Black Thunder (32 page)

As they walked out of the main building, Ella looked over at Justine. “Try to narrow down the date
of the incident by relating it to her chemo sessions. Then see if it coincides with Romero’s whereabouts. That road-rage thing has his mark all over it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

On their way back to the station, Benny called with important news. “We’ve got a positive ID on the fourth body. Arthur Nih—another Navajo—disappeared three years ago and had been on Highway 64 on the way to his girlfriend’s house. When he didn’t show up, she called it in. She figured he’d gone out drinking again and got into an accident. According to our records, that was on June
first, same as the other victims. I called Dr. Roanhorse earlier and gave her the name. It didn’t take her long to match Nih’s Army dental records to those of the deceased.”

“What about his vehicle?” Ella asked.

“It was found over in the Bisti area, wrecked, about a week later. No evidence of trauma was detected in the car. It was the opinion of the investigating officer that the vehicle had
been pushed over the edge of the ravine and that nobody had been inside at the time.”

“Next of kin?” Ella asked.

“No one came forward. All we know is that he’d divorced an Anglo woman from Albuquerque six years prior, and at the time of his death, Nih lived alone. The Gallup police investigated, and so did one of our officers, but no one found any leads. The girlfriend had an airtight alibi,
so eventually the case was filed away with the other open cases.”

After Ella slipped the phone back into her pocket, she gave Justine all the details. “Let’s go over the facts on this case and see what common ground we have for all four killings.”

“The two kill shots, in combination with the other facts, suggest two people were involved and took turns with the same weapon. Two perps would have
also made it easier to grab the victim, transport him or her, dig the grave, and get rid of the victim’s car,” Justine said. “That means Bowman and Romero are still in contention.”

“I don’t buy it. Jimmy Bowman told me he hadn’t killed anyone. In fact, he insisted on it. Why lie when he knew he was dying?” Ella asked.

“Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Justine answered.

“There’s also something
I got from Logan Bitterwater I haven’t had time to share,” Ella said and gave her the highlights of Preston’s meeting with Kelewood.

“If Kelewood got ticketed, there should be a record of it,” Justine said.

“We have to follow that up,” Ella said. “There’s also that one name that keeps popping up in this investigation—Ross Harrison.”

“Yeah, but it stands to reason that it would. He’s in the
business of finding missing people, and since he’s a former cop, he probably has friends in law enforcement who keep him informed.”

“Check him out again anyway. You got us some general background on him earlier, and Dan’s working it from his end, but we need to find out if he’s been in contact with any of our officers. I also want to know if he’s involved with the friends or families of the two
other victims.”

“If I recall correctly, FPD officers carry nine-millimeter handguns, and have for years. So Harrison probably carried one when he was on the force,” Justine said.

“And had access to AP rounds, like with the first victim. The time frame is right,” Ella replied. “Talbot owns a nine-millimeter handgun, according to background-check records. Harrison could have borrowed his weapon
to throw off a trace.”

Once they reached the station, Ella let word out that she was interested in talking to anyone who was regularly in contact with Ross Harrison. Time passed and when no one came to her office, she decided to take a walk to the front desk and speak to the sergeant there. He was usually well informed.

As she arrived in the front office, she ran into Harrison himself, who was
standing at the counter, texting on his cell phone. Seeing him there caught her off guard momentarily, but she covered it well. “What brings you down to our station? Are you working for a client?” she asked him.

“Nah, Investigator Clah. Just paying a speeding ticket,” he said, putting away his phone.

“Since you’re here, maybe you can answer a few questions for me. Your name seems to turn up
every time we dig into the backgrounds of our murder victims.”

“I could say the same thing about yours,” he shot back. “It’s true that I’m always drumming up business, but I do that by following up missing persons reports. I don’t kill people so I can contact their relatives, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Ella said coldly.

“Just so we’re clear then—when I
started searching for the ones who turned out to be the snake-eyes killer’s victims, they were just missing people no one was busting their butts to find. I wasn’t obstructing your department’s efforts either, because nobody here had any leads. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Harrison’s in-your-face attitude pissed her off. It was as if he were daring her to make something of it. She had a feeling that he
was enjoying the game, too. “But now they’re active investigations, and if you get in our way, I’ll throw your butt in jail.”

Without giving him a chance to respond, she headed back down the hall to her office. As she stepped through her door, she found Justine waiting.

“I’ve checked on Romero’s whereabouts around the time of Alice Pahe’s disappearance, but there’s nothing on record,” Justine
said. “And he hasn’t been in a classroom since dropping out of high school at seventeen.”

“So he’ll have to remain a suspect for now, since we can’t conclusively rule him out,” Ella said, then glanced up at the clock. It was already five in the afternoon. “I’m going to stop by the house and check on Dawn. We’ll be working late tonight for sure, so I want to touch base with her. Consider it my
dinner break,” she said.

“Go. I’ll call you if anything new comes to light.”

On her way home, just after she’d turned off the main highway, Dan called. “The signature on the Hickory Lodge roster was a phony. It appears to have common points with Harrison’s writing.”

“He was doing whatever was necessary to keep his client writing those checks,” Ella said, slowing down as she hit a washboard
section of dirt road.

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too. I’m going to keep digging into this guy’s background. We know he’s cheating his clients, so let’s see what else he’s doing on the side.”

“That’s a good idea. Keep me—” She heard a thump. Glancing into the rearview mirror, she saw a bullet hole in the window and almost simultaneously, she heard the distinctive crack of a small-caliber high-velocity
rifle.

Ella dropped the phone and swerved hard to the left, raising a cloud of dust before driving off the side of the road into the shallow drainage ditch. Nearly at a stop, she cut back to the right at the last second, placing the SUV between her and the direction of the shooter.

“Clah, you okay?” Ella could hear Dan yelling.

Ella grabbed the phone off the passenger seat, then jumped out,
ducking and using the engine block as a shield. “Someone just shot through my rear car window. I’m on the road to my house less than two hundred yards west of Highway 491. Call my station for backup.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Ella slipped the phone into her pocket and brought out her pistol. She moved toward the front of the SUV, but avoided looking across the hood, not wanting to present a shooting-gallery target. Crouched low, she looked out from headlight level, taking only a three-second glance before pulling back. To her left, the north, the terrain between her and the road was relatively flat. If
the shooter was over there, they only had brush for cover.

Slipping to her right, she moved to the rear of the SUV and looked out from bumper level. There was no sign of the sniper along the long low ridge that ran parallel to the highway south of the dirt road. An expert at this game would have patience, waiting for her to show herself long enough to get another shot.

She inched back down the
length of the vehicle, then took another look, this time longer and below the front bumper. Again, she couldn’t see anything between her and the highway, and all she saw moving among the waist-high brush were a few pieces of traffic litter blown from the highway.

Not anxious to stay in one spot long enough to present a target, she rose up to take a quick glance along the SUV. She couldn’t see
an exit hole anywhere, not in the windshield or side windows, so either the bullet had ricocheted off the glass, or it was stuck in the interior someplace.

With more time to look at the small, circular hole in the rear window, she guessed the bullet had come from a .22 rifle. Such weapons were used for hunting small game or plinking. Had she been in any other profession she might have assumed
it was an errant shot from somebody shooting at beer bottles or cottontails.

Ella waited, but everything around her remained quiet. The only sound she could hear was the ticking of the engine metal as it cooled, and the distant hum of traffic going down the main highway. It was possible the shooter had left—or not. She’d play it smart and stay put for a bit longer. Even a small bullet could kill
if aimed carefully enough.

Ella called Justine, all the time scanning the terrain to the north and south. She’d become vulnerable again if the shooter came up on either flank. “I want whatever cruisers are in the area to take the road a few miles north of the turnoff and circle around to my house, making sure my brother is okay when they pass by. My family…”

“Got it,” Justine said immediately.
“Nez didn’t give any details when he called our dispatch. What direction did the shot come from?”

“Somewhere behind me, east toward the highway, and just north or south of the road—probably south because there’s more cover. I can’t get a handle on the trajectory except that the round struck my rear window. If he’d fired from an extreme angle, the bullet would have probably ricocheted off the
glass, so maybe he was all the way back at the highway. That was about a hundred and fifty yards away at the time the shot was fired. Anything beyond that would have been too far of a reach for someone with such a small caliber weapon.”

“Did you see any vehicles by the road when you turned off the highway?” Justine asked.

“No, but I could have been followed, or maybe seen by someone coming from
the south. All they’d have had to do was pull over and take a shot from inside their vehicle,” Ella said. “Stay on the line while I take a better look around.”

Ella flattened, looking from beneath the vehicle and beside a tire, knowing that she was in shade and difficult to spot as long as she stayed still. There was enough cover out here to conceal a prone sniper, but she saw no movement except
for the natural sway of the brush and grasses.

“I think that was it for him, partner,” Ella said, rising to her knees.

Ella poked her head up high enough, beside a window pillar, and checked the interior of the SUV. She quickly found the location of the missing bullet. There was a tear in the back of the passenger’s side headrest, but no exit hole. The round was still in there someplace. The
fact that she’d been moving in a straight line instead of turning may have saved her life.

“Justine,” Ella said, bringing the phone to her ear again, “set up a checkpoint between here and Shiprock. If he headed north and stuck to the highway, we might get lucky. Be sure to have the officer in charge ID every driver who passes by within the next twenty minutes. We’re looking for someone with a
rimfire rifle and probably a scope.”

“You’ll be heading back this way in case he tries to turn around?” Justine asked.

“Exactly, but if he drove south after the shot, we’re screwed,” Ella said. “There are lots of places to turn off between here and Gallup.”

Justine called back five minutes later. “I’ve got a unit in place. The officer is going to be checking licenses and writing down names.
Same with the Gallup police.”

“What about Ross Harrison?” Ella asked. “I spoke to him just before I left. Is he still at the station?”

“I passed him in the lobby on my way out—just a few minutes before you called. He was hitting on Mavis Zahnie, and I had to stay and watch him crash and burn.”

Ella knew Big Ed’s secretary, a buxom woman in her late forties. She was interesting-looking and highly
intelligent, but not at all friendly to the male officers—or the women either, for that matter. “Interesting that he’d choose her. Cathy, at the desk, seems more his type.”

“Mavis told him to come back when she was ten years younger and he was twice as good-looking. She said that in front of half the staff,” Justine said, chuckling. “Were you thinking he might have been responsible for taking
the shot at you?”

“Yeah, he and I butted heads just before I left,” Ella said. “But if you left the station before he did, there was no way he could have been the shooter. Make a note to check on Talbot, his associate.”

“Copy that,” Justine said. “Some of our team is on the way to your location, but the crime scene van is in the shop at the moment. Think we need it?”

“Not just to search for
the shooter’s tracks and a spent cartridge.”

“That’s what I thought. I put a metal detector in my car to help in the search. Also, since we’ll have to impound the SUV, we’re bringing you another set of wheels.”

“ETA?”

“Less than ten minutes—make that five now.”

While she waited, Ella inspected the SUV, verifying the bullet, about the size of a .22 long rifle, was lodged in the headrest as
she suspected. She’d intended to dig it out, but just then her phone rang.

“I asked FPD to send an officer to Harrison’s office and look for Talbot. We’ll get a call within ten minutes,” Justine said.

“Where are you now?”

“I’m cresting the hill, and I can see the turnoff now,” Justine said.

Less than two minutes later Justine pulled up on the opposite side of the road and parked. Ella was
walking across to her partner’s cruiser when her phone rang.

“I just got a call from Detective Nez,” Blalock said. “The officer he assigned to watch Norman Ben observed the subject, suitcase in hand, chartering an airplane to Tucson with connections to Mexico City. Nez had the officer detain Ben at the Aztec airport. I’m heading over there now.”