Moonlight Water (24 page)

She wrapped her arms around him. “I'll be with you this evening. I'll get a guard put on you the rest of the night. And see you again first thing in the morning. With a lawyer.”

Damon looked like a deer caught in headlights.

“Let's get down to business, Zahnie!” called the sheriff, and she had to let go of Damon.

The pilot pushed him roughly toward the whirlybird.

*   *   *

Red got out of the car and looked at the front door of Harmony House. A thought struck him. If he still had money, he could save the old folks' home and would.

Tired, he trudged through the darkness around the main house to Zahnie's little place. It was cluttered with outdoor gear but clean. In the fridge she had nothing but milk (past its date), cheese with blue-green blossoms of mold, and white bread. Red cut the mold off, made a sandwich, carried it to the loft, and got into her bed, a single-width mattress on a hard board. Felt good because it was hers.

He turned out the lights and lay there maybe half an hour, unable to sleep.

Zahnie's kid in jail.

James Nielsen's chest caved in. Blood splashed all over the clothes, on the boulder, in the dust.

*   *   *

Red switched the lights back on. First he stared at the ceiling, then the walls. Before long he started noticing things. He studied a picture of a group of schoolkids, about ten Navajos and two Anglos, with Damon sitting right in front, grinning. Cute kid. Red thought of the tenderness, and sadness, Zahnie must feel when she looked at the picture.

Then he checked out some handwritten sheets pushpinned into the wall. They were poems in an attractive, flowing penmanship. Hey, they were good, too:

So soon the dawn

comes tumbling on the heels of night

I stand and watch

your shadow melt in light

Roses bloom across the western sky

The yellow moon descends behind the pines

And for a moment you and I

Always parting

Stand as friends.

Feeling guilty, he read them all. Loved them. Damn, this woman was fine.

She came with the first light, her face stiff with fatigue. Faking sleep, Red watched her undress. She was beautiful and her movements graceful in a way only a lover would appreciate viscerally. She was also racked by the effort of staying up all night, hours spent near the stink of a decaying human body, and terrible fear about what would happen to Damon. Red could smell the fatigue and fear on her.

Naked, she slipped in next to him. Red snored once and then threw his arms around her—she smiled. She started kissing him. Her lips were weary but hungry. Later, in her moment of pleasure, her face finally relaxed, and in a breath she was asleep.

 

29

THE BAR OF JUSTICE

Don't eat with your left hand. Ghosts do that.

—Navajo saying

 

They slept only a couple of hours. Zahnie made a phone call, negotiated, and got the public defender she wanted. They pointed Red's van toward the county seat, Montezuma City, twenty-five miles up the highway.

When they got to the old-style county courthouse, the lawyer was walking up the sidewalk. “Rose Sanchez, Red Stuart.” They shook.

“Call me Rose,” she said. She was a hefty woman of middle age, her hair red-gold without a hint of gray, a face that said,
Don't get in my way.
She didn't look in the slightest Hispanic. Later Zahnie told him the Mormons had picked up some Hispanic names when they had polygamous colonies south of the border. Even on a hot summer day Rose Sanchez wore a suit coat with shoulder pads wide enough to make the NFL.

Rose strode down the basement stairs, under the sign that said:
SHERIFF'S OFFICE
, and strutted past the front desk like she owned the place. Zahnie and Red followed wearily. The interrogation room was halfway down the hall. Rose opened the door like she had a right, which she did.

The sight jolted Red. Damon was seated at the middle of a long table. Four cops crowded around him, in uniform, sidearms at their hips, cuffs dangling from their belts. Damon seemed small and scared, and the cops looked big and mean. Every anti-authoritarian hair on Red's spine stood up.

“This stops right now,” said Rose. She glared at the cops. “You know better than this. A minor, no parent, no attorney? Guns and handcuffs? Where's the sheriff?”

“Back in a minute,” said a cop as stretch-necked as a vulture.

“Has his potty break been long enough for you to rough Damon up?”

Red liked Rose.

At that moment Sheriff Rule materialized behind them in the hall. “Zahnie, Mr. Stuart, you can't be here.”

Rose slashed Rule with her words. “Neither can these officers, nor the weapons nor the cuffs. What's going on, Rulon? You know better than this.”

For a moment Rule almost lost the kindly good humor of his face. “Now, Rose, let's all just calm down and work this out.”

He nodded at the cops to leave, then slid past Zahnie and Red and started closing the door on them. The last words they heard were angry-sounding ones from Rose. “Anything you got from my client will be inadmissible.”

A moment later, Rulon Rule lumbered out and closed the door behind him. Lawyer–client talk, apparently, and privileged. In twenty minutes Rose invited Rulon Rule back in and Zahnie began to weep. Red held her.

*   *   *

They waited a long time on two hard chairs up front while Damon was grilled. The words
murder one, murder two
beat in Red's head like a pulse. In an hour the sheriff took a break and Rose walked back up front. “I think it's going to work out okay,” she said. “At least no murder charges. Damon will have to stay in custody until we talk to the judge. Why don't you two go eat and come back in an hour?”

They did, and discovered the little Mormon town had a tiny, unfashionable, very good Mexican restaurant. Zahnie ordered nothing, fidgeted, and pushed them back to the sheriff's office in half an hour. More time on hard-backed chairs, staring at their fingernails.

Rose led the way out of the interrogation room. “Let's get some coffee.” Red was willing to bet that meant coffee and doughnuts for sizable Rose.

“I want to talk to Damon,” said Zahnie.

“After we're done talking.”

She hesitated. “Okay.” Then Zahnie called, “Sheriff, what are you doing to protect him?”

Rule padded out of the room and spoke softly. “He'll be in an inside cell, no windows. No one but officers can see him, and whoever you say.”

“Me, Rose, and Mr. Stuart. No one else, period.”

“Fine, Zahnie.”

Coffee and a gigantic cinnamon roll for Rose, it turned out. “They'll let him out on bail. Talking to the judge, doing the paperwork, it'll take a couple of hours.” She looked each of them in the eyes to make sure she had their attention. “The charge against Damon right now is stealing the ATV. It's baloney, and they'll drop it. No jury would convict him. We would say he used the ATV to get out of the wilderness and report a crime.”

All three of them knew better.

“It's possible other charges will be filed. Obstruction, perhaps, if his story isn't true. I think it is. They scared him good.”

“What was that bullshit intimidation?” Red's tongue was running loose.

“Actually,” said Rose, “the sheriff was doing us a favor. He would never tell you this. He talked Damon into a test, the up-to-date version of a paraffin test, early this morning. It showed Damon hadn't fired a gun, which means he couldn't be the killer.”

Zahnie's breath gushed out.

“Once the sheriff knew that, he squeezed Damon hard. Too many officers, weapons, cuffs, intimidation—whatever he got would have no chance in a court of law. He knew that. He was after the killer, not Damon.

“The boy's not out of the woods,” Rose hastened to add. “He may have been one of them. If you're committing a crime and someone is killed, even though you didn't pull the trigger, you can be convicted of murder. That's still possible. If he's not telling the truth.”

Rose picked a raisin off the cinnamon roll, dabbed up some icing with it, and poked it into her mouth with a blunt finger.

“We have other problems. Damon won't say what he was doing in Lukas Gulch. Everybody's guess is looting. Eventually they'll find the site, get evidence, and the feds will bring charges.”

She switched her eyes back and forth between them. “The biggest problem is that he admits he saw the murder but won't say who the murderer was. Or murderers. That could lead to an obstruction of justice charge. Will lead, unless Damon changes his mind fast.”

“So why is the sheriff letting Damon out, if he isn't coming clean?” This was Zahnie.

“Sheriff Rule likes to solve crimes fast, real fast. Particularly when the crime is against a respected member of an old LDS family like the Nielsens.” Red cocked an eyebrow at
respected,
but no one noticed. “To get things done he goes by his gut a lot. He has a remarkable record for intuiting right.

“In this case he believes Damon. He used a lot of juice to force the truth out. If he's wrong and Damon could be charged with murder, Rule has screwed up big-time. He knows that, and he took a chance. Which is a lucky break for Damon.”

“Does the sheriff believe the murderers will come after Damon?” This was Mom being scared.

“Yes. That's one of the reasons he's making it a bailable offense. If this works, and you agree, Damon will be out this afternoon.”

“Thank God.”

“He could be back in jail real quick. They want the names of the killers, and the sheriff will put the pressure on. However, he can't make an obstruction charge stick yet. He's taking a calculated risk. He hopes you'll help Damon see the way.”

“What do you mean,
if this works
?” Red asked.

“We go back over to the courthouse, all of us, walk with Damon upstairs to Judge Johnson's chambers, and discuss it with him. The sheriff will ask for bail of ten thousand.” She studied Zahnie. “There are no bail bondsmen in Redrock County.”

“I don't have that kind of money,” she said.

To Red's surprise, he quickly put in, “But I do.”

 

30

SURPRISE!

Don't waste any part of an animal when you butcher. Your flock will diminish.

—Navajo saying

 

It was accomplished snappily. Red unscrewed a rear panel of the van, dug into his stash, handed the county clerk a stack of hundreds, and got a receipt for ten grand. As he did it, Zahnie watched him oddly, and Red's fingers moved stiffly, uncomfortably. Both of them were surely wondering what it meant between the two of them, Red playing papa.

No matter what she wondered, though, a mother can't say no to anyone willing to spring her child from the hoosegow, especially when being in a jail is a setup to be killed. All she can do is what Zahnie did: squeeze Red's hand, look deep into his eyes, flick back a tear, and say, “Thank you.”

Which was more than Damon said. Somehow the kid managed to look rabbity and sullen at the same time. Instead of
thank you,
he muttered, “I'm hungry.”

Back to the Mexican restaurant, where Damon kept his face in his plate and scarfed up a sopaipilla stuffed with green chile and pork without saying a word. His mother watched him, ate nothing, and held her tongue and her emotions.

On the way to Moonlight Water, on a glaring, hot desert afternoon, Red drove and Zahnie sat turned around in the front seat of the van so she could grill Damon. “We can't protect you if you don't tell us who to protect you against.”

In the rearview mirror Red could see the kid staring blankly at the passing sagebrush.

“Damon, if you don't cooperate, the sheriff will charge you with obstruction of justice.”

More stare. Damon picked up the old newspaper Red had left in the backseat and pretended to read the sports section.

“Since when do you read the newspaper? Tell us what you were doing up there.”

Silence.

“It's looting. All right, pot hunting. It's got to be pot hunting.”

Silence.

“For Christ's sake, tell us
who
will try to kill you. And why.”

Silence, with eau de moroseness.

After a few more questions, Zahnie matched Damon with her own silence. Attitude hung like a stinking fart in the closed car. Everybody wanted to open the window and no one knew how.

Finally, Red pitched in, “Hey, Damon, say something.”

“Okay. Who are you, besides the guy who's boning my mom and bailed me out to impress her? You look like somebody.”

Zahnie actually smiled. “It's a long story.”

Damon shrugged like,
What else have we got to do?

“You remember,” said Zahnie, “when you were a kid, Leeja had those albums around, and a big poster, a group called Elegant Demons?”

“Yeah.”

“You like them?”
Why can't I keep my mouth shut?
Red wondered.

“Not my kind of music.”

“You really remember?” Zahnie sounded tickled.

“Sure. Leeja and Roqui raised me much as you. Great dad, Roqui.”

Old resentments died hard. Red remembered that Zahnie had told him in the Navajo way your mother's sisters are also your mother. So Leeja was Damon's mother, too.

“Back to the posters. Red is Rob Roy, the guy who did the wild dancing.”

“No shit?”

Red could hear in his voice that Damon liked it. “Was Rob Roy,” Red put in.

“That's cool, that's really cool.” Pause. “Whaddya mean,
was
?”

“I'm out of the band. Long story, tell it later. Rob Roy was my stage name. Call me Red.”