Coyote's Wife

  Also by Aimée & David Thurlo

  Ella Clah Novels

  Blackening Song

  Death Walker

  Bad Medicine

  Enemy Way

  Shooting Chant

  Red Mesa

  Changing Woman

  Tracking Bear

  Wind Spirit

  White Thunder

  Mourning Dove

  Turquoise Girl

  Plant Them Deep

  Lee Nez Novels

  Second Sunrise

  Blood Retribution

  Pale Death

  Surrogate Evil

  Sister Agatha Novels

  Bad Faith

  Thief in Retreat

  Prey for a Miracle

  False Witness

  Prodigal Nun

  COYOTE’S WIFE

  AN ELLA CLAH NOVEL

  AIMÉE THURLO DAVID THURLO

  A Tom Doherty Associates Book

  New York

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  COYOTE’S WIFE

  Copyright © 2008 by Aimée and David Thurlo

  All rights reserved.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1716-2

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-1716-8

  First Edition: October 2008

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Fred and Betty Hill,

  just ‘cause they know so much

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To MK, for her continued help with the Navajo language.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ONE

  High up in the Chuska Mountains on a winding forest road, Special Investigator Ella Clah of the Navajo Tribal Police took time to enjoy herself. While her second cousin Justine drove the pickup, she gazed down at the New Mexico side of the Navajo Indian Nation. It felt good to be up here today, on the hunt for piñon and cedar logs instead of fugitives or suspects.

  She’d always loved this particular section of the forest road. In places the trees were so close on both sides it was like driving down a blue-green tunnel lined with the rich scent of pines. Ella breathed in the humidity, a sensation usually missing down on the desert floor or atop the mesas of the Colorado Plateau, where she’d lived most of her life.

  This had been a perfect morning. The golden leaves on the scrub oaks all around them intermingled with the pine-covered slopes and brought back a kaleidoscope of pleasant memories. After hiking for over two hours, searching for just the right pieces, they’d found four lengths of beautifully twisted cedar and piñon—thick cuttings that would be perfect for what Herman, her mother’s husband, had in mind. “Thanks for the help in tracking down the right pieces, partner. Once Herman peels off the bark, then sands and stains each piece of trunk, these will make gorgeous one-of-a-kind table lamps. You should see his work. I’m buying two from him—one for me, and one for Dawn.”

  Justine smiled slowly. “Okay, before you award me a merit badge for forest skills or woodcrafts, I have to ’fess up. I had a personal stake in this. One of the lamps he’s making is for me. I saw his work in your mother’s sitting room and placed an order with him. The lamp will look great on the table by my living room sofa.”

  Ella laughed. “That’s why you were being so incredibly helpful on your day off!”

  “Well, that, and the promise of lunch at your mom’s,” Justine answered, laughing.

  Ella joined her.

  Before long they passed a small meadow, and Ella grew wistful. “I miss trips like these up into the mountains, cuz. My family used to come up for firewood every fall about this time. When Clifford and I were younger, Mom and Dad used to rely mostly on the heat from an old wood and coal stove they’d bought and hauled all the way from Colorado. We already had propane by then, but Dad’s ministry was just getting started and they were trying to save money any way they could. Clifford and I would come up here with Dad and compete to see who could gather the most wood. Dad was the judge, and whoever brought in the most didn’t do chores for a week. The loser would have to do them all.”

  “I missed out on that kind of thing growing up in town with no fireplace or stove. We always had natural gas. So who’d win the contest, Clifford?”

  Ella smiled slowly. “Naw, it was me, at least until Clifford finally wised up. He loved chopping wood, and spent most of his time with the axe. I’d get whatever was on the ground first, then saw up the dead stuff that was too heavy to carry. When Dad measured our piles, mine was usually bigger. It used to irk Clifford to no end,” she said laughing. “I think it was a testosterone thing with him. He loved that axe!”

  “You’ve always played to your own strengths. That’s why you close more cases than anyone else in the department,” Justine said.

  “That and a lot of stubbornness. I won’t give up.” Ella leaned back in her seat, basking in the radiant glow of the sun coming though the windshield.

  She’d just closed her eyes when a warm spot near her neck suddenly began to burn like a hot coal. Realizing with a start that it was the badger fetish she wore—Ella jerked upright, as if stung by a bee. She’d never figured out just how it worked, but the fetish would always get hot when danger was near.

  Ella reached over automatically for the handgun at her waist, and although she didn’t draw her weapon, she kept her hand right next to it. On call twenty-four-seven, she was required to remain armed even on her days off.

  Aware of Ella’s reaction, Justine jumped. “What?”

  “Something’s not right. Keep your eyes open.” Ella searched among the trees to her right, then glanced in the side mirror. There was nothing back there but the dirt road and a trail of dust rising up into the air.

  She’d just turned back to her left when a bloody figure staggered out from behind a tree, directly into the path of the pickup. “Look out!” Ella yelled.

  Justine swerved to the right, then touched the brakes, going into a barely controlled skid.

  The man in front of the
m turned at the sound of the sliding tires, his face contorted in fear. His red-gloved hand went up in a vague attempt at protection. Then he pitched forward onto the road.

  Still sliding, Justine uttered a curse, and whipped the pickup to the right again. The tires came dangerously close to the edge of a steep drop-off and Justine whipped the wheel back to the left and stood on the brakes. They slid a dozen feet, then came to a stop, raising a cloud of dust.

  “You missed him! Good job,” Ella yelled, throwing open her door and jumping out of the cab. “Call 911,” she added, coughing from all the dust.

  The figure, dressed in work clothes, was lying on the road behind them, facedown. The dust the pickup had raised was settling on the fabric of his heavy denim shirt, darkening what appeared to be a sleeve completely soaked in blood.

  As Ella ran up, the man turned his face toward her. His hollow wheeze was followed by a strangled cry of despair. The next instant he went limp. His head dropped to the ground, his mouth open, his eyes staring at nothing.

  The coppery scent of blood was strong and Ella’s heart was hammering. Her thoughts racing, she searched for the source of his bleeding. Aware of the dank, earthy smell that clung to him, she kept her breathing shallow.

  Ella had been at her job for too long not to know death when she saw it, but she still checked. Reaching down, she touched the pulse point at his neck. His body twitched, and she flinched. Then all movement stopped. The man was beyond their help.

  Crouching down, Ella studied the body before her. His left arm was completely drenched with blood. Through a tear in his left sleeve she could see a five-inch diagonal cut on the inside of his arm, about halfway between his elbow and his wrist. The cut went into the bone. It could have been the result of his having thrown his arm up to ward off the slash of a big knife, or maybe a machete.

  Justine came running up, carrying the first aid kit she’d left behind the seat. “How is—oh,” she added, seeing Ella shaking her head.

  Ella focused back on the body of the Navajo man. The sticky sweet smell of blood on his shirt and jeans was so thick in the still air it nearly made her gag. Although she’d seen more than her share of dead people, she normally arrived on the scene well after the fact. This …made it more personal somehow.

  “I guess it’s time for these,” Justine said, opening the first aid kit and bringing out some latex gloves. “Sorry, I only have one pair for each of us.”

  “It’ll do until Tache arrives with the crime scene van.” As a Navajo, touching anything that had been in direct contact with the dead was repulsive to her. Unfortunately, that would invariably happen when she stripped off the latex gloves, unless she’d worn two pairs. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the chindi, the evil in a man that remained earth-bound after death. It was more of an ingrained reaction. Illogical, but as natural to her as avoiding the number thirteen or walking under a ladder was to an Anglo.

  “Suspicious death, right?” Justine said, reaching for her cell phone.

  “Yes, until we know otherwise, so get Carolyn, too. We’re going to need the tribal ME’s expertise on this.”

  Justine turned away, preferring not to look at the body while making the calls.

  Ella, wearing her latex gloves, pulled out the victim’s wallet and examined it. The victim was George Charley, a forty-five-year-old Navajo man who worked in Shiprock.

  Ella returned to Justine’s truck and emptied the paper bags they’d used for snacks. With the victim’s wallet in hand, and the bags in the other, Ella walked back to where the body lay.

  Justine, who’d completed the calls by then, took the paper bags from Ella. After taking a close look at the wallet, she placed it into the cleanest-looking bag and labeled it with the time and her signature.

  “If the address is current and my memory is correct, the victim lives—lived—near Long Lake.” As a sign of respect, Ella avoided mentioning Mr. Charley by name. “There’s not much of anything out that way until you reach Naschitti, and no phone service. At best, he’s several hours’ walk from there, so unless he was drunk and wandered off, he must have gotten here either by horse or vehicle. The employee ID says he worked for that new high-tech company, StarTalk, in their Shiprock warehouse. Check at the station and see if we can get a location on his next of kin.”

  Justine called in and, after a few minutes, hung up and looked at Ella, who’d finished searching his pockets. “He’s got a wife. She’s apparently not employed and lives at the address on his operator’s license. Also, as you suspected, there’s no phone service at his home.”

  “We’ll process the scene first. Once we’re done, we’ll go by the residence and notify his wife.”

  “What do you think, was it an accident of some sort? Or do you think someone cut him and hijacked his vehicle?” Justine asked. “I didn’t see you pull out any car keys from his pockets.”

  Justine, petite and young-looking, but with a seasoned hardness in her eyes, stepped closer and looked down at the body again. “I don’t see any obvious wounds on his torso. There’s that gash on his forehead. But his arm…that much blood means a severed artery.” Justine pointed to the deep, jagged cut that Ella had noted earlier.

  “More than a knife did that,” Ella said after further visual examination. “His skin was ripped apart, not sliced. Either he cut himself on a saw blade in a freak accident, or someone came at him with a chain saw and that’s a defensive wound. There’s also that cut on his head, but that looks more like he bumped himself, judging from the swelling.”

  “This reminds me of what happened to a friend of mine who worked at a lumberyard,” Justine said. “One day he caught his sleeve on the blade while trying to brush away some sawdust. He’d turned off the saw, but the blade was still spinning. It pulled his arm right into the jagged teeth. Poor guy nearly died, even with the hospital just five minutes away. This might have been a similar type of accident, except this guy was alone and too far from help. He couldn’t stop the flow on his own, and just ran out of time—and blood. That would be my guess for the cause of death.”

  “Carolyn will have to make that determination,” Ella said. “But I think you’ve probably nailed it. Notice the sawdust all over his shirt and glued to his hands? He may have been out gathering firewood, cut himself with his saw, then panicked and ran. But you’d think he would have run to his truck,” Ella added. “You don’t hand carry wood this far from home. You haul it. And losing that much blood, I doubt he could have walked too far from the accident site. Check the area, but stay close enough not to let the body out of your sight. I’m going to backtrack using the blood trail. His vehicle has got to be out here someplace.”

  “And the chain saw or whatever he cut himself on,” Justine said, then added, “I’ve cancelled the EMTs, by the way.”

  “Good. Keep an eye out for anything that might be evidence, just in case this wasn’t an accident.”

  Ella followed the trail of blood and mostly dragging boot prints up a steep hillside, finding a place where he’d obviously fallen before leaving the road. George Charley must have either become disoriented, or decided to take a shortcut.

  Back on the dirt road, the victim’s trail, lined with drops and puddles of blood, made a path that wound back and forth, much like that of a drunken man. She was amazed that the victim had been able to walk as far as he had. He must have been in shock as he headed off in search of help.

  Then she found deep tire tracks in the road, angling off to the side, downslope. The blood trail continued, so she followed. A late-model pickup had crashed through a sapling, dropped down into a stand of low junipers, running them over, then struck a sturdy piñon head on. From the damage to the front she guessed the victim had probably been alert enough to brake somewhat, but not enough, obviously. It was the tree itself that had finally stopped the forward motion of the vehicle.

  The scenario appeared obvious at first glance. For some reason Mr. Charley had swerved sharply and ran over whatever vegetation had
been in his path. After coming to a stop, the rear tires had dug holes in the soft ground, explaining why George Charley had taken off on foot. The big Dodge Ram, with its powerful Hemi engine that could outrun most sedans, had become stuck.

  The blue paint on the side of the late-model Dodge was scratched and the door was dented, evidence of his collisions after leaving the road. It seemed pretty clear that George had lost control, dizzy from the blood loss. The windshield wasn’t broken, but the rearview mirror was askew, and there was a small amount of blood on it.

  The door was open and, as she approached, Ella could see a blood trail that extended into the cab on the driver’s side. She looked inside, careful not to smudge the single set of boot prints. Nothing in there could account for what had caused the wound on his arm. The keys were still in the ignition, and the red light on the instrument panel showed that the engine had died, the gears still in reverse. To her, it appeared that George had been racing to find help, had passed out, and run off the road. The crash had probably caused the bump and cut on his head, the result of being thrown forward and striking the rearview mirror. Stuck and unable to back out, he’d left the vehicle and set out on foot. That had only hastened his fate.

  Ella stepped back and examined the bed of the truck. There was no sign of a chain saw or any woodcutting tool inside, or anywhere around on the ground. The tailgate was down, and the bed was a third full of firewood, many of the pieces showing evidence of having been freshly cut. Firewood farther up toward the road showed that some of the load had shifted and bounced out.

  Ella reached into the cab and pulled out the keys, careful not to make contact with the blood, which was evidence. She then wrote down the vehicle tag letters and numbers for the New Mexico plates, and walked back up to the road. Following the tire tracks and trail of firewood that had bounced out of the truck, she hoped to find the place where George Charley had met with his fatal injury.