Red Mesa (2 page)

Suddenly Ella heard a familiar voice. “Police Officer! Drop the gun!” Justine’s voice was hard and sharp.

Startled, Ella
turned her head to verify Justine’s position and saw a figure approaching from the darkness on the far side of the Dumpster. Instinctively she turned, her aim shifting slightly toward the approaching shape as she did.

“Drop it!” Justine ordered.

Realizing that Justine was mistaking her for the perp, she instantly shifted her aim back squarely on the perp in front of her and called out loudly,
“Justine, it’s me!”

But it was too little, too late. Warned by instinct, Ella spun away and dove to the ground just as a muzzle flashed. A bullet passed inches from her right shoulder.

“No!” Justine cried out, realizing her mistake and running toward Ella.

Ella rolled and came up to a shooting stance to bring her aim back on the perp’s position, but he’d already taken advantage of Justine’s
misidentification and raced back into the store through the rear entrance.

“I’m okay, Justine. Circle around front and cut him off if he tries to get out that way.” When Justine didn’t respond, Ella turned and saw the frightened look in her partner’s eyes. “Really, I’m okay. You missed me by a mile. Get moving. I’ll follow him through the back door. We don’t want a hostage situation.”

As Justine
ran off, Ella hurried to the back door, flinging it open while hugging the doorjamb. The clerk was on the floor beside the counter, his hands clasped over his head as if he were expecting an artillery attack, or immediate arrest.

“He ran right out the front! Get that SOB!” the man yelled, his voice an octave higher than before.

Hearing another two shots out front, Ella raced down the aisle toward
the front entrance. Before she could get there, headlights blinded her and she heard the loud squeal of tires. Knowing this was one battle she couldn’t win, Ella dodged to the left. Sliding on the waxed floor, she crashed into a display rack, causing dozens of paperbacks to rain down upon her.

A heartbeat later, glass flew everywhere as the old pickup she’d parked behind came up on the sidewalk
and crashed through the convenience store’s glass front wall. The building shook and the smell of car exhaust filled the store. In a frenzy of screaming tires, the vehicle veered into a hard turn and raced away.

Ella raised her head and looked up at the chaos. The perp, unable to back out of the parking lot because Ella had blocked his vehicle, had gone forward instead, jumped the concrete barrier,
and plowed through the glass front of the store to gain the space he needed to turn and flee.

Ella heard Justine yelling and cursing outside. Picking her way out of the store across broken glass and scattered merchandise, Ella managed to reach the sidewalk. “Which way did he go?”

The static that had disrupted communications earlier was gone and Justine was on her handheld radio now, calling
dispatch to request additional units to handle the pursuit. After a few seconds, she put the radio into the pocket of her blue athletic jacket. “Look what that sack of manure did to our units.” Justine pointed out a flat tire on her own vehicle, and on Ella’s Jeep.

Her voice was as unsteady as her hands, and Ella considered, as she often did, how young her cousin looked. Maybe it was her petite
size and delicate features, but if it hadn’t been for the oversized-looking handgun in the holster high on her hip, Justine could easily be mistaken for a high school student. “Jeez, how many things can go wrong in one night?”

Ella knew that Justine was still shaken by the realization of how costly her earlier mistake could have been. It was a miracle that Ella had escaped serious injury, despite
wearing a bullet-resistant vest beneath her blouse. But all that had to wait. “Since we can’t follow the perp, we need to question the store owner while everything’s still fresh in his mind.”

Ella turned and looked back at the damage done to the store. The clerk was standing up now, on the phone to someone, perhaps his boss. He was staring at the debris, rubbing the back of his neck and shaking
his head as he spoke.

After they went inside, Ella looked around and realized that the small, family-run store had no videotape security. She asked the clerk about it anyway, hoping she’d missed something.

“Nope, never got around to it. Except for the alarm, my dad can’t afford any of that fancy stuff. And to be honest, it hasn’t been needed, not in the thirty years he’s run this place.” The
clerk, a man in his early twenties, looked around and cursed. “Look at the mess they made.”

“Do you have insurance?” Justine asked.

The young man shrugged. “My dad will know. We’ve never spoken about that.”

“What’s your name, and what happened here tonight?”

“I’m Juan Benally. The guy came in and the second I saw the mask and gun, I reached down and hit the silent alarm. Then he came right
up to me, aimed the gun at my head, and told me to empty the cash register into a paper bag he handed me.”

“The suspect was working alone? There wasn’t anyone waiting in the truck?” Ella prodded.

“I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I only saw the one who held me up.”

“Describe him.”

Juan gave her a long look. “He was about your height, had long hair, too. Shoulder length.” He scowled.
“Heck, he was even dressed like you. A dark brown leather jacket and jeans. Of course, he had a mask, but from the voice, I knew it was a guy.”

Justine pressed the clerk for more answers, but after a few minutes, it became obvious that there was nothing further he could tell them, except how much money had been stolen.

After warning him that he’d have to stop by the station and sign a statement,
they walked back out to the parking lot. Ella went to her Jeep, opened up the back, and started to bring out the jack and spare tire.

Justine went with her. “Ella, about what happened…”

“It was just an accident. These things happen. It was dark, you were expecting someone with a gun, and there I was,” she said quietly. “But from now on, make sure to get a positive ID before using deadly force.
That’s basic, Justine.”

“I know, but I had every reason to believe you were the suspect. I’d pursued him out into the scrub brush beside the store and lost sight of him for a moment. When I heard someone in back of the store, I headed that way. Then I came around the corner, saw a figure who looked like the person I’d been chasing. He turned and pointed a weapon in my direction. I fired just
like I’d been trained to do.

“Ella, you know that it’s not just an excuse, it’s a conditioned response. I’d chased the perp to that spot, then the next thing I saw was a gun aimed at me. I hadn’t lost sight of him for more than a few seconds, and in the dark you looked just like him.”

“You knew I was around.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect to run into you back there, or have you point a gun at me.”

“Justine, how long had it been since you’d lost sight of the perp?”

She considered the question carefully before answering, ignoring a strand of shiny black hair that drifted back and forth across her face in the breeze. “Less than ten seconds. When I saw you, I thought it was him,” Justine replied. “Or maybe it was you I saw all along.”

Ella shook her head slowly. “Something’s not right about
this. He couldn’t have moved that fast. I’d been chasing him for more than ten seconds before he went to ground beside the Dumpster. He couldn’t have gotten away from you and all the way around to the front of the store before I spotted him in that small amount of time, much less gone all the way to the back of the store where we met. Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

“The only
way to explain this otherwise is if we say that there were two perps involved, who looked and dressed the same and also happened to be wearing clothing similar to yours. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? And nobody saw more than one perp.” Justine shook her head. “But something is definitely fishy. Several minutes passed between the time I responded and you arrived on the scene. Why didn’t
the guy make a run for it sooner?”

Ella nodded. “Good point. Yeah, something about this entire thing stinks. We’ll have to keep going over it until we can figure this out.” She looked directly at Justine. “But look, let’s not make a big deal about the near accident, okay? As long as we’re both careful that it doesn’t happen again, we’d be better off moving on to the real issue here, which is
catching the perp.”

Ella knew an incident like this one could cost Justine plenty if it went in her permanent file, and she wanted to give her cousin a break. Justine had worked hard to get to where she was in the department, and a mistake like this would follow her for the duration of her career. Whatever had almost happened, when it came down to it, Ella still trusted Justine’s abilities as
a cop.

“Tone down that part of what happened today in your report,” Ella continued. “Otherwise Big Ed’s going to have a bazillion questions and it’s going to divert everyone from the work we have to do. All things considered, I’d rather focus on the crime, and I think you would, too.”

“All right. And, Ella, it will
never
happen again.”

“I know.”

“How about if I start by asking around about
the robbery and the damaged pickup? Someone out there knows this perp. There aren’t many secrets here on the Rez, and if the robber is a local, we should hear some talk right away.”

“Go for it. By the way, I noticed your radio is working now. What happened before? When I got here I couldn’t hear a thing through the static,” Ella asked.

“It just quit for a while. As far as I know, it’s okay now.”

“I can’t figure out where all the static came from. Reception is not usually a problem in this area, and we were pretty close to each other.”

“That’s true. And I could barely hear you.”

“Walk around the side of the building and let’s see if that’s what was causing the interference.” Ella got into her car and tried calling Justine. This time Justine’s voice came through crystal clear. Ella then
did a radio check with dispatch, which also came through as normal. The inconsistency just added another level to the puzzle.

Ella put her radio away and shifted her attention to changing her damaged tire, weighing what was the most likely explanation for the radio problems, and not liking it one bit.

Justine came back around to the front of the store, then leaned over, resting her elbows on
Ella’s driver’s-side window. “You realize what this means, don’t you?” She continued, not waiting for an answer. “Somehow, the perp must have jammed our radio signals. I sure don’t like any of the other questions that raises, like how he did it, and why he went to all that trouble. This whole thing comes across as more than just a 2-11 if you accept that as a possibility.”

Ella nodded slowly.
“It’s getting late. Give me a hand with my tire, and I’ll help with yours, then let’s both go home. We can fill out the reports first thing tomorrow. Maybe things will be clearer then.”

“Don’t worry about my flat. Let’s get you on the road. Maybe you can still see Dawn before she’s put to bed.”

“It’s too late already,” Ella said, checking her watch and trying to hide her disappointment. “She’ll
be asleep by the time I get there. It’s always that way when we get a call around the end of the shift.”

Justine started to say something, then changed her mind.

“What’s on your mind?”

“I just wondered … I’ve been avoiding serious relationships because I’ve been afraid they’d add too many complications to my life. But is it a lot harder for you these days, now that you have Dawn?”

“Yes and
no. I love my daughter more than I ever thought was possible. But being a single mom with a fulltime career is really frustrating. I try to spend as much time as I can with Dawn, but it’s never enough. It can tear you in two.”

Justine nodded slowly. “I had a feeling that’s the way things would work.” She stood up and moved around to help Ella get her spare into position and secured.

A few minutes
later, Ella pulled out onto the highway, notifying dispatch of her status as she headed south. The events tonight had unsettled her far more than she’d allowed Justine to see. Deliberate jamming of police radio transmissions spoke of an operation far more complicated and deadly than a simple armed robbery of a convenience store.

Although experience told her that her questions would be answered
as the investigation took its course, instinct warned her that things would get a lot worse before they got better, unless they found those answers in a hurry.

TWO

Ella reached home fifteen minutes later. It was after ten and all the lights were off except on the porch. She walked inside silently, locked up behind her, and before doing anything else, peered inside the baby’s room. The nursery was her brother Clifford’s old room, next to her own.

Ella stood in the doorway and watched her eighteen-month-old daughter sleeping. Dawn’s bed these days was
a plain mattress placed on the floor against the wall. She could no longer be kept in the crib because she’d learned how to crawl out of it, and it was a long way to the floor. Ella shook her head. She’d wanted to get her a bed with a guardrail, but Rose wouldn’t have it. Traditionally, babies Dawn’s age slept on sheepskins placed on the floor where they’d be safe from falls. Had Rose had her way
completely, Ella was pretty sure she would have opted for that.

The one totally modern amenity Ella had insisted on was the child’s gate they’d set up at the doorway. The door would remain open, but if Dawn decided to move off the mattress and play, she’d still be confined to that one room, where everything had been child-proofed.

Ella slipped off her boots and stepped over the gate, sitting
down on the floor beside Dawn. She leaned over and brushed a strand of soft black hair away from her daughter’s eyes, enjoying the scent of soap and her baby’s breath, which never ceased sending a feeling of pride that only another mother understood.

Dawn’s tiny arm, which had been tightly wrapped around her stuffed dinosaur, was now relaxed, and Ella gently removed the toy, placing it a foot
away on the mattress, so Dawn could find it again if she woke up.