Never-ending-snake (32 page)

Ella knew that Abigail had gone to Rose a few months ago and convinced her to participate in the Prickly Weed Project. “I recall that
you
were the one who got
her involved in this.”

“At the time, the only clear risks were calluses accompanied by sneezing,” Abigail said. “But if your mother wants out, all she has to do is tell me. . . .”

“We’re getting sidetracked,” Ella replied. “Did you see anyone hanging around when you came home? Also, was Norm already with you or did he arrive afterwards?”

Abigail smiled slowly. “To answer your real question,
Norm and I aren’t hanging around together. He showed up about twenty minutes after I got here. I was already outside scrubbing the graffiti.”

“What did he want?”

“He was very interested in Adam’s role in the Prickly Weed Project, but we haven’t had much of a chance to talk. I wanted to scrub that paint off my garage door before it set up. I find that particular word highly insulting. I belong
to the Navajo tribe, and I grew up on tribal land. I am
not
an outsider or a squatter.”

Ella nodded slowly. “Does it strike you as odd that whoever did that came all the way out here? Scratching Begaye’s car was one thing. He was in a parking lot in the center of Shiprock. You’ve got, what, three neighbors on this street?”

“I see your point. The message was obviously intended solely for me.”
Abigail stood. “Let’s go back outside so I can work on that paint.”

Moments later as Abigail bent down to put on her rubber gloves, something thumped against the garage, and a shot rang out.

“Gun!” Ella yelled, forcing Abigail to the concrete and reaching for her pistol. A bullet had struck the garage less than two feet away from the woman. “Abigail, get behind the hedge and stay out of sight.”
Ella reached over to push her in the right direction, but Abigail was already on the move.

Justine rolled away from Norm, who was flat on his belly. “Get over there with Mrs. Yellowhair,” she told him. “But stay low and move fast.”

The farmland in this neighborhood lay atop a low mesa that rose to the north and west, but the shot had come from the river valley. Ella ran in that direction, zigzagging
randomly to throw off the gunman. Too angry to be scared, she used the extra energy to give her strength and speed.

Justine followed, angling to the side so the sniper would have to choose between targets.

They were about thirty yards away from the rim of the bluff that defined the outward reach of the river when Ella heard a vehicle starting up below. She raced forward, hoping for a glimpse
at the suspect’s vehicle, but by the time she reached the edge of the embankment, there was nothing on the gravel road below them but dust. The vehicle had gone west and had disappeared in a farming area covered with a network of roads.

Walking along the embankment, Ella and Justine soon found the location the sniper had used to target them.

“He didn’t even leave a shell casing behind,” Ella
said, looking to what would have been the shooter’s right, the direction most firearms ejected spent cartridges.

“The sand’s soft where he scrambled up and down the bank, so it buried his boot prints,” Justine said.

“Let’s check at the bottom, by the road,” Ella said, making her way down the ten-foot-high slope.

Not finding anything but smeared-over prints and impressions in the gravel, they
climbed out of the old river bottom onto high ground and walked back to the Yellowhair house. Hattery’s SUV was gone from the driveway.

Ella knocked on Abigail’s door, and hearing the invitation to enter, went inside, followed by Justine.

Abigail was sitting on the couch, a large shotgun on her lap.

“You won’t need that,” Ella said, deliberately keeping her voice calm. “Why don’t you put it
away?”

“It belonged to my husband. He used it to chase away
coyotes,” she said, then propped it up against the wall in one corner of the room. “These people are animals, too. They’re never one bit sorry for the trouble they cause.”

Ella took a seat. “Where’d Hattery go?”

“Norm said he had to go file his story,” Abigail said. “He didn’t think you’d catch the gunman, and it looks like he was
right. This is the third time you’ve let these criminals get away, isn’t it?”

Ella refused to take the bait. “To your knowledge, has anyone else in the Prickly Weed Project been the target of violence?”

“Adam and Billy Garnenez had some problems at the last chapter house meeting.” She paused, gathering her thoughts, then continued. “Someone took a swing at Billy after Emerson got the crowd worked
up, reminding them about the mess the coal and uranium mines left behind. But Adam stepped in, and since nobody wanted to raise a hand to him, things calmed down.”

“Do you think Emerson was responsible for the shot fired at you today?” Ella asked.

“Not Emerson himself, no,” Abigail said. “The man’s sight is all but gone. I doubt he could hit my house from across the street. But his son-in-law
. . .”

“What do you know about him?” Ella asked.

“Until recently, Chester Morgan worked at the government offices in Farmington, but he lost his job when they cut back at the beginning of the fiscal year. He’s the one who decided to plant a vegetable garden and turn out a few head of sheep to graze on the property. He told everyone that was the only way a Navajo could guarantee that neither
he nor his family would go hungry,” she said. “Mind you, he’s got a point.”

“So a part of you thinks they’re right and should fight to keep their land?” Ella asked, sure she wasn’t seeing the whole picture.

“We never wanted
all
their land, just, say, seventy-five percent of it on the side closest to the existing Navajo Irrigation project. Compromise is the only way to go on something like this.
But the family refused to even consider the options. With only Trina working full time now, they’re afraid of what the future will hold for them. It’s not that they’re in dire straits—they’re not—but it’s pretty clear that the ‘what-ifs’ terrify them.”

When Ella’s phone began to vibrate, she left Justine to finish taking Abigail’s statement and answered the call outside.

“I’ve got good news,
but you’ll need to come over.” Teeny’s unmistakable sotto voice came through clearly. “This isn’t the kind of conversation we can have over an unsecured line.”

“I’ll be there in twenty, maybe sooner.” Ella shut the phone and signaled to Justine, who had just stood. “Time to go.”

Ella followed Teeny inside the main office, and waited as he settled his enormous bulk onto the chair closest to his favorite desktop computer. He’d had special programs uploaded into multiple hard drives, added a host of peripherals, and had tweaked every component until it had practically become an extension of Teeny himself. As she looked at him staring
adoringly into the screen, she had no doubt she was witnessing a case of compumance—that special romance between a man and his computer.

“I have the information you need from Adam’s BlackBerry. I’ve made a printout of the content—names and address, his schedule, meetings, and his daily notes—kind of a log, or diary. It all came out to around forty pages when I copied everything into one text
file. I’ve also downloaded everything onto a flash drive and placed it inside the same envelope.”

“As you retrieved the information, did you take a look at it, and if so, is there anything you can tell me?”

“I skimmed some of it to make sure I’d broken the encryption, but that’s about it. My job was to make it readable, so I focused on that.”

“Anything particularly interesting that stuck in
your mind?” she asked, hoping for the short version.

He considered it for several moments. “It’s clear to me that Adam had divided loyalties, Ella,” he said at last. “He was frustrated with the way the Prickly Weed Project was being handled and wanted to do things his own way. He felt that the project leaders were holding him back, yet still expecting him to get results. He couldn’t do both and
the guy liked to win.” He met her gaze. “I can understand that. I’m the same way.”

“Me, too,” she admitted.

He handed her the padded envelope with the information. “I heard what happened at Abigail’s.”

Ella wasn’t surprised. Teeny’s sources—electronic and human—were second to none. “We told Abigail to lay low for a while, but I have no idea if she’ll do it or not.”

“Here’s something you
can
count on. No one’s getting near your mom’s place without our knowledge. I’ve increased security just to stay on the safe side. Mack Kelewood will be inside your home, and take turns with Jimmie Harvey and Preston Harrison. Outside, you’ll have a man who’s had extensive sniper training in the Rangers, Eugene Nakai. He’s the only person I know who can pick off a target the size of a baseball at a
hundred yards—while it’s rolling.”

“That’s some marksman.”

“Which is why he’s there,” Teeny answered. “He’ll have the others as backup anytime, but he told me that he rarely sleeps more than four hours a night when he’s on the job. With anyone else, I would have said that’s a bad idea, but not with this man. He goes by different rules.”

Ella stood. “By the way, we’ve lost track of that pain-in-the-butt
reporter, Norm Hattery, after he left the Yellowhair residence. If you hear anything about his whereabouts, let me know. I don’t like not knowing where he’s at, or where he could pop up next.”

“You’ve got it.”

As Ella walked to the door, Justine, who’d been in the next room talking on her cell phone, joined her. “You ready to roll?” she asked Ella.

“Yeah. Let’s get back to the office. I want
to go through what Teeny handed us and update Big Ed.”

They were on the highway a short time later. Not wanting to waste time, Ella pulled out the printout as Justine drove. “There’s nothing here that links Grady to Lonewolf. From what I can see here, Adam was completely focused on getting IFT to work with the tribe. The IFT rep, a man named Williams, was his contact, and Williams was being a
hard-ass.”

Hearing her phone ring, Ella picked it up, hoping it was Teeny and he’d found a lead to Hattery. But it was Blalock’s voice she heard at the other end.

“We’ve got a minor problem,” he said. “Marie Lonewolf went over my head and got permission to leave Kirtland Air Force Base. She’s on a special flight back as we speak.”

“What happened?” Ella asked.

“Since Adam hasn’t regained consciousness,
the family hired your brother to make a special medicine pouch for him. Marie’s landing in a half hour, so I’m on my way to the airstrip to pick her up.”

“So that means she’s spoken to Clifford and he now knows for sure that Adam’s alive,” she said in a thoughtful voice.

“No, not quite. All she told your brother is that she needed a medicine bundle that would restore the
hózh
.”

Medicine to restore beauty and harmony. That made sense. “My brother wasn’t fooled, believe it,” Ella said.

“Yeah, he’s too smart for that.”

“Whoever’s watching her back also needs to make sure she doesn’t come across Norm Hattery. I don’t know where he is right now.”

“Noted. I’ll be taking her by her home first, so that’ll buy me time to spot a tail and deal with it, if necessary,” Blalock
answered.

“The family’s cover story has been that they went up to one of their sheep camps in the Chuskas to grieve in private. If you need to, say Marie came back to gather up her husband’s belongings so she could give everything away to a church group off the Rez. Adam’s parents are Traditionalists, so people would understand that they wouldn’t be comfortable visiting Marie at her home if Adam’s
stuff was still there. Traditionalists avoid all contact with the possessions of the deceased.”

“Okay, got it.”

“I’ll meet you at the Lonewolfs’ home.” Ella hung up and glanced at Justine. “Change of plans,” she said, updating her partner.

Once they were headed in the right direction, Ella called her brother. Though their conversation was brief, she learned all she needed.

They met with Blalock
and Marie Lonewolf thirty minutes later at the Lonewolfs’ home, one of many small houses in an old tribal housing development on Shiprock’s east side. The fact that every house was painted the same color, and had the identical basic design, gave it a certain amount of anonymity. Also a plus was the fact that there were no mailboxes at the curb that would make the Lonewolfs’ home easier to spot.