Black Thunder (15 page)

“So, did you have to shoot her?” he asked, looking at Ella and Justine.

“Is that what you were hoping for?” Ella snapped back.

“You can’t arrest me for wishing she were dead,” he answered. “My brother
and I spent the last three and a half years working our butts off, building up business at our gas station. We even built one of those garage bays ourselves. My wife did nothing but gripe nonstop from day one, but the land it sits on is deeded to her. About six months ago she threatened to shut us down unless we started paying her rent. If she’d ended up dead we would have finally had that crazy
bitch off our backs.”

“So you
knew
we were walking into a dangerous situation, but you failed to warn us,” Ella said through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t
know
, not for sure, but I’d seen her hopped up several times—her boyfriend, too. I also knew she didn’t have the cash to buy that poison.”

“If you had reason to suspect she was running a meth lab, you should have warned us,” Ella said.

“So now
you want to arrest me.”

It hadn’t been a question, something that didn’t surprise Ella. “I can’t think of any reason not to,” she said.

“I can. I heard you’re investigating those murders over by the Hogback. According to the TV, you’re still trying to identify the victims.”

Ella waited. This was his hedge. She’d been right.

“I think I know who one of the victims might be. If I give you a lead,
I stay out of jail?”

Ella nodded once. The lead was worth more to her than the paperwork it would take to book him.

“The man who built most of our gas station, a Navajo named Elroy Johnson, disappeared before the job was done. My brother and I paid him the first half of the money up front. Then about three-quarters of the way through the job, he stopped coming to the site. He vanished off the
face of the earth. His workers couldn’t find their boss, and weren’t getting paid, so they quit. We were left holding the bag, so we had to finish the job ourselves.”

“When exactly did Johnson disappear?”

“Four years ago. The kids had just gotten out of school, so it must have been the last of May or early June. I remember because we ended up hiring several teenage boys to help us finish up
the main building.”

“Didn’t you try to track down Johnson?”

“You bet. The only reason we’d been able to afford a contractor at all was because he’d agreed to give us a special deal. We were going to be trading services. In exchange for a reduced fee, we’d service his company’s vehicles for one year at no cost for labor. It was a good thing for both of us, but then he just disappeared.”

“If
you think of anything else give me a call,” Ella said, handing him her card.

As they got underway, she glanced at Justine. “I need to call Blalock and update him.”

The FBI agent answered on the first ring and Ella quickly briefed him. “What I’d like to do is get everyone, Dan Nez included, over to my office. We need to compare notes, see where we are, and more importantly, figure out our next
step.”

“Done.”

Ella put the phone away. “Pedal to the metal, partner.”

ELEVEN

An hour and a half later, her team, Blalock, and Detective Nez met in Ella’s office. Dan and his people had been able to rule out nearly twenty possibles. Thanks to the M.E.’s descriptions, Tache and Neskahi had also been able to cross several names off their lists.

Ella started the meeting by telling everyone there about the text messages she’d been receiving. Nobody else had received
anything similar. “Opinions?”

“Someone’s messing with your mind,” Neskahi said. “You’ve got a lot of enemies—the families of those you’ve arrested, those out on parole, and so on. Since you’re in the news again, maybe one of them decided to push your buttons.”

A groan went around the room.

“I think we should get a court order and hope it doesn’t lead us to an electronic dead drop,” Justine
said. “My granddad, Judge Goodluck, may understand the problem better than most and streamline the process. Shall I talk to him?”

“Yeah, do that,” Ella said. “If the text messages are untraceable, we can at least rule out the less intelligent troublemakers.” Ella then filled them in on what she and Justine had been told by Yazzie. “On the way back here I did a background check on Elroy Johnson.
Our four-year-old corpse fits his height and build. Johnson’s business was in Farmington, out of tribal jurisdiction. He may have lived there, too. I couldn’t find a home address.” She looked at Dan, then Blalock. “You two will have to handle any off-Rez interviews.”

“We’ll get the ball rolling, then let you know what we find—if anything,” Nez said. “Just give me what you have—addresses, social,
driver’s license numbers, etcetera.”

Ella gave Justine a nod, then continued. “Progress has been slow, but at least a pattern’s starting to emerge. The killer, or killers, act only once a year, and if we find out that two of those victims were Kelewood and Johnson, that’ll place the time of the killings at around the end of May or early June. We need to find out what makes that time frame special.
When you conduct interviews, stay on the alert for an answer to that question. It might be a drug deal, reunion, anniversary of some event—anything like that.”

“Word about these murders has already spread,” Tache said. “If we’re right and the killer or killers like late May or early June for some reason, that’ll get around fast, too, no matter how hard we try to keep a lid on it. Then we’ll have
an even bigger problem on our hands. People are going to start looking over their shoulders, because it’s almost June now.”

“The clock’s ticking, so we need to nail this guy quickly,” Ella said with a nod.

Blalock glanced around the room. “The fact that all the victims appear to be Navajo brings up the obvious. Maybe the murders are racially motivated, like what happened here in the seventies.”

“I remember reading about that,” Benny said. “Some Anglo high-school kids were rolling drunk Navajos for sport, but things got out of hand. Three men were tortured and killed in some canyon near Farmington. There was a lot of racial tension back then, especially when the killers were sent to reform school instead of prison.”

“That was a long time ago,” Ella said.

“The only racial tension I’ve
heard about recently in the Four Corners centers on illegal immigrants, not Navajos,” Nez said. “But it’s still worth checking into. New Mexico has more than its share of anti-whatever groups.”

“Those AP rounds used to kill the first victim—they penetrate most ballistic vests,” Benny said. “I haven’t been in the area long, but do we know of any missing police officers?”

Justine shook her head.
“I thought of that, thinking the killer may have selected a cop as his first victim. According to the database Agent Blalock checked, no officers are unaccounted for. As for retired or former officers, they have to turn in their vests when they leave their agency. Besides, the victim was shot in the head, a poor use for those type rounds anyway.”

“Yeah, a waste of expensive ammo, unless it was
stolen, therefore free,” Ella replied. “But let’s not lose track of this detail when checking for suspects, people.” She turned to Blalock, who nodded.

“Guys, it looks like we’re in for a long night. What do you say we order in?” Blalock said.

Ella thought of Rose’s banquet. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we finish this meeting at my house? My mother’s cooking beats the heck out of fast
food.”

When everyone eagerly accepted, Ella stepped out into the hall for a moment and brought out her cell phone. “Mom could you accommodate my team, plus two others for dinner?”

“Of course,” Rose replied without hesitation. “There’s plenty of food, and we still have the folding chairs from when your father had his church board over for those Saturday meetings.”

“We’ll have to make this a
working dinner, so are you also willing to set things up in the den for us? Maybe your husband could bring in one of those folding banquet tables.”

“We’ll get things ready right now,” her mother said, her enthusiasm obvious. “I made a lot more corn stew than I’d intended, and there’s plenty of fry bread, too. Your preacher friend also called a while ago. He’s going to be running late, so I told
him I’d save him a plate.”

Ella cringed. She’d totally forgotten that she’d asked Ford over, but the situation wasn’t totally unworkable.

“Okay, Mom, we’re on our way.”

A half hour later, they sat in Ella’s den. On the old quartersawn oak sideboard that stood against the south wall, Rose had set the big cast-iron Dutch oven filled with stew on top of a warming tray, four plates heaped with
fry bread, and two large pitchers of iced tea.

Since they were all hungry, no one was shy about loading up their bowls and plates. Everyone found a seat on folding chairs that had been set around the large wooden folding table.

Ella waited until everyone finished their meal, then brought their attention back to business. “Let’s pick up where we left off.”

Detective Nez used his laptop to access
the old Farmington P.D.’s case files. “We discussed the possibility that the murders could be tied in some way to the racially motivated ones that went down in the seventies. Here are the particulars on those.”

The details he read aloud were gruesome and the murders chaotic in nature. Before long, Ella held up her hand, signaling him to stop. “Those old crimes are completely unlike what we’re
dealing with here. They were spur-of-the-moment acts carried out in a very unorganized fashion,” Ella said. “The murders we’re investigating appear to be the work of an adult with a clear objective—and patience.”

As they came up with new avenues of investigation, each team member contributing their thoughts, Ella glanced at Dan, who’d remained quiet. He’d folded up his laptop and was doodling
on the back of his paper napkin.

“Dan, you mentioned the presence of fringe groups on the county side. We know about the ones taking antigovernment positions, with the immigration issue at the top of the agenda. Have you heard of any that might be promoting racial purity, too?”

“There’s nothing specifically targeting Navajos. There are organizations that are against tribal casinos, but most
of those have religious affiliations and aren’t violent,” he said.

“There’s one group on our own side of the fence that’s bound to complicate things for us—the Fierce Ones,” Justine said. “If you can believe the gossip, they’ve already started patrolling the highway between Shiprock and Farmington.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of that,” Ella said. The Fierce Ones were a vigilante group of mostly
Traditional Navajos who were as dangerous as they were unpredictable.

“It’s more than rumor. It’s a fact,” Neskahi said. “I’ve seen them. There are usually three to four in a vehicle, all with rifles clearly visible.”

“Tache, Neskahi, Pete, you keep working on that list of missing people, narrowing it down. Justine, you and I are going to pay the leaders of Fierce Ones a visit tomorrow and see
what they have to say. We need to make sure this doesn’t flare up into another ‘us against them’ issue.”

“You might also want to do a little additional checking on Elroy Johnson,” Dan said. “When I ran his background I discovered that although his business was based in Farmington, he actually lived on the Rez. His wife, Leigh, has a place here,” he added, handing Ella a slip of paper with the
address.

“We’ll follow that up,” Ella said.

Once her team left, Ella began picking up the den. Ford still hadn’t shown up, but he hadn’t canceled either, which meant that sooner or later he’d drop by.

As Ella went around the room collecting glasses, she remembered Dan had seemed a little distracted. More curious than anything else, she went to the trash where he’d pitched the napkin he’d been
doodling on.

The one with pencil marks was near the top, so she unfolded it. As she saw the sketch, Ella smiled.

TWELVE

Rose came in so softly Ella didn’t hear her at first. “Your preacher friend just arrived. He’s sitting at the kitchen table drinking some of my special tea,” she said, and glanced down to see what Ella was holding. “That’s a wonderful sketch of you! Who’s the artist?”

“The new detective from county,” she said, avoiding names out of respect for her mother’s beliefs. Ella folded up the
drawing and placed it in her shirt pocket.

Rose looked at her. “A keepsake. He interests you then?”

“His artistic talent does. The department let our composite artist go when we got a computer program that could help us translate a victim’s description onto paper. But the program has its limitations. For accuracy, you need to add that touch of humanity. But that’s just my opinion.”

Hearing
a chair being moved in the kitchen, Rose stopped picking up and glanced at Ella. “Go talk to your friend. He seemed a little anxious about something.”

Ella went into the kitchen to meet Ford, and he stood as she came into the room. “With our crazy schedules, I was beginning to doubt we’d actually have a chance to talk tonight,” he said.

“Why don’t we go for a walk? I need to unwind a bit, and
it’s a beautiful evening.”

With a nod, he followed her out. Moonlight from a cloudless, star-covered sky illuminated the desert floor as they walked away from the house. Ella stopped by the horse corral and, resting her foot on the metal railing of the gate, noticed Chieftain, her horse, and Wind, Dawn’s faithful pony, lying in the sand, enjoying the coolness of the evening.

“My daughter and
that pony were a perfect fit once. But she’s growing up. Now she wants to ride Chieftain.”

“She’ll always be your daughter, Ella. Time can’t change that.”

Ella smiled at Ford. “You always see beyond my words and understand. I’m glad we’re such good friends.”

She saw the flicker in his eyes and the hesitation.

“What’s bothering you, Ford? There’s nothing you can’t tell me, you know that.”

He took a deep breath. “There’s a mission northeast of Tuba City that’s falling apart. It’s in a place called Cow Springs. The preacher lost his faith, threw up his hands, and took off without any warning. The church board’s in disarray, desperate to find someone who’ll fill the void. The need is urgent, and I’ve been asked to go.”