Mourning Dove (15 page)

They moved toward the house, which was shaded by two willows at opposite ends of the rectangular, shingle-covered frame building. Keeping a fifty-foot distance between them, they were able to watch the house and both sides. There was no cover, but they kept moving. As they got close, Ella saw a few chickens wallowing in the dirt in the shade of one of the willows. The birds
rose up and started
to scatter, all in the same direction, toward the shed, which lay closest to her side of the house.

Ella crossed over toward Justine. “If anyone else had come up, they’d have also spooked the chickens.”

“Unless the chickens belong to them, maybe?”

Ella stood still and listened, watching the house and the yard at each end of the structure.

“Somebody’s in the house,” Justine mouthed, gesturing
toward a window.

Ella didn’t see any other vehicle around except for an old pickup with four flat tires and a missing hood. “You saw someone?”

She nodded once. “Curtain moved, and the window is closed.”

Ella, with Justine alongside her, continued toward the door. They got within fifteen feet of the porch when a shot suddenly rang out.

There was a flurry of squawking from the frightened chickens,
then a shaky voice. “Get off my property,” a man ordered. The tip of a shotgun barrel was visible from the left corner of the building. It was pointing skyward.

“We’re police officers looking for car thieves,” Ella called out, crouching low and keeping her sights on the edge of the building. “Put your shotgun down.”

A heartbeat later an elderly Anglo man with long white hair in a ponytail came
around the corner of the building, hands in the air. “Don’t shoot, Officers.”

Ella moved toward the man, but stayed close enough to the building to keep from presenting a target to anyone inside. Passing a window, she ducked down while beneath it, not taking her eye off the owner. The last thing she wanted was to push an elderly man into a heart attack, but there was no way of knowing if he had
someone else in the house—perhaps a son or grandson armed to the teeth.

As Justine watched the other side of the house, and the front
door, Ella gestured for him to approach. “Are you all right, sir?” she asked, seeing fear in the man’s eyes.

“I guess so. What’s going on? Why are the Navajo Police here, off the reservation? Does it have to do with that pickup out by the road?”

“Is there anyone
else in the house?” Ella pressed, sidestepping his question for now.

The man nodded. “My wife. She’s bedridden.” He turned his head and saw Justine peering in the windows.

“No one else is in there, so please don’t upset my wife. If you want to come in and look around, do it, but if you want to check out our bedroom, I’ll have to go in with you. Otherwise you’ll scare my Margo. She’s deaf, too,
and if you just walk in carrying a gun . . . ”

Ella went inside with him, and Justine followed, providing cover, alert to the slim chance that someone was being held hostage. They looked around the rooms quickly, but it was clear that everything was all right. The man’s wife was asleep in bed, obviously alive.

Ella and Justine went outside into the backyard with the old man to make certain no
one was hiding in the barn or shed. The old man showed them everything, explaining himself as he walked from his barn, which contained an old but serviceable-looking pickup, to the shed, which had been converted into a chicken coop. “I fired a warning shot because I’d seen a few people skulking around and figured they were up to no good. They roared up in that big new pickup, then jumped out and
climbed into a beat-up old green van, which had followed them up the lane. I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I went to grab my shotgun. By then, the green van was gone. I kept watch, then you came up and I saw you had guns. I didn’t know you were with the police because you don’t have a regular police car.”

“Sir, I’m sorry. The people who drove up had just stolen that white truck. We were in
pursuit—” Before Ella could finish the
sentence, she heard sirens and two county sheriff’s vehicles raced up the lane.

“I’ll go fill them in,” Justine said, holstering her weapon and bringing out her badge.

“Can you tell me anything more about the people you saw? A description?”

“A man and woman jumped out of the pickup and ran over to the van. There was a driver, of course, but from the angle
and distance I couldn’t tell if anyone else was in there. The man and woman jumped into the van through the side door and the driver backed up the lane to the highway. Then the van drove off toward Kirtland—east. It happened fast, like it was one of those reality TV stunts.”

“Did you happen to notice if the van had any markings?”

“It was a Chevy, all beat up, like I said. The green was more
olive than green, faded, like from the sun, and there were no windows in the back. I remember a lighter, rectangular spot on the side, like maybe a sign had been there at one time, then sanded off.”

Ella gave him her card. “You’ll be asked to give the county officers a statement, and they’ll give you their names and numbers as well. But keep my card. I’d really appreciate a call, too, if you
remember anything else once things calm down a little here. It happens that way sometimes.”

“Okay, I’ll do that.”

After exchanging information with the county deputies, and making sure that the pickup would be held and processed for evidence, Ella and Justine headed west back toward the reservation.

“I want to talk to Albert Tom and Leroy Enoah. Call our PD and find out where they are right
now.”

Twenty minutes later, they met with both men at the station in Shiprock, where they’d been taken to make their statements. Leroy Enoah was in his forties and looked like he took bodybuilding seriously. If he’d been injured in the attack, he certainly didn’t
show any outward signs of it. He was sitting behind the table inside the nicer interview room reserved for victims of a crime, or those
who’d witnessed a crime. The wooden chairs there had cushions on them, and the walls were painted a soft blue.

Ella joined Leroy and offered him something to drink, but he declined. “I can’t believe that they set me up and
stole
my truck! I had to put in some serious overtime to get those wheels.”

“We’ve already recovered your vehicle, but it’ll have to be processed for evidence before you can
pick it up at the sheriff’s station,” Ella assured him.

“Is it in one piece?” he asked quickly, leaning over.

“I think so. All I could see from a quick outside inspection is a little dust.”

He exhaled, then leaned back. “Good. I have insurance, but it probably wouldn’t have covered everything.”

“Can you tell me what happened?” Ella asked.

“I got suckered, that’s what happened. I’ve always
had a soft spot for blondes.”

She’d heard it before, but she’d never been able to figure out why some men turned into instant idiots over the color of someone’s hair. “Okay, so you saw a blonde . . . did she flag you down?”

“Well, yeah,” he answered. “She was waving her arms in the air, and that little halter top of hers was barely covering her breasts—which were large enough to pass for cantaloupes,
if you have to know.”

She nodded impatiently and tried to curb her temper. “Besides the abundant produce, what else did you notice?”

“Not much—my eyes just kind of hovered there,” he said slowly. “Until I heard a noise and saw the guy with the baseball bat or whatever he was swinging. By then, it was too late to duck.”

Ella was tempted to smack him in the head and knock some sense into him.
“Okay. What about the guy who hit you? Was he big, small, short, fat? How about hair color? Was he Indian or Anglo?”

“Dunno. He was wearing a ski mask and leather gloves. Big, like me, wearing a stretchy black T-shirt. I don’t think it was a bat he hit me with, come to think about it. Maybe an axe handle. At least there wasn’t an axe on it. Caught me right across the back and knocked me down.”
Leroy squirmed slightly. “Gonna leave a bruise.”

“Anything else about the guy?”

“Well, he had on shoes, lace-ups. When I went down I saw his feet. They were running shoes, I think. Black or blue, with white laces. That’s it.”

“Okay, I’m going to turn you over to a police artist. See if you can come up with a sketch that’ll tell us something about the woman from the neck up.”

Leroy gave her
an embarrassed shrug. “Yeah, sure, I’ll be glad to help.”

As she left the room, Tache was approaching. “Ella, we’ve got the car they used to draw their victim in. And we now have a photo of the plaster cast made from the tracks of the van that picked up the car thieves—courtesy of Sheriff Taylor.”

“They steal a piece-of-crap car, which they leave behind, and drive away in the stolen truck, while
someone in a van keeps lookout. I think I remember seeing a van on the road when we first responded. All in all we have more than we had before. Progress.”

“With luck, we’ll get prints or hair samples this time that’ll establish DNA,” Tache said.

“I want you and Justine to get in touch with the county crime scene team and see if they’d like your help processing the truck and that decoy sedan.
They know why it’s a priority case for us now, but mention that anyway. In the meantime, I’ll question Albert Tom.”

Ella went into the next interview room and saw someone had already brought Albert some coffee. After exchanging a few pleasantries, she got right down to work. “I need you to think back and tell me exactly what you saw.”

“I was driving home, and saw that blonde babe. I considered
stopping but remembered the warnings about the carjackers from the paper. When I got home, I called the station, then climbed onto the roof of the house to take a look and see if she was still there. I have a ten-power scope on my Winchester, so I could even see the cleav—the woman—really well. Then Leroy stopped, and walked right up to the babe. The next thing I saw was this guy coming around
from behind the car. He nailed Leroy across the back with that board or whatever. For a second, I thought maybe Leroy had made some kind of comment and the husband or boyfriend turned on him. But as soon as Leroy went down, the guy and the woman jumped into Leroy’s truck and hauled ass. That’s when I scrambled down from the roof and called you guys again. The truck whizzed by my house going sixty,
at least. I ran over to check on Leroy, and you drove past me just about then.”

“Tell me about the woman—what you saw through your scope. And the man who came out of the car.”

“The woman had shoulder-length blonde hair, and boobs that would block out the sun. The guy was big-chested, too, but more like Popeye, with big arms and one of those muscle T-shirts. It was a smooth operation and they
were out of there in ten seconds, like in the movies.”

“Pros?”

“Had to be. You could almost hear the stopwatch counting down. Each second was planned.”

“Okay. Thanks for your help.” Seeing him yawn, and noting his drooping eyelids, she added. “You drive here on your own?”

He shook his head. “Naw, Sergeant Neskahi picked us up where it went down, and checked out Leroy. Anyone else would have
needed an ambulance, but Leroy just shrugged it off, like just another bar fight. The sergeant said that when you were done, we should check in at the desk. They’d find someone to take Leroy and me home.”

“Okay. You’re free to go.”

Ella went back to her office, and saw FBI Agent Dwayne Blalock waiting for her. “Nice digs. Beats that old closet you had before.”

“That’s for sure, but I haven’t
been able to spend much time in here lately.” Ella sat behind her desk and looked out the window at the cloudless blue sky.

“I spoke to your partner a few minutes ago. I heard the clunker the thieves used as bait was stolen right outside the owner’s home. It was left parked outside with the keys still in it. They didn’t think anyone would steal it.”

“Justine and Tache will go over it, along
with county. If there’s any evidence there they’ll find it,” Ella said.

“The carjackers have adjusted their M.O. just a bit. They’re operating later in the morning. It was a blonde?”

“With top-heavy attributes,” Ella said and explained. “It worked, I’ll give them that much. The witnesses didn’t take a careful look at anything else.”

“At least this time no one’s dead,” Blalock said. “But the
key may be that no one fought back.”

“He was unarmed, and couldn’t take his eyes off the woman long enough to see it coming,” Ella answered.

“Think I’ll stick around here until the car’s processed. That okay?”

“Sure.” She was about to say more, when she saw Samuel Blacksheep at her door.

“I got a call from Sanders, who said you might be having a run-in with the carjackers. How’d it go down?”
he asked without preamble.

Blalock stood up. “I’ll be with your crime-scene people,” he told Ella, then ducked out the door.

“Sit down, Officer,” Ella said. “We didn’t get close enough to make an arrest, but we were able to recover the stolen vehicle this time. Add to that some new descriptions, a slight change in their M.O., and the possibility that we’ll find something in the vehicles that’ll
help. But I’m glad you came by. I’m having a problem getting
a clear handle on your brother. I need more to go on. You said he’d thought about taking some writing classes, but was there anything else? I understand he was a ladies’ man, so who was he seeing? Anyone around here?”

“My brother had a lot of women in his life—off and on. Women loved to mother him for some reason. We’d laugh about that,
but it was true,” Samuel said seriously. “He spoke of getting married several times—but it was always just talk. My brother wanted to be a writer like I told you, but I don’t think he knew he’d probably need a real job in case that didn’t work out,” Samuel said with a sad smile.

“I have witnesses that claim Jimmy said he had a score to settle with someone when he got back home.”

Samuel’s expression
hardened. “Who told you that?” he shot back.

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

Samuel stood. “I think you’re wasting time on useless speculation that has nothing to do with his death. Stick to the facts you have. My brother was murdered because he didn’t want to relinquish anything to a man holding a gun. Considering where he’d come from, you can’t blame him. Do you have any more information we
don’t already have that I can pass on to my PD?”