Red Mesa (31 page)

“Blalock found some shells from a .45, but no sign of the third man or a vehicle.”

“I don’t think anyone’s inside Branch’s house unless they came on foot, and I doubt there was time for that,” Ella said.

“Well, there’s no other car around here except Branch’s SUV. And there’s no garage or outbuildings big enough to house one. The orchard’s got nothing but trees, and I didn’t spot a vehicle in any of the surrounding fields.”

“Then let’s get back and help the others search.
The third car has got to be around somewhere,” Ella said.

“He may have already changed the tire, or just driven it on the rim until he was out of the area, depending on how desperate he was. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a vehicle down by the river.”

Ella started to get inside her unit, but stopped when he spoke again.

“By the way, Ella, you shouldn’t have engaged in conversation with him. You
practically told him we had solid evidence and were ready to arrest him.”

“No, I didn’t. I was just applying a little bit of pressure, hoping to persuade him to talk.”

“Just don’t do that again. If this is linked to Officer Goodluck’s death, it’s a Bureau case, and we’ll dictate the way things go down.”

As he returned to his sedan and drove off, Ella’s temper spewed to the surface. The little
strutting peacock! The officer fired upon was part of the SI team and this was her turf. She knew how to deal with a jerk like Branch better than the agent did.

As she mentally reviewed the hard-nosed way he’d handled questioning Branch, she suddenly realized something. Up to now, Payestewa had seemed almost too laid-back to be a federal agent, but in there, he’d shown his true colors. Paycheck,
as the others called him, had disappeared. There had been a hard edge to Payestewa as he worked the case that she’d never seen before. One thing was clear: there was more to this guy than met the eye, and it was obvious he’d been hiding behind a carefully developed smoke screen.

Ella drove back to where Blalock had suggested they meet, then joined the others in an all-out effort to locate the
third vehicle. Eventually Sergeant Neskahi was able to spot where the old sedan had been hidden. The disturbed ground indicated that the driver had driven on the rim for a short distance, gone down below the ditch levee out of sight, then had run back and wiped out the vehicle tracks as well as he could.

“He must have changed the tire down here,” Neskahi pointed out. “The darkness hid him well.
He drove out once he saw I’d passed by.”

As they walked back up to the road where their own vehicles were parked, Ella looked at Tache. “How soon can you develop the photos you took of Branch and the other two?”

“A few hours, but I’ll have to mix up fresh chemicals first and it’s late and I’m tired. We’d all be better off if I waited to do that in the morning. I may have to really play with
the exposure and the development time to get a good image. I guessed at the exposure because I had to use the telephoto lens.”

Ella glanced at Blalock, who nodded. “Okay. Morning will do,” she said.

“Call me as soon as you have some prints ready,” Blalock said.

“Done,” Tache said.

As Tache moved off, Payestewa looked around and then expelled his breath in a hiss. “Look, we didn’t find anything,
and there are no guarantees that Tache’s photo will be worth anything to the investigation unless we can ID one or both of the other players. Let me try to get a court order to tap Branch’s phone.”

“On what grounds?” Blalock asked. “That one of us saw him meeting with two men? Remember that Tache’s story stipulates that the third man shot at him
after
Branch left.”

“It’s a matter of presenting
it to the right judge,” Payestewa said, looking at Ella.

Ella had a feeling she knew what he was up to, but she remained quiet. If her guess was right, Payestewa had looked into Justine’s background very carefully. In fact, a man like him probably hadn’t stopped there. Instinct told her that he’d probably researched all their backgrounds equally as thoroughly.

“No judge is going to give you
a warrant to tap Branch’s phone based on what we have, no matter how charming you think you are,” Blalock said. “We need Tache’s photos. Then we can take
that
to a judge.”

“By then our window of opportunity may be gone.”

“Not at all. We’ll just have to get a record of all incoming calls made to Branch’s home and to the radio station where he works and follow them up.”

“We can circumvent all
this waiting if we approach a judge who’s as motivated as we are to see justice done. Then, if the shooter contacts Branch, we can make our move right away.”

“Which judge do you have in mind?” Blalock said. “It sounds like you know a perfect candidate for the job.”

“I do. Judge Goodluck.”

“When did you find out about my cousin’s grandfather?” Ella asked.

“A few hours after I was told I’d be
working this case. I believe in doing my homework,” Payestewa answered.

“Have you met this judge?” Blalock asked Ella.

She nodded. “He’s helped us in the past. He adores … adored … my cousin. But my coming along when you make your request won’t help. Her family doesn’t trust me at the moment.”

“I’ll take care of it then,” Payestewa said.

“Do you know where he lives?” Ella asked.

The Hopi
agent nodded. “I have his address. I’ll handle this, then get back to both of you.” He looked at Neskahi, then at Blalock. “Do you think we should have someone stake out Branch’s place and see if anyone shows up?”

“We’ll have to take a pass on that for now,” Blalock said. “From the looks of it, the moon’s going to be behind the clouds for hours. That means visibility is going to be poor, and
the night scope is back in Shiprock, locked up in my office.”

“I’m not used to having all that government technology,” Sergeant Neskahi reminded them. “I’ll find a good hiding place to keep watch up close.”

“One-man surveillance? I don’t know…” Blalock said slowly.

“Joseph can call in at regular intervals on my cell phone. If we don’t hear, we come running,” Ella suggested, handing Neskahi
the phone. “I can also check with the sheriff’s department and see who has this patrol area tonight. I can request that the officer stay relatively close by unless he has to answer a call.”

Blalock shook his head. “No. I’ll call the sheriff’s and let them know it’s my operation.” He looked at Neskahi. “Call in every hour.”

“Okay, but who do I call?” Neskahi looked at Ella first, then at Blalock.

Ella said nothing. With Dawn sleeping, she was hoping that Blalock would take it himself, but she didn’t want to beg off if she was needed.

Blalock looked at Ella, then shook his head. “It’ll have to be me, folks, for the same reason as before.”

“No problem,” Ella answered.

As they headed back to their vehicles, Ella felt the knot in her stomach. She was in a situation where she wasn’t supposed
to be trusted. Blalock had cut her some slack, but he was still bound by protocols.

Even during her years on the outside, she’d always felt a sense of belonging by identifying herself as part of a law enforcement team. But now her fellow officers were being forced to treat her like a suspect. She tried to push back her own sense of betrayal knowing that they were only doing their jobs. Yet logic
did little to silence the outrage that pounded through her with every beat of her heart.

TWENTY

They met in Tache’s darkroom the next morning. The prints were drying on a makeshift line. The photos had been taken through an infrared viewer, and were more detailed than any of them expected. But the only person they could identify was Branch. The other two men never turned face-on to the camera, or even presented a good profile.

“I’ll run this by Judge Goodluck, along with a copy
of Officer Tache’s report of the shooting. He cut us a break by giving us a court order when we asked for it, so this should help convince him that he made the right decision,” Payestewa said.

Ella watched him carefully. When it came to business, Payestewa also knew how to play politics. The more she dealt with him, the more convinced she became that they’d all underestimated the young Hopi agent.
They’d taken him at face value, and with Payestewa, that was a very small part of the true picture.

“I got the list of telephone numbers we wanted from the phone company this morning,” Blalock said. “The only calls Branch gets at home are from the radio station, some relatives in the area, and three of his known associates, including the station manager and the producer of his radio program.”
He looked at Payestewa. “I want you to check all those people out.”

Ella said nothing, guessing that Blalock approved of Payestewa’s attention to detail when doing background checks.

Payestewa looked at a notebook he’d produced from his jacket pocket. “The calls Branch gets at the station include a lot of kooks and reactionaries his show seems to bring out from beneath the woodwork. The few
we managed to identify as Indians living in the area don’t match those in the photos, judging by height and overall shape. Their vehicles also don’t match the descriptions of the ones that Tache spotted. One Navajo, a professor at the Shiprock branch college named Jeremiah Manyfarms, called him on the air at least three times and tried to pressure Branch to contribute funds to a youth program that’s
being run here on the reservation. Manyfarms appears legit, though. Doesn’t even have a traffic citation since moving here from California.”

“I’ve met Manyfarms. He’s working with Wilson Joe on those youth programs, and has approached my brother concerning visits for his group with a medicine man. And Neskahi called me before he finally went home this morning, confirming what you probably already
know. No one came to pay Branch a visit last night,” Ella said. “I told him to catch up on his sleep before coming in. I also checked the nearby gas stations to see if anyone came in to purchase a tire, but I didn’t have any luck.”

“This guy knew enough to keep his cool and elude us. I don’t think he’s careless or stupid. My guess is that he’s either going to lay low or has already left the area,”
Payestewa said.

Blalock looked at Ella. “If any of us turn up something useful, I’ll let you know. But from this point on, we have to keep your involvement to a minimum. This is getting to be high profile, and Big Ed wants to see you actively working on something other than this case. I spoke to him last night. Some of the politicians are putting an incredible amount of pressure on him. They
want him to take your badge and gun until Justine’s case is resolved.”

“All right. Consider me out of this then,” she said.

Ella left the two FBI agents and Ralph Tache and walked back to her office. The station’s day shift was just getting started, so she’d have to make it a point to avoid Blalock and the others. It didn’t take much to get people talking, and from the sounds of it, things were
difficult enough for the chief already.

Ella looked at her caseload, which had diminished to practically nothing with the arrest of Jimmy Begaye. Making a spur-of-the-moment decision, she decided to visit Jeremiah Manyfarms. Maybe he’d had some contact with Branch other than on the phone, and could suggest some other avenue of investigation for them. It wasn’t her case, but she could help herself
a lot if she could find something that would effectively muzzle Branch for a while.

First Ella called up Wilson Joe, who she knew worked with Jeremiah sponsoring the teen groups that met on campus after school.

“He’s here today,” Wilson verified. “Right now I think the professor is trying to get the basketball coach to donate some of his time to practice with the kids.”

“Professor Manyfarms
is really dedicated, isn’t he?”

“It seems like it,” Wilson replied coldly.

Ella smiled. Wilson was just being himself, jumping to conclusions and seeing her interest as a personal one. She should have let him stew, but she didn’t have the heart.

“I want to talk to him because I think he may be able to help with a case I’m working on.”

“I heard that you’ve been taken off your cousin’s case.
Is that true?”

“Yes, but I’m still keeping tabs on it.”

“From your tone, I gather things aren’t going well?”

“It’s a difficult investigation,” she answered, knowing that she hadn’t given away anything. All it meant was that Wilson’s imagination was on overdrive.

“Watch out for Jeremiah Manyfarms, Ella. I’m telling you this as a friend. He isn’t all he seems to be.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Wilson paused for a few moments. “He’s trying too hard. This youth program is a terrific idea, but he’s constantly pushing both the kids and the sponsors. It’s become almost an obsession for him.”

“So he feels strongly about keeping kids out of gangs. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing—it’s the way he goes about it. He’s too controlling. Everything has to be done his way, according to his plans
and his schedule. His attitude is all wrong for a Navajo. One person shouldn’t presume to make all decisions for a group.”

“You know he’s been away for years living in California. Things are a lot different there. It sometimes takes time to get back into the groove here on the Rez.”

“You’re not identifying with him because you spent time away, too, are you? You two are nothing alike, believe
me,” Wilson said.

Ella smiled, glad that he couldn’t see her reaction. It would have only ticked him off.

“I’ve got to run, Ella. I’ve got a class in a few minutes.”

After saying good-bye, Ella hung up. The trip to campus would help her relax. It was hard to dwell on her problems on such a clear New Mexico day.

By the time she arrived, she was eager to get started. Ella knew the Shiprock campus
pretty well, and drove around to the visitors’ parking area. From there she walked to the gym, but as she approached, she saw Jeremiah enter the portable building adjacent to it. Ella followed him inside a few moments later. As she stepped through the open doorway, she saw Jeremiah writing on a portable chalkboard.