Changing Woman (6 page)

“I was right beside you when the sniper fired, but you
were his target,” Justine said, voicing Ella’s thoughts. “The stop sign was on your side.”

“Maybe it was a random decision.”

“I don’t think so. My guess is that somebody with a grudge is gunning for you.”

“You could be right. I’ll make a list of my known enemies, and we can check on those people first,” Ella said.

Justine left Ella,
intending to work in her office on the crime-scene report, but returned a few minutes later, paper in hand. “This just came in on the fax. Artie, one of Jeremiah Manyfarms’s twin sons, escaped from a federal prison in California.”

Ella noted that Justine’s hand was shaking as she handed her the bulletin. Artie had been one of the men who’d kidnapped her and cut off her finger in an elaborate
plan to frame Ella last year.

“Don’t let them get to you, cousin.”

“Easier for you to say.” Justine’s eyes blazed with fire. “That ordeal is over as far as you’re concerned, but I’m still paying for what happened.”

Ella glanced down at the fax. The twins, twenty years old now, had apparently used the fact that they were identical to confuse the guards. It had taken a fingerprint comparison
to confirm which of the two was missing. The escape had gone undetected until a few hours ago and, in that time, Artie would have had plenty of time to fly to New Mexico and take a shot at her.

“I think we just identified our sniper,” Justine said, voicing Ella’s thoughts.

“We don’t know for sure that this was Artie’s work,” Ella said slowly.

“Sorry, but I don’t buy it as an amazing coincidence.”
Ella nodded. “It’s true that all the Manyfarmses hate my guts. They blame the department, and especially me, for their troubles, especially now since we busted the lot of them and sent them to prison.”

“If Artie Manyfarms is our sniper,” Justine said, “he’s
acting alone now. Jeremiah Manyfarms was placed in a different lockup in the Midwest because the authorities felt he was too dangerous to
put into the same prison as his sons. What we’re probably seeing is a plan the twins hatched up to exact revenge, as opposed to their father’s more sophisticated schemes.”

Ella was considering Justine’s words when she heard someone knock on her open door.

“Hey, Ella,” Dwayne Blalock smiled as he walked into her office carrying a large duffle bag. “Justine,” he added, nodding to Ella’s assistant.

“It’s one in the morning. What brings you here now?” Ella asked with raised eyebrows.

“I just heard about Artie Manyfarms. He’s gone fugitive”

“Yeah, we got the fax.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t find out until
after
the sniper incident?” Blalock asked.

“Yeah.”

Dwayne Blalock hadn’t changed much physically since Ella had first met him during the investigation of her father’s death several years
ago. The tall senior FBI agent had grown a little thicker around the middle and his brown hair was now tinged with gray, but otherwise the years had been kind to him. Known as FB-Eyes to the people on the Rez, a nickname he’d earned because one of his eyes was brown and the other blue, he sometimes put in longer hours than Ella did. If he had a personal life, Ella certainly didn’t know about it.

“Deputy Marshal Harry Ute is already en route to New Mexico from California. If Artie Manyfarms has returned to the Rez, we’ll catch him before long.”

The news about Harry’s return cheered her up a bit. It would be good to see him again. Lately, her thoughts often turned to her former special investigations team member. There was a new awareness between them these days that was sexy and exciting.
She’d hoped for
a chance to be around him and see if the spark she’d felt last time was still there.

“Harry will catch up to you sometime tomorrow. And Ella, what have you got by way of a vest?”

“Department issue. You’ve seen them.”

“That’s not good enough—not anymore.” He unzipped the duffle bag, and brought out a thick, black bullet-resistant vest that looked more like a ski jacket. “I’m
going to give you this on loan. It’s a new model with better ballistic properties and designed to be worn on the outside. It passes for a winter jacket, but it’ll stop most rifle-caliber rounds outside a hundred yards,” he said. “Not tremendously comfortable, mind you, but who cares, right?”

“Thanks, Dwayne. I appreciate it.”

Once she was alone again in her office, Ella sat back in her chair
and closed her eyes. Her stomach was still in knots. That had been a very close call tonight and, despite Blalock’s intent, no vest could stop a highvelocity fifty-caliber bullet—at least none she’d ever seen. And if it was a head shot...

Ella took a deep breath, then let it out again, staring down at her hands and willing them not to tremble. Now that she was a mom, incidents like tonight’s
shook her up more than ever. Yet leaving the department was not an option. Despite her responsibility to her daughter, she also had a debt of honor to pay the tribe who’d financed her education and her training. The tribe needed its cops, and Ella knew she was exactly where she belonged.

Dawn deserved to grow up proud of her mother and to know that she’d always stood for the right. It would be
testimony enough of a life well spent, and would speak for her long after she was gone, and serve as an example of courage to her daughter.

As the phone rang, Ella focused back on the job. It was Big Ed, calling from home. He’d been notified about the shooting by the watch commander, and wanted to
know all about it. Ella began to go over the evening events, minute by minute, with her boss. A
time for work and a time for family, that was the way to walk in beauty.

Despite the late hour, Ella got busy at her computer terminal checking through police data files and the federal crime base for a hit on a sporting goods store, or a collector. Very large bore target rifles weren’t in great demand, so it wasn’t long before she found a likely connection to the sniper attack.

Hunter’s Emporium in Farmington had reported the theft of a fifty-caliber telescope-equipped
target rifle, a night scope, and fifty rounds of match ammunition. The video camera at the establishment had captured the fleeting image of a tall, slender man wearing a mask, but no ID was possible. A second parking lot camera showed the thief leaving in a metallic gray late-model pickup. The vehicle tags had been stolen as well.

Justine came in a moment later. “I retrieved the file on Artie
Manyfarms. He still has a lot of relatives in this area, including his mom in Gallup. I also read that he and his brother have years of experience in hunting and competitive shooting. Artie was the better shot of the two.” She paused. “Ella, for what it’s worth, my money’s on this guy.”

“Contact the Gallup police and the McKinley County Sheriff’s Department. We need to put Mrs. Manyfarms under
surveillance,” Ella said.

“She’s remarried now, her name is Sanchez.”

“Make sure she’s watched twenty-four/seven,” Ella said, standing up to stretch and yawn. “After that, go home. We need to get at least a few hours’ sleep. We have to report to work early in the morning.”

“Deal.”

About a half hour later, Ella walked out of her office. She was dead tired and, to make matters worse, she was
getting that odd sick feeling at the pit of her stomach—the kind that usually meant things at work were going to turn to complete and utter crap soon.

The way Ella figured it, by tomorrow morning Rose would know all about what had happened. It was inevitable, even if she didn’t notice the extra patrols Big Ed had ordered around their home. On the Rez, secrets were as rare as hen’s teeth. After
that, Ella could expect Rose to be furious with her for at least a week. The risks associated with police work always affected her deeply, and anger was Rose’s way of dealing with it.

Trying to push back the gloominess she felt, Ella allowed her thoughts to turn to Harry. She’d invite him for dinner the first chance she got. At least it would help put her mother in a better mood.

“Harry, come
soon. You’re my only hope,” Ella whispered as a cold wind blew around her. Realizing that she was talking to herself, and convinced she’d lost her mind, Ella got into her unit and drove home.

Ella woke up with a start as a pan, then another, clattered to the floor. She could hear the radio blasting in the kitchen, giving the weather report with the same old forecast—cold and dry. Ella squinted
against the first rays of sunlight, trying to orient herself. The clock on her bedstand said it was 6:45.

With a groan, she placed the pillow over her head and tried to go back to sleep. Within seconds, another pan clattered loudly to the floor.

Dawn came into the bedroom holding her stuffed dinosaur.
“Shimasání
angry,” she whispered.

“What happened? Did you do something?” Ella muttered sleepily,
her eyes semiclosed.

Dawn shook her head.

“Sweetie, let me sleep a while longer,” Ella begged, curling up beneath the covers.

The radio in the kitchen changed stations and suddenly country music blasted down the hall. Ella groaned. Who was she trying to kid? She wouldn’t get any sleep. This was Rose’s revenge. “Mom!”

There was no answer.

Accepting her fate, Ella got out of bed wearing her
ancient Shiprock Chieftains sweatshirt and wool socks. The wood-and-coal stove in the living room, one they’d added to supplement the butane heater, already had a fire going inside and the house was warming up slowly.

Ella padded into the kitchen while Dawn remained in the living room to play with her toys.

“Mom, show some mercy,” Ella pleaded.

“Oh, are you up?” Rose had to speak loudly to
be heard over the radio.

Ella turned the music down, then sat, lowering her head to the kitchen table, using her folded arms as a pillow. “Mom, I didn’t get to bed till after three,” she croaked. “What are you doing to me?”

“Your daughter gets up at six-thirty in the morning. I was taking care of her,” Rose snapped, making scrambled eggs in the old iron skillet.

“Fine. Then if you have everything
under control, I’ll go back to bed.”

Rose scraped the scrambled eggs out of the skillet onto a plate with a large metal spoon, banging the spoon against the skillet to dislodge a few chunks of egg. It sounded like the stamping machines at a steel mill. Ella stopped at the door and groaned loudly. “Mom, I swear, just one more loud noise, and I’m going to arrest you for disturbing the peace.”

Rose glowered at her. “You may be a cop, but I’m your mother. I outrank you. Now explain why you never bothered to tell me that someone was trying to kill you!”

Ella rubbed her eyes. Rose must have heard about the sniper incident already. It had to be a new Rez record.
The only thing she could figure was that there’d been early news reports on the radio or a piece in the Farmington paper. “If
you’re talking about the sniper—”

Rose glared at her. “If you’re not even sure what I’m talking about, there must be a lot more going on you haven’t told me.”

Ella returned to the table and plopped back down in her chair. This was going to be a long morning. “Mom, what did you expect me to do, wake you up at three in the morning to give you a full report? I’m sure you would have slept real well
after hearing that. Come to think about it, maybe
I
would have managed to sleep late. We could have had this fight then.”

Ella was fully awake now, glaring at her mother.

Rose shrugged. “I see your point, but that doesn’t mean I have to like hearing about you being in danger. Do you have any idea who did this?”

Ella wondered why she hadn’t taken a firmer stand on this issue years ago. Maybe
it was because she’d been raised not to fight with her parents. “We’re still trying to find out what happened. Someone took a shot at me, and then I learned that one of the twins from that conspiracy last year has broken out of prison. It’s very possible that he’s the one who came after me.”

Rose sat across the table from Ella and studied her daughter’s expression. “But you have your doubts about
that, don’t you?”

Ella nodded. Her mother read her like a book. “From a logical standpoint, he’s a really good suspect. He’s got a motive—revenge—and had enough time to have stolen a weapon and come looking for me.”

“Your intuition is more reliable than your logic. It’s your gift.”

Ella knew what her mother meant. It was all tied to her family’s past and the strange legacy that had been handed
down through the generations. Her brother, Clifford, was said to have inherited leadership qualities and a remarkable gift for healing. Ella’s special ability was
said to be intuition. But those who believed in that legacy never took into account the years of study Clifford had dedicated to becoming a medicine man, nor all the training Ella had obtained as an FBI agent, then as a cop. The. legacy
held more appeal because there was nothing either glamorous or magical about hard work.

“I don’t know, Mom. I just have the strong feeling that we need to work slowly and not accept any of the easy answers that present themselves.”

“In the meantime, will you be wearing that heavy armored vest I saw in the living room?”

Ella nodded, vaguely remembering leaving it there last night as she’d made
her way through the house in the dark. “It’s a loaner from FB-Eyes.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot. I think you should know that early this morning at around five, an officer drove by, stopped, and aimed his searchlight all over. He took a good long look at our house before driving on,” Rose commented.

Ella looked up at her in surprise. “I slept right through it. My boss ordered extra patrols just to
make sure there’s no trouble.”

Ella finished breakfast with Dawn on her lap, glad to be with her girl for a little longer today even if it had cost her some extra sleep. She had a feeling that she’d be putting in some very long hours during the next few weeks.

Leaving Dawn with her juice cup in front of the television to watch a children’s program on the educational channel, Ella showered and
dressed. By the time she walked down the hall, ready to go to work, she heard her mother in the den. Ella went to find her.