Navajo Courage

“Did you hear me?” she added.

“Of course.”

“Then grunt or something, will ya?”

He paused, then added by way of an explanation, “Conversation…There’s more of a demand for it out here in the city.”

They soon reached a white unmarked sedan with local government license plates. While she unlocked the door, he noted the folder on the passenger’s seat.

“How much do you know about the last killing?” she asked as they both got in.

“I was briefed by my captain. I know that the murder suggested a Native American connection—Navajo, to be specific.”

“Yeah. The cause of death was the result of stab wounds from a large knife. What made it—shall we say unusual?—was that the victim was also stabbed with a blade shaped from a human thighbone. The M.E. was able to narrow that down via fragments recovered from the wounds. Pieces broke off when the bone blade hit the victim’s ribs. There was a lot of weird symbolism at the scene, too. You can see that in the photos.”

He nodded, studying the folder’s contents.

“My first thought was that it was some sort of Satanic or Goth ritual, but one of our officers insisted that it was connected to Navajo witchcraft. He said that the powder we found scattered on the body, what he called corpse poison, was a trademark of skinwalkers. The M.E. confirmed later that it contained human tissue. We also found coyote hairs on the victim’s skin and clothing. Locks of her hair had been cut off, probably with the murder weapon. One last thing—interesting, not to mention weird—the tips of both index fingers, actually the entire joints, were cut from the body. They weren’t at the scene, so the perp must have taken them with him.”

He nodded, understanding more than he was willing to talk about yet. “Was vic number two mutilated in the same way?”

Valerie nodded. “That’s what I was told, but we’ll be able to see for ourselves soon enough.”

As he studied the crime-scene photos, Luca recognized the symbol of the Brotherhood of Warriors that had been made from ashes and left next to the body.

“If the perp’s intent had been to slow down identification of the victim, he would have taken all the fingertips,” she said. “So the whole thing is just plain weird.”

“Was either victim Navajo or part Navajo?”

“The first one’s name is Ernestine Ramirez and she’s Hispanic. The latest victim is a twenty-year-old woman named Lea Begay.”

“The most recent victim has a Navajo name,” he said. “But from now on, vic one and two will suffice.”

Valerie winced. “Sorry. I was told not to use the names of the victims around you, but I forgot. It has something to do with the evil side of a person that sticks around ’cause they can’t enter Heaven, right?”

“Not quite right, but you’ve got the idea,” he answered. “What else struck you about the first scene? Does anything in particular stay in your mind?”

“There was a small arrow with a bead at the end. It had been shot or jabbed into the victim. It was less than six inches long, doll-sized. I asked, but was told you’d explain that part.”

“Arrows like those are shot from a small ceremonial bow made from a human shinbone,” he answered.

“Here’s something else I’d like to know,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “Why were you, in particular, sent to help us with this case?”

“I’m a police detective, and more important, the son of a respected medicine man.” Luca lowered his voice before uttering the next phrase. “Skinwalkers are my father’s natural enemies—and mine.”

“Are you a medicine man, too?” Valerie asked in a whisper, not really understanding his need for secrecy but mirroring his tone nevertheless.

He shook his head. “I trained for it but in the end I chose police work.”

“The job gets in your blood, doesn’t it?” Her voice was still soft. “It starts as something you do and ends up being part of everything you are.”

Her observation said a great deal about her. Valerie was turning out to be an interestingly complex woman as well as beautiful.

“To catch a killer I need to put myself in his head—to see things as he does,” she continued. “I hope you can help me do that. I need to start thinking like a skinwalker.”

He touched the special medicine pouch he wore looped through his belt. “Don’t use that word so freely,” he said at last.

“Because I might call evil to us, like when I use the names of the victims?”

He nodded and said, “It’s even more so with the evil ones. The spoken word has a great deal of power.” He glanced down at the file. “I’m going to need a few more moments to study this file.”

“No problem. We’re still about ten minutes from the second site. It’s past the university, near Central Avenue.”

As silence stretched out between them in the car, she kept her eyes on traffic but her focus was on him. There was something magnetic about Luca Nakai—an intensity that wove its way around her and sparked her imagination. Police officer…medicine man…He was a man of many layers and something told her that beneath that imperturbable calm was a man worth getting to know much better.

Chapter Two

They were still underway and despite their silence, or maybe because of it, her attention had remained riveted on the man sitting next to her.

“You have questions about me,” Luca said, still looking down at the contents of the folder.

She almost choked. Maybe he should have added mind reader to his list of qualifications. Recovering quickly, she glanced at him casually.

“You have questions about me, too, I would imagine,” she said, turning it around on him. “You’re a guest of our department, so why don’t you take your shot first, then I’ll take mine.”

“You know why I’m on this case. Why were you chosen?” he asked without hesitation.

“Fair question,” she said with a nod. “I was chosen because I’ve been given special training to deal with violent crimes against women. I’ve only been working homicide for six months, but I’ve closed all the cases I’ve worked on so far.” Her car radio came on and she answered.

“Our ETA’s less than five minutes,” she responded to the caller, then, racking the microphone, glanced over at him and continued. “One big problem with this case is that we already have reporters breathing down our necks. Information about the killer’s unusual signature reached the media and that’s made this a hot story. The public’s pushing for quick answers.”

“Uncovering hidden truths often takes time. Accuracy and speed are enemies,” he said, expelling his breath in a soft hiss.

“These days stories unfold quickly,” Valerie answered with a shrug. “Internet and television are always in competition to see who breaks the story first.”

“That’s their problem. It shouldn’t become ours. Life isn’t a television quiz show.”

“Off the record?” She glanced at him, saw him nod, then continued. “The problem becomes ours when the sheriff is running for reelection.”

He nodded once. “I hear you. Any suspects yet?”

“No, not even a good lead. But I’ll find answers. Count on it.”

It was her tone that revealed more than her words. “You have something to prove on this case,” he observed.

Valerie swallowed back her annoyance. If it had been anyone else, she would have told him to stuff it. Yet there’d been no censure or disapproval in Luca’s tone. He’d simply stated his opinion. Knowing that he had to get to know her—after all, their lives might depend on each other—she decided to cut him some slack.

“I’ve had to work very hard to establish myself in my department,” she answered after a brief pause. “When I first signed up, the deputy at the desk tried to talk me out of it. I’m smaller and lighter than most of the other officers. From day one, all I kept hearing was that I’d be a liability, and that I’d cost another officer his or her life someday.”

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“During training, I was forced to fight twice as hard as any other recruit. Nobody thought I’d make it, even when my physical training scores were better than some,” she said. “Since those days, I’ve worked my way up the ranks to detective, but it hasn’t been easy. A lot of people back from my rookie days would still like to see me fail, just so I’d prove them right.”

“Why was becoming an officer so important to you?”

“Because I know I can make a difference in my job,” she said in a firm voice. “My methods may be different than some of the textbook procedures, but I can get results.”

“Different how?” he asked.

“Let me give you an example. Last week at the downtown office, a suspect slipped off his handcuffs at the booking desk and jumped the arresting deputy. He knocked the officer to the floor and grabbed his weapon. I was coming around the corner just then and, not seeing my weapon beneath my jacket, he motioned me over. I think he wanted a helpless woman hostage. I went over to him as meekly as possible. Then before he could see it coming, I grabbed the weapon and kneed him in the groin,” she said. “I used the fact that I’m not threatening—the very thing they said was my biggest liability—to do what had to be done.”

Luca gave her a huge, devastatingly masculine grin. “Way to go.”

As she looked into his eyes and saw the approval and admiration there, her heart began to hammer. Telling herself it was low blood sugar, Valerie focused. “In this game it’s all about winning, and you do that when you put the bad guys away.”

“Winning…I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. To me, it’s more about restoring harmony—for others and within yourself.”

“Inner peace? That sounds very ’60s,” she said with a hesitant smile, then added, “I’m not sure that kind of thing really applies to police work.”

“It does. Try keeping your sanity after years of busting bad guys without it.”

She kept her eyes on the road as she thought about what he’d said. Luca sure wasn’t like anyone else she’d ever met. There was a quiet dignity about him and a strength that didn’t rely on machismo to back it up.

“Okay, we’re here,” Valerie said at long last, driving down a shabby-looking neighborhood just south of Central Avenue. The street had been cordoned off at both ends of the block by APD police barriers. As Valerie held up her badge a city officer in his dark blue uniform motioned them through.

Valerie parked beside another Sheriff’s Department vehicle just outside the yellow tape that defined the crime scene. The perimeter included an unoccupied-looking, flat-roofed house and a section of the alley.

It was midmorning and there were two television cameras and at least a hundred curious onlookers lining the outside of the tape. As she climbed out of the vehicle, Valerie glanced over at Luca. He was clipping his service pistol to the right side of his belt, next to his badge and a small leather pouch. Coming around the front of the car a few seconds later, he fell into step beside her as they walked toward the crime scene.

“Crazies can be real proud of their handiwork, and sometimes stick around to see us work the scene. Keep a sharp eye out for anyone who fits the profile,” she said.

“Don’t concentrate too much on profiles just yet. Keep an open mind,” he said, then in a whisper-thin voice added, “Patience.”

It was the way he’d said that word that teased her imagination, making her think of steamy summer nights someplace far away and exotic…. She shook her head, banishing the thought as quickly as it had come.

“Detective Jonas,” a tall, ruddy-faced officer called out as he jogged up to meet them. “The body’s through that alley at the other end, inside a private property and not visible from the outside of the yard unless you look over the wall,” he said. Then, lowering his voice, he added, “the entire hood is pretty restless at the moment, so watch yourself in case a relative or friend of the victim shows up. Things could explode in a hurry.”

She knew this type of neighborhood well. The residents were mostly Hispanic and Native American—people who often believed that you were either one of them or an outsider. It wouldn’t make their investigation easy.

“A deputy is tracking down her family, right?”

The officer nodded. “Her residence is in the North Valley, and an officer is en route. She apparently lives with her parents.”

“Anything else on the dead woman?” Valerie asked.

“She’s got a student ID card from the university and crime scene found a paycheck from an area print shop in her purse. The amount suggested a part-time job. Deputy Gonzales is following up on that lead, hoping to backtrack her recent activities,” the officer replied.

“Call the campus police and get her class schedule,” Valerie ordered, increasing her stride.

To their left there were several old multistory apartment buildings that took up several blocks. Ahead of them, on their side of the street, were run-down single-family homes a decade or so older than the apartment structures. The fronts of the homes were open to the street, and several of the houses had low cinder-block walls in the rear.

“From what I recall, a lot of Navajo families live in this neighborhood, but I don’t see any among the onlookers,” she said, glancing at the crowd that lined the yellow tape cutting across the alley at both ends of the property.

“We avoid the dead. Contact with them doesn’t bring anything good.”

Valerie and Luca followed the tall deputy through an open wooden gate at the midpoint of the block wall and found themselves in a small backyard—the crime scene. The body hadn’t been covered yet, but its location close to the wall blocked it from the view of the onlookers.

Her attention already on the body, which rested not five feet from the wall, Valerie reached into her pocket. “We’ll need gloves,” she said, handing him a pair.

“I’ll need a second pair,” he answered.

“Why?”

“Tribal officers prefer to wear two. That way we don’t inadvertently touch anything that came into direct contact with the body.”

Valerie called another officer over and soon Luca had his second pair. As they approached the body she glanced back at him. His focus had shifted from the body itself, and the fact that the fingertip joints were missing, to the bare earth and the items left around the victim.

“Let me know when you get the results on the green powder placed on her lips,” Luca said. “I think it comes from plants used in our rituals but I’d like to know which ones specifically. You’ll also want to get those strips tested,” he said, pointing next to the body. “Find out if that’s buckskin. Navajo witches are said to wear masks of that material at a kill site.”

In a smoothed-over area of dirt by the body he could see the black outline of the circle and flames—the Brotherhood’s emblem.

She followed his gaze, then pointed across the alley to the property opposite them. The wall there was covered with gang signs painted in a multitude of colors. “I saw that same symbol, or one close to it, at the first scene. Is it graffiti, spray painted onto the ground?”

“That’s not paint. Take a closer look. It’s finely powdered ash,” he said. It had been left there as an insult to the Brotherhood. “Make sure the team takes a sample and identifies the source. It may help us in the long run.”

“I’ll take care of that,” a young woman from the medical investigator’s office answered, overhearing them. “We’re ready to transport, Detective Jonas. The team leader says we’ve got enough photos. All we need now is your okay.”

Valerie glanced at Luca, who nodded. “Go ahead,” she told her. “What about the vic’s belongings?” Valerie asked. “Do you have a list of what she had on her?”

One of the crime scene techs looked up then. “Her purse, with billfold, driver’s license and university ID. There were some bus tokens, too. Deputy Gonzales is running down the print-shop check now. We didn’t find any car keys, but there’s a book bag. Inside are pencils and a pen, notebooks and an anthropology textbook.”

“Let’s have a look,” Luca said. “Students sometimes doodle on their notes or slip papers into their textbooks for safekeeping.”

“She took English lit—here’s something on Beowulf,” Valerie said moments later. “Here’s another section with some anthropology notes. It’s all pretty general so it must be a beginning survey class. Yeah, here it is, Anthro 101.”

Luca, thumbing through the anthropology text, nodded. “This book fits that description. Any mention of a professor or TA?”

“Not yet. Wait—here’s some scribbling next to some sketches of arrowheads. It says, and I quote, ‘Dr. Finley sucks.’ That could be one of her professors.”

“Interesting wording—respecting the title but not the man—but it gives us a name to check on. Maybe Dr. Finley, whoever he is in the anthropology department, will recognize her photograph and provide us with some information we can use,” Luca added. “There’s a strong cultural connection to the way she was killed.”

“Sounds like a plan. When we leave here, we’ll go straight to the university. It’s not too far back down Central, on the north side of the street.”

As the body, now in a sealed plastic bag, was placed on a gurney, she studied the faces in the crowd. Their expressions told the story—along with horror and disgust there was also morbid fascination.

Praising the members of the crime-scene team who were busy placing numbered cards near each piece of evidence, she studied the camera-laden reporters. They were all struggling from behind the yellow tape for the best angles.

“Who found the body?” Valerie asked an APD sergeant working crowd control, aware that city officers were the first to arrive on the scene.

“A couple of area residents.” He called her attention to two women who were seated on the back steps of a neighboring home. Another APD officer was standing beside them. “The young redhead with the short skirt and low-cut blouse was on her way home from work, and the other’s a widow who was out looking for her cat. Apparently it was the cat that led both of them to the body.”

Valerie turned to speak to Luca, but to her surprise saw that he’d left the taped area. He was now climbing a large elm tree to the left of the crime scene with the grace and agility of a mountain lion.

Hearing comments from curious onlookers and wondering what he was up to, she went to meet him. “What on earth are you doing?”

“The scene was carefully arranged, and I wanted to get another perspective,” he said, inching out on a low limb then staring down.

A moment later he came back down. “Don’t act surprised or alarmed, but someone’s been watching me from the flat roof of that two-story apartment building at the east end of the block. Binoculars and gray, hooded sweatshirt—even in this heat,” Luca said.

Valerie scanned off into the distance, but failed to spot the person Luca had seen.

“He’s working hard to keep his face hidden. Otherwise he would have come in closer like those other folks.” He gestured toward the onlookers by pursing his lips, Navajo-style. “I’m going to find out why I’ve got his interest.”

Luca and Valerie walked slowly toward the house as if searching for something on the ground. They soon stepped into the shadow cast by the roof of the next building and there were hidden from the person with the binoculars.

In the blink of an eye Luca took off around the side of the house. He crossed the street and circled around the opposite side of the apartment building, planning to catch the guy with binoculars from behind.

Valerie shot after Luca, trying her best to keep up, though he ran like the wind. Unable to close the gap, she worked hard to at least keep him in sight.

Then, as she turned the corner, she saw their suspect climbing up the fire escape onto another pueblo-style rooftop, Luca directly behind him. A heartbeat later, both of them disappeared from view.

Knowing that Luca was on his tail, she pressed on and climbed up after them. As she reached the top of the ladder she heard a loud scraping noise somewhere ahead. Valerie crossed the roof in a crouch. Peering over the edge, she saw Luca on the parapet of the next building, dangling from one of the cañales. Separating Valerie from him was a fifteen-foot gap. He’d obviously jumped but had come out a foot short.

Before she could call out, he quickly pulled himself up over the ledge and onto the roof. “He’s some kind of athlete, that one,” Luca yelled, seeing her. “I’m in good shape, but I barely made it.”

“Where did he go?” she asked, looking past Luca toward the east.

Luca studied the expanse of roof beyond. There were several chimneys as well as heating and cooling units big enough to hide behind. A moment later he looked back at Valerie and gave her a quick thumbs-up.

Valerie studied the area carefully, but all she could see were three pigeons on the graveled roof. There were no shadows anywhere to give the suspect away.

Luca pointed to the pigeons, to his eyes then to a spot across the rooftop.

It took her a moment but Valerie suddenly realized what he was telling her. The pigeons were watching the suspect.

As Luca ran across the roof a shadowy figure slipped out from behind a large chimney then dropped over the far side, apparently finding a ladder.

“Go back down, circle around and cut him off,” Luca called, not looking back.

Seconds mattered. Instead of climbing back down the ladder, she shimmied down a drainpipe, dropping the last four feet to the ground and landing in a crouch.

The narrow alley was in deep shadow and constricted to one lane by two large trash bins. Hearing a footstep ahead she reached for her sidearm and, putting her back to the brick wall, moved forward cautiously.

Standing at the corner, Valerie stopped to listen. Someone took a breath. She had him now.

Chapter Three

Ducking down, gun ready, she took a quick look around the corner—and found herself staring directly into Luca’s face.

She lowered her weapon immediately. “Sorry. I thought I had him.”

Luca holstered his own weapon and glanced back the way he’d come. “I shouldn’t have lost him, but between his familiarity with the area and his speed, he had the advantage.”

“What made you spot the guy?” she asked. “There was quite a crowd back there.”

“I was looking for anyone who might be paying attention to me—not the crime scene. That’s when I saw him.”

“I don’t get it. Why focus on you? You mean because you’re Navajo?”

“Not just that. I figured that a skinwalker would be watching for anyone who might be a hataalii, a medicine man, and wearing a medicine bundle,” he said, pointing to his jish. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth either. The skinwalker, or skinwalker wannabe, had issued a clear challenge to the Brotherhood of Warriors and would have undoubtedly been looking to see who’d come in response to that.

“Did you get a close enough look to be able to make an ID?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Just general size and shape, and the fact that he moved like a man, not a woman. I’m not talking about fitness, just gait, okay?”

She gave him a wry smile. “No harm, no foul. I get you. But that puts us at a dead end. Let’s go back and interview the witnesses.”

“They may be reluctant to talk to us, particularly in a case where witchcraft’s involved. Navajos aren’t the only ones taught to avoid things of that nature.”

Valerie gave him a surprised look. “I have no idea how you investigate a case like this on the reservation,” she said, “but, out here, they can either talk or find themselves down at the station. I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer—not when I’m investigating a homicide.”

As they approached the crime scene Valerie was aware of everything about her new partner. Their styles of working were vastly different, yet she had a feeling about him. A quiet man of strength, Luca had come prepared to solve the case. She could feel his determination and understood that feeling well. They’d mesh well as partners…if only she could stop letting the fire in his eyes distract her.