this man died as a result of several—four or five—heavy blows to the left side of the skull. The last three or four
were probably unnecessary. The location and angle of the attack suggests the killer was right-handed, or had a wicked backhand for a lefty. The murder weapon was a blunt object, like a pipe, wooden club, or something of that nature. He’s been dead less than eight hours, which would put the approximate time of death around dawn, plus or minus an hour or two. It’s pretty straightforward from what
I can see.” Carolyn stood up slowly, and signalled for Ute to join her.

Ute, who always wore a glum expression, looked even more miserable now, as he put down his clipboard and walked toward them.

“You like to pick on poor Harry, don’t you?” Ella whispered.

Carolyn smiled. “Don’t begrudge me my little pleasures,” she said, reaching for the body bag.

While Carolyn and Detective Ute loaded the
victim’s body into the M.E.’s van, Ella walked up to where Tache and Justine were working.

Blalock was nearby, placing blood-encrusted sand from individual droplets into separate plastic vials, labeling them as he worked.

“Hello Ella,” Blalock nodded congenially, looking up from his work for a moment. “How’s your family?”

“Doing real well. I’ll tell them you asked.” Ella knew that her mom and
brother didn’t care too much for Blalock, but at least they had acquired some grudging respect for the man. He was dealing with the
Dineh
with a lot more tact nowadays, especially since working with her the past two years. As ex-FBI herself, she had managed to instill in Blalock the need to pay more attention to their cultural differences if he wanted to get anywhere on a case.

Ella glanced at
Tache, who had finished loading the camera. “Have you photographed the murder weapon?” she asked him.

“We haven’t found it, at least not yet.”

“Why would the killer or killers take it with them?” Ella mused. “They didn’t try to hide the body, or obscure other evidence.”

Justine joined them. “One of the three had enough presence of mind to balk at the thought of leaving a club full of fingerprints
behind?”

“Maybe the blood tests will reveal that more than one person was cut up enough to bleed,” Ella said. “That will help us later on in the investigation when we have a list of suspects. I have a feeling this crime is going to be far more complicated than it looks.” Ella looked at Justine, then Tache. Wariness shone in their eyes. They knew about her hunches.

“It’s time to get to that twenty-four/twenty-f
our rule,” Ella continued. “The two most important things in an investigation are the last twenty-four hours of a victim’s life and whatever we find within twenty-four hours after the body is discovered. Get me everything you can find on the deceased,” she said, looking at Justine. “I want to know about his activities at the coal mine and his personal life. I want to know who he
trusted, who he worked with, who he hung around with, and who his enemies were.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Justine said, writing everything down in her notebook.

Ella looked at Tache. “I’d like the photos you’ve taken here developed as soon as you get back. Have them all on my desk before you go home tonight and make copies for Blalock, too.”

Carolyn came up as Tache went back to help FB-Eyes,
who was still collecting bloodstained sand. “You’re really pushing on this one. How come?”

Ella looked at Carolyn, then Justine.

“I have things to do.” Justine said, turning to leave.

Ella shook her head. “No, you might as well hear this now instead of at the station. I was detoured on my way over here answering a ten-forty-seven—a drunken driver—endangering traffic. But that’s not what I found.”
She recounted what she’d seen, the convulsions, the unresponsive stare. “I have a feeling we’re going to be getting a lot of heat on that one, and just at a time when we’re going to need all our energy for this case.”

“Why should that accident be different from any other drug-or alcohol-related death that happens on the Rez? Who was in the car?” Justine prodded.

“Senator Yellowhair’s daughter.”
Ella saw Justine take one step back as if she’d been hit. She reached out to steady her assistant.