Black Thunder (22 page)

“Let’s hope you find one.”

Justine had searched all around the vehicle by the time Ella
put the phone away.

“Did I hear you say that you want to find out more about Kelewood?” she asked, moving toward the back of the vehicle.

Ella nodded, and reaching the tailgate first, opened the back so they could access the tire jack and tools.

“Back when Dan was pushing to see if Curley’s identity theft crime included homicide, I dug into Kelewood’s background. I was searching for a connection
between the two men.” She began moving tools aside to access the spare tire.

“Was there anything noteworthy there?” Ella asked, helping Justine lift the heavy spare out of the SUV.

“Kelewood was single and lived on the Rez with his sister, Martha Jim, and her daughter. In fact, she was the one who reported him missing. He’d stopped for a beer after work, but he never made it home. The next morning
she reported him missing.”

“The M.O. fits—stopping for a drink after work, then driving back to Shiprock on the same highway,” Ella said, helping Justine put on the spare.

“There was something else, too.… He was scheduled to inspect a mine here on the Rez, but I can’t remember the details.”

They continued working on the tire, and before long saw the lights of the crime scene van approaching,
a tribal cruiser behind it.

“Our team’s here,” Ella said. “Let’s hope this guy left something besides footprints.”

SEVENTEEN

They were able to recover the badly deformed high-caliber rifle slug that had flattened their tire. After passing through the steel belts, the round had flattened against a sandstone boulder beside the road. The other bullet, however, had apparently ricocheted away, trajectory unknown. All they were able to find was a streak of metal on a rock.

After estimating the shooter’s position
based on the path of the bullets, they found where he’d lain on the ground atop the ridge using a boulder to brace his weapon. He’d made his escape across hard, dry ground leaving scuffs but no defined shoe or boot impressions. Even the tire prints of the vehicle he’d used were indistinct.

After another hour, Ella glanced at her watch. Although they’d powered up the generator battery, lanterns
and flashlights were more useful outside the immediate circle of light. Finally it was clear there was nothing left to find.

“It’s time to wrap it up, guys,” she said at last.

After everything was put away, the crime scene van headed back to the highway.

Ella and Justine followed in the SUV, the spare tire now in place. “If you want, you can access my computer at work from here and see what
I’ve got on Kelewood,” Justine said.

Ella shook her head. “I’ll wait until tomorrow for that. Right now I’ve got to meet my kid at her father’s. Give me a ride there, okay?”

“Yeah, no problem,” she said. “Once I drop you off, I’ll see if I can come up with something on the slug we recovered. I’m also going to try and find out where Bruce Talbot and Ross Harrison were at the time of the incident.
Talbot left only about a half hour before we did. He would have had plenty of time to set up the ambush, or if he’s innocent, he might have seen the shooter coming our way.”

Ella nodded. “We have to check it out, but I don’t think either of them would have been stupid enough to do something like this. The motive’s not there.”

A half hour later, Justine dropped Ella off at Kevin’s, a relatively
new home southwest of Shiprock. “You want me to wait and give you two a ride home?” she asked.

“No, Kevin can do that. It’ll give us all a little extra time together.”

Justine was driving off when Kevin came to the door. “Good timing. Our daughter just finished three slices of day-old pizza for dinner. I offered her steak and salad, but she wanted the pizza and iced tea. I figured I’d do better
picking my battles.”

Ella followed him inside, noting that he seemed tired. “It’s quiet,” she said, noting the absence of Dawn’s favorite music.

“She’s in the spare bedroom doing her homework, a term paper she put off to the very last minute,” he said, then took Ella to his study and closed the door.

“I gather things haven’t gone well,” Ella said with a sigh.

He ran a hand through his hair.
“I spoke to her and she knows she messed up big time. She swore she would never do that again.”

“Do you believe her?”

“She knows that she let us both down, and I think she regrets what she did. But I’m not sure of anything else.”

Ella exhaled loudly. “Me neither.”

“I also spoke to her science teacher on the phone. He told me that it’s not that she’s incapable of doing the work. The real problem
is that she’s not taking any notes or paying attention.”

“And ditching school … That’s all going to cost her. She’ll have to forget going to any end-of-the-year parties or get-togethers.”

“That’s a good plan. We both have to clamp down hard on her.”

Five minutes later, they were all in Kevin’s car. Dawn fidgeted in the rear seat. “I’m really, really sorry,” she said in a teary voice.

“I’m
sure you are, but don’t expect either of us to instantly trust you again,” Ella answered. “Once trust is lost, it has to be earned back, and that might take some time.”

“Are you both going to stay mad at me
forever
?”

“We’re not mad. You let us down, and we’re sad and disappointed,” Kevin said.

A thick, tense silence stretched out in the car after that. Ella knew that their battle was just beginning.
Teenage angst and hormones were a powerful force, and those were lurking just around the corner.

*   *   *

Ella was up early the next morning, eager to get started with her day. It was Saturday and Rose was outside gardening. Dawn was in her room, her phone privileges suspended and Internet severely curtailed. The last time Ella had checked on her, Dawn had been working on her term paper, which
was due on Monday. So far, so good.

Justine came into the kitchen shortly after seven-thirty carrying the watercolor Ella had inadvertently left inside the tribal SUV the evening before. “You forgot this.”

“Thanks for bringing it in,” Ella said. As she looked outside, she saw Rose was still busy. “I’ll leave it on Mom’s favorite chair. It’ll be a nice surprise.”

“There’s some interesting news
on the slug. There were some scrapes along the base, which fortunately wasn’t deformed like the tip, and it looks like a reload,” Justine said.

“So the shooter owns reloading gear. That narrows it down to what, several thousand New Mexico residents?” Ella responded. “Do you think we might be able to match the marks to a particular reloading press?”

Justine shook her head. “No, just a particular
spent case, which the shooter took with him. And once he reloads it again…”

“We lose any chance of making a connection. Good work, anyway—the fact that he reloads may help us once we get a suspect. Anything else?”

Justine nodded. “I’ve also brought you a printout of everything I have on Chester Kelewood. Turns out he was the crucial player in a controversy that involved one of the local coal
mines. Kelewood had inspected some heavy machinery, drag lines, and ore trucks, and concluded that they didn’t meet the required safety standards. He reported that the company mechanics were signing off on maintenance work that wasn’t being done. That could have led to a total shutdown of operations for a while, and a lot of jobs were on the line.”

“How did the company running the operation take
that?”

“They were urging the state to give them the all-clear on their equipment. They claimed that the irregularities were all a matter of improperly filled forms—clerical errors, nothing more, and that any shutdowns would only hurt worker salaries and the economy. Kelewood told the company that he was coming back for a second inspection of their operating equipment. He was putting them on the
line.”

“But Kelewood disappeared before that reinspection could take place?” Ella asked, taking the papers.

“Yeah, and here’s the interesting thing. With Kelewood gone, the company mechanics had an extra week to work on the equipment. When Kelewood’s replacement finally came in, he found no violations. A potential fine, which would have been upward of a quarter of a million, was never issued.”

“So, as far as the company goes, his disappearance couldn’t have come at a better time.”

“That’s the way Martha looked at it. She believed that her brother had been taken out of the picture because he refused to look the other way. The problem was, there was no evidence to support that claim with Kelewood gone. Chester’s car was found in a grocery store parking lot just outside Farmington a few
days later, the keys still in it. There was no sign of foul play.”

They arrived at Martha Jim’s home twenty minutes later. She lived near the high school in a residential section populated by Modernists, judging from their homes. Justine parked in the narrow concrete-slab driveway, and Ella led the way to the door.

Martha came to the door before they even had a chance to knock. “I saw you coming
up. Is something wrong, officers?” she asked, looking down at the badge on Ella’s belt.

Ella identified herself and Justine. “Can we come in for a moment?”

“Sure. I’ve got some freshly brewed coffee. Would you like some?” she asked, leading the way to the kitchen.

“That would be great,” Ella said. Familiar routines often helped people relax, and she had bad news to deliver.

“We’re here about
your brother,” Ella announced after Martha had set the steaming cups down on the table.

“I’m surprised the police are finally taking an interest,” she said, sitting down. “Did you find Chester? Is he okay?”

“I’m afraid not,” Ella said gently, giving her an overall report that left out the details.

Tears spilled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her hand. “Who killed him, those people
from the coal mine? I need to know.”

Ella heard the anger in her voice and knew that emotion would help keep Martha from falling apart. She’d seen this before more times than she cared to remember. “We have no suspects or answers yet. We’re still gathering information. That’s why I was hoping you could tell us more about your brother.”

“Chester was a good man,” she said in a heavy voice. “When
my husband was killed overseas, Chester moved in with my daughter and me. He told me it was because he didn’t like living alone, but the truth is, he came to help me. He shared his paychecks with us and made sure we had everything we needed.”

“And he was happy with his life?” Ella asked.

Martha nodded. “He never married or lived with anyone, though he dated sometimes, mostly Anglo women. He
had a fondness for blondes, but there aren’t many of those on the Rez.”

Ella glanced down at the printout she was carrying to double-check her memory. “You reported him missing. Is that correct?”

She nodded, took a sip of her coffee with a shaky hand, then continued. “When he didn’t come home at eight, his usual time, I figured that he’d probably met up with friends and gone out for a drink
at some off-Rez bar. But when I woke up the next morning, I realized he’d never come home at all. That’s when I got scared. I thought maybe he’d been in an accident. I’d often warned him about drinking and driving.”

“Did he drink to excess?” Ella asked.

“When he went out, he had a tendency to have one too many, but if he thought he couldn’t drive, he’d sleep it off in the car. By morning he
was always home.”

“Do you know if he’d been having problems, personally or at work?”

“I don’t know all the details, but my brother was having problems with Stepson Inc. They’re the Anglo company from Wyoming that runs local mining operations here on the Rez. Some of their equipment needed a second inspection because things weren’t right. From what my brother said, they weren’t happy at all about
that. At first I thought they had something to do with my brother’s disappearance, so I told the police. They checked it out and found nothing. Looking back now, I wish I’d pressured the police to keep looking.”

“We’ll be investigating all his contacts, including his business with Stepson,” Ella said. “But we also need to find out more about your brother. Do you know if he ever had any trouble
with another bar patron, or maybe a motorist on the road? Any major or minor incident,” Ella added, “it wouldn’t have to have been a fight.”

“No, there was nothing like that. If there had been, he would have mentioned it to me. People who got in his face really pissed Chester off, and when he was angry he’d prowl around the house like a caged tiger. He wasn’t the kind to hold stuff like that
in.”

*   *   *

They soon left, and on their way back to the station, Ella reviewed what they knew. “Now that we’ve narrowed down a time line, we should try to cross off John Curley as Kelewood’s killer, if at all possible. I doubt he’s going to remember his exact whereabouts every day of late May and early June of last year, but ask him anyway.”

“I’ll take care of it and let you know,” Justine
said.

Ella was about to say more when Big Ed called her on the cell. “I need to see you ASAP,” he said, a sense of urgency in his tone. “How soon can you be here?”

“Ten minutes, maybe less. What’s going on, Chief?”

“I’ll tell you in person,” he said, and ended the call.

Ella glanced at Justine and told her what he’d said. “Step on it, partner.”

They arrived at the station within five minutes.
While Justine went to the holding cells to interview Curley again, Ella hurried down the hall to Big Ed’s office. As she approached, she could hear Sheriff Taylor’s voice inside.

Ella stopped by the open door, knocked, then stepped into the office. “I’m here, Chief.” She nodded to Sheriff Paul Taylor, whom she’d known and worked with off and on for years.

“We’ve got a problem,” Big Ed said,
and slid a copy of the Farmington daily paper toward her from across his desk. The headline was clear: “Snake-eyes Killer Baffles Police.”

“Snake-eyes killer? That throwaway line came from one of the county techs,” Ella said. “The dice is another matter altogether and had nothing to do with the killings. That was part of a police report, and no specifics about what was found at or around the
scene were given out to the press.”