Edge of Dawn (11 page)

He settled into the chair behind the desk. Studied the colors swirling and combining like a mad creation by Jackson Pollock. He couldn't put it off any longer. With another sigh, he picked up the wireless receiver and started making calls. Cassutt wanted to host a Washington mill-and-swill and needed funds. Richard okayed it. Kenzo, the CFO, wanted to fly in from Tokyo and meet with him. The Japanese man's voice sounded grim, and Richard desperately wanted to postpone the meeting, or fob him off on Lumina's COO, Dagmar Reitlingen. Instead he reminded himself that the buck stopped with him, and he said okay. He jotted down the date on a piece of paper to give to Jeannette. He then applied himself to the stack of papers on his desk, only to be interrupted by a soft knock on the office door.

It was Joseph. “We need to leave for the airport.”

Richard checked his watch. “Right.” He wasn't sorry to abandon both the office and the paperwork.

 

Chapter

SIX

I
N
the distance, Shiprock thrust its jagged pinnacles toward the sky as if some ancient power had placed a stone pipe organ in the middle of the desert. Richard peered through the front window of the helicopter and felt awe.

“The Navajos call it
Tse Bit' a'i,
rock with wings,” Jerry, the helicopter pilot and a Desert Storm vet, called over the headphones.

Richard nodded, the beat of the chopper's rotors a thrumming in his chest. He sat in front next to Jerry, while Joseph, his dark features serene, sat behind them, a duffel bag containing a shotgun and a submachine gun at his feet. The sword hilt gouged at Richard's lower back, and he shifted in the seat.

Beyond the mass of red sandstone that dominated the space, distant peaks, blue tinted, edged the horizon in all four directions like rampart walls defending the basin. Immediately below, the scrub brush, blasted brown by summer heat, clung doggedly to the tan dirt. In the distance, Highway 491 made a black scar on the face of the desert. A red pickup, looking like a toy from this height, drove in splendid isolation. Such vastness and emptiness left Richard momentarily longing for the green of Rhode Island and the blue of its lakes and the bordering ocean. He knew he would never return home; there was nothing there to return to. But at odd times he found himself afflicted with homesickness.

“Where are we landing?” Richard asked.

“Near the senior center,” Joseph answered. “There aren't a lot of choices out this way.”

“Really? Looks to me like we've got hundreds of miles of choices.”

“Not if you want to be anywhere close to town,” Jerry said. In the west, monsoon thunderheads were building, lightning jabbing at the earth beneath. “We want to land before that hits,” he added, a frown between his gray brows.

The helicopter had seemed small. Now it seemed a fragile soap bubble caught between rock and fire. A few more minutes and the town came into view. There didn't seem to be a lot of houses or trailers. What there was, was a long, wide main street lined with a multitude of fast-food restaurants, a few unidentifiable buildings, and some banks. Smaller roads snaked away into the desert, but only for a block or two. As they drew closer, more details came into focus. Virtually every car on the road or in the parking lots was a pickup truck. People looked up as the helicopter pulsed overhead.

A gust of wind made the copter yaw, and Richard grabbed for a handhold, but Jerry was unruffled and set them down in a dirt lot next to the senior citizen center. The rotors slowed and stopped. Richard pulled off the headphones and opened the cockpit door. The wind swirled into the helicopter, carrying the scent of dust, rain, and fried chicken. In the distance, the sky muttered to itself. A car, a big dust-covered Cadillac, pulled out of the center's parking lot, drove down the shoulder, and came jouncing across the dirt lot toward them. Richard slipped behind the tail of the copter and laid a hand on his gun. Only when Joseph walked forward to talk to the driver did Richard relax.

Joseph beckoned, and Richard headed to the car. “We'll leave as soon as I'm back,” he said to Jerry.

The older man pointed at the threatening clouds. “Only if that lets us.”

Joseph held open the door against the buffeting wind and Richard climbed in. He leaned forward across the front seats and held out his hand to the driver, a broad-shouldered man with his hair in a traditional rolled queue bound with a white cloth. He also wore a Washington Redskins baseball cap. “Hi, I'm Richard Oort.”

“Wendell Benally. So, we're goin' to Henry Yazzi's?”

Richard checked his notes on his iPhone. “Yes.”

“They're not in trouble, are they?”

It was an echo of what Richard had heard on the Cahuilla reservation. It depressed him to think that the arrival of a white man always meant trouble to these native peoples. “No, not at all. I'm a police officer, and we have information for Mosi Tsosie about what happened to her family.”

“They all got killed by that crazy kid. What else is there to say?” Benally grunted.

“Well, we have a bit more insight into what happened. I thought she should know.”

“Hmm, not how cops usually act.”

There was no possible response. They drove north on the main drag of Shiprock. Past a KFC, presumably the source of the smell, a Taco Bell, a McDonald's, a Domino's Pizza, and the largest Laundromat Richard had ever seen. Most of the male population seemed to be teens and younger and over sixty. There was a wider age range among the women. Richard's impression was of sleek black hair, T-shirts, and blue jeans. Occasionally there was a flash of deep blue as an older woman in the heavy traditional velvet skirt and blouse, loaded with turquoise jewelry, flashed by.

“Was this a traditional encampment?” Richard asked, making conversation.

“Nah, it was founded in 1903 when the government built a school and agency here.”

“Oh.”

“And we don't call it Shiprock. We call it Naat'
á
anii N
éé
z.” Richard repeated the words, trying to wrap his tongue and palate around the unfamiliar syllables. Benally gave a short laugh. “Not bad for a white eyes.” He laughed again. “Now you see why they used it as a code during World War Two. My grandfather was a code talker,” he added with pride. “They're almost all gone now.”

“That's sad,” Richard said.

Benally shrugged. “That's life.”

The road took a sharp curve to the right, and they crossed over a river. A sign identified it as the San Juan. Richard could see where the river had originally flowed, hundreds of yards wider, but irrigation and drought had reduced it to a narrow blue ribbon. They crossed a modern bridge, but on the other side the traffic crossed over an old steel truss bridge. Benally turned left on Hephaestus Peak Road. They passed a police station and a run-down mission called the Power Place. At the top of the bluff, Benally turned left down a small paved road. Well, it was paved only if a person was generous. The edges had been nibbled away, and the center of the road was a collection of potholes.

They passed a corral with a pair of tired-looking horses standing head to tail and swishing flies. A trailer with nine cars and trucks in various states of disrepair parked in the dirt yard out front. Then they reached a cinder-block house painted bright blue. The tin roof was adorned with thirty or so old tires. Richard wasn't sure why. Nestled among the tires, a large, rusting swamp cooler thrummed and clanged as it tried to beat back the heat.

As in Tecolote, there were a lot of dogs, and they began caroling when he and Joseph stepped out of the car. The noise brought a heavyset woman to the front door. Richard put her in her forties. The high cheekbones of her Amerind genes struggled to be seen in a round, fat face. Her expression was tight and closed off as she watched Richard and Joseph walk toward her.

“What do you want?”

“Mrs. Yazzi?” There was a stiff nod in reply. Richard flashed his badge. “I'm here to see Mosi Tsosie.” He found the name hard to say with the three
s
sounds, and he flushed with embarrassment.

“FBI said we all done with that,” came the unencouraging reply.

“This is the final follow-up, and we have information that we thought would be a comfort to Mosi,” Richard said. Sweat was breaking out in his armpits, and the August sun beating down on his bare head made him feel faint.

“That girl's crazy. Maybe crazy as her brother. She smashed the screen on our computer. Tried to smash the computer screens at the library.”

“I may be able to help with that,” Richard said.

Her face closed down even more. “We're gonna have a medicine man do a sing.” The message was clear:
We
don't need
your
help, White Eyes.

“If I could just see your niece, please.”

The leading edges of the clouds rolled over them, and the temperature immediately dropped twenty degrees. Lightning flared and thunder snarled overhead. The woman reluctantly stepped aside, and Richard and Joseph entered the house. The furniture was fairly new and of better quality than Richard had expected. “Your husband isn't here?”

Mrs. Yazzi shook her head. “He's on a roustabout crew out in the gas fields round Farmington. I'll get Mosi.”

They waited in the living room. Joseph leaned in close. “Is your telling her she was right going to help or hurt her, sir? She can't go through life smashing computers.”

Mrs. Yazzi and the girl returned before Richard could answer. She was a graceful child and seemed very tall for her age, which from the file Richard knew to be nine. Long black hair fell almost to her waist; arching eyebrows accentuated the almond shape of her dark-brown eyes, but they were wary.

She spared him only the briefest of glances before looking away. Thin wrists thrust out from the sleeves of a too-small blouse, and her blue jeans were a tad too short. She did have the new craze in tennis shoes—pink lights in the heels flashed in the storm-darkened room as she shifted from foot to foot.

“If we could talk privately,” Richard requested.

“I'll be in the kitchen,” the aunt said.

“Mind if I get a drink of water?” Joseph asked.

A nod of permission, and they left the room. Richard and the girl contemplated each other. Unlike other children Richard had known, she didn't speak. The silence stretched on and on. Some of that was no doubt her own nature, and the trauma she'd endured, but it was also a hallmark of her culture. His first year in New Mexico, Richard had sung in the choir at the Lutheran church. One of his fellow choir members was involved in a musical outreach program to the Pueblos and reservations, and he'd helped out for a few months. One of the performances had been at a Navajo boarding school southwest of Shiprock, a place called Sheep Springs. One of the teachers had warned them not to expect applause or comment. “
If they really like it, they may gather around and want to touch you,
” she had warned.

That had been the case. Richard had sung Mozart and Schubert lieder, his tenor voice echoing off the gym walls, while his accompanist contended with an old upright piano whose upper B wouldn't sound. Each song was met with total silence from the stone-faced audience, and he wondered what earthly relevance this music and his presence could have to these children. After he'd finished to an awkward silence, and the teacher had dismissed the students, he'd found himself surrounded by a sea of children and reaching hands. They'd ruffled and tugged at his white-blond hair, touched his hands and his face. There had been a small amount of chatter in Navajo, and then they had flowed away and vanished, emulating the summer rains on the desert outside.

Well, it was going to be up to him to start. He took a breath. “First, let me tell you how sorry I am about your family.” There was the smallest twitch of the muscle at the corner of her mouth, the start of a grimace quickly suppressed. “And I want to tell you that you were right. There
were
monsters in your brother's computer, and they're what caused your brother to murder your family. I saw them.” It seemed harsh, but grief calls when he'd been an active-duty cop had taught him that euphemisms actually weren't kind. People wanted truth and they wanted it unvarnished.

That shocked her into reacting. Her eyes widened, her breath quickened, and she clasped her hands and pressed the clenched fists against her belly. “No. You couldn't have. They hid from the…” And she used a Navajo word.

“Does that mean FBI?” She shook her head.

“Police?” Again the head shake.

Richard took another stab. “White men with badges?” This time she nodded.

“I saw the face, and I sent it away and destroyed the computer,” Richard told her.

“Not crazy,” she whispered, as if talking to somebody not in the room.

“No,” he said firmly.

She looked up at him, not a long way since she was only about a foot shorter than Richard, then she burst into tears. His first instinct was to enfold her in a comforting hug, but there was a pride and strength to this child along with her culture that made him hesitate. Instead, he stepped to her side and touched her lightly on the shoulder and found her arms wrapped around his waist, her face pressed against his chest, slim body shaking with sobs. He patted her back and murmured the usual platitudes.

“It's all right. Go ahead. You can cry. You're safe now.”

After a few minutes she stepped back, scrubbed at her wet face with her hands, and looked around for something to wipe her streaming nose. Her arm was just coming up so she could use the sleeve when Richard pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. She studied the folded piece of white cotton and linen embroidered with his initials, and dabbed carefully at her cheeks and eyes.

“It's okay, you can blow your nose.”