Turquoise Girl (6 page)

“I just heard that the Fierce Ones are planning on looking into your homicide case. What do you know about that?” Big Ed asked.

“So far I don’t think they’re directly involved, but that could change, depending on how fast we get results,” she said and explained the circumstances and
her conversation with Lena Clani.

“You think the suspect you hauled in could be the killer?”

“It’s too early to know for sure, but why else run from the police? Maybe we’ll get lucky and close this one fast,” she said, hoping it would be true. Yet, even as she said it, a part of her knew it wouldn’t be so easy. Nothing on the Rez was ever that simple.

Ella sat in the stark interrogation room across the table from their suspect, saying nothing, letting him sweat. Justine had already tried to question him but he hadn’t said a word, not even to ask for a lawyer, which, generally, was one of the first things out of a suspect’s mouth. Justine had left to write up the initial
report.

“You realize that we’ve already got you on a variety of counts, reckless driving, DWI, resisting arrest…I could go on, but I think you get the idea. We’ll be looking into all your activities, so if you’ve got any secrets, they won’t remain that way for long.”

For the first time he glanced up.

Ella waited for the man to say something. She could sense him trying to make up his mind.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ella finally said. “Let’s start with murder. We found your ex-wife dead, and it looks like someone used her for a punching bag before they finally killed her.” She made a point of letting him see her staring at his bruised knuckles.

Gilbert shifted in his chair nervously and took his hands off the table. “You can’t pin that on me. No way.”

“Why not?” Ella pressed.

“Look,
I haven’t even seen my ex for a month or maybe two. I didn’t know she was dead until I heard it on the radio this morning.”

“Then how do you explain your bruised knuckles and the cuts on your face?”

“What else? A bar fight.”

“You playing games with me, Gilbert?” she asked, deliberately using his name. He clearly wasn’t a traditionalist, but even most modernists on the Rez avoided the use of
names whenever possible. Names had power, and using them stripped the bearer of that source of help.

“Give me a break, will ya? I can’t even remember what I did last night,” he grumbled.

“Bad answer. You need to stop drinking, Gilbert. That’s at the bottom of all your problems.”

“I’ve complied with the courts,” he said in a weary voice. “I’m in the program—for all the good it does me.”

Something
about the way he’d dropped his voice alerted her. “Maybe we should go speak to your supervisor or counselor over at the drug and alcohol rehab center,” Ella said, playing a hunch.

His shoulders sagged. “I’m telling you right now. I didn’t take it.”

“Take what?” Ella pressed. She’d had a gut feeling that he’d been hiding something.

“The money from the cash box. I thought that was what you were
after me for, not killing my ex-wife.”

Ella tried to stay on track. “But others think you did—steal the money?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Will we find it when we search your home?”

He swallowed hard. “You can’t do that, not without a warrant. I want a lawyer.”

“One can be provided for you. We told you that in the arroyo when you were read your rights,” Ella said. “But let’s get back
to the money. Are you a betting man, Gilbert, ’cause I’m willing to bet we get lucky at your house.”

Ella knew that Officer Tache and Sergeant Neskahi were there now. They’d been able to get a warrant based on the suspect’s behavior and the physical evidence, including the bruises and injuries that must have been inflicted during a struggle—or a beating.

“When you search my place…well, it may
look like I took that cash, but I’m not a killer. And you can’t prove I did that, ’cause I didn’t.”

“Things look bad for you.” She pointed to his skinned knuckles. “And your memory seems to be improving now that the stakes have gone up. How about some truth, now? You didn’t get those while raiding a cash box, did you?”

“I
told
you I was in a fight. I got into it at the Double Play Sports Bar
over in Kirtland. Some white boy called me a name I didn’t like, so we threw some punches. But I got the best of him.”

She knew about the Double Play. It was one of the roughest bars around, and in a community full of hard drinkers that was saying something. She and Justine had been there before on business and had barely managed to avoid having to fight their way out.

“I
will
check on your
story. Count on it.”

“Then that’s that. I’m not saying another word until my lawyer gets here.”

A moment later there was a knock at the door, and a man she recognized was let in by an officer. Lee Yazzie was the tribe’s latest public defender. He was all of twenty-five, if that, but she’d heard he was very good and was acquiring a reputation for getting his clients off on the slightest technicality.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Ella said, standing up. “Have you been apprised of the situation?” she asked Yazzie.

He nodded once. “I saw the paperwork. Now I need a few minutes in private to confer with my client. Once we’re done, I’ll call you back.”

Ella knocked on the door, and the officer on duty outside let her out. Rather than return to her office, she walked down the lobby and got herself
a cup of coffee from the machine. The coffee that flowed into the foam cup was syrupy thick. She grimaced as she picked it up, wondering if it would eat right through the foam cup.

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” Justine cautioned, coming up the hall. “I had a sip of that stuff a while ago and nearly heaved. Either the machine’s out of whack, or the coffee grounds went sour.”

“Can coffee
go sour?” Ella dropped the cup into the trash. “Thanks for the warning.”

She was about to put two quarters in the Coke machine when Yazzie came out into the lobby.

Seeing Ella, he motioned to her. “We’re ready now, Investigator Clah.”

Ella went back inside the room with the attorney and sat across from Yazzie, who was seated beside his client.

“Mr. Tso has something to say to you,” Yazzie
said.

Gilbert squirmed in his chair and stared at a corner of the table. “You’re going to find the cash box that’s missing from the rehab center over at my place. I couldn’t get it open, so I just grabbed the whole thing. It’s a little dented up, but all the money’s still in there. We can just give it back, okay?”

Ella glanced at Yazzie, whose expression remained neutral. “If the center presses
charges, you’ll have to go to court. From there, it’ll be up to the system. But I’ve got to tell you, Gilbert, stealing a cash box should be the least of your worries. I need to know about you and your ex-wife, Valerie.”

“Look, I didn’t tell you anything before because I thought you’d just twist my words around. But Mr. Yazzie has advised me to tell you what I know.” He looked over at his attorney,
who nodded.

“Please note that my client is volunteering information of his own free will,” Yazzie added.

“Noted, counselor.” She looked back at Gilbert and waited.

“I hadn’t seen Valerie in a long time, don’t really know how long—weeks, or months maybe. But I ended up in a jam last week ’cause my rent was due and I was tapped out. I’d heard she had a good paying job these days, so I dropped
by where she worked and hit her up for a loan. She was glad to see me. That same night she came by and gave me all the cash she had. It wasn’t that much, but I scraped the rest together.”

Something didn’t sound right. “Why would she help you, Gilbert? You two were history.”

He gave her a cocky grin. “She never got over me, I guess.”

“What were you doing yesterday, say between about four and
nine
P.M
.?”

He shifted in his chair, then looked at his attorney, who nodded. “Answer her,” Yazzie said.

“I was at my place. Alone, unfortunately.”

“Did anyone see you, neighbors, maybe? Anyone at all?”

He shook his head. “If they saw me, I didn’t see them. I was mainly inside the house, watching TV and…just relaxing, you know?”

“What were you watching?”

He hesitated. “Reruns, probably.
I can’t remember. I was a little drunk at the time,” he muttered.

“Investigator Clah, we’ve already established that my client has a drinking problem, and he’s willing to admit he fell off the wagon yesterday. That’s not a healthy situation, but it’s also not a crime.”

“No, but the rest of it—like stealing, driving while intoxicated, and resisting arrest—is a crime.”

“My client has cooperated
and told you all he knows. So how about cutting him loose? You know where he lives, and he has no plans to leave town.”

“He’s not leaving our custody until we finish searching his home. For now, he remains here.”

“You don’t have much to hold him on. I mean, resisting arrest? I can argue that you didn’t identify yourself properly, that my client was on his way out and saw someone chasing him.
He’d been in a fight recently, and was afraid of retribution.”

“So two Navajo women were coming to kick his ass? I don’t think so.” Ella stood up and knocked on the door. “Sorry, counselor. For the time being, your client remains in a cell.”

The officer outside opened the door and let her out into the hall. Justine was just coming in her direction. “I’ve been going over his records and checking
with other agencies. Gilbert Tso has a long rap sheet for violence and petty crimes. He likes to use his fists, especially. I think he’s a strong suspect.”

“But we need solid evidence to prove he killed Valerie, and we have nothing so far. We can’t even prove that he ever went inside her home, unless some of the fingerprints we’ve recovered end up being a match. How are Tache and Neskahi doing
over at Tso’s house? Have they found anything that ties him to the murder?”

“Not so far. I’m heading over there now.”

“Any news from the ME?”

“Not yet.”

“What about our anonymous caller? Any ideas who that could be?”

“No, but I haven’t had time to follow it up.”

“All right,” Ella said with a nod. “Go give Tache and Neskahi a hand. I don’t want to let our suspect out on bail until I’m sure,
but the clock’s ticking. In the meantime, I’ll try to get a lead on our anonymous caller. We already know that the call came from the Quick Stop down the street, so maybe the clerk will remember who was at the phone.”

“Benny and Jane Joe run it these days. Jane said that she and Benny needed breathing room, so he takes the late shift and she the early one. They’re open until midnight.”

“Then
I better go by their home and wake Benny up. After that, I’ll stop by the morgue. I wonder what the holdup is? I expected Carolyn to have her preliminary report by now.”

As Justine left, Ella looked up Benny Joe’s home address. It wasn’t far from the station, in an area of new family housing. Houses were sprouting up everywhere these days, it seemed, though it was anything but easy to legally
build on reservation land. The first thing that had to be done was a thorough search for antiquities and that usually took months of digging. That phase was then followed by innumerable arguments at the local chapter about the required permits. Then there were the squatters.

Benny and Jane’s home, in particular, was a real test of Navajo sensibilities. Traditionalists wouldn’t have been caught
anywhere in the area, neither would New Traditionalists, who combined the old with the new, accentuating the old as long as they didn’t have to give up their microwave oven or satellite dish.

Only modernists would have ever lived in the new subdivision. It wasn’t architecture that kept the traditionalists away, it was the location. A short distance behind the adjacent elementary school was a
cemetery. Skinwalkers were said to frequent the place, exhuming bodies in their search for bones and personal items. Of course to a modernist, all that really meant was a call to the police station to report grave robbing.

Knowing where Benny felt comfortable living was a big help in figuring out how best to approach him. Sitting in the car until invited to approach—the old, respectable way of
visiting a Navajo family—wouldn’t be necessary there.

Ella located the address, then went up to the door and knocked. No one answered, so she knocked again. The next-door neighbor, a woman maybe in her sixties, poked her head out a window. “Nobody’s home.”

“Do you know where I can find Mr. Joe?” Ella asked, showing the woman her badge.

The neighbor came out onto her front porch a moment later,
motioning Ella over. “I’m Alice Bitsillie,” she said. “I recognized you when you drove up. I know your mother.”

“I’m looking for Benny. Do you happen to know where he is?” Ella asked her.

Alice nodded somberly. “His wife thinks he comes home right after work. Wait ’til she finds out he’s going to visit Margaret Napolean. You know who she is?”

Ella nodded. She’d heard of Margaret. The department
suspected Margaret of moonshining, though they’d never been able to prove it.

“I don’t know why he does it. Margaret’s nothing but trash and Jane’s a good, hard-working woman. But who knows with men? If you want to find him right now, I suggest you go over there.”

“Thanks for the information.”

“Do me a favor?” As Ella stopped, Alice continued. “Don’t tell him how you found out where he was.
I don’t want problems with a neighbor.”

Ella drove to the northwest side of Shiprock, past the old boarding school staff housing. The department had run a few stakeouts on Margaret’s place on weekends, hoping to get lucky and get enough evidence to tie her to some nasty batches of moonshine that cropped up on the Rez now and then. Unfortunately, due to their manpower shortage, they’d never been
able to maintain the kind of watch necessary to get the evidence they needed.

Part of the problem was that Margaret had the sympathy of most of the officers. When money was tight, as it was all over the reservation, people often came up with entrepreneurial, if not legal, ways of making ends meet. And, as long as the brew didn’t make anyone go blind…

A short while later, Ella pulled up in front
of a modern-looking home, one of the site-built houses that the Navajo Housing Authority had constructed for members of the tribe. The structure itself, instead of stucco, had siding and was well designed and constructed. Even from the outside, she could tell that it had a hogan-shaped great room on the east side. The front yard, landscaped with native plants that required little water, looked
well kept and attractive. The tags on the late-model Ford pickup in the driveway matched Benny Joe’s.