White Thunder Page 4

  “Did you say anything to him about that?”

  “Me? No way. It’s none of my business. I get crashed networks up and running, do troubleshooting, and tweak custom-designed software for virtually every law-enforcement agency in the Four Corners. And when I’m not doing that, I protect paranoid entertainers from screaming fans at concerts. That keeps me busy. I don’t have time to open an advice column for the feds. But FB-Eyes must have had a talk with Andy about the clothes because Andy finally lost the suit and discovered bolo ties and western-cut boots,” he said, then added, “All that said, I have a feeling the guy’s in trouble right now.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Yesterday afternoon Andy asked me about Navajo ceremonies—then took off. But he didn’t show up this morning, something he always does like clockwork, and now both his boss and you have come by to check out his office. In my experience, the only time the FBI gets the tribal police involved in anything is when they have no other choice and they really need something. The fact that you’re here now proves it. They must be desperate if they left you here alone to search his office.”

  It was all resoundingly logical. “Wait a sec. Back up a bit. What kind of ceremonies did Agent Thomas want to know about?”

  “He didn’t say—maybe he didn’t know exactly. But he wanted to know who did ceremonies around here, where they were held, and if there were any scheduled soon. He told me that he’d tried asking several Navajos around town but they wouldn’t tell him squat.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Really. So what did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t know of any ceremonials, public or private right now, but that didn’t mean anything because I wasn’t in the loop when it came to that kind of thing. I’ve been kind of an outsider since I moved off the Rez, and, hey, I’m Catholic. I did warn him that some Sings were very private affairs and that he could get himself in a truckload of trouble. But I could tell that he was chasing down a lead and wasn’t about to let go.” He paused. “Then today Mr. Suit—Simmons—came into my office asking if I’d seen the kid. Stuck his badge in my face, too.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I just shook my head and stood up. He kind of backed off, as I recall. Then I saw him out.”

  Ella bit her lip to keep from laughing. Simmons was around six feet tall, but practically a skeleton in comparison to Teeny.

  “You haven’t said why you’re involved in an FBI case. Jumping ship again?” he asked, alluding to her days in the Bureau before joining the tribal force.

  “No, but your theory about what’s going on is right on target,” she said, seeing no reason not to tell him. Teeny was obviously acquainted with the missing man and might be able to provide a lead. “Agent Thomas went missing yesterday, or last night, I guess. If you hear anything I can use, pass it along. I need to find him ASAP. And keep this confidential, okay?”

  His eyes narrowed as he studied her expression for several long moments. “This isn’t just business as usual for you, is it? You’ve got a stake of some kind in this.”

  Teeny had an absolute gift for picking up nonverbal cues.

  “You’re right,” she admitted slowly. “Blalock asked me to keep an eye on Thomas before he left on vacation. But I got wrapped up in other stuff and didn’t take the time to check in on the rookie. Thomas called about a week ago, asking if we could get together over coffee, but I put him off because I was concentrating on a case. Said I’d call him back and never did.”

  “So you’re thinking that this is partly your fault?”

  “I could have made sure he understood that he can’t run roughshod over the Rez just because he carries that gold badge. But I never got around to it.”

  “Did either Blalock or Thomas ask you for cultural lessons?”

  “No, but I should have seen this coming. Blalock reins him in. Without Blalock around …”

  “It wasn’t your responsibility, Ella, you’re not teaching lesson twelve in the special-agent real-world curriculum. Like most inexperienced, aggressive people I’ve met in law enforcement, Thomas wanted to do things his way,” Teeny said. “Apparently, once he was really on his own, that’s exactly what he did, and all you can do now is try to sort out the mess.”

  His cell phone rang, Teeny muttered some quick words, then glanced over at her. “I’ve got to get going, Ella. The server at the county courthouse has locked up again.”

  “Before you go. Any idea how I can get hold of Blalock?” she asked as Bruce made his way to the door.

  He shook his head. “Dwayne—don’t you love that name—didn’t want to be found—at least that’s what he told me. He swore he wasn’t going to turn on his cell phone again until his vacation was officially over. But he did mention that after he had a chance to do some fishing and camping, he planned to visit his sister in Denver.”

  After Teeny left, Ella shut down Blalock’s computer, then checked through the address book on his desk. He’d never been much on computerizing what could be easily written down. Mercifully, a quick look through the names revealed a Phyllis Blalock. She hoped it would turn out to be his unmarried sister instead of an ex-wife who also lived in Denver and had kept his name. Although she’d known Blalock for a decade, and had grudgingly grown to respect him and his abilities, Ella knew very little about his personal life. In fact, although his first name was Dwayne, she felt much more comfortable calling him Blalock. It was that kind of relationship.

  A quick phone call verified that Phyllis was indeed Blalock’s sister. Ella introduced herself, then left a message asking that Blalock get in touch with her as soon as possible. That done, she grabbed a set of office keys from Blalock’s desk just in case, and headed out to her car.

  Her brother, Clifford, a well-known hataalii, a medicine man, might know about the ceremony—who’d conducted it, who the patient was, and all the other details Ella needed to get. It was also entirely possible he’d done the Sing. If so, she’d try to persuade him to share some information she could use to track down Thomas.

  As she reached her unit, her cell phone rang.

  “This is Agent Simmons. I just wanted to let you know again that I will be back on the Navajo Nation as soon as I possibly can. I’m not just dumping this in your lap,” he said, then added, “Were you able to find anything useful in Agent Blalock’s office?”

  “Not yet, but I’ve been on the case less than an hour, Agent Simmons. You, on the other hand, have had around five hours since the dispatcher called you to report that Agent Thomas was missing. Not asking for the tribal police’s help immediately has only made matters worse.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he snapped. “I’ve been an agent for twenty years, and I don’t need advice from a tribal police officer who couldn’t cut it in the Bureau.”

  As anger flooded through her, she gripped her cell phone so tightly her hand began to shake. “I do not have to justify my career choices to you,” she said, her jaw clenched.

  “You misunderstand me, Clah. I’m not saying that it was your fault. Affirmative action just hasn’t done anyone any favors.”

  “I got through Quantico on my own ability, Agent Simmons, not through affirmative action.” Even the implication that she’d made her way into the Bureau through a back door rankled her. She’d worked very hard for everything she’d ever attained.

  “You really were up and coming … once,” he said, then continued before she could respond. “But we’re getting off track here. I just wanted you to know that I’ll be back on the reservation as soon as I can to oversee this case.”

  “Understood,” she clipped, then hung up and looked at her watch. It was nearly 1:00 P.M. She was on the highway driving south in the general direction of her brother’s medicine hogan when her cell phone rang again.

  Justine’s alto voice came through clearly. “One of our uniforms found Agent Thomas’s sedan. It’s at the bottom of a big arroyo west of the Sanostee Chapter House. If Officer Curtis
hadn’t gotten a tip from one of his relatives, we probably wouldn’t have found it for days. The man was riding his horse up in the foothills and happened to come across it.”

  “Was the car anywhere near a medicine hogan?”

  “About half a mile uphill and west from one, according to Officer Curtis,” Justine said.

  All this time she’d clung to the faint hope that their intel was wrong and Agent Thomas hadn’t gone anywhere near a Sing. But reality now shattered that fragile illusion. “Give me the exact location and meet me there. Call Tache, too. I want him to process the scene.”

  Directions on the Rez didn’t always entail the use of street names and house numbers. In this particular case, she had to proceed south down the highway leading to Gallup for around twenty-five miles on good road, turn west for another ten toward the Chuska Mountains, then continue another few miles on a primitive dirt track that would be hell this time of year even with the scant rains. The entire area was lined with overgrown trails that had at one time served as roads to the mines that had been in operation during the ’50s and ’60s.

  The drive took her nearly an hour. It was just past two o’clock when she parked beside Justine’s dusty white department vehicle at the top of a small piñon- and juniper-lined canyon in the rocky foothills. The terrain was rough, and she’d nearly gotten stuck during the last half mile because she’d kept to the vehicle tracks of those who’d arrived ahead of her.

  Justine was already on the scene, standing beside the dark blue FBI unit, and waved as Ella exited her SUV. Officer Tache, in the department’s crime-scene van, had nearly caught up to Ella just before they’d left the surfaced road, and Ella could now hear the low gears and bouncing tires as the officer approached from a rocky outcrop to her right.

  The familiar scent of pine resin, fresh sagebrush, and late summer flowers reminded Ella that her father’s mother, her nálí, had lived not too far from here. This had been a place of happy memories for her at one time, but now the area held only echoes of tragedy and danger.

  Ella brought out her evidence kit, donning a set of latex gloves so she wouldn’t leave her own prints behind. When a body was part of a crime scene, two pairs were usually worn by the Navajo officers in order to prevent touching anything that had touched the dead—a taboo even most modernist Navajos respected.

  Not waiting for Tache, Ella climbed down the rock strewn slope, picking her way around the footprints and vehicle tracks that would need to be recorded and processed. As they approached Agent Thomas’s vehicle, Ella saw that it had been damaged.

  “Vandalism, or the result of an attack?” Ella asked, then saw the answer for herself as she came up to it. Both headlights had been smashed, along with the windshield, and someone had scratched “F-BItes” into the surface of the hood using a rock, apparently. Another rock was still embedded in the windshield.

  “No sign of the agent. I did a spiral search for about a hundred yards while I was waiting for you, and called out several times,” Justine said. “But the truth is he could be anywhere. There are a lot of mines around here.”

  Ella nodded, checking the ground carefully from several viewpoints, like a golfer lining up a putt. “There were two groups of people here,” Ella said, waving her arm in the immediate area around the vehicle. “At least five individuals. Two people arrived on foot but, later, there was also an SUV or a pickup here. There was a struggle, too,” she said pointing to the tracks on the ground. “See the undisturbed boot marks by the driver’s door where Thomas first got out? He was okay until he started to come back to his vehicle, then he was jumped.”

  “Someone must have caught Thomas looking in on the ceremony and sent two helpers to deal with him.”

  “Those larger footprints—two sets—are over the smaller ones, which means they were here last. It’s anyone’s guess who vandalized the sedan. In some places there are so many tracks it’s difficult to make heads or tails out of them. Take plenty of photos, Ralph,” Ella said to Tache, who’d just arrived carrying a big box that held his cameras and other gear.

  Officer Tache, a slender, glum-looking man who rarely smiled, nodded. “Right, boss. Anyone else coming I should know about? Want me to put up the tape?”

  “Don’t bother. We’re on a rush job right now. We need to find something quickly that’ll lead to locating the Anglo FBI agent.”

  Tache nodded and brought out his camera, getting to work immediately while Justine continued to examine the agent’s vehicle.

  Studying the area of the struggle about six feet from the sedan, Ella found a few drops of blood on the sand. She waved first to Tache, who took a few photos, then had Justine come over and bag a sample.

  “Someone got injured but we would have seen more blood if it had been a severe wound,” Ella said, as Justine recorded the date, time, and other identifying information on the bag’s label. “See if it matches Agent Thomas’s as soon as you can.”

  Ella’s muscles tensed, dark images filling her brain. With effort, she pushed them back, knowing that neither anger nor guilt feelings would help her now. She was here to do a job. Self-discipline was the key now and fortunately that came easily to her, particularly in circumstances like these.

  “I caught a glimpse of the hogan on the way in,” Ella said. “I’m going down there now to take a look around.”

  “Watch your step,” Tache reminded. “The ground west of here is pockmarked with uranium mine shafts. You must have seen some of the old markers along the road on the way in. Most of the openings have been overgrown with brush, so make sure you don’t fall into one.”

  Seeing Justine’s attempt to hush Tache up, Ella smiled. “I won’t make the same mistake twice, Ralph. But thanks for the warning,” she said, remembering her last experience. She’d been lucky to come out of it alive, but the nightmares would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  Justine picked up her own camera and walked along the narrow canyon with Ella, occasionally spotting tracks leading to and from the hogan as they scrambled over solid outcroppings, beds of coarse sand, and hard, rocky ground.

  “One group came up this way, then went back down,” Ella said, then let out a harsh whistle to catch Tache’s attention. He looked over and she pointed to the ground, then saw him nod.

  “I’ve never been able to whistle that way,” Justine said. “I wanted to learn and my brother tried to teach me, but I never got the hang of it. And forget about my sisters. All they can do is scream.”

  “Once Clifford started whistling, I had to figure it out so I could do it too. It’s this sibling thing we have between us,” Ella said, and grinned.

  As they approached the hogan, Ella heard a rumble of thunder and glanced up at the clouds creeping down the mountainsides. “We better move fast, photograph everything, and secure all the evidence we can.”

  “Maybe it’ll just threaten to rain—the usual. But the wind certainly won’t help.”

  “No, today it’ll pour—mostly ‘cause we need it to stay dry,” Ella answered with a wry smile as they approached the medicine hogan. Ceremonial hogans were usually larger than those intended as residences, and more traditionally constructed. This eight-sided structure constructed of interlocking pine logs was topped with layered branches and a sealing layer of clay on the roof. No blanket was hung in the simple doorway here.

  Ella crouched near the hogan’s entrance, studying the tracks left on the sandy ground outside. “The ceremony was attended by a fairly large group—maybe a dozen or so people, judging from all the different sizes and types of tracks. I can see moccasins, boots, and even a few imprints from athletic shoes.”

  Ella stepped inside the rounded interior, her gaze taking everything in as Justine snapped photos. The fire pit had been used recently and the dirt floor had been cleared of any debris or plants and smoothed out. “This place has certainly been used as a medicine hogan, but I have no idea which medicine man, or men, work here. Maybe my brother will know.”

  Ella studied
the ashes scattered about, then picked up a bit of blackened animal fat. “Blackening must have been part of the Sing that was done here, but all I know about this is that the black comes from charcoal. My brother will be able to tell what kinds of ceremonies incorporate that ritual and, with his help, we may be able to track down the hataalii who conducted it.”

  Sings were based on knowledge and no one medicine man knew all them. Some could last for days and were extremely complicated, so hataaliis specialized, sometimes memorizing only one ceremony.

  When her cell phone rang, Ella stepped outside and answered it. Big Ed’s booming voice came through clearly.

  “Our front desk just received a call from someone claiming to be Agent Thomas,” he said. “The caller, a man, said that he was injured, unable to move, and trapped in a dark place. The call was made from a cell phone, but the transmission was weak, and faded before we could get any more details. Unfortunately, every attempt to call him back has failed. I wanted you to know right away and I’ll be calling Agent Simmons next to tell him about it. If he’s on the flight and I can’t get him, I’ll leave voice mail. Is there anything you’d like me to pass on to him, Shorty?”

  “Yes. See if he can get the Bureau to try and pick up the GPS signal from Thomas’s cell phone. Maybe his battery still has enough juice to home in on. If you can’t reach Simmons, call the Albuquerque office. That’s all I can offer at this stage,” she said, and told him what they’d found. “But once I have something more definite, we’ll pass it along.”

  “It’s your call.”

  Sensing Justine’s curiosity, Ella folded up her cell phone and briefed her partner quickly. “We’ve got to pick up the pace. If the caller was really Andy Thomas, then he’s injured and trapped, so there’s no telling how long he’ll be able to hold on.”