Kitabı oku: «Navajo Courage», sayfa 2
Chapter Two
They were still underway and despite their silence, or maybe because of it, her attention had remained riveted on the man sitting next to her.
“You have questions about me,” Luca said, still looking down at the contents of the folder.
She almost choked. Maybe he should have added mind reader to his list of qualifications. Recovering quickly, she glanced at him casually.
“You have questions about me, too, I would imagine,” she said, turning it around on him. “You’re a guest of our department, so why don’t you take your shot first, then I’ll take mine.”
“You know why I’m on this case. Why were you chosen?” he asked without hesitation.
“Fair question,” she said with a nod. “I was chosen because I’ve been given special training to deal with violent crimes against women. I’ve only been working homicide for six months, but I’ve closed all the cases I’ve worked on so far.” Her car radio came on and she answered.
“Our ETA’s less than five minutes,” she responded to the caller, then, racking the microphone, glanced over at him and continued. “One big problem with this case is that we already have reporters breathing down our necks. Information about the killer’s unusual signature reached the media and that’s made this a hot story. The public’s pushing for quick answers.”
“Uncovering hidden truths often takes time. Accuracy and speed are enemies,” he said, expelling his breath in a soft hiss.
“These days stories unfold quickly,” Valerie answered with a shrug. “Internet and television are always in competition to see who breaks the story first.”
“That’s their problem. It shouldn’t become ours. Life isn’t a television quiz show.”
“Off the record?” She glanced at him, saw him nod, then continued. “The problem becomes ours when the sheriff is running for reelection.”
He nodded once. “I hear you. Any suspects yet?”
“No, not even a good lead. But I’ll find answers. Count on it.”
It was her tone that revealed more than her words. “You have something to prove on this case,” he observed.
Valerie swallowed back her annoyance. If it had been anyone else, she would have told him to stuff it. Yet there’d been no censure or disapproval in Luca’s tone. He’d simply stated his opinion. Knowing that he had to get to know her—after all, their lives might depend on each other—she decided to cut him some slack.
“I’ve had to work very hard to establish myself in my department,” she answered after a brief pause. “When I first signed up, the deputy at the desk tried to talk me out of it. I’m smaller and lighter than most of the other officers. From day one, all I kept hearing was that I’d be a liability, and that I’d cost another officer his or her life someday.”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
“During training, I was forced to fight twice as hard as any other recruit. Nobody thought I’d make it, even when my physical training scores were better than some,” she said. “Since those days, I’ve worked my way up the ranks to detective, but it hasn’t been easy. A lot of people back from my rookie days would still like to see me fail, just so I’d prove them right.”
“Why was becoming an officer so important to you?”
“Because I know I can make a difference in my job,” she said in a firm voice. “My methods may be different than some of the textbook procedures, but I can get results.”
“Different how?” he asked.
“Let me give you an example. Last week at the downtown office, a suspect slipped off his handcuffs at the booking desk and jumped the arresting deputy. He knocked the officer to the floor and grabbed his weapon. I was coming around the corner just then and, not seeing my weapon beneath my jacket, he motioned me over. I think he wanted a helpless woman hostage. I went over to him as meekly as possible. Then before he could see it coming, I grabbed the weapon and kneed him in the groin,” she said. “I used the fact that I’m not threatening—the very thing they said was my biggest liability—to do what had to be done.”
Luca gave her a huge, devastatingly masculine grin. “Way to go.”
As she looked into his eyes and saw the approval and admiration there, her heart began to hammer. Telling herself it was low blood sugar, Valerie focused. “In this game it’s all about winning, and you do that when you put the bad guys away.”
“Winning…I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. To me, it’s more about restoring harmony—for others and within yourself.”
“Inner peace? That sounds very ’60s,” she said with a hesitant smile, then added, “I’m not sure that kind of thing really applies to police work.”
“It does. Try keeping your sanity after years of busting bad guys without it.”
She kept her eyes on the road as she thought about what he’d said. Luca sure wasn’t like anyone else she’d ever met. There was a quiet dignity about him and a strength that didn’t rely on machismo to back it up.
“Okay, we’re here,” Valerie said at long last, driving down a shabby-looking neighborhood just south of Central Avenue. The street had been cordoned off at both ends of the block by APD police barriers. As Valerie held up her badge a city officer in his dark blue uniform motioned them through.
Valerie parked beside another Sheriff’s Department vehicle just outside the yellow tape that defined the crime scene. The perimeter included an unoccupied-looking, flat-roofed house and a section of the alley.
It was midmorning and there were two television cameras and at least a hundred curious onlookers lining the outside of the tape. As she climbed out of the vehicle, Valerie glanced over at Luca. He was clipping his service pistol to the right side of his belt, next to his badge and a small leather pouch. Coming around the front of the car a few seconds later, he fell into step beside her as they walked toward the crime scene.
“Crazies can be real proud of their handiwork, and sometimes stick around to see us work the scene. Keep a sharp eye out for anyone who fits the profile,” she said.
“Don’t concentrate too much on profiles just yet. Keep an open mind,” he said, then in a whisper-thin voice added, “Patience.”
It was the way he’d said that word that teased her imagination, making her think of steamy summer nights someplace far away and exotic…. She shook her head, banishing the thought as quickly as it had come.
“Detective Jonas,” a tall, ruddy-faced officer called out as he jogged up to meet them. “The body’s through that alley at the other end, inside a private property and not visible from the outside of the yard unless you look over the wall,” he said. Then, lowering his voice, he added, “the entire hood is pretty restless at the moment, so watch yourself in case a relative or friend of the victim shows up. Things could explode in a hurry.”
She knew this type of neighborhood well. The residents were mostly Hispanic and Native American—people who often believed that you were either one of them or an outsider. It wouldn’t make their investigation easy.
“A deputy is tracking down her family, right?”
The officer nodded. “Her residence is in the North Valley, and an officer is en route. She apparently lives with her parents.”
“Anything else on the dead woman?” Valerie asked.
“She’s got a student ID card from the university and crime scene found a paycheck from an area print shop in her purse. The amount suggested a part-time job. Deputy Gonzales is following up on that lead, hoping to backtrack her recent activities,” the officer replied.
“Call the campus police and get her class schedule,” Valerie ordered, increasing her stride.
To their left there were several old multistory apartment buildings that took up several blocks. Ahead of them, on their side of the street, were run-down single-family homes a decade or so older than the apartment structures. The fronts of the homes were open to the street, and several of the houses had low cinder-block walls in the rear.
“From what I recall, a lot of Navajo families live in this neighborhood, but I don’t see any among the onlookers,” she said, glancing at the crowd that lined the yellow tape cutting across the alley at both ends of the property.
“We avoid the dead. Contact with them doesn’t bring anything good.”
Valerie and Luca followed the tall deputy through an open wooden gate at the midpoint of the block wall and found themselves in a small backyard—the crime scene. The body hadn’t been covered yet, but its location close to the wall blocked it from the view of the onlookers.
Her attention already on the body, which rested not five feet from the wall, Valerie reached into her pocket. “We’ll need gloves,” she said, handing him a pair.
“I’ll need a second pair,” he answered.
“Why?”
“Tribal officers prefer to wear two. That way we don’t inadvertently touch anything that came into direct contact with the body.”
Valerie called another officer over and soon Luca had his second pair. As they approached the body she glanced back at him. His focus had shifted from the body itself, and the fact that the fingertip joints were missing, to the bare earth and the items left around the victim.
“Let me know when you get the results on the green powder placed on her lips,” Luca said. “I think it comes from plants used in our rituals but I’d like to know which ones specifically. You’ll also want to get those strips tested,” he said, pointing next to the body. “Find out if that’s buckskin. Navajo witches are said to wear masks of that material at a kill site.”
In a smoothed-over area of dirt by the body he could see the black outline of the circle and flames—the Brotherhood’s emblem.
She followed his gaze, then pointed across the alley to the property opposite them. The wall there was covered with gang signs painted in a multitude of colors. “I saw that same symbol, or one close to it, at the first scene. Is it graffiti, spray painted onto the ground?”
“That’s not paint. Take a closer look. It’s finely powdered ash,” he said. It had been left there as an insult to the Brotherhood. “Make sure the team takes a sample and identifies the source. It may help us in the long run.”
“I’ll take care of that,” a young woman from the medical investigator’s office answered, overhearing them. “We’re ready to transport, Detective Jonas. The team leader says we’ve got enough photos. All we need now is your okay.”
Valerie glanced at Luca, who nodded. “Go ahead,” she told her. “What about the vic’s belongings?” Valerie asked. “Do you have a list of what she had on her?”
One of the crime scene techs looked up then. “Her purse, with billfold, driver’s license and university ID. There were some bus tokens, too. Deputy Gonzales is running down the print-shop check now. We didn’t find any car keys, but there’s a book bag. Inside are pencils and a pen, notebooks and an anthropology textbook.”
“Let’s have a look,” Luca said. “Students sometimes doodle on their notes or slip papers into their textbooks for safekeeping.”
“She took English lit—here’s something on Beowulf,” Valerie said moments later. “Here’s another section with some anthropology notes. It’s all pretty general so it must be a beginning survey class. Yeah, here it is, Anthro 101.”
Luca, thumbing through the anthropology text, nodded. “This book fits that description. Any mention of a professor or TA?”
“Not yet. Wait—here’s some scribbling next to some sketches of arrowheads. It says, and I quote, ‘Dr. Finley sucks.’ That could be one of her professors.”
“Interesting wording—respecting the title but not the man—but it gives us a name to check on. Maybe Dr. Finley, whoever he is in the anthropology department, will recognize her photograph and provide us with some information we can use,” Luca added. “There’s a strong cultural connection to the way she was killed.”
“Sounds like a plan. When we leave here, we’ll go straight to the university. It’s not too far back down Central, on the north side of the street.”
As the body, now in a sealed plastic bag, was placed on a gurney, she studied the faces in the crowd. Their expressions told the story—along with horror and disgust there was also morbid fascination.
Praising the members of the crime-scene team who were busy placing numbered cards near each piece of evidence, she studied the camera-laden reporters. They were all struggling from behind the yellow tape for the best angles.
“Who found the body?” Valerie asked an APD sergeant working crowd control, aware that city officers were the first to arrive on the scene.
“A couple of area residents.” He called her attention to two women who were seated on the back steps of a neighboring home. Another APD officer was standing beside them. “The young redhead with the short skirt and low-cut blouse was on her way home from work, and the other’s a widow who was out looking for her cat. Apparently it was the cat that led both of them to the body.”
Valerie turned to speak to Luca, but to her surprise saw that he’d left the taped area. He was now climbing a large elm tree to the left of the crime scene with the grace and agility of a mountain lion.
Hearing comments from curious onlookers and wondering what he was up to, she went to meet him. “What on earth are you doing?”
“The scene was carefully arranged, and I wanted to get another perspective,” he said, inching out on a low limb then staring down.
A moment later he came back down. “Don’t act surprised or alarmed, but someone’s been watching me from the flat roof of that two-story apartment building at the east end of the block. Binoculars and gray, hooded sweatshirt—even in this heat,” Luca said.
Valerie scanned off into the distance, but failed to spot the person Luca had seen.
“He’s working hard to keep his face hidden. Otherwise he would have come in closer like those other folks.” He gestured toward the onlookers by pursing his lips, Navajo-style. “I’m going to find out why I’ve got his interest.”
Luca and Valerie walked slowly toward the house as if searching for something on the ground. They soon stepped into the shadow cast by the roof of the next building and there were hidden from the person with the binoculars.
In the blink of an eye Luca took off around the side of the house. He crossed the street and circled around the opposite side of the apartment building, planning to catch the guy with binoculars from behind.
Valerie shot after Luca, trying her best to keep up, though he ran like the wind. Unable to close the gap, she worked hard to at least keep him in sight.
Then, as she turned the corner, she saw their suspect climbing up the fire escape onto another pueblo-style rooftop, Luca directly behind him. A heartbeat later, both of them disappeared from view.
Knowing that Luca was on his tail, she pressed on and climbed up after them. As she reached the top of the ladder she heard a loud scraping noise somewhere ahead. Valerie crossed the roof in a crouch. Peering over the edge, she saw Luca on the parapet of the next building, dangling from one of the cañales. Separating Valerie from him was a fifteen-foot gap. He’d obviously jumped but had come out a foot short.
Before she could call out, he quickly pulled himself up over the ledge and onto the roof. “He’s some kind of athlete, that one,” Luca yelled, seeing her. “I’m in good shape, but I barely made it.”
“Where did he go?” she asked, looking past Luca toward the east.
Luca studied the expanse of roof beyond. There were several chimneys as well as heating and cooling units big enough to hide behind. A moment later he looked back at Valerie and gave her a quick thumbs-up.
Valerie studied the area carefully, but all she could see were three pigeons on the graveled roof. There were no shadows anywhere to give the suspect away.
Luca pointed to the pigeons, to his eyes then to a spot across the rooftop.
It took her a moment but Valerie suddenly realized what he was telling her. The pigeons were watching the suspect.
As Luca ran across the roof a shadowy figure slipped out from behind a large chimney then dropped over the far side, apparently finding a ladder.
“Go back down, circle around and cut him off,” Luca called, not looking back.
Seconds mattered. Instead of climbing back down the ladder, she shimmied down a drainpipe, dropping the last four feet to the ground and landing in a crouch.
The narrow alley was in deep shadow and constricted to one lane by two large trash bins. Hearing a footstep ahead she reached for her sidearm and, putting her back to the brick wall, moved forward cautiously.
Standing at the corner, Valerie stopped to listen. Someone took a breath. She had him now.
Chapter Three
Ducking down, gun ready, she took a quick look around the corner—and found herself staring directly into Luca’s face.
She lowered her weapon immediately. “Sorry. I thought I had him.”
Luca holstered his own weapon and glanced back the way he’d come. “I shouldn’t have lost him, but between his familiarity with the area and his speed, he had the advantage.”
“What made you spot the guy?” she asked. “There was quite a crowd back there.”
“I was looking for anyone who might be paying attention to me—not the crime scene. That’s when I saw him.”
“I don’t get it. Why focus on you? You mean because you’re Navajo?”
“Not just that. I figured that a skinwalker would be watching for anyone who might be a hataalii, a medicine man, and wearing a medicine bundle,” he said, pointing to his jish. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth either. The skinwalker, or skinwalker wannabe, had issued a clear challenge to the Brotherhood of Warriors and would have undoubtedly been looking to see who’d come in response to that.
“Did you get a close enough look to be able to make an ID?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Just general size and shape, and the fact that he moved like a man, not a woman. I’m not talking about fitness, just gait, okay?”
She gave him a wry smile. “No harm, no foul. I get you. But that puts us at a dead end. Let’s go back and interview the witnesses.”
“They may be reluctant to talk to us, particularly in a case where witchcraft’s involved. Navajos aren’t the only ones taught to avoid things of that nature.”
Valerie gave him a surprised look. “I have no idea how you investigate a case like this on the reservation,” she said, “but, out here, they can either talk or find themselves down at the station. I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer—not when I’m investigating a homicide.”
As they approached the crime scene Valerie was aware of everything about her new partner. Their styles of working were vastly different, yet she had a feeling about him. A quiet man of strength, Luca had come prepared to solve the case. She could feel his determination and understood that feeling well. They’d mesh well as partners…if only she could stop letting the fire in his eyes distract her.
Focusing back on the case, Valerie spoke to the city officer who’d kept the witnesses separated. Elderly Mrs. Santiago had been escorted home so Valerie approached the younger woman who’d remained behind. Mary Sanchez had listed her employment as entertainer, but the short skirt, revealing tank top and hard look despite her age left little doubt what kind of entertaining she did.
“I’m tired, guys, and ready to go home. Tell me what you need so I can get out of here,” she said in a weary voice.
“We’ll make this as quick as possible. Just tell us what you saw,” Valerie said.
“It was around eight. I was on my way home—I usually cut through this alley—when I heard Mrs. Santiago looking for that blasted cat of hers. The thing’s a nuisance, but it’s all she’s got so I decided to help her find him. I know he likes digging through the garbage, so I looked in the alley near her trash can. He was up on that wall,” she said and pointed, indicating the spot just above where they’d found the body. “The cat was making such a racket I thought he was hurt, so I went over to pick him up. That’s when I saw the dead girl,” she said and shuddered. “I’ve seen people cut up before, but this was bad—real bad.”
Valerie gave her time to pull herself together. A crime scene like this one was enough to rattle even a seasoned veteran.
“The blood—it was everywhere—and that Satanic stuff, right out of a horror flick. That’s going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life,” she whispered. “And poor Mrs. Santiago. She came up behind me for a look before I could warn her away. She nearly fainted.”
“Did you notice anyone else around—maybe someone wearing a gray sweatshirt, hood over their head?” Luca asked.
“Not today. Sometimes I see people in sweats out jogging, but that’s usually closer to the university,” Mary answered.
Leaving her to sign the statement she’d given earlier to the county officer in charge of the crime scene team, they followed up on Mrs. Santiago.
The sergeant who’d secured the scene directed them to a house two doors down. “That woman’s got to be in her eighties and she was looking downright frail. I let her go back to her home and left an APD officer with her.”
When Luca and Valerie arrived at the house they were greeted by brightly colored flowers that edged the path to the front door. Although the paint on the trim was faded and the screen door looked worn, they could see that the owner had done her best with her limited budget.
Mrs. Santiago was a small woman with intelligent eyes that, at the moment, mirrored only a barely contained panic despite the presence of the burly city cop standing beside the window.
Not wanting to traumatize the elderly woman any further, Valerie released the APD officer, then, seeing a knitting basket across the room, smiled. Her mother had been an avid knitter and if Mrs. Santiago was anything like her, the activity would immediately relax her.
“Let me move that closer to you,” Valerie said, picking up the basket. “That’s a lovely sweater,” she added, looking at the partial work lying on the top.
“It’s for my niece. I’m hoping she’ll come for Christmas….”
“That’ll be a wonderful present,” Valerie said. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”
Mrs. Santiago fingered the yarn absently then picked up her needles and began to knit. “I’m going to have to stop letting Oscar out. These days, between the gangs and the drugs, no one’s safe. But the way that poor woman was massacred, and those things around the body…” Mrs. Santiago shuddered and her knitting needles began to click together at a furious pace. “That’s not drug related or the work of the gangs around here. That’s brujería.”
“Excuse me?” Valerie asked.
“I know witchcraft when I see it—but that’s not Spanish brujería. That’s from your people, isn’t it?” she asked, looking at Luca.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“I overheard two officers talking,” Mrs. Santiago said in a hushed tone and crossed herself. “When you’re old like me, people don’t notice, or maybe don’t care that you’re there. Sometimes that’s a good thing, other times it’s not.” She paused and lapsed into a long, thoughtful silence.
Getting impatient, Valerie started to press her, but Luca shook his head and signaled her to wait.
“Like that strange man I saw this morning,” Mrs. Santiago added at long last. “He hovered around at the edges of the crowd, watching the officers instead of trying to get a look at the body like the rest of the people there. I think he was more interested in the officers’ reactions than anything else.”
“What was he wearing?” Valerie asked immediately.
“A gray sweatshirt with a hood. He was probably a jogger trying to lose weight. He must have been sweating like crazy in that outfit.”
“Did you happen to get a look at his face?” Luca asked. “Was he Anglo, Indian, maybe black?”
“I didn’t get a close enough look. All I really noticed was the sweatshirt ’cause it struck me as odd in this heat. Then a deputy asked me a question. By the time I glanced back, the man was gone.”
“How tall was he?” Luca asked. He’d never seen the person standing still up close, and it was harder to estimate the height of someone who was running.
“He was about your size and weight. But that’s all I can tell you. My eyes…they don’t work too good at a distance.”
Despite that, their oldest witness had noticed more than most others had today. “We’ll need you to sign a statement, then we’ll be out of your way,” Valerie said.
“Good, because it’s time for me to get Oscar’s lunch ready. He gets crabby when he doesn’t get his tuna on time.”
Soon they left Mrs. Santiago’s, and, as they walked back to the scene, Valerie matched Luca’s strides. He was built for strength and endurance…. The possibilities sparked her imagination.
Almost instantly, Valerie pushed those thoughts firmly back, shaking her head.
Noticing it, he glanced at her. “Something wrong?”
Just with my brain. She scrambled for a way to cover for her lapse, and then answered. “You and I need a way to communicate out in the field,” she said. “We got separated back there while pursuing the suspect and things could have gotten out of hand in a hurry. Let me give you my cell phone number in case that happens again and we need to find each other fast.”
As she gave him her number, he wrote it down on a notepad he’d taken out of his jacket pocket.
Bringing out her PDA, she waited for him to reciprocate but he didn’t volunteer the information. After a moment she added, “I need yours, too.”
“I don’t have a cell phone. They don’t work well enough on the Rez to make them of any real use to us. We have radios in our department vehicles and carry handhelds.”
Valerie just stared at him. “No cell phone?” Had he told her that he’d just beamed down from an alien spacecraft, he couldn’t have surprised her more. Her cell phone was permanently attached to her ear. She’d almost worn it into the shower a few times.
“In that case, I need to get one for you,” she said after a beat.
“How about a handheld radio?”
“I’ll find both—a radio and cell phone for you,” she said, heading over to get the emergency spares in the crime scene vehicle.
After making sure he had one of each, Valerie arranged to get the surveillance tapes from the nearby businesses, especially those within a four-block stretch along Central Avenue. Maybe they’d get lucky and locate an image of Hooded Guy.
They continued to work the crime scene until midafternoon, viewing surveillance feeds from the various businesses by using the equipment in the crime scene van. Unfortunately, none of the cameras had revealed the passage of a man in a hooded sweatshirt. He had either not been wearing the sweatshirt when passing within camera range or had traveled along a side street.
Once the crime scene unit finished with their on-site work and began packing up, Valerie and Luca headed back to her unmarked unit.
“Do you know where you’re staying, or were you supposed to make arrangements once you got here?” Valerie asked him.
“I figured I’d track down a motel after I got here. Any suggestions?”
She paused, considering her answer. There was an empty furnished apartment next door to hers. She knew that her landlord would happily allow an officer to use it, too. Yet something told her that having nothing but a thin wall between them would make for some very long, restless nights. “Let me think about it while we go over to the university. We need to pay Professor Finley a visit.”
