White Thunder Page 13

“It’s probably on his desk somewhere. His filing system sucks worse than mine.”

  “It’s not there. Simmons, Officer Tache, and I all searched your office.”

  “I’m coming back today, Ella. I’ll find the file.”

  “Is it possible Agent Thomas took it home?” Ella asked.

  “No way. He wouldn’t even take his computer files with him.”

  “Somebody must have. The case file is missing.”

  “I’ll look through my desk and his file cabinet. Maybe you all overlooked it or it was mislabeled or relabeled,” Blalock replied, undaunted. “Did you check every folder?”

  “No. That would have taken time we didn’t have. And I couldn’t turn it over to a clerk, considering the nature of the job. We weren’t supposed to be going through those files in the first place.”

  “Yeah. Simmons would be facing the mother of all reprimands if his boss found out you’d been given access to Bureau files,” Blalock replied. “Looks like you need me, Clah.”

  “Not as much as Andy Thomas does.”

  “You got that right. What are the chances he’s still alive?”

  “It’s been over a day and a half since he made the call. But if he’s in a mine shaft, and could still speak and get a signal out, he’s probably got air available. It all depends on what his injuries are, I guess.”

  “Right. Fingers crossed here. He’s an idiot, but nobody deserves to die alone like that.”

  “Tell me about it,” she muttered. “I guess I’ll see you when you get here. Give me a call as soon as you get back, or if you think of anything before then.”

  “Count on it.”

  “One more thing before you hang up. Did you ever talk to anyone at the Social Security Administration office?” Ella asked.

  “No, but I think Andy did,” Blalock said.

  “I’ll follow it up and see what I can uncover.”

  “Good. And, Ella, a word of advice about dealing with Simmons. He’s got a chip on his shoulder about minorities and women in the Bureau, if you haven’t noticed already. Passed over too many times for promotion, I think. Don’t let it get to you, okay?”

  “You mean I can’t shoot him?”

  “Better not. But you have my permission to beat the crap out of him,” Blalock asserted, then ended the call.

  It was 1:00 P.M. by the time they arrived at the station in Shiprock. Ella was happy to see that her vehicle had been repaired. Once inside the building, Justine brought out the file with all the photos of the area where Thomas’s car had been found and set them down on Ella’s desk.

  Ella studied each photo carefully, especially the close-ups. “Check these tracks against the ones made by Rainwater’s vehicle or any he might have driven at work—except a hearse, of course. I want to know if they’re a match. And if we ever find Mrs. Krause’s stolen vehicle, it should get the treatment as well. Meanwhile, I’ve got a phone call to make to the social security office in Farmington.”

  Ella was put on hold three times. She was getting impatient and close to losing her temper when a cold, disinterested voice answered.

  “This is Jerry Hathaway. What can I do for you, Mrs …”

  “Investigator Clah of the Navajo tribal police. I’m working on a case in conjunction with the FBI. A resident FBI agent named Andrew Thomas was making inquiries into a suspected social security fraud case and called your office to get some information.”

  “Agent Thomas, you said? From the FBI?”

  “Yes. Do you remember speaking to him?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. A Navajo woman had reported that she’d never received her husband’s death benefits or had his monthly survivor-benefit checks sent to her at her new address. We looked into the matter and learned that the man had supposedly filled out a notification for a change of address on-line. His social security checks were being mailed to the new address as requested but, according to Agent Thomas, he was deceased and couldn’t have made that request on the date we had on record. We take fraud very seriously and cooperated fully with Agent Thomas. To give you an idea, it would normally have taken us weeks to get the information he wanted, but I phoned him with the names he needed in less than four days.”

  “Names, you said?”

  “Agent Thomas asked me for a list of other social security recipients on the reservation who’d filed a change of address during the last six months. He was particularly interested in people whose checks were going to a post office box number off the reservation.”

  “Can you give me those names?”

  “Yes. I have them in a folder. Hold please.”

  Once again Ella was subjected to the drone of the elevator music. She was drumming her fingers on the table impatiently when Justine came in. Ella looked up at her, scowling.

  “What did I do?” Justine protested.

  “It’s not you, it’s the bureaucratic runaround phone tag that’s got me annoyed.”

  Justine nodded. “While you’re in limbo, I have some bad news. No match on the tire tracks on site and Rainwater’s vehicle. I also checked with the mortuary. They have a van there, but the tire size would be wrong. Were you thinking someone at the Sing went after Thomas after Jim and Eugene left?”

  “It was a possibility I wanted to check into since the Darwin rejects told us they’d seen someone driving up,” she said, then switched her attention to Jerry Hathaway. “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “Here are the three names I gave him—Daniel Yellowhorse, Billy Tom, and Roy Blackhat,” he said, then proceeded to give her the addresses of the latter two.

  “Did he ever call you back and update you on what he’d found?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  After thanking Hathaway, Ella ended the call and glanced at Justine. “We’ve got to do some serious digging,” she said, and passed on what she’d learned. “We know Yellowhorse is dead, but let’s go to the addresses Hathaway gave me. We need to see who’s living in those homes now and talk to someone face-to-face.”

  “You want to split up?”

  “No. I have a feeling we may have to canvas their neighborhoods and two can work that faster than one,” she said. “But let me call the sheriff’s department again. Taylor was going to have somebody check on the status of Daniel Yellowhorse’s death certificate. You didn’t take the call, did you?”

  When Justine shook her head, Ella called Sheriff Taylor. Three minutes later, she hung up, shaking her head. “The deputy is trying to locate a supervisor. The clerk that runs that part of county records closed up for lunch and still isn’t back. But we should be getting an answer within a half hour—tops.”

  “Right. And the choppers are coming—and the check’s in the mail. Count me as a pessimist. Just when we need to know this stuff yesterday, another roadblock appears in our way. I sure hope Andy Thomas is still hanging on.”

  “Me, too,” Ella nodded.

  As they walked out to the parking lot, Ella glanced at her now repaired unit, spotting Clifford’s spare in the back. She’d drop it by next time she went home, or in that direction. “My wheels are good to go, but I need time to think, so we’ll take your cruiser and you drive. Go to Billy Tom’s house first.”

  Silence stretched out between them as they drove across the river and past an old residential area on the southwestern side of Shiprock. The houses there had been demolished, hauled away, and buried years ago because they’d been constructed with materials contaminated with uranium tailings—a legacy of the old uranium mill across the highway. The land there was still uninhabitable in the eyes of some, so the former neighborhood of fifty or more houses was no more. A few houses adjacent to the three run-down streets had cropped up but the area, for the most part, was an eyesore where memories of lost innocence lingered.

  “That place gives me the creeps,” Justine said. “Like it’s haunted or something.”

  Ella nodded slowly. “People didn’t know any better back then, so they lived in the houses the Bureau of Mi
nes provided for them, trusting they were safe. The workers at the helium plant had children and raised them there for twenty or more years. Then, when it was too late, they found out that their homes had been built using concrete and mortar contaminated with radioactive materials. And politicians wonder why the People don’t trust the federal government.”

  They circled toward the north to a neighborhood of single-and double-wide mobile homes, each separated by a quarter of an acre, closer to the river. Sheep and goats grazed on the meager pickings the small parcels provided, supplemented by alfalfa and whatever other feed was available.

  Billy Tom’s house was positioned perpendicular to a ditch about fifty feet away, having apparently just been backed into place. Seeing no vehicles or livestock, Ella glanced around, walked up the rickety wooden steps to the door, and knocked. No one answered.

  “He’s not there,” a boy about eight years old called out from across the road where he was playing with a toy truck.

  Ella walked over to question him, but before she could get there, an obviously pregnant Navajo woman in her late twenties came out.

  “Go inside, son,” she said. “And get your toy.” The boy picked up the red dump truck and went inside without a word. Without so much as glancing at Ella, the woman turned to follow him inside.

  “Wait, ma’am. We’re trying to locate your neighbor,” Ella called out.

  “He’s gone.” The woman half turned to look at them, a scowl on her face.

  “Do you know where he’s gone?”

  She shook her head, and hurried inside the trailer before Ella could ask another question.

  Justine sighed. “My guess, judging from that response, is that Billy Tom died.”

  “We need to know for sure. Then we have to find out where he died and who buried him.”

  “Our best shot is getting that information from records. This isn’t a traditionalist area exactly, but from the looks of it, no one’s going to rush right out and talk to us about a dead man,” Justine said. “They probably figure that they have enough bad luck without risking calling a chindi.”

  Ella nodded slowly, taking a look around. There was no local trash service here, and garbage was piled in barrels or plastic bags, ready to be burned or taken to the closest dump. Beer bottles and cardboard boxes were scattered all over.

  “I don’t know if it’s bad luck or just loss of hope,” Ella commented softly, her gaze taking in the area. “There’s never enough money, just kids that have to be fed and clothed. A lot of our people can’t make a living from the land anymore and many of them just don’t know how to do anything else. The ones that get a good education have to move away to use what they’ve learned since there are so few opportunities here.”

  “It’s a wonder we don’t have more crime considering how many people live below poverty level,” Justine said. “I read an article Jaime at the Times wrote last week saying that more than half the Navajo homes still burn wood for heating, but a lot of families can’t afford woodstoves so they’re making their own using whatever they can get, like empty metal containers. Deaths inevitably follow.”

  Ella looked down the street. “Come on. Let’s start knocking on doors. We’re bound to meet a Christian or a modernist who won’t mind talking about the dead.”

  ELEVEN

  It was a long process. Justine finally caught up with Ella as they reached the opposite end of the row of mobile homes. “Most people aren’t home right now, cuz,” Justine said. “But I found an elderly man who told me that his neighbor went out and never came back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get him to clarify so I don’t know if the body was carried out, or if the man just drove away.”

  Ella knocked on the door of the last mobile home in her section and a teenager wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt and baggy jeans answered. Ella figured that she should have been in school, like the boy at the other trailer with the truck, but decided to let it pass.

  After introducing herself Ella learned the girl’s name. “Roxanne, I’d like to ask you some questions about one of your neighbors—Billy Tom.”

  “Oh, the old man down by the ditch?” Seeing Ella nod, she continued. “What about him? He’s gone now, you know. His trailer’s filled with some good stuff, but no one wants it. The family across the street is really upset about the whole thing and they’re going to be moving their trailer away from here.”

  “So he’s dead?” Ella asked.

  “Worse than roadkill. Mrs. Begay, the pregnant woman next door, smelled something rotting in the trailer and called the cops. It turned out to be Mr. Tom. They found him sitting in front of his TV, watching Jeopardy. Well, not really watching, I guess. He’d been dead for weeks. So now no one wants to talk about him, but I’ve got to tell you, I sure thought about getting his TV set. If it works that well after being on all that time, and no one else wants it, why not?”

  Ella didn’t comment. “Did you see who picked up the body?”

  “I don’t know. The sergeant called someone, I guess.”

  “Sergeant? Who was the officer, do you know?”

  Roxanne grinned, standing up straight and accentuating the front of her blouse. “The cute guy with the cool hair—you know, real short. He’s built like a wrestler.”

  “Joseph,” Ella and Justine both said at the same time, glancing at each other and trying hard not to burst out laughing.

  “Sergeant Neskahi?” Ella asked, looking at the girl.

  “That’s him. He patrols this area sometimes when he’s not helping out the tribe’s murder squad,” she said.

  “Murder squad?” Justine whispered to Ella, who just grinned.

  Ella thanked Roxanne, got her last name, then walked out with Justine to the unit. “Call the station and have the desk sergeant check through records. I want to know if there’s a mention of the pickup by Mesa Vista.”

  Justine used her cell phone, and a moment later nodded. “It was them, all right.” Justine then listened to the person on the other end of the phone again, frowned, then disconnected the call.

  “What was the second thing?”

  “Sheriff Taylor’s office called because they couldn’t get through to us on the radio. You know the deputy that was checking to see if there was a death certificate for Daniel Yellowhorse?”

  “Yeah. Let me guess, there wasn’t one.” Ella shrugged.

  “Wrong. There was a death certificate for him.” Justine said. “Which leaves us nowhere. Who do you think arranged for a change of address then?”

  “Either the social security people are screwing things up and covering for it, or the county records people are responsible and changing the information now that they know it’s being searched. We need to confirm what kind of checks are being rerouted—survivor benefits to the spouse or retirement benefits for the guys who just happen to be dead. But either way, someone is getting these checks, and we’ve got to figure out who that is. I’m convinced these answers are the key to finding Andy”

  “But in order to make someone appear to be still living, on paper at least, wouldn’t their death certificate have to disappear?”

  “Yeah, or have them filed under another name. Let’s see what happened to Roy Blackhat. If he’s dead, too, we’ll ask the county to find out if there’s a death certificate on file for him and Billy Tom. If the county has a record of the deaths, and the checks are just the result of a clerical error, we’ve gone around in a circle and nothing makes sense. But my instincts tell me some kind of fraud is going on, and Thomas was about to confront those responsible.”

  As they walked Ella looked down at the address they’d be going to next. “What I still don’t have a handle on is exactly what happened to Agent Thomas. Did he fall into one of the mines while being pursued and the perps decided to leave him there, or did Thomas hide and become injured later? What really worries me is that if the bad guys know where he’s at and we tip our hand, they may just go back and finish the job.”

  “Good point.”


  As they reached the car, Ella handed Justine the second address. After a drive through Shiprock they reached a modern housing area on the bluff north of the river valley. Judging from the late-model cars, this was an area of Navajo professionals. They located the house number quickly, but a look through the parted curtains as they walked to the porch revealed that the house was empty.

  A middle-aged Navajo woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and sweeping her front porch watched them peek through the windows, then came over. “Are you looking for Mr. Blackhat?” she asked.

  “Yes, we are,” Ella said, and flashed her badge.

  “You’re a little late, I’m afraid. I think he’s dead.”

  “But you’re not sure?” Ella pressed.

  “Well, I do know that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and didn’t have long to live. He gave away all his things. Then, one day, right in the middle of winter, he just got into his car and drove off.”

  “To where, do you know?”

  “He said he was going to have a Sing done, then die in the old way. But I’m not sure if he meant in a hogan somewhere or if he was saying that he intended to just walk off into the desert. If he did, he would have frozen to death for sure. It was January.”

  “Do you know who was going to do the Sing?”

  “I don’t know, but I suppose it would have had to have been someone who lived close by. That car of his wouldn’t have taken him far. It was a good thirty years old, and the tires were so bald you could almost see air through them.”

  “What type and make?” Ella asked.

  “An old VW van, probably from the sixties. Faded blue—well, closer to tan now—the blue is almost completely gone.”

  Ella nodded to Justine, who called it in. Minutes later as they were walking back to Justine’s unit, Neskahi called them back.

  “A vehicle that fits that description is parked in the impound yard. It was towed in late last winter, March eighteenth. It was found abandoned in a ravine south of Big Gap,” he told Ella. “Isn’t that in the same area as your brother’s hogan?”