Shooting Chant (17 page)

“True, but there are many, many others in New Mexico and Arizona. Look at it this way, Jaime. History
has shown us what can happen when we start making lists based on race or religion. So work with us, and buy us some time.”

After a long, silent pause, Jaime nodded. “All right. The paper has a responsibility, too. We can’t ignore that. But I want you to honor your bargain with us.” Her gaze shifted to Blalock. “And it’ll be binding on you, too. Are we in agreement?”

“Totally,” Blalock replied,
then turned to Lulu. “By the way, did you recall anything about your caller that may help us out? Have there been any more calls or contacts?”

Lulu shook her head. “Just what you already know.”

“Do you have any clues or suspects other than the obvious?” Jaime added.

“Not really, it’s just too soon. But we’ve got an interagency team working on the case. We’ll turn up something soon. It’s a top-priority
case.” Ella said.

By the time Ella and Blalock left the newspaper office, the FBI agent was visibly restless. “You know, I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this case,” he said. “The more I think about that note, the more convinced I get that we
are
being jerked around. A first grader could figure out who the kidnappers are supposed to be just on the basis of that note and current events.
So, that means that there’s got to be a reason why the Fierce Ones aren’t taking credit for it openly. If they know people will assume it’s them, why not go the rest of the way and admit it? And if they weren’t prepared to do that, why pursue an action like this that’ll point directly to them? They’ve
got
to know that because of the circumstantial evidence, we’re going to be all over them, whether
they take credit for the kidnapping or not. It doesn’t really add up right.”

“I agree,” Ella said.

Blalock continued. “Is there anything else going on that could tie into this kidnapping? I read about the protest at the tribal offices and know that Yellowhair got the Fierce Ones ticked off when he crossed their picket line, though apparently he did have a family emergency. By any chance did
he make any other enemies that day?”

“Not that I know of, so I guess that leads us back to the Fierce Ones again. I’ll be talking to my brother soon, and maybe he can give us a lead we can follow up on.”

“Would he tell you if he knew his own group was responsible for this?”

“Probably not directly, but Clifford isn’t a good liar, at least around me or my mother. Both of us can tell when he’s
holding back.”

As they headed east toward Highway 666, which would, in turn, lead to the senator’s home, she remembered the last few times she’d visited the Yellowhair family. It had been after his daughter’s death in an auto accident, and the situation had been tense and grief filled. Now she’d have to face Abigail Yellowhair with more bad news. She would have given anything to avoid this, but
she had a job to do.

They’d been traveling for forty minutes when Blalock broke the silence. “Why is everything so far from everything else out here?” he muttered. “It gives a person too much time to mull things over.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“Not for law enforcement, but it is when you think of the criminals. Too much time for them to plan, you know?”

Passing the kidnapping site again, they
headed down the long, gravel road that would eventually take them to Yellowhair’s home. As they left the highway behind them, Ella felt that peculiar tingling feeling that always warned her when something wasn’t right. She tried to pinpoint what was wrong, searching around her from left to right, and in the side mirror.

Picking up her nonverbal cues, Blalock loosened his seat belt, and threw
back his jacket, insuring he had easy access to his pistol. “Should I speed up or slow down. You’re on to something, I can tell. What did you see?”

“Nothing, but something’s not right. Can’t you feel it?”

“My gut instincts have been out of sync from the first day I came to the Rez.” He looked around on his side of the car, alert for trouble.

Ella spotted the remains of a dead sheep near the
side of the road. “There should have been a predator or two near that—or birds, if nothing else. But the carcass is just sitting there for the flies and bugs.”

“Maybe another car passed by recently and spooked them.”

“The road’s pretty straight. I don’t see anything in either direction, do you?”

“No,” he answered his voice taut.

Ella could see dwellings ahead, and several cars parked beside
them. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The senator’s house was off by itself in the distance, on a parcel of land the tribe had provided for his use. When he’d become a state senator he’d hired his brother-in-law to renovate his old house, and now it was an impressively large stucco building with a red tile, pitched roof. It was a display of wealth that always left a bad taste in Ella’s mouth.

Ella considered the possibility that her anxiety was just a reflection of her dislike for Yellowhair. He’d always been bad news as far as she was concerned. But it was more than that, and she knew it. The badger fetish she wore at her neck for protection felt warm against her skin. The logical explanation was that it probably was no warmer than usual, but since she was always more aware of it
in times of trouble, it seemed that way. Yet, no matter how she rationalized it, the fact remained that the fetish had always been an accurate warning sign. To discount it now would be foolish.

They were less than a mile from the senator’s house when she saw movement and a flicker of light from atop a rock on the mesa to her right. “Sniper, two o’clock!” Ella yelled.

Blalock pulled hard on the
wheel just as a bullet cut across the sedan, followed an instant later by another. Ella heard one impact on metal, and another shatter the windshield and rear window almost simultaneously. As the brakes grabbed, the car spun around sideways in the road and came to a stop in a cloud of dust, facing in the direction of the sniper.

Ella dove out the passenger’s door, hearing Blalock do the same
on his side. Suddenly another round passed by her so close that she felt a tug of cloth and the sensation of heat against her skin.

For a moment she thought she’d been shot, but as she hit the ground and rolled into the drainage ditch, she was aware that she wasn’t in any pain.

Pistol out, she took a defensive position behind a low ridge of road grader-formed sand. She heard Blalock, now behind
the car, making a call for backup on his handheld. As she looked down at her arm, a tremor that started at the base of her spine ran through her. She could see a small hole where a bullet had pierced her jacket and passed through between her arm and her side.

“You hit, Ella?” Blalock said. “Say something, for God’s sake!”

“No, but he almost got lucky.” She’d had close calls before, but it was
different now that she was carrying a child, and she was almost sick to her stomach. She was going to start wearing a vest full time now, no matter how inconsequential or routine her day’s work seemed to be at a glance.

Blalock fired off two shots toward the rocks where the sniper had been hiding, but there was no evidence anyone was there now. Silence descended around them. “I would have had
to be lucky as hell to hit that guy. He’s too far away for anything except a rifle and scope.”

“Just in case he’s still around, stay out of sight and don’t give him another shot. Its possible he may have only changed position. We’ll have backup soon, and then we can make our move. Justine is at Yellowhair’s, and should be here any minute now.”

As she finished her sentence, they heard a siren,
and saw a vehicle heading their way from the Yellowhair home.

“Cover me.” Ella zig-zagged back to Blalock’s sedan and dove inside. Reaching for the radio mike, she instructed Justine to go straight up the mesa, then yelled for Blalock. “Jump in, Dwayne. We’ll cover her.”

Blalock got back inside the sedan, which was still running, slammed down hard on the accelerator and sped uphill. “The sniper
may have missed, but he did deliver his message,” he said, glancing over at the hole in her shirt.

“Yeah, but what exactly was his message?” Ella asked. “Was it a warning not to question Yellowhair’s family, or a warning against looking into the case at all?”

“You’re overanalyzing, Clah. I would have said it was his way of letting us know he wanted us dead.”

She smiled. To the point—that was
Blalock’s style. “The one thing I’m sure about is that there’s a connection between the kidnapper and the sniper. Otherwise he wouldn’t have known we’d show up here.”

Before long, several patrol units were involved, and a countywide manhunt was underway. Roadblocks were established, and the entire force was put on alert.

Ella and Blalock managed to locate the place where the sniper had been
from the obvious impressions in the sand where he’d laid, prone. But clues were scarce, except for some distorted footprints.

“He did a really good job picking up after himself,” Ella said, looking around for spent brass cartridges and finding none. “Unless we can recover at least one bullet, we won’t even be able to identify the caliber of the weapon he used.”

“There are vehicle tracks here,”
Justine said, pointing them out to Ella. “They lead down to that farm road, and then probably to the highway. From the size of the tread pattern, it’s a pickup or SUV, and the tires are pretty new. I’ll have a make and model, with luck, in a few hours,” Justine said. “Can I use your reference material?” She looked over at Blalock.

“I’ll fax my tread patterns to the station ASAP,” FB-Eyes agreed.

“There’s one clear boot-print here among the rest,” Ute said, as he crouched by a soft sandy area near the gravel-filled ground at the top of the mesa.

“Size ten,” Blalock said, studying it. “Pretty common around here.”

“But we can probably get a brand name. Those ridges on the heel look distinctive,” Ella said, crouching by it. “Every little piece helps.”

“Are you trying to bolster your own
spirits, or mine?” Blalock shot back.

Ella resisted the urge to kick dirt onto his expensive wing tips. FB-Eyes had mellowed, but he could still be one colossal pain in the neck when he chose.

“He may not have left us much to work with, but we’ll get him,” Justine said. “Maybe one of the roadblocks will get lucky. He probably didn’t throw away that rifle, and it’s hard to hide one in a vehicle.”

“I don’t want to rely on luck. I need you to scour this entire area. Find something else we can use,” Ella growled.

“If it’s here to find, we’ll find it,” Justine said. “But this was done by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“You know we’ll do our best,” Ute added.

“You guys always do,” Ella said more gently, realizing she was starting to push the others a little too hard. She had confidence
in those working with her, but things had taken more of an edge for her now. She was locked in a battle with an unseen enemy and it was a battle she had to win—for her sake and that her of her child’s.

TEN

Ella led the way back to Blalock’s car, determined not to let anyone sense her frustration. “Let’s see what kind of damage your sedan took.”

“Hopefully it won’t have to go into the shop for more than a day. The bureau can take forever to supply me with a loaner.”

Blalock approached the sedan, concern in his eyes. He crouched by the passenger side and studied the bullet hole, which had penetrated
behind Ella’s door and out the driver’s side. “This one must have hit us just before we swerved to the right. The other went through the front and back windshields. The third, you know about personally.”

“We have to find a way to get Abigail Yellowhair to talk candidly to us,” Ella said.

“Will that be a problem?” Blalock’s eyebrows rose.

“My problem has always been with the senator, not his
wife, so let’s see how things go. Justine, I’m sure, already picked up some useful information for us, though it was probably all hearsay or off the record.”

“If you trusted Officer Goodluck to go question the family, why are we going up there, too?” Blalock asked.

“The reason Justine can get information for us so successfully is because the Yellowhairs see her as a friend more than a police
officer. If I don’t interview Mrs. Yellowhair, they’ll start to distrust Justine and I’ll lose the advantage she gives us by soliciting unguarded comments.”

They arrived at the stucco, Spanish-style house a few minutes later. Ella signalled for Blalock to wait with her in the car.

“Don’t tell me that someone living in a pretentious place like this one is trying to pass themselves off as a traditionalist,”
Blalock scoffed. “I thought any display of riches was frowned upon.”

“Yeah, I thought the house was a bit much myself the first time I saw it, but the tribe supported him when he said he needed it to be this way. He argued that he would have to entertain many influential state politicians here, and his home had to be the kind an outsider would automatically respect.”

“So, if he’s really just
a pragmatist who tries to fit into every crowd, why are we waiting?”

“Courtesy. It can sometimes gain trust. I’ve always thought that Abigail leaned toward the traditionalists, despite her husband’s work.”

A moment later a tall, slender Navajo woman came to the door and waved at them to approach. She was dressed in a long, dark blue skirt and a simple tunic blouse woven loosely in gentle yellows
for summer. It was fastened at the waist with a concha belt. It was a relaxed style, but it gave her an air of elegance and an undeniable sense of presence.

Ella met her by the door, and then followed her inside, Blalock a few steps behind them.

“I’ve been expecting you to come by,” Mrs. Yellowhair said to Ella, then included Blalock in that statement with a glance.

“I’m sorry that every time
I come it has to be under such difficult circumstances,” Ella said, remembering the last time.

Abigail nodded, her face serene. “When do you think the kidnappers will free my husband?”

“I don’t know,” Ella answered, determined to be as honest with her as possible. Abigail deserved that much from her.