Chee made good on his promise to Officer Bigman.
The captain was at his computer, as expected, with the usual stacks of paper on his desk. Chee summarized his thoughts on the Chinle crime spree and the possible Shiprock connection.
“I think the recovery of that bolo was a breakthrough. I want to interview the old gentleman about the burglary, and the granddaughter is worth talking to, too. I know the team leader there, Lieutenant Black. It will be easier for me to handle that side of the investigation than it would be for Bigman.”
Captain Largo spread his hands on the desktop. “Talk to Black before you do anything. He’s been looking into the link between gangs, burglaries, and drug traffic out there.”
“I called him this morning. He said he welcomes all the help he can get. Bernie wants to follow up on the flea market angle because she talked to Mr. Natachi.”
“Fine. We’ll keep Bigman busy closer to home.” Largo shifted in his chair. “Did you and the Lieutenant discuss the rookie?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That kid was lucky he didn’t get beat up any worse.” Largo frowned. “Between us, I’m surprised Bernie hasn’t taken a swing at him. But that’s not her style, is it?” He didn’t wait for Chee’s answer. “Has she talked to the Lieutenant about her issues with him?”
“You’ll have to ask her, sir, but I don’t imagine so. She tends to handle things herself.”
Largo looked at the pile of folders on his desk. “You doing anything else I should know about, Chee?”
“No, sir.”
“OK then, get to work.”
Chee considered his approach before he called the number he had for Mr. Natachi’s granddaughter. He dialed from his cell phone instead of the office. When the mechanical voice came on, he left a message. “Hi, I’m Jim, Bernie Manuelito’s husband. I’ve got a question for you. Can you please give me a call?”
He followed up with a text, did some paperwork, and called her again an hour later, this time not leaving a message. Then he phoned Bernie out on patrol.
“Hi. Where are you?”
“On the way to deal with a possible case of child abuse.” Largo had asked her to come in early to cover for the rookie again. Chee heard the undertone of dread beneath her usual cheerfulness. He couldn’t blame her. He hated those calls, too.
“I’m going to Chinle to follow up on the burglaries. Do you know where Mr. Natachi lives? And do you have a phone number for him? All I have is the granddaughter’s.”
“I can’t help you, but I know Mama can.”
So he called Bernie’s mother. Mr. Natachi, she told him, did not have a phone. She didn’t know the address, but he lived outside of Chinle toward Canyon de Chelly, past the last turnoff and beyond the Spider Rock overlook. His house sat off a dirt road, across from a couple of cattle guards. She described the view of the mountains. “He says it’s not close to anything, and that’s why he likes it. He lives in a small home his daughter brought in behind the main house where Ryana and the boyfriend are, or maybe it’s just her now. I’m not too sure about that boyfriend.”
“Ahéhee’.” Chee figured he could find it from her description.
“How was that pie my daughter made?”
“Good.”
“Did she burn the crust?”
Chee thought about how to answer. “The peaches were perfect.”
Mama laughed. “That one tries to do too many things at once. You tell her to come and see me, and I will show her how to take it out of the oven in time.”
After he hung up, he remembered that he should have asked about Darleen. Next time.
Chee enjoyed driving, especially when it involved interesting places on the Navajo Nation, and even more when Bernie sat next to him. The trip to Chinle took about two hours. He got there in time to catch Black before he left on a call. They went to the break room to talk.
“Have some coffee if you want.” Black handed him an empty mug inscribed with the word “Wildcats.” “I made it, so it’s at least half decent.”
Chee poured a cup and took a seat.
Black joined him. “So some of our stolen jewelry is finally turning up?”
“It was just one piece, but it makes me wonder if other stuff stolen from here is winding up in our backyard. I want to get your off-the-record take on the situation.”
Black explained that the burglaries had his team baffled. “The stolen merchandise hasn’t been recovered. The problem started with a few reports in April and has been steadily on the increase. Whoever is doing this seems to know their targets. Until you called, I hadn’t heard of any merchandise showing up in Shiprock. I appreciate whatever help you can offer with this.”
Chee sipped the coffee. “The link to the flea market was a lucky break. If my wife, Bernie, hadn’t been there—she’s an officer, too—and picked up on it, we wouldn’t have had the lead. The old man showed her where the booth was, but by then, the guy was gone. Bernie got a decent description of the flea market seller and she’s following up on that.”
“He got spooked and folded his tent. They sell from tents?” Black laughed. “Who’s the guy who got his bolo back?”
“A Mr. Natachi. You know him?”
“Herman Natachi?” Black pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “He’s the old gentleman who came by the station a couple of weeks ago to report some missing jewelry. I remember how polite he was. He couldn’t say for sure when his bolo had disappeared. He had an invitation to a relative’s graduation from college in Tsaile last month, and that’s when he realized the bolo he wanted to wear was gone.”
Chee considered what Black had said. “Sometimes elderlies forget things.”
“You’re right, but from the rest of the conversation and the way he described the missing bolo, his memory seemed fine.”
“Did he lose more than the bolo?”
“No. He had a ring in the dresser next to his bed, and he mentioned a ketoh. They were still there. You don’t see those old pieces so much anymore.” Chee knew a ketoh was a wrist guard, like an oversized bracelet, from the days when hunters used a bow. “And he had a fancy rodeo buckle on display and no one took it.”
Black stood. “Let me find the paperwork to be sure I’m remembering this right.”
The lieutenant returned a few minutes later with a folder. “This is all in the computer somewhere, but I wanted to show you exactly what he wrote. The handwriting says something, too.”
Chee leaned toward the open folder. He had dealt with enough challenged elders to recognize the way problems showed themselves in shaky or illegible handwriting. Mr. Natachi’s penmanship was graceful and solid.
Black chuckled. “Some of the younger officers coming in now would have trouble reading this.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They aren’t teaching cursive writing much anymore. My daughter just prints and types. But she’s learning to speak Navajo in class and that’s important. You can’t expect the schools to do everything.”
Chee closed the file. “You know Ryana, his granddaughter, called us and said the old man made all this up.”
“She called you?”
“She called Bernie, actually, and denied that he was a burglary victim.”
Lieutenant Black closed the folder. “That’s the Ryana who lives out that way toward the canyon, maybe with a boyfriend. She’s Navajo but with a Mexican-sounding name. Flores, Fresquez, something like that. That must be who you mean, right?”
Chee nodded. “Did she come with Mr. Natachi when he made his complaint?”
“No.” Black paused. “I remember her because years ago some boyfriend was beating on her and a neighbor called about it. Of course, when the officer got there she didn’t want to talk and said she got that split lip from walking into a door. The boyfriend was nowhere to be found. Later, I heard he was married and went back to his wife.”
Black brought the conversation back to the burglaries. “We don’t have any leads. They target jewelry and electronics in the break-ins, stuff that’s easy to sell for drugs. They’re careful. No one sees anything, and they don’t leave fingerprints or other clues we’ve been able to work with.”
“Anyone ever interrupted them?”
“Not yet. Not that I know of.”
“And none of the goods have turned up?”
“Not until now. We have surveillance at the flea markets in the area and at those roadside sales that pop up around here. No luck.” Black closed the folder and stood. “Say hello to Mr. Natachi for me.”
Chee recited the directions Bernie’s mother had given him.
“Sounds about right. It can be hard to tell what’s a road and what’s not out there. The main house, Ryana’s place, is along a little wash. You’re lucky it hasn’t rained. It gets slick because of the caliche. Watch out for loose horses. Good luck.”
Chee started the green-and-white SUV and headed from Chinle out toward Canyon de Chelly. Tséyi’, the place deep in the rocks, made his heart sing. Sacred country, a refuge, a quiet oasis even with van and jeep tours taking visitors into the canyon to see the pueblo ruins. He viewed this landscape as a living reservoir of the spirit tied to stories of the People’s emergence into the glittering world as they transitioned to five-fingered creatures. No matter how many times he saw the canyon’s buttes, spires, and mesas, they never failed to move him to a state of peace.
In contrast, he thought of those who had lived here during the time of General James H. Carleton, Kit Carson, and their soldiers and pictured the terrible scene as homes and crops burned and fruit trees were destroyed. He felt the sorrow of terrorized families forced to abandon the very heart of Dinetah and to make the Long Walk.
The canyon stirred many emotions. The songs he had learned in his quest to become a hataali rose in his memory. He drove into the parking area, opened the door to the morning’s heat, and walked the trail to the end of the Spider Rock overlook. Magnificent. He said a prayer of gratitude and added a request to Spider Woman for protection for himself, for Bernie, for all their fellow officers, for every good person they shared the world with.
He stood in the sun, happy to be alive.
Back in the SUV, his thoughts turned to the case and the interview ahead with increased clarity. It troubled him to think that someone, most likely Navajo since this was Navajoland, would steal from an old man, especially in the vicinity of such an important landscape of the spirit.
He attended to Mama’s directions and made a right turn off the pavement just past the mile marker she mentioned. He headed south over a succession of hard-packed dirt roads that didn’t deserve the name. With only a few wrong turns, he found a house with a smaller home behind it. A tan sedan and a battered orange and white truck from the 1980s were parked alongside the main building. As he dodged the ruts and craters in what could have been a driveway, he noticed the dry gray tumbleweeds, shredded plastic bags, and yellowed newspapers that had collected around the pickup.
There were no vehicles near the smaller house, but that didn’t surprise him since Mr. Natachi probably wasn’t driving anymore. Also missing were the dogs that alerted rural residents to arriving visitors. The late morning was quiet; he could barely hear the traffic on the canyon overlook road.
Chee sat in his unit for a few minutes for the sake of courtesy, and when Mr. Natachi didn’t appear, he climbed out of the SUV. As he walked toward the house, he noticed a tire track in the sand. From years of habit he bent down to look more closely, finding a spot where the tread was nearly smooth.
He knocked on the front door. He waited and then spoke loudly enough to be understood over the radio inside. “Mr. Natachi, it’s Jim Chee from Shiprock. Your friend Bernie’s husband.”
Chee rapped again. He spoke louder this time. “Hello, sir. Are you in there?” When no answer came, he tried the knob. The door opened.
The room’s warm air smelled faintly of fried onions. The radio had switched from country music to a weather report: continued hot and dry. He moved through the doorway, stopped, and called again more forcefully. “Mr. Natachi, it’s Jim Chee. I’d like to talk to you.”
Noise from the radio was the only response.
The housekeeping here reminded him of his own home in the pre-Bernie days, when he survived without her propensity for having everything in its proper place. It had a casual man-living-alone look to it. Not exactly messy but hovering on the line. A coffee cup with a bit of dark liquid at the bottom sat next to a jar of peanut butter and an open box of saltine crackers. On top of a pile of papers, Chee saw an advertising circular for hearing aids with the name Herman Natachi on the label, quick reassurance that he had come to the right place.
Chee stepped toward the back of the house, where he assumed he’d find the bedroom. Based on his experience, he prepared for the worst but hoped to see an empty bed.
“Mr. Natachi. Mr. Natachi?”
The room was empty, the bed made. No sign of a disturbance, just a pair of brown-framed reading glasses and a leather-bound book on the table next to the bed. Chee felt the stiffness flow out of his neck and shoulders. On a shelf across from the bed he noticed a beautiful belt buckle, a prize for roping someone had won at a rodeo ten years ago. If he was like most people, Mr. Natachi kept his jewelry in the bedroom, and sure enough, on top of the nightstand Chee saw the bolo tie with the silver tips Bernie had described.
In the old days, some people used the pawn system for safeguarding valuables. Chee remembered his relatives going to the pawn shop to rescue their favorite turquoise necklaces and silver belt buckles for special events, then re-pawning them. In his grandparents’ days, people had nothing much in their homes to steal and the rare pilfering was handled among the clans, not by the police.
Chee wrote a note on his business card, asking for a call, and wedged it between the screen and the front door. He might have guessed wrong about Mr. Natachi and driving. Or maybe the old gentleman had a buddy who picked him up—that would explain the fresh tire track. He ruled out a trip on a horse; neither this house nor the one nearby had a corral.
He decided to check the nearby house to talk to Ryana before he headed to Chinle. She might know where her grandfather was. Maybe Mr. Natachi himself had stopped in for coffee and Chee could interview them both.
He opened the door to his SUV and realized the July morning had heated the interior to pizza-baking temperature. He relocked it. The walk would do him good.
The sun, glaring from a cloudless sky, had begun its daily job of baking the already desiccated landscape. He remembered the times he’d been in Washington, DC, in the summer, where trees blocked the sky, a monotony of green dominated the color scheme, and the thick air left a sticky residue on your skin. In his opinion, brown held more interest. A person could see the bones of the earth out here. He felt at home.
Like Mr. Natachi’s place, the larger house also seemed deserted. A shade covered the front window. A plastic bowl half full of water sat on the porch, but, again, no dog barked. He rang the doorbell, waited, then knocked. He studied the door frame, where a large spot of what looked like blood stood out, red against the white paint, at about shoulder height.
He rapped again, louder and more persistently. “Ryana? Everything OK in there?”
Then he heard a voice behind the door. “Grandfather?”
“No, it’s Jim Chee.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Manuelito’s son-in-law. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“Open the door so we can hear each other better.”
“I can’t talk now. I’ve got to go to work, my ride is on her way.”
“I see blood out here. Are you hurt?”
“Blood?” The space on the other side of the door drew quiet.
“Where do you work?” Chee felt sweat accumulating in the places where his hatband touched his skin.
“At the senior center.”
“I saw a car out there. Why do you need a ride?”
“Oh, that’s my boyfriend’s. He’s not here right now or he’d drive me.”
“I’ll give you a lift. We can talk in the car. My unit has air-conditioning.”
“Oh, what the hey.”
The door opened.
He’d seen a lot of surprises in his days as a cop, and this was another. Ryana was almost as tall as he was, something around six feet, with jet-black hair that fell to her shoulders in a neat, blunt curtain. She had sparklingly clear dark eyes and, as far as he could tell, perfect skin. She wore jeans that hugged her long legs and a shirt with a green-and-black print design, cut low enough to allow room for a silver-and-coral necklace to rest against the burnished skin of her chest. She met the textbook definition of beautiful.
“Come on in.”
He followed her, admiring a hanging lamp made of antlers over the dining table. He smelled the residue of coffee and toast from her small kitchen. She walked ahead of him into the living room.
“Sit. I just need my shoes and a minute to call Elsie. I hope she hasn’t left already to pick me up.”
“I have to talk to Mr. Natachi, too. Do you know where he is?”
“No. He and I usually have coffee before I go to work. I guess he made other plans and didn’t tell me. I heard a car drive up to his house this morning.” Chee recognized worry in her voice. “What did you say about blood?”
“I’ll show you.”
“OK.”
Ryana disappeared down the hall and closed the door. He hadn’t seen any bandages or noticed wounds on her hands or arms. The shade drawn over the window that faced the road gave the morning light the color of Canyon de Chelly’s sandstone. He listened to the unexpected crunch of tires on the dirt road. Then he heard the gunshots.