Black Thunder (14 page)

“I heard she moved in with the guy.”

“What’s his name?” Ella pressed, still trying to read him.

“Gene Lee.”

“Gene or Eugene.”

“Don’t know. I just heard Gene.”

“Address?”

“Don’t know the house address either, but I heard he lived south of the highway, halfway between Coyote Canyon and Twin Lakes. That’s all I know. If you want more, you’ll have
to talk to her.” He picked up his beer, took a swig, then stood and walked to the door.

Ella strolled across the room slowly, deliberately taking her time. Something felt off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

As they headed back to the car, Ella glanced at Justine. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this guy, like he knows a lot more than he’s saying. He’s trying too hard to play it casual.”

“I agree. So what do you want to do next?”

“Get an unmarked over here and have them keep an eye on Jake. You and I are going to pay Emmaline a visit.”

As soon as they were back on the road, Ella called Blalock and gave him an update. “I got a real bad feeling about Yazzie. We’re on our way to talk to the wife. If we find her alive and this turns out not to be connected to the case, I’ll drop
it.”

“Your closest backup will be in Gallup or Window Rock, miles away. Don’t cowboy up, you hear me?” Blalock said.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Ella said with a tiny smile, then ended the call.

“What’s that about?” Justine asked.

“Ever since Dwayne’s ex-wife moved back in with him, he’s become more cautious out in the field. He wants to make sure the deck’s stacked in his favor before he or his
partners go into a situation.”

“Sensible strategy, but too much caution can lead to hesitation in the field. That could get him killed.”

“He’s got too much experience for that.” Ella smiled. “I’ve gotten to know FB-Eyes pretty well over the years. What drives him these days is that he wants to be around Ruthann. He’s a family man again.”

While Justine drove, Ella checked their GPS. The residence
was about twenty-five miles north of Gallup, close to the McKinley County line. As they continued down the road she ran a background on Gene Lee.

“Gene Lee, legal name Eugene Lee, is strictly small time—a few arrests for assault, mostly bar fights, and some DWIs,” Ella told Justine. “Obviously he can get violent, so be ready.”

The secondary highway east was paved, but after a few miles they
turned south down a dirt track filled with holes from the runoff rain.

“Looks like Gene’s not exactly a people person,” Justine muttered as she slowed to a crawl and maneuvered around a pothole the size of a kitchen sink. “This road isn’t exactly well traveled.”

At the end of the track, butted up against the slope of a rocky hill, was a weary-looking white frame house with faded blue trim. “There’s
no house number, but I’m going to assume that’s it,” Justine said.

“It better be. It’s the only thing around.”

As they parked beside a new-looking Ford pickup about fifty feet from the front porch, a familiar, dangerous scent wafted toward them through the open car window. Both of them tensed up and glanced at each other.

“Ammonia,” Ella said softly, pointing to the partially opened door. A
big fan was on the floor, venting the interior.

“She could be cleaning,” Justine said, her hand reaching down to the radio.

“No. Look at those foil-covered windows. I think we’ve found a meth lab,” Ella said, shifting in her seat.

“I’m calling for backup,” Justine said.

“Get the McKinley County Sheriff, not Window Rock. Gallup’s closer,” Ella said, reaching for the shotgun.

A long rifle barrel
suddenly poked out the door.

“Gun!” Ella yelled, ducking below the dashboard. A fist-sized chunk of the windshield crumbled as the crack of a rifle sounded from the direction of the house.

“Crap,” Justine mumbled, her head just a foot away from Ella’s. “I dropped the mike.”

A second blast struck the front of the car.

“Bail out—my side,” Ella yelled, lifting the handle and scrambling out the
door. Inching over to the front fender, she aimed her pistol at the house. The front door was now closed.

“Move! The shooter just ducked back inside,” Ella urged.

Justine scrambled out, pistol in hand. She crouched behind the engine compartment and looked across the hood.

“Make the call, but keep your eyes on the left side of the house,” Ella ordered.

Justine brought out her cell phone, contacted
Gallup dispatch, then made a second call to the Window Rock station. “A state police officer is south of Tohatchi, about ten minutes out,” she told Ella. “Deputies from Gallup are on their way, and I asked for a hazmat team as well.”

“Good.” Ella looked around. “I can’t spot the shooter, but the pickup is their ticket out of here. If they try to climb that hill behind the house on foot, they’ll
be sitting ducks. Slip back toward the trunk and cover the front door.”

“Did you ID the shooter?”

“Navajo man with short hair. That’s all I saw,” Ella said.

“So what’s the plan, sit tight and wait for backup?”

Ella nodded. “Stay put and don’t fire unless they come out shooting. I don’t want to risk blowing up the place or exposing ourselves to those chemicals.”

“Roger that.”

After five minutes
passed, the scent of ammonia faded somewhat. In the distance, they could hear the wail of an approaching siren.

As they waited, Ella heard the sound of a new text message coming in. “Stay sharp. I’m going to get this in case it’s Blalock.” As she switched on the screen, she knew instantly who it was.

DON’T GET SHOT, CLAH
. It was unsigned. Ella read it to Justine. “He knows where I am.”

“I never
spotted a tail,” Justine said.

“Me neither.” Ella took a breath. “But I can’t let him sidetrack us now. We’ve got to concentrate on the ones inside that meth lab. What do you say, we give them a chance to come out on their own?”

“Go for it.”

Ella aimed the shotgun. “Tribal Police. Put down your weapons and come out slowly with your hands in the air,” she yelled. “Don’t turn this into a gun
battle. You can’t win. You’re trapped in a house full of dangerous chemicals.”

Two minutes went by and they could hear arguing inside the home. Then the sound of voices was drowned out by the siren of the black-and-white state police cruiser that came up the road. The vehicle pulled up to their left, angling so the engine block shielded the officer from the house.

A second later the front door
opened a crack. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot,” a woman yelled.

Before Ella could reply a wild-haired Navajo woman wearing a dirty yellow house dress stumbled out onto the wooden porch. She dropped to her knees and toppled over slowly, her head hitting the floor with a thud.

“Cover me,” Ella told the black-and-white-uniformed state patrolman. Crouched low, he had his pump shotgun up and pointed
across the hood toward the porch.

“How many suspects in there?” he asked her.

“At least two, one with a rifle. They’re cooking meth,” Ella said, then slipped out from behind the front fender in a crouch. She jogged to her right, approaching the porch from the side so she could see anyone coming from around the house.

She was halfway there, watching the windows, when a man came out from the
rear of the house, firing his rifle. The state cop fired back, his shotgun digging out a chunk of stucco from the corner of the house.

Ella jumped to the left, screening herself with the building itself.

The state patrolman fired again and the man ducked back around, out of sight.

“Forget the woman. Hug the wall,” Justine yelled at her.

Ella, her back to the building, looked over at the woman,
collapsed on the ground. “If he pokes his head around the corner again—” she yelled at the patrolman.

“… I’ll take him out,” the officer confirmed, his shotgun ready.

“Cover my six, Justine,” Ella yelled, then inched to the corner and took a quick look. Above her head she could see the jagged hole where buckshot had ripped away a big handful of stucco, exposing the chicken wire and sheathing
beneath.

Ella waited, catching her breath, then, crouching low, inched around, leading with her pistol. “Unload your rifle and slide it out on the ground,” she called out. “More armed officers will arrive within a few minutes and you’re already outgunned. The woman on your porch needs medical attention. If you care what happens to her, give up—now—and save two lives.”

Ella waited. In the distance
the sound of multiple sirens rose in the air, emphasizing her words.

“Okay, okay. I give up,” he answered from somewhere behind the house.

“Stick your hands out so we can see them, then step into view—slowly,” she ordered.

“I’m putting my rifle on the ground. Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed.”

A few seconds later a Navajo man wearing jeans and a stained white tee-shirt stepped out from behind the
corner, his hands in the air. She could see the rifle on the ground.

“Don’t shoot,” he repeated.

Ella cuffed him as Justine ran over to check on the woman who’d collapsed. “Anyone else inside the house, Gene?” Ella asked, playing a hunch. “Any children or animals?”

“Nah, it’s just us.”

As Justine checked on the location of the hazmat team, Ella gave him his rights.

“Yeah, yeah, I know all
that,” Gene grumbled. “Will Emmaline be okay?”

“I don’t know. The doctors will have to check her out. Here comes the ambulance.”

“I
knew
this was a bad idea. Emma, hell, she had big plans. She wanted to sell a bunch of this crap, then leave the Rez for good. I told her it was dangerous stuff, but she said this was the only shot life was going to give us, and we’d be suckers not to take it.”

“Consider yourselves lucky. You could have blown yourselves up.” Ella turned Gene over to one of the newly arrived tribal police officers and saw him place the suspect in the back of one of the patrol cars.

Once the big white hazmat van arrived and the other officers took charge of the scene, Ella and Justine were free to leave. “We’ve been played,” Ella said as they walked to their unit. “I want
to go back and talk to Jake Yazzie.”

Justine slipped behind the wheel. “Do you think he knew what was going on and wanted us to arrest his wife?”

“Yeah. I also want to make sure he’s not dealing, too. Maybe the reason he set her up was to take out the competition.”

“You’re not worried about two drug rivals. You’re pissed because you think he used us to get back at his wife,” Justine said.

“That’s part of it, sure, but I also have a bad feeling about this guy. He manipulated us, even though he knew we’d figure it out. That tells me that he has leverage of some sort, like information he hopes to trade to stay out of jail. He may see that as a way of maintaining the balance—we do something for him, he does something for us,” Ella said.

“You’re thinking of the murders over by Hogback,”
Justine said, nodding. “Drug dealing and murder go hand in hand, and the bodies we found were shot execution-style—punishment for something.”

They were halfway back to Shiprock when Ella got a call on her cell phone from Ford.

“How about letting me take you out to dinner tonight?” he asked.

Ella suppressed a sigh. No wonder she was gaining weight, everyone insisted on feeding her. “I have a
better idea. Join me at home for dinner. Mom’s been busy cooking and she loves company.”

“I need a chance to talk privately, just you and me.”

“It sounds serious,” Ella said.

“It is.”

She and Ford, Reverend Bilford Tome to his parishioners, had been dating for a couple of years. For the most part, she was happy with the way things were. Ford and she were more than friends, but less than lovers
since Ford’s religion didn’t allow them to cross that line. Though there’d been many times she’d wished that were different, she’d learned to accept it.

“Come over anyway. I’ll find time alone for us, I promise. We can go for a long walk after dinner.”

“Good enough. See you tonight.”

As Ella hung up, Justine glanced over. Although she clearly didn’t want to intrude by asking, the questions
were there on her face.

“He says he wants to talk to me,” Ella said.

“Hmmmm. Do you know what it’s about?”

“I have no idea.” As she glanced at Justine, she saw her partner avoiding eye contact. “You know something, don’t you, cuz?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“But you’ve
heard
something,” Ella said slowly.

Justine said nothing.

“Spill it.”

“Okay, but it’s just gossip, and I have no idea how
reliable it is.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I heard some talk at church that Ford’s going to be transferred.”

“Any idea where?”

“To a struggling mission over in Arizona somewhere—Cow Springs, maybe.”

Ella stared at her. “Pretty country, but in the middle of nowhere. How long have you known about this?”

“Since last Sunday, and before you get angry, I want you to know that this came from Bea
Curtis, and half of what she says is wrong.”

“Which makes her right half the time,” Ella said.

“If you don’t want him to leave, you might consider going over the board’s head and asking the regional council not to send him. Tell them that he does a public service here by serving as a police consultant. His prior work with the FBI in intelligence gathering and cryptography has helped us break
several big cases. It’s the truth, and Big Ed would gladly back you up.”

Ella considered it. “That’ll have to depend on how Ford feels about the transfer—
if
it turns out to be true. We both have demanding jobs and he’s never complained about mine, so I need to do the same for him.”

“But he’s in love with—”

“Drop it for now, Justine,” Ella interrupted. “We’re on the clock, and I need to be focusing
on this case.”

When they arrived at Jake Yazzie’s home, they saw him out back, changing a tire on his truck. Spotting them, he stood, wiped his hands on his pants, then walked over to meet them.