White Thunder Page 12

  “Of course they could only try this with people who’d died of natural causes since then there would be no need for further investigation,” Justine commented thoughtfully. “But where’s our evidence? We can’t prove any of it, even if it’s one hundred percent true.”

  “We’ll start by checking to see if there’s a death certificate for Daniel Yellowhorse,” Ella said. “We can then—” Ella stopped in midsentence as she glanced back in the side mirror. “There’s a gold SUV parked halfway down the street. It’s been there since we went in and there’s a driver behind the wheel. He may just be waiting for someone, but let’s go check him out.”

  Justine started to turn the vehicle around but, as if guided by a sixth sense, the SUV wheeled around quickly in the street and raced south down a narrow, tree-lined residential street.

  “Close in on him so I can get a look at his plates,” Ella said, reaching for the radio. “I’ll call for county backup.”

  Justine shot after the fleeing vehicle, siren on and emergency lights flashing. She quickly narrowed the distance between them as they raced past fenced-in yards in the old neighborhood closer to the river.

  “New Mexico tag, but I still can’t make out the letters and numbers,” Ella said.

  “Is that Melvin’s Chevy?” Justine asked.

  “No, it’s a Ford, probably the same Excursion that flashed Herman and me,” Ella said.

  “Huh? Oh, right. The mirror.”

  The SUV ran the stop sign at the end of the street, sliding out into the old Shiprock highway, then accelerating away with smoking tires toward the west. An oncoming pickup swerved and went off onto the shoulder as the suspect came across the centerline. The three teens inside were cursing and flipping off the driver of the SUV as Justine and Ella shot by after him.

  “He’s driving like a wild man, Ella,” Justine said, her voice a half octave higher. Her expression was taut as she focused on controlling their unit over the wavy, cracked pavement that had been patched hundreds of times by now. “Man, this old road is a piece of crap.”

  Ella looked over at their speed. In a shrinking old farm and orchard area where the speed limit was thirty-five, they were approaching sixty. She watched ahead, hoping to help Justine spot any road hazards. The worse thing in the world now would be to meet up with a farmer pulling his tractor out onto the street.

  The big SUV disappeared around a curve, then Ella caught a flash of gold. “He turned left, Justine.”

  “I’m on it, boss.”

  Justine took the corner well, but a chunk of old pavement must have broken loose from the strain because there was a loud clunk and the left rear tire slid just a little. Ella hung on, not saying a word, and reached up toward the stone badger fetish on her neck. She wrapped her hand around it, noting that it wasn’t hot, a sign of great danger, but it was definitely warmer than usual.

  The high vegetation lining the fields along the side road reflected back some of the engine noise, making it sound as though they were racing down a tunnel. Within a half mile they were back in the same residential area they’d been five minutes ago.

  Justine was approaching an intersection when a small rubber ball came bouncing out a driveway into the street.

  “Hit the brakes!” Ella yelled.

  TEN

  Justine responded instantly and something slippery in the road, perhaps leaves from an overhead branch, caused them to skid wide to the left. She corrected, and the unit screeched to a stop in the oncoming traffic lane.

  Out of the corner of her eye Ella saw a toddler and a small black-and-white terrier come running out into the street in pursuit of the ball. A scream was already fading as a woman wearing leotards and a sweatband came rushing off the porch of the house adjacent to them. The fair-haired woman raced into the street, scooped up the frightened child, then glared at them accusingly.

  “You’re going too fast!” she screamed. “You could have killed my baby!”

  “Sorry. But your child wouldn’t have had the opportunity to run out into the street if you’d been keeping a better eye on her,” Ella answered firmly although her hand was shaking as she held up her badge. “Didn’t you hear the siren?” Ella looked down and saw an MP3 player hooked to the woman’s waistband, and headphones dangling down. “Never mind.”

  The woman turned sharply and stalked back into the yard, still clutching her child. The little dog followed, barking.

  Justine’s hands were clenched around the wheel in a death grip, and she was cursing softly to herself. “I can’t believe this! That kid came out of nowhere. How did you know? You told me to brake before the kid and dog came out.”

  “The ball,” Ella said, her voice still shaky. “Rule of thumb—if you see a ball, a kid isn’t far behind.”

  “I saw the ball, but I didn’t see anyone around, and we were running code three—with siren and lights. If you hadn’t yelled …”

  “No one was hurt. That’s what’s important. Now let’s go. Maybe we can still spot where that gold SUV went.” Ella called in another report, relating the incident with the child as well as the fugitive, then asked for an APB on the gold vehicle.

  Emergency gear off now, Justine and Ella searched for over twenty-five minutes, looking down long driveways, beside farmhouses, and even in the parking lots of the area schools. They found a lot of SUVs, some gold, but none that matched the right make and model. It was as if that particular vehicle had vanished into thin air.

  “We’ve lost him,” Justine said at last.

  “Yeah,” she admitted through clenched teeth. “Let’s go talk to Sheriff Taylor. We need to get more on Jack Krause, the funeral home director. Maybe he’s got priors. We also need to find out if the county has a death certificate on file for Daniel Yellowhorse. If not, then somebody else along the document chain is also involved in this social security scheme.”

  “If you ask me, this case centers on Melvin Rainwater. Despite his alibi covering the time when Agent Thomas went off the radar—being the patient at the Sing—he’s still the one who’s dropped out of sight again. Melvin could be the key to finding Agent Thomas.”

  “You may be right,” Ella answered. “We’ll come down hard on Melvin once Teeny finds him—and I have no doubt that he will.”

  Sheriff Taylor, a lean-looking cowboy in his late fifties with pale blue eyes, sat behind his desk and regarded Ella thoughtfully as she filled him in on recent events.

  “I’m glad you reported that near accident over in Kirtland. But we haven’t received a call from the mother—which means she’s either willing to accept the fact that she should have been watching her kid better or she’s getting ready to file a complaint.”

  Justine groaned. “I hope not.”

  A young man holding three paper sacks came in just then, and placed them on the desk. Ella reached for her wallet, but Sheriff Taylor shook his head. “Lunch is on me today,” he said.

  “Thanks. I wish we didn’t have to make it a working one but I really need some leverage to use on Krause. And the sooner the better. I think we’re onto something here.”

  “If you’re right, it’s a freakin’ foolproof scam,” Taylor said. “His chances of getting caught were almost zip. I’ll have one of my people run over to county records and check for a death certificate on that Yellowhorse fellow. It’ll save you some legwork.”

  “Thanks.”

  Taylor made a quick call, putting the records check into motion, then took a bite out of his sandwich while punching keys on his computer keyboard with his other hand. A couple of beeps and a mouse click or two later, he looked up at them. “Krause is squeaky clean. He’s got two parking tickets, one outstanding. That’s it. I’ll run him through the feds next.”

  There was another beep from the computer. “Wait a second. Talk about coincidences. We just got a stolen vehicle report. Mrs. Krause, Jack’s wife, just reported that one of her vehicles has been stolen.”

  “Let me guess. A gold Ford Excursion?”

&nb
sp; “Bingo. And she just noticed it missing, though she can’t really say how long it’s been gone,” Taylor answered.

  “Krause’s wife’s car. Too much of a coincidence for me, too, Sheriff. Will you have a deputy do spot checks on Krause?”

  “Sure, Ella. You don’t think his wife is involved, then?”

  “I got the idea she was about to become his ex-wife, but the husband may have kept a key to the gold SUV.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Thanks for helping us out,” Ella said standing up. “I’m going to concentrate on Rainwater next. If I can get something to nail him on, I may be able to pressure him into talking once we find him. If he’s involved in some kind of dead-body switch or social security fraud, I doubt he’ll roll over on his partners easily, so I’ll need to have something solid to use against him.”

  “I’ll stay on Krause, follow through on the check for Yellowhorse, then get back to you.”

  As they walked out, Justine glanced over at Ella. “I hate to put a damper on things, but getting something on Melvin might be like putting the cart before the horse. He might have gone underground for good.”

  “Teeny’ll find him.”

  Justine smiled. “That sure of him, are you?”

  “Yeah. It’s a matter of pride to him to be able to carry it through, and he doesn’t have all the restrictions we have as cops. We’re under public scrutiny much more than he is.”

  “His new job does have its perks, doesn’t it? I mean, being able to charge lots of money to use his police training on cases and not having to stick to the book?”

  “I’m not sure that’s really a perk in the long run. Truth is, I like the black and white of police work. We know what we can and should do to bring a criminal down. Working within the system is a pain in the butt, but it maintains order. Without all the regulations, we’d be working in gray areas and, if you stay there long enough, the line separating the good guys from the bad can become real blurry.”

  As they climbed into the department vehicle, Justine glanced at Ella. “Where to?”

  “Back to the station. I want to study all the photos we took of the area where Agent Thomas’s car was found.”

  “I’ve already done that and included what I found in my report.”

  “Let’s go over it again.”

  As they got under way, Justine glanced over at Ella. “You know I’ve been thinking of how Teeny—Bruce—was forced to leave, then started his own company. And then there’s Sam Pete and Harry Ute. Both of them left our department and ended up with new careers that suited them perfectly.”

  “Don’t tell me, cuz. You’re thinking of leaving too?” Ella asked, hoping she was wrong. Justine was her right arm, and they’d really learned to work together well.

  “No—not yet, anyway. But a while back I did consider working for a private security firm who offered to pay me double what I’m getting now. I turned them down because it felt like I was selling out. But I’ve been thinking about my job here lately and …” She shook her head and grew quiet.

  “What?” Ella pressed.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ella, but most of my life I’ve lived in your shadow—like little sisters sometimes do. Since I admire you and what you’ve done with your life, following in your footsteps wasn’t a bad thing as far as I was concerned. But the truth is that I don’t want my accomplishments weighed against yours for the rest of my career and I’m afraid that’s exactly what’ll happen if I don’t leave. And, let’s face it, I have no chance for advancement here unless you retire or I start lobbying for a desk job.”

  Ella knew Justine was right. “So what have you decided?” Ella asked, dreading the answer.

  “Well, like Harry and Sam, I gave some thought to other PDs or joining one of the federal agencies. But what I’d really like is to work for a crime lab somewhere.”

  “You could probably get a job in a forensic lab anywhere you chose. Those places are usually short of qualified people, like the state lab in Santa Fe. But our department really needs you here, Justine. With your qualifications you’d be almost impossible to replace.”

  “I know. That’s why I haven’t done anything about it,” she said, then shaking her head, continued, “Well, there’s more to it than that. The fact is I’d miss my family and my life here terribly,” she said, then paused before adding, “And off the Rez I’ll always be marked as different. Here, I’m just one of the many. I fit in, you know?”

  Ella nodded, remembering her own experience in the FBI, where Indians of any tribe were almost nonexistent. “When I joined the Bureau I didn’t think that would bother me, but after a while it did. For one, I got trapped in what’s unofficially called the taco circuit. Because of the way I look, I only got sent to places with a large Spanish population. Never mind that my Spanish stinks. The career-making high profile cases usually went to the guys with light skin.”

  “Yeah, some things never change.”

  “But tell me, do you really think you’re in my shadow?” Ella asked. “I honestly don’t think people compare us.”

  “They do, but you don’t hear it because you’re not the clone. It followed me through all my classes at the police academy because we’re cousins. By then, you were well-known around here as a successful FBI agent so people began to think of me as the generic Rez version of you. Now that we’re both here, it’s worse.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “The thing is that we’re not all that alike. True, we’re both detectives who love what we do, but that’s where the similarity ends. I really don’t want to spend the rest of my career out in the field,” she said. “I’m sure that I’d excel in a lab with the latest equipment and state-of-the-art technology.”

  Ella didn’t reply right away. “You love lab work, like Teeny with his computers, and that’s fine. But give yourself time to think things over first. Don’t set yourself up for regrets later on in your life.”

  Justine nodded slowly.

  Ella thought of all the years she’d spent in the field. Every case stayed with her, much more vividly than it would have if she’d been investigating from the relative security of a lab or from behind a desk. And with those memories came nightmares. The faces of those she’d killed in the line of duty always came back to haunt her. Whenever she awakened from one of those dreams, she’d lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling, or maybe sit at her computer and surf the Internet the remainder of the night. “We all pay a price for our choices, cousin. Or, as my brother would say, everything has two sides.”

  When Ella’s cell phone rang, she answered it and recognized Special Agent Dwayne Blalock’s voice immediately.

  “What the hell’s going on, Ella?” he asked. “My sister said you d called and that it was an emergency. This better be good. Even though I was pressured into it, I’m having a good time. This is my first vacation in ages.”

  “I wouldn’t have called unless it was important, Dwayne. Listen, Andy Thomas disappeared after interrupting a Navajo ceremony. He managed to send a cell phone message that he was trapped in some dark place, injured, but lost contact before we could get anything more. Nobody’s been able to call him back either. A search is under way, and we’re trying to figure out what happened and where he is right now.”

  “That idiot kid. I should have known he’d pull something like this. I tried to warn him that on the reservation things were done differently, but I just couldn’t get past his ego and his thick head. Andy thinks he’s invincible with that badge in his pocket.”

  “I should have made time to brief him, too,” Ella said. “Maybe hearing it from me would have brought the point home. I could have used your early years on the Rez as a lesson in stupidity, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I used to be a jerk. But okay, enough what-ifs and second guesses. What’s going on now?”

  She told him about Simmons and her inability to find any paperwork pertaining to Thomas’s cases.

  “There’s a reas
on why Andy kept that to a minimum. His reports to Simmons were sketchy because Thomas was hoping not to have that a-hole breathing down his neck like he does mine,” Blalock said.

  “What exactly was Agent Thomas investigating? Our best guess so far involves some social security check problems.”

  “Then you already know almost as much as I do. The case I started—that I turned over to Thomas—suggested possible social security fraud. A widow, Lorena Yellowhorse called me, saying she hadn’t received her husband’s benefit check or his social security after he died, like she was supposed to.”

  “I’ve talked to her about that already. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Just one more thing. Her checks weren’t getting to her because someone had filed for a change of address—Mr. Yellowhorse ostensibly. But the EMTs made a positive ID and swore the man was dead. That’s as far as I got when I had to turn the case over to Thomas. Simmons got pissed at me for not filing reports on time so he told me to give the case, and any others I was working on, to Agent Thomas until I caught up with my paperwork. I advised Simmons strongly against that course of action. I explained that I didn’t think Agent Thomas was qualified to work a case on the reservation yet and mentioned the cultural factors, but he wasn’t listening.

  “I had no choice,” Blalock said, then in a somber voice added, “I was real close to losing it with Simmons, Ella. Before I could say something that would have undoubtedly ruined what’s left of my career, I took his suggestion to take my annual leave and went on vacation.”

  “If you started the case, then handed it to Thomas, there’s got to be a file or notes on this somewhere,” Ella said.

  “Yeah, there is. I know because I started the file myself and passed it on to Andy. It should be in our office.”

  “Yeah? I haven’t been able to find it.”