When she got off the phone with Chee, Bernie returned Darleen’s call. Her sister answered on the third ring.
“Howdy, sis. How’s it goin’?’”
Darleen had been drinking. Bernie’s heart sank.
“I got a buncha drawings done for that portfolio. When can you come over so I can show you? I’m celebrating now.”
“You aren’t driving tonight, are you?”
“Duh. That’s why I called, so you can come over here. Mama and I are watching an old movie on TV. I forget the name, but it’s funny. Here, she wants to talk to you.”
Bernie could hear the phone being transferred.
“Eldest Daughter, how are you?”
“I’m fine, Mama. Did you and Darleen have dinner?”
“Yes. Pancakes. Everything is fine here.”
“Except that Darleen has been drinking.”
“We have an agreement now. She only drinks at home, and I have her car keys.”
“I don’t think that school in Santa Fe is a good idea.” Bernie spoke without her usual caution.
“It is a good idea for her to have something to look forward to.”
“Tell Sister I’m tired tonight. I will look at her drawings tomorrow when I come to see you.”
Bernie was getting ready for bed when the phone rang. She checked the ID, and was relieved to learn that it wasn’t work, or Darleen calling back to argue.
“Hi, Louisa.”
“Hey there. I wanted to tell you that Joe is enjoying the laptop. We installed the Navajo language font.”
“Great.”
“He’s doing research on hummingbirds. And he’s looking up that cactus you gave me to see what kind it is.”
Bernie thought of the necklace Chee had mentioned, and explained the situation to Louisa. “I’m going to e-mail the Lieutenant a photo. Maybe he can find out something about it. He has Chee’s listing in his address book, so he can respond directly to him.”
“Good idea. Joe is really taking to this computer. You know, his spirit has been up and down. The physical therapist says that he’s frustrated, and it’s all part of the brain injury. But he’s got some of his old sparkle back.”
Bernie couldn’t imagine the Lieutenant having mood swings. She’d seen him satisfied, if not actually happy, when a case came to conclusion, and noticed brief, rare flashes of irritation, usually directed at Chee or the feds, but that was it. Sparkle was not a word she ever would have used to describe the Lieutenant. But she didn’t know him the way Louisa did.
Bernie woke early, went for a run, took a shower, and ate a tortilla with some peanut butter. She put on her uniform for work and headed to Mama’s.
Mama was sweeping the porch when Bernie drove up, using the broom for a bit of support.
“You’re working hard this morning. Did you have your breakfast?”
“I made the coffee.” Mama indicated the chair against the front of the house, next to her walker. “You sit here while I finish.”
It was nearly nine. Bernie asked, “May I fix you something to eat?”
Mama shook her head. “Youngest Daughter set up oatmeal in that envelope. She leaves me a bowl, even the water in a cup.” Mama swept the last of the dirt off the porch and moved carefully toward the walker. “She likes that beeping machine and those little packages.”
The microwave oatmeal Darleen had purchased was full of sugar, not as healthy for Mama, and more expensive than the regular kind. “I’ll tell her how to make the oatmeal you like.”
“I already showed her.” Mama laughed. “You explain how to make it in the bee na’niildóhó. That’s the way she does it.”
Bernie smiled at the Navajo word for microwave oven. It translated to “you warm things up with it.”
Mama looked good this morning. Relieved, no doubt, that what seemed to be a major problem for Darleen turned out to be less than that. Bernie would talk to her sister about the ramifications of her arrest, and learn what came next, if anything.
“How are you, my daughter? There’s some trouble in your voice.”
“Oh, a little problem at work.”
“And with the one you married?”
“I miss him.”
“He works hard, that one. He won’t forget you. Can you stay here with us today?”
“No, I have to patrol this afternoon. I just came by for a quick visit and to take a look at Sister’s new drawings.”
“That’s good. She’s in the kitchen.”
Darleen had opened a Mountain Dew, and sat at the table with two piles of papers in front of her. She wore silver hoop earrings that reached her chin and a knit shirt with a butterfly on it that, Bernie thought, would have fit better a size larger.
Bernie sat next to her. “Where are your drawings? I’m glad you did some.”
Darleen sighed. “I looked at them this morning. They still need work.” She put her elbows on the table. “And I don’t know about all this. I never was good at school.”
“You’re smart, you just weren’t motivated.” Bernie glanced at the paperwork Darleen had assembled—an admission application, student housing requests, and forms for financial aid. “Did you call the school and find out about the deadlines and the GED?”
“I left a message. No one called me back.” Darleen shoved a booklet toward her. “Look at this. They want to know all kinds of stuff. I don’t get it.”
Bernie opened the cover and thumbed through it. It was the application for financial aid, a universal form that many colleges used. Darleen had answered the questions requiring basic information but left most of it blank.
She could take over, Bernie thought, but she wasn’t going to. She poured herself half a cup of coffee. “Want some?”
“No, thanks. I made it too strong this morning.”
Bernie picked up the financial aid application again. “How much is tuition anyway?”
“I don’t remember. It’s here somewhere.” Darleen started shuffling through the piles.
“When the person from the school calls you back, ask about that too.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“When there’s something I can do. For now, you can handle all this.”
And if you can’t, Bernie thought, you shouldn’t be going away to school.
Darleen sighed. “You know, I just want to be an artist. This is really complicated.”
“Life’s complicated.”
“Like you and that the guy with the dirt?”
“Yeah,” Bernie said. “Like you getting arrested. What’s next with that?”
Darleen shrugged. “I got a ticket. Twenty-five dollars. Stoop Man is all mad at me and his sister for being drunk. He’ll get over it.”
Bernie said, “I don’t like you getting drunk either. Neither does Mama.”
“I’m OK. I just do it to celebrate or when I don’t have anything better to do. Don’t nag me anymore.”
Bernie took Mama some coffee. The rug Mama loved, the rug she planned to sell, was on the couch, folded into a rectangle. Mama ran her hand over it as she focused on the TV. “When I feel this one, I think of those sheep we had then. We had a time with some of those dibé yázh, the little lambs.”
“I remember that spring when it was so cold, and the lambs came early.” Even though she had been small herself, Bernie had bottle-fed one of the newcomers. She could hear the rhythmic sound the lamb made as it sucked and see the way its tail wagged as it gulped the milk. It grew to have wool the color of chocolate and became one of her favorites. The brown in the rug’s double diamonds came from its fleece.
As she drove into Shiprock, Bernie noticed the building clouds, potential thunderheads that held the flirtatious promise of rain. Had it rained somewhere on the sprawling Navajo Nation? She hoped so.
She arrived at the police station a little earlier than she had to for her shift, and ran into Bigman finishing his reports.
Bernie greeted him. “A couple of days ago, you said you wanted to ask me a favor?”
“Oh, that’s right. It’s for my wife. She’s interested in weaving. She asked me to see if I could find somebody who might be willing to teach her. She’d like to start soon, while she’s still off from school.”
A couple of years ago Bigman had married a bilagaana who taught at Shiprock’s elementary school. Bernie didn’t know her very well, but she liked the woman.
“Learning to weave takes a while. She won’t be able to pick up a whole lot before she has to go back to work.”
“She wants to keep at it, evenings and on the weekends, depending on how much she has to do for her classes.”
“Does she know anything about weaving?”
“She knows how to get to the auction at Crownpoint.”
Bernie laughed. The auction, held each month at the Crownpoint Elementary School, drew weavers from across the reservation and plenty of buyers, too. “I’ll see who I can come up with.” She wondered if Mama, probably the teacher Bigman and his wife had in mind, would be willing.
Her afternoon’s most interesting assignment involved two males with fake IDs, apparently underage, turned away from Falling Water Casino. They remained loitering in the parking lot, drawing the attention of a security guard who thought they might be working up the gumption to break into vehicles. The boys disappeared before Bernie could find them, vanishing at the first glimpse of her police car. The guard knew one of them because his teenage grandson had played basketball with the boy, and he agreed to have a word with that boy’s mother. The whole thing took longer than Bernie expected.
Next she talked with a man accused by a neighbor of siphoning gasoline. The gas thief explained that he was merely borrowing the gas. He had gone over to ask his neighbor if he could have some, but the neighbor didn’t come to the door, so he helped himself. He meant to explain the situation, but he got busy. Bernie took him to the complainant’s house, where he apologized and promised to buy more gas than he stole as soon as he got his check. Apology accepted, case closed.
The day dragged on. She checked with the soil analysis lab and got good news; results should be available by the end of the day. She’d talk to Cordova when she found out what was in the dirt, tell him about the frequent calls to Las Vegas and Utah she’d seen on Miller’s phone. Maybe she could parlay the new information into an explanation of why Miller warranted federal attention.
The promising clouds vanished, pushed away by a hot, dry wind that unrelentingly blasted the landscape, stirring tiny bits of sand into dust devils. Bernie remembered walking on the dirt road near her house as a girl, the airborne dirt stinging her arms and legs. In high school, waiting for her events in track, she dreaded feeling the wind-blown sand buffet her skin, and she would shut her eyes and turn her back to the gusts.
She watched the swirling spirals move from the earth into the sky, as much a part of summer as rodeos and roadside flea markets. Diné tradition taught that, like everything in nature, the wind had its purpose—scouring the earth clean. Nonetheless, it made her feel edgy.
She heard the radio call for her.
“Largo wants you to head over to check out a burned car.” Sandra gave her the route number and directions to a house closest to the car. “Somebody who was driving out there called it in.”
“OK.” Bernie knew the area—a good place for mischief, complete with old stories of evil ones.
She soon saw and smelled the smoldering car, or what was left of it. She drove her unit off the road and parked. The cases of burned vehicles she knew about on the reservation had all been tied to revenge, and a few had involved grisly murders. She hadn’t been the responding officer on those calls. Once, as a rookie, she had been on duty at a house fire. The family survived, but she never forgot the stench and sight of the dog that had burned in the blaze chained to the back wall.
As she walked closer, she realized the vehicle looked like the car she’d pulled over, the one with the boxes of dirt in the trunk. Even in its blackened condition, she was almost certain that she recognized it. She remembered Miller at the wheel, sweaty and uneasy, and hoped she would not encounter what was left of him now. Bernie’s aversion to associating with the dead had begun in childhood, learned from the example of her relatives and from the stories she’d heard as a little girl. The spirits of the dead, chindis, roamed restless and out-of-sorts. She tried not to imagine what she might find inside the car, but she had paid too much attention during training to return to naïveté. The thought of the body and the stink of the smoldering car made her queasy.
Reminding herself that she was a Navajo police officer, she stood straighter as she walked to the driver’s door. She forced herself to look through the broken window at the blackened remains of the seats. Empty seats. No burned body. She exhaled and stepped away. She took a few deep breaths, then walked back to the vehicle and found the VIN near the windshield, above the melted dashboard. She went to her unit to radio in the ID number, along with the good news that no one remained inside, then realized this place was a communication dead zone. No radio meant no cell phone service either.
Bernie surveyed the scene around the car: empty beer cans, broken glass, shredded plastic, and the usual accumulation of windblown trash. No obvious clues. When she’d seen enough, she drove to the closest house, a tiny home with a porch added on, covered to provide some shade. Whoever lived here might have seen the car burn.
An elderly man in a cream-colored cowboy hat sat on a wooden bench outside the house. A small flock of sheep watched from the corral as Bernie got out of her car, taking a couple of bottles of water with her.
On a calm day, the view of Ship Rock from this spot would be spectacular; today, the Rock with Wings rose against an ugly brown haze. The man was sheltered from the wind, but Bernie struggled to keep her hair out of her eyes as she walked toward him. She introduced herself, and the man, Mr. Tso, reciprocated, inviting her to sit down in a chair next to him. She offered him one of the bottles of water. He accepted and placed it on the porch beneath the bench.
Mr. Tso looked out toward the horizon. “You are the daughter of the one who weaves in Toadlena.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“My sister, she knows your mother. Your mother helped her string the loom for one of the big rugs.” Mr. Tso described his sister’s weaving in detail.
They sat, watching a raven plane down, struggling against the wind to examine something on the side of the road, then soar again. After a while Bernie said, “Someone called about that burned car. That’s why I am here.”
“That’s what I thought. My daughter made the call. I have coffee from breakfast, it could still be warm. Would you like some?”
It would be rude to refuse, even though the heat of the day made coffee less appealing.
“Do you want sugar in it? I like mine sweet.”
“No, sir. Just the coffee would be fine. No sugar for me.”
He hobbled in, leaving her to enjoy the view of Ship Rock. Even in the harsh afternoon light, Tsé Bit’ a’ í held majesty. Bernie knew the story of the winged monsters who once lived on Ship Rock and how the Hero Twins killed them but spared their children, transforming them into eagle and owl.
When Mr. Tso came back with the coffee, Bernie noticed that he used a rope to hold up his pants. He handed her a blue enamel cup that reminded her of the ones she’d seen at Paul’s house. She tried a sip. It tasted worse than she’d imagined; stale, sharply acidic, and about the same temperature as the day. To make it worse, he had added so much sugar that it could have been coffee syrup.
She listened to Mr. Tso’s stories about serving in the marines in Korea. He made her laugh, but she knew he must have darker memories of that time, things left unspoken. He finished his coffee and the story at the same time. “My grandson was going to sign up for the marines, too, after high school, but then he never did. He says he’s looking for a job, but he’s not looking in the right places.”
“Speaking of jobs, I need to ask you questions about the car that burned. It could happen that whoever did this will do it again. People will suffer.”
Mr. Tso frowned. “It’s dangerous to talk about these things. I am an old man, but you, you need to stay safe to help your mother.”
“My job is to help keep other people stay safe, too. People like you, my mother, and your daughter and your grandson.” She paused to give him time to consider what she’d said. “Did you see the fire?”
He leaned back, resting his thin shoulders against the wall. With some difficulty, he twisted the lid to open the bottle of water that Bernie brought. “Yesterday afternoon, I had a pain in my hip, so I was resting in bed when I smelled something.” He took a sip. Screwed the cap back on. “I opened my eyes and still smelled something strange. Then I came out here to the porch and that’s when I saw the flames over that way.”
He moved his chin toward the site of the burned car. “After a long time, the flames got so low I didn’t see them, just the glow and the smoke. My daughter saw that car when she came for me so we could go to Gallup to the clinic. When we got to town, we went out to eat at a big restaurant, you know, one of those places where you get your own food? They have Jell-O with those little marshmallows. Red Jell-O is the best.”
Mr. Tso stopped talking.
Bernie turned the conversation back to the car. “Did you see any people out there? Anyone driving by or driving away?”
“Not people. Only the thing we don’t talk about.”
The area had a reputation for skinwalkers, shape-shifters who could outrun a car, who changed from human to animal and back again. Evil creatures. She shared the Lieutenant’s view on this, more skeptical than Chee when it came to supernatural malevolence. But she did not doubt that evil existed and that some of it defied ordinary explanation. Traditionals like Mr. Tso believed that to talk about shape-shifters invited their attention, gave them power to trouble you.
Bernie sat with Mr. Tso for a while, watching the light change on the Rock with Wings. The gray volcanic core looked massive, sharp-edged, beautiful.
“Tell the police that car should stay there,” Mr. Tso said. “It can remind people to keep away from that place.”
In the background, Bernie heard the sheep bleating in their pen. She remembered spending summers traveling with her mother’s flock to the greener pastures in the mountains, enjoying the outdoors, the freedom, and even the work.
“Your mother might like that restaurant my daughter knows about. The Big Corral, or some name like that. You should take her there next time you go to Gallup.” He finished the bottle of water and put it down beside him. “I would like you to come back to see me. But we will not talk about that fire.”
She walked to her unit, feeling the push of the hot wind against her pants and shirt, narrowing her eyes to slits to keep the dust out. She felt worn out from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, and Mr. Tso’s old coffee sat in her stomach like an acid bath. She had hoped for a clue from the old gentleman, not skinwalker rumors.
She drove back to the burned vehicle to look again for tracks, for an empty gas can, for some sign of how the fire started other than a theory of supernatural evil. She was more thorough this time, examining debris the wind had anchored to the shrubs and rocks and hiking up a hill above the vehicle, hoping the overview might give her a better perspective on the crime. Pausing when she reached the ridgeline and turning out of the wind, she glanced down toward the blackened car. It looked like a carapace, the discarded outgrown body of a giant insect, even darker than the lava that formed Ship Rock and its dikes.
Bernie knew that geologists described Ship Rock as the core of an ancient volcano. The dikes, or stone walls, that radiated from it had once been lines of liquid glowing lava that spewed up through the earth rather than pouring from the volcano’s mouth. One Diné story, also violent, told of Ship Rock as the home of vicious birds that swooped up the People and fed them to their fledglings. Geologists disagreed about the age and force of the volcanic field that created Ship Rock and the dikes, just as her people’s stories of the rock’s origin and purpose varied depending on the storyteller. As Bernie saw it, the diversity of stories reinforced the idea that there are many valid ways to see the world and live in harmony, in hozho, with nature and your fellow humans.
She looked around the ridgetop again, seeing some indentations, possibly what the scouring wind had left of footprints in the soil. She followed them for a few minutes until she came to a place where the earth had obviously been disturbed. A piece of wood, thin and painted, had been shoved into the soil. At first she thought it might be a prayer stick of some sort, but it wasn’t. It reminded her of the little stakes used at construction sites. Something had been removed from this spot, and if she had to guess, she’d say it was dirt. The same kind of dirt she’d seen in the trunk of the car that so closely resembled the burned vehicle at the bottom of the ridge. She took some photos of the stake with her phone. She took out the plastic Ziploc bag she always had with her in case she found some interesting seeds, or something else worth collecting, and used her hands to scoop in some dirt. Hiking down, she walked around the burned car again, taking more photos.
On the drive back to the Shiprock station Bernie thought about Miller. Why had he come to the reservation instead of going home to Flagstaff? And where was he now, the man who loved the desert? Why had his car burned? Who would destroy something so useful? She’d have plenty of questions for the Lieutenant to ponder.
As soon as she had service again, she radioed in the charred vehicle’s VIN. The check could take a while, and the business day was nearly done. But by the time she arrived at the office, Sandra had a message: “Arizona Motor Vehicles confirmed Michael Miller as the burned car’s registered owner.”
Bernie checked her e-mail and found a message from the soil sample lab, with a report attached. She opened it eagerly. “No organic or chemical contamination discovered. Soil resembles that found near Ship Rock, more gravelly than loamy, with traces of pulverulent clay.”
Disappointed, she read on to discover highly detailed information about soil structure. Unfortunately, none of the details offered obvious clues to Miller’s motivation. At least now she knew that the dirt was just dirt, and where it came from. It wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for, but it led to a new series of questions.
“Do you have a phone number for the daughter of Mr. Tso, the woman who reported the burned car?” she asked Sandra.
“Here it is. Roberta Tso.” Sandra gave her a slip of paper. Before she called, she checked it against the number for the Roberta she’d noticed on Miller’s phone. Bingo. But why?
Roberta Tso remembered the burned car very well.
“By the time I got there to pick up Dad—he was spending the night with me because his appointment at the clinic was early—the fire was nearly out. I’d never seen a car burned like that. It was amazing. Scary. I had to wait until we got back toward Gallup to call it in.” The voice on the phone stopped. Bernie heard Roberta sigh. “I worried about my father living out there by himself even before this happened. I’d like it if he’d move in with me in Gallup, but he’s a strong-willed man. It will take even more than a fire-starting maniac to make him change his mind.”
“When I spoke with him, he didn’t have much to say about the fire.”
Bernie heard Roberta chuckle. “He’s not a big talker unless it’s war stories. He knows all those details, but the rest of his memory seems to be fading. Sometimes he can’t tell the difference between what happened to him and what he dreamed or imagined. My father mentioned that he saw something strange a few weeks ago. He didn’t want to talk about it, but I could tell it made him nervous. Now he thinks whatever he saw was tied to the fire. I don’t like the idea of Dad out there alone, with something like that going on.”
Bernie noticed the anxiety in the woman’s voice. “Do you have an idea of what frightened him?”
“No. He just changes the subject when I ask, so I stopped asking. He might have just imagined something.”
“Does your father have any other relatives or neighbors who check on him? Anyone you know of who might have seen something suspicious?”
“My boy, his grandson, goes by now and then. Aaron. Aaron Torino.”
“Would you give me his number? I’d like to touch base with him.”
There was silence for a moment. “I’ll give you his phone number if you want, but I don’t know how helpful he’ll be.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, he’s our problem child.”
Bernie changed the subject. “How do you know Michael Miller?”
“He’s been talking to me and Aaron about some solar panels he would like to install out by Dad’s house. I think he’s a nice guy, but Dad doesn’t like him, and he says the panels are ugly.”
“Do you know how Miller’s car ended up out there?”
“Oh, no. That was his car, the one that burned?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe he was looking for an alternative site, since Dad was so adamant about not wanting the solar stuff. Was he hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
Bernie told Roberta she might have some follow-up questions, and hung up.
She called Aaron Torino. Her efforts to build rapport by telling him how much she had enjoyed talking to his grandfather fell flat. Torino asserted that he hadn’t seen anything and didn’t know anything. From the noise in the background, she suspected there were others in the room with him. The nervousness in his voice was palpable.
“My granddad says the skinwalkers hang out there. He has some crazy scary stories about that stuff. Ask the old dude.”
She spoke before she could stop herself. “Shicheii. That’s what we call our mother’s father, our grandfather. We speak of them with respect.”
After he hung up, she decided she needed to talk to Aaron Torino face-to-face. Preferably at Mr. Tso’s house.