Black Thunder (3 page)

Ella
stood. “People, work
very
carefully,” she announced, looking into every face to make her point clear. “We’re dealing with a murder here, and I don’t want to lose a single piece of possible evidence.”

After the body was completely uncovered, still intact, Justine took another series of photographs. They carefully widened the excavation so they could place a thirty-inch-wide piece of plywood next
to the body. Then, working together, the four team members slid the body onto the board and lifted it to the ground beside a stretcher.

The M.E. came up, bag in hand, and while everyone watched, she examined the body for several minutes, concentrating on the skull. Then she looked up. “Help me turn the body over, people, then give me some more room to work.”

Benny and Joe assisted, working carefully
to ensure the body remained intact, then moved out of the way to let Justine take more photographs of what was clearly a male.

Ella stared at what had once been a living, breathing human being. There was no way anyone would be able to make an ID without forensics now. Even if the body hadn’t been decomposed, the destruction caused by two exiting bullets would have made facial recognition nearly
impossible.

Ella moved away and watched her friend work. As she did, she caught the appreciative looks Benny and Joseph gave Carolyn as she knelt down beside the body. Ella bit back a smile. Her friend had always been a beautiful woman, but was even more so now. There was a new grace to her movements.

“The victim was shot twice,” Carolyn said, speaking into her digital recorder and confirming
Ella’s earlier and obvious assessment.

Justine came up and stood beside Ella. “The body was buried deep enough to keep scavengers from uncovering the body and to prevent it from being washed out in anything less than a flood,” she said.

“That means the grave took some time to dig,” Ella said. “I noticed that some of the harder-packed sediment was broken apart in big chunks. To get through that
layer the digger must have used a pick. He came prepared.”

Ella told Justine about the plants around the crime scene. “I’m going to call Mom and see what she can tell us about this.”

The phone rang several times before her mother finally picked up. Rose sounded winded.

“You okay, Mom?” Ella asked quickly.

“Yes, I was just trying out a new, whole-wheat bread recipe. I wanted to give your daughter
something more nutritious than store-bought.”

“She doesn’t really mind the regular stuff, Mom.”

“Well, I do,” Rose snapped, then with a sigh, continued. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to get this right. Was there something you needed?”

Ella wasn’t sure what had been bothering Rose lately, but her mom simply hadn’t been able to relax. Although Rose no longer worked for the tribe surveying native
plants, she hadn’t followed through with her initial plan to just take it easy and enjoy her retirement. Ella suspected part of it was due to the fact she’d been laid off so abruptly. Tribal funds were so tight that even the police department was operating on an austerity budget.

“I’d like to run something past you, Mom,” Ella said. “It concerns the Plant People.” Ella described the plants she
could see closest to the grave site. “So how long ago would you say the ground here was disturbed?”

“It sounds like you’ve got a crop of second-generation tumbleweeds sprouting up, so I’d say last summer,” she said. “Snakeweed comes afterwards, and grasses are usually the last to appear.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“If you need more specific information, bring me some photos and I’ll see what I can do
for you.”

“I will, Mom.” Ella hung up, then stared at the phone for a moment, lost in thought.

“Something wrong?” Justine asked, coming over.

“Mom hasn’t been acting right lately,” Ella said, then shook her head, brushing aside the distraction. “That’s for another time. Right now I need to focus.”

Justine nodded, then called Ella’s attention to the general layout of the site. “This spot is
hidden from the highway and that old secondary road that curves around close to the Hogback,” Justine said. “That means the suspect had time to work, even in the daytime.”

“All the brush between here and the roads also gave him a sound buffer. No one driving by would have been able to see that the ground had been disturbed, either, not unless they happened to stop and then go walking through
this area. All things considered, the suspect chose a good place to do their dirty work.”

“The victim was shot twice in the head, and maybe elsewhere. We may be talking about more than one suspect.”

“That’s certainly a possibility.” Ella saw Carolyn rise to her feet and pick up her gear. The next step, getting the body into a bag and placed inside the van, usually sent everyone running for cover,
but not today.

“Look at that,” Ella said in a hushed whisper. “Both Benny and Joe
want
to help her.”

“I heard Joe say that Carolyn’s looking hot. And he wasn’t referring to the temperature.”

“He’s lucky she didn’t hear him. Otherwise, he would have been leaving here in a second body bag,” Ella said.

While Benny and Joe carried the body to the wagon, Carolyn walked over and gave Ella a wan
smile. “They used to turn tail when I asked for help. Now I get volunteers.”

“Men are taking notice of our slimmed-down M.E.,” Ella said.

Carolyn sighed. “Suddenly less is more … appealing. But I’m still me. Nothing’s changed on the inside.”

“Packaging matters. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.”

Carolyn nodded. “Did I tell you that the new Anglo doctor has asked me out—twice.”

Ella smiled.
“The tall blond with the big shoulders and killer smile?”

“Yeah,” Carolyn said with a tiny grin. “Imagine that, huh?”

“You going to take him up on the offer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been down that road before,” she said, making a veiled reference to her former husband. “Some of these Anglo doctors come to the area filled with ideals, but seldom stick around.”

“So what’s one date? You don’t have
to marry the guy. Just go have fun.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“How are things with you and Ford going?” Carolyn asked.

“We’re still dating, and I care about him a lot, but…,” Ella responded.

“Let me guess. You’re not sure if you want to become a conservative preacher’s wife,” Carolyn answered, lowering her voice. “And that’s what he requires? Reverend Tome’s got a domineering personality.”

“And I know what I want.”

“Is it the religion, him, or just uncertainty in general?”

Seeing Joe and Benny closing up the van, Ella decided to use the opportunity to duck the question. She didn’t really know how to answer it anyway. Quickly she focused back on the case. “Anything preliminary you can tell me?”

“He was shot twice, that I know about, in the back of the skull. I recovered two jacketed
hollow-point bullets just beneath the body, so the vic was killed where he lay.”

“That’s cold. Being forced to lay down in your own grave,” Ella replied.

“Exactly. The exit wounds confirm the paths of the bullets. This was an execution, not a crime committed in the heat of passion,” Carolyn said.

“That should help us get into the mind of the killer. Any idea how long the body has been there?
Months, years?”

“Judging from the soil and climate, and what I’ve learned from studies done at some body farms, I’d say it has been there around a year, give or take. I’ll have to do more tests and confirm the research, but I think my estimate will be close. Of course if we knew the name of the victim and when they went missing…”

“No chance of fingerprints?”

Carolyn shook her head. “Nope, the
usual gang of decomposition critters pretty much consumed the friction ridges and smoothed everything out. But I’ll get DNA samples once I start my autopsy.”

While Ella walked with her friend to the van, Ralph and Justine finished taking photographs and set up wood-framed wire screens to sort through the loose earth that had surrounded the body.

Ella held the van door open for Carolyn while
she stowed her medical bag. “Go out and have some fun with the new doc. Then you can tell me all about it.”

As Carolyn drove off, Benny came up to Ella. “Maybe she should have stuck around. I’ve taken another look at the ground and I have a sinking feeling that there are more bodies here—maybe three or four.”

“Because so much ground has been disturbed?” Ella said.

“Yeah. I also did a little
probing with a screwdriver and noticed that some spots seem to be undisturbed, hard packed. Those lie between the three or four softer, worked-over places. Like squares on a checkerboard,” Benny said. “Some hard, some soft, but in a pattern.”

“Any additional digging is going to be a hit or miss proposition—that is, unless there are bodies in each soft spot,” she said.

“I spoke to Joe about it
and he brought a metal detector from the van that’ll pick up dense metal three feet down,” he said, gesturing to the sergeant. “That might help us locate the presence of bullets—if other vics were killed here in the same way.”

Ella watched as Neskahi searched the ground, sweeping the loop of the long-handled device back and forth like a weed cutter.

“He’s going to find bottle caps and all kinds
of trash, so we’ll still have to do a lot of careful exploratory digging,” Benny said.

“We need more technology,” Ella said. “I have an idea that may speed things up.”

Ella made a call to the station and put in a request for a ground-penetrating radar device. Although their department didn’t have one, county did, and an official request would soon go out.

“Do you think we’ll get to use the
new unit county recently purchased?” Benny asked, looking over to Neskahi, who had just unearthed a beer can.

“I’m hoping. I’ve heard it’s state-of-the-art. Their tech could save us a week’s worth of digging, and in this heat I’m all for quick answers,” Ella answered.

“I’d like to get a better overview of the scene,” Benny said, “I’m going to climb up the Hogback a ways, then look back in this
direction. Maybe I can spot some features we just can’t see from ground level. Unless you can call up a helicopter?”

“That’ll never happen, but I’ll go with you. Two pairs of eyes and all that. Let me find some privacy so I can shed this ballistic vest. No sense in climbing with all that extra weight in this heat.”

The steep, slippery climb up the essentially bare-faced, spinelike ridge was
even harder than Ella had expected. Although they’d chosen the lateral route with the most footholds and handholds instead of going straight up, the climb was still precarious. The nearly sixty-degree outcrop was solid sandstone broken into large and small slabs, and extended for miles north and south, undulating like a dragon’s tail.

The cracks were far apart, and often the bedrock was covered
with loose material and windblown dust that made each footstep slippery and dangerous. Rocks continually shifted under her boots. After sliding downward a few feet across naked rock, twice in a row, she decided not to go any higher.

Keeping the tips of her boots firmly lodged in a narrow joint and leaning into the cliff, she turned her body around as much as possible and looked to the east. She
could see up the valley for miles from here. Spotting Joe still sweeping the ground with the metal detector, she oriented herself further by finding the fence line and posts.

From where she was, Ella could see three other areas that were a shade lighter than the surrounding topsoil. The former marsh to the south toward the river had been dried up for years. Yet change had come slowly and the
darker sediment was contrasted by three roughly rectangular lighter spots around the uncovered grave. The vegetation was also a little out of phase, as they’d noticed before, though at this distance that was apparent only in color shifts.

“Tell me what you see, Benny,” Ella said, turning her head. Never a fan of heights, staring down a nearly vertical drop was making her dizzy.

“I see three
other spots that look suspicious, two farther south of the grave, and one almost due east, just across the fence,” Benny called out, clinging to the rocks a few feet below and behind her.

“Yeah, that’s what I saw, too. One of those is on the county’s side, so that’s going to bring us a brand-new set of problems.”

Carefully retrieving her handheld from her jacket pocket, Ella directed Justine
to the various sites so they could be marked with numbered flags. She then instructed her and the other officers to expand the crime scene to include the new areas, and to call the M.E. again.

“Let’s get back down,” Ella called out to Benny after he confirmed the placement.

They worked their way slowly, and there was a tendency to slide. The footing seemed even more precarious on the way down,
but maybe that was only because they were both eager to finish their descent.

Ella breathed a sigh of relief the second she hit solid ground. Benny, who’d slid the last ten feet on his behind, landed a few steps away from her. Reaching for her cell phone as they walked back toward the site, Ella wasted no time calling FBI agent Dwayne Blalock and San Juan County Sheriff Paul Taylor to give them
the news. Jurisdictional matters required special handling, though, for practical reasons, the officers present would have to pass back and forth over boundaries as needed.

Neskahi met them before they reached the yellow tape line and held up a plastic evidence pouch with another bullet. “Nine millimeter, probably from the same pistol as the other two. I found this about two feet down in the
place Justine marked next to the current grave. I also have some hits from other, deeper locations. I marked them.”

“Good. We can start digging where you found the bullet, but we’ll wait for radar on the rest. We don’t want to risk tainting evidence if there are other bodies here.”

Justine was at one of the sections they’d been able to identify from higher ground, the same spot where Neskahi
had dug up the bullet. She pointed to six small yellow flag-tipped markers she’d placed in a crude rectangle about three by six feet. “I did some probing with a piece of wire, and outlined the area of soft ground. This is almost exactly the same size as the grave we dug up already.”