Naked Edge (27 page)

The horrifying words--words that no traditional Dine would willingly speak--forced their way into her mind, leaving her dizzy, sick, shaking.

Skinwalker.

Even as she told herself that skinwalkers didn't exist, that they were nothing more than a superstition, that a bit of old bone couldn't hurt her, she felt a chill of foreboding settle in her stomach.

GABE HAD JUST written down the cross streets near the second of five pay phones in downtown Boulder when he heard Kat gasp. It took only a glimpse of her bloodless face and wide, terrified eyes to get him on his feet. "Kat? What is it?"

She held out a hand as if to keep him from coming any closer, even as her legs gave and she sank to her knees, her gaze still fixed on whatever it was that lay on her open palm, her breathing erratic.

"Kat, talk to me. What's wrong?" He knelt beside her, wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her, and leaned forward, trying to get a better look at whatever she was holding. It looked like a ... bone.

A human bone. The distal phalanx of a human finger, to be specific.

He drew her tighter against him and reached for a piece of paper, which he folded like a taco shell in his hand. "Drop it in here, Kat. Drop it in here. It's evidence."

Slowly, Kat tilted her hand, the small bone rolling off her palm and onto the paper. "D-don't . . . Don't touch it!"

"I won't. I don't want to get my prints on it." He set the piece of paper with its grisly burden on her desk.

The rest of the I-Team had noticed something was wrong and gathered on the other side of Kat's desk, whispering in hushed tones.

Matt leaned in for a better look. "What is it?"

"It looks like some kind of bone," Natalie answered.

Gabe kept his voice calm, only too aware of Kat's trembling and her fast, irregular breathing. "Sophie, call your husband or Darcangelo. Ask them to send over a couple of detectives. Is there a break room or a staff lounge anywhere?"

Tom's voice came from behind. "Bring her to the executive conference room. It's got a sofa she can lie down on. Alton, get Chief Irving on the line while you're at it. This bullshit has gone far enough. I don't want another member of my staff getting hurt."

Rage building in his chest, Gabe drew Kat to her feet. Limp as a rag doll, she leaned against him, her face still deathly pale. "Let's get you to the conference room so you can rest for a minute."

Kat walked, took a few steps, letting him guide her, then she froze and looked down at her hand. "I need to wash my hands. I need to wash--"

"Okay. I'll take you to the women's room first."

Natalie appeared beside them. "I'll come with you."

Kat drew back from them. "You shouldn't touch me. Neither of you should touch me."

"Don't be ridiculous!" The words came out harsher than Gabe had intended. He tried again. "I'm not letting go of you. I don't want you to faint and hurt yourself."

Natalie linked her arm through Kat's. "In case you've forgotten, I'm from New Orleans, voodoo capital of the United States. It's going to take something more macabre than one little old bone to scare me."

Gabe met Natalie's gaze, grateful for her help. He wondered what it was about the bone that terrified Kat so much. He knew lots of cultures had taboos about death and dead bodies. Was it something like that, or did these things hold some darker meaning for her? And not for the first time, he found himself wanting desperately to comfort her and not knowing what to say or do.

"THE BONE LOOKS human to me and very old, but I'm no expert. We'll get these to the lab and see what the forensics team has to say."

Feeling tainted and unclean despite five minutes of hand washing in hot water, Kat watched as Julian, still wearing gloves, held up the plastic evidence bag in which he'd placed the bone, examined it under the fluorescent lights, then passed the bag to Police Chief Irving, an older man with a bristly white crew cut and big belly. She wished neither of them had touched it, though she supposed their gloves and plastic bag gave them a measure of protection.

It can't hurt them. It can't hurt anyone. You have a college degree, Kat! Stop being superstitious, for goodness sake!

That was easier said than done. Until she'd realized what she was holding, Kat hadn't known exactly how much of a grip the old stories had on her. If someone had asked her yesterday whether she believed in skinwalkers, she probably would have laughed. But one piece of bone was all it had taken to prove that she didn't know herself as well as she'd thought she did.

No sooner had Natalie and Gabe gotten her to the women's room than her stomach had revolted. She'd spent the next ten minutes in a bathroom stall throwing up while Natalie offered her reassurance from the other side of the door. When her stomach was finally empty, she'd felt weak and shaky, but the worst edge of her fear was gone. She'd scrubbed her hands until they were red, unable to wash away the unclean feeling.

When at last she'd left the women's room, she'd found Gabe standing just outside the door, a worried look on his face. He'd held out a disposable coffee cup. "Chamomile tea. It will help calm your stomach."

And it had.

But now, seeing the bone again--incontrovertible proof that someone wanted her to die--she found herself once more growing queasy, her hand seeming to burn where she'd held it.

Frowning with concentration, Chief Irving looked at the bone, then set it down on the polished conference room table. He met Kat's gaze, his eyes filled with the weariness and compassion of a man who'd seen too much. "I can see how getting a bone in the mail could be frightening, but I think this means something different to you that it does to us. Can you help us understand?"

Feeling both embarrassed and afraid, Kat glanced around the table from Chief Irving to Julian, who sat across from her, to Tom, who sat at the head of the table, to Gabe, who sat beside her. "It's . . . It's not something we talk about." Her body gave an involuntary shiver. She folded her hands tightly together in her lap, trying to keep them from shaking.

"Take your time," Gabe said, resting a hand reassuringly over hers.

"No Navajo person would willingly touch anything dead. It's one of our strongest taboos. Bones, bodies, even the bodies of animals--they're unclean." She searched for the right English words. "Traditional Navajo believe that there are . . . that there are those who walk among us ... witches disguised in the skins of humans or animals. They might take strands of your hair while you sleep and work evil on them. Or they might take an arrow, a bead, or a piece of ... of bone . . . and shoot it into you. We call them . . . skinwalkers."

She could barely say the last word, her heart thudding. "You grow sick or go mad and then die. The only way to cure the sickness is to ... find and kill the witch."

Find and kill the witch.

That sounded good to Gabe. If he ever got his hands on the son of bitch behind all of this, he'd be only too happy to pull the trigger. He'd seen Kat gravely injured and in pain. He'd seen her devastated by grief. He'd seen her afraid for her life. But he'd never seen her like this--shaken to her very core.

Irving picked up the plastic bag and examined the contents again. "By sending this to you, they're trying to cast some kind of spell on you?"

"Or trying to tell me that I'm cursed, that I'm already as good as ... dead." Her voice dropped to a near whisper. "It's hard to explain."

Tom, who'd been silent and busy taking notes, looked over at Kat. "Are skinwalkers common to all American Indian cultures?"

Kat shook her head, her gaze fixed on her hands. "Only Dine. Only Navajo."

"So whoever sent this knows you're Navajo and knows it would upset you." Irving shifted his gaze from Kat to Tom and then to Darcangelo. "It seems to me we ought to consider the possibility that the person behind these death threats and yesterday's shooting is American Indian--someone who knows Ms. James and is familiar with Navajo beliefs."

Gabe could see from the troubled expression on Kat's face that the idea was upsetting to her. "Not necessarily. With the Internet, anyone could find out about skinwalkers."

Or Navajo sexual mores, right, Rossiter?

"Good point." Irving nodded. "Still, it's something we ought to consider. Ms. James, is there anyone who comes to mind who might have done this, anyone in the American Indian community?"

"No, not in the Indian community." She shook her head. "I don't know any Navajo in Denver, and everyone I do know loved Grandpa Red Crow, too. They've been praying for me, hoping I'll get to the bottom of this."

"What about non-Indians?"

Kat's gaze met Gabe's as if seeking his guidance. "I . . . I don't have any proof, but Officer Daniels, the officer who pulled my hair, made the decision to raid the
inipi
. He was the first officer to respond when we found Grandpa Red Crow, and he was one of the first officers to respond to the shooting yesterday. Every time I looked his way, he was . . . watching me."

"I can corroborate that." Gabe then filled Irving in on everything he knew about Daniels, including the complaints he and Kat had filed against him for excessive use of force and Feinman's apparent attempt to get Gabe to withdraw his complaint. "It was clear to me they were trying to cover for him."

Irving seemed to consider this, then he turned back to Darcangelo. "What have you and Hunter learned from the Boulder boys?"

Darcangelo shrugged. "The Boulder PD is being territorial. We had one hell of a time getting the locations of the city's surveillance cameras, and we still don't have the report from yesterday's shooting. So far, we've been polite, but ..."

"Really? You? Polite? That's a first." Irving raised an eyebrow. But Gabe wasn't fooled. He could feel the affection between the two men. "You have my permission to be yourself. This has spilled over into our jurisdiction now, and that means I want everything they've got going all the way back to the raid on the sweat lodge."

Darcangelo grinned. "Yes, sir."

"In the meantime, we need to keep you safe, Ms. James. Where are you currently staying?"

"I'm staying at Gabe's house in Boulder, and he's acting as my ... bodyguard."

"Are you satisfied with that arrangement?"

Kat nodded. "Yes."

"Mr. Rossiter, do you think you're up to it?"

"Yes, sir." Gabe filled the chief in on his experience and tactical training, feeling oddly like he was in a job interview.

He was grateful when Darcangelo vouched for him. "I worked with him when we were chasing Hunter. Rossiter here is rock solid."

They spent the next several minutes debating whether Kat was safe enough at his place or whether she ought to be set up in a police safe house under twenty-four-hour DPD surveillance or secreted in a hotel. In the end, they agreed that she was probably safe at Gabe's--with a little additional plainclothes police surveillance that Chief Irving promised to provide as soon as possible, jurisdiction be damned. Gabe found himself both liking and respecting the old man.

"One last thing: secrecy." Irving looked over at Tom, who'd sat silent through most of the meeting. "Ms. James will need to keep her location secret, and that means not sharing it with anyone outside this room. It also means limiting her time in public or in the office. We don't want to give the perpetrator an opportunity to follow her home."

Tom turned to Kat. "James, take what you need to work from home."

"Okay." Kat still looked deeply shaken, and it took everything Gabe had not to put his arm around her. "And thanks, everyone. I'm grateful for your help."

With that, the meeting was over.

Tom left the room with Irving. Darcangelo picked up the two evidence bags--one holding the bone, the other the envelope in which the bone had been mailed--and dropped them into a much larger envelope. "Hunter was sorry he couldn't make it. He and the rest of the SWAT team are doing some kind of training exercise today. You know how those SWAT boys just love to play with their toys."

That made Kat smile. "Thank him for me. And thank you for coming. I know this isn't the sort of case you usually handle."

"Hey, it's no problem. You're family to us, Kat." Darcangelo walked around the table and ducked down to kiss Kat on the cheek. "Call if you need anything, got it?"

She nodded. "Thanks."

Darcangelo met Gabe's gaze. "I'll be in touch."

Gabe waited till he and Kat were alone, then he gathered her into his arms. She leaned into him, as if he was the only thing keeping her on her feet, and he knew she was near the edge. "Let's get your things together and get you home."

CHAPTER 18

"ARE YOU OKAY?"

Kat buckled her seat belt. "Yeah."

She stuck the key in the ignition, turned on her headlights, then slowly backed out of the parking space, aware Gabe was watching her.

"Why don't you let me drive?"

She shook her head. She needed to drive. It would distract her, give her something to do, help her feel in control again. "I'll be fine."

But the moment she said it she knew it was a lie. She could barely think in a straight line, let alone drive. She felt sick, shaken, confused. And suddenly Gabe's house in Boulder seemed a million miles away. She slipped her truck into park and squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back her tears. She heard the passenger door open and close, and then Gabe was there opening her door, unbuckling her seat belt, smoothing her hair from her face. "It's going to be okay."