Enemy Way (10 page)

“More likely they’re checking out the car. You’re tensing up,” Ella warned. “Don’t do that. Remember you’re a girl out for some fun.”

“Here they come.” The primer-paint-laden Chevy sedan pulled up alongside, matching
their speed as the youngsters checked out Justine and the car.

“I hope you realize that we’re supposed to be very impressed. See how they’re not making any effort to go all the way around? This is meant to show us how much guts they have.” Justine waved and smiled at the boys.

“And how much guts they’ll spill all over the road if there’s— Look out!” Ella saw the semi coming over the hill, heading
straight toward the boys in the car.

Justine made a tiny sound that could have been anything from a cry to a muttered curse, then suddenly slammed on the brakes, allowing the boys’ slowly accelerating car to cut in front of them. The smell of burning rubber filled the car.

Catching her breath, Ella forced her fingers off the dashboard. The squeal of brakes still echoed in her ears. “Those idiots!”

Justine cursed loudly. “I say we arrest them, right now. I got the tag number.”

“Uh-uh. We’re supposed to be impressed by that stuff, so just laugh, be awestruck, and wave at them,” Ella reminded. “They’ve slowed down to a crawl again. Now you pass
them,
but at normal speed. The road ahead is straight and there’s nothing coming. I’ll scrunch down into low rider position to make sure they don’t
get a good look at my face, but I want to ID those guys.”

“You’ve got it.” Justine pressed on the accelerator.

As they passed, the boys honked, raised beer bottles up to where they could be seen, and made lewd suggestions.

“It’s just too dark. A lit cigarette here and there inside their car isn’t enough to show their faces,” Ella said, “especially when they’re holding bottles for us to see
instead. All I know for sure is that they’re members of a gang, probably the Many Devils. One of the boys tried to flash a gang sign, but then he almost dropped his bottle. I couldn’t make it out.”

“At least I didn’t see my cousin. I was worried that they might recognize us if he was with them.”

“Let’s go for broke. There’s a gas station ahead with lighted bays,” Ella said, turning her cap around
so the bill would cast a shadow on her face. “Stop there and buy cigarettes. I know you don’t smoke, but they don’t. When the boys pull up, do your best to keep their attention focused on you. Get them out of the car, if you can, so we can get clear IDs.”

As Justine pulled into the station, she gave Ella a quick glance. “Should I warn Wilbert Jones to be careful? He owns this place.”

Ella thought
of the frail, white-haired Navajo man. Although many believed that his thinking was no longer focused, the reality was that he was as sharp as a tack. She’d met him once while attending a Plant Watchers’ meeting with her mother. They’d spoken about many things, including police work. She still remembered his advice. “Never tell all you know. Never show all you have.”

“He’ll know who you are,”
Ella said. “Don’t worry about him. If there’s trouble, he’ll take the right course of action.”

Moments after Justine walked inside the Quick Stop, Ella watched the boys pull up. Justine timed it just right and came out of the store holding a pack of cigarettes. Two of the gang members got out and began flirting with her. While Justine played it for all it was worth, Ella tried to get a clear
look at the boys who’d remained in the car.

Despite her efforts, Ella soon realized that it was useless. The glass on the car driven by the teens was tinted a smokey gray. That made looking inside nearly impossible. She reluctantly settled for listening to them, trying to get a handle on who they were. As she eavesdropped, a great feeling of sadness swept over her. They seemed so lost in a world
of bluster and false bravado. They hid behind gang names and created chaos because only within that did they find identity.

For a moment she shared her brother’s sorrow at what was being lost. Navajo ways were of no importance to these kids. They followed a junk culture that had no past and held no future.

Strangely enough, it was through the old myths that the gangs’ behavior made the most
sense. In her mind, she could almost hear her mother recounting the familiar tale. When Black God was sprinkling the heavens, creating the constellations, Coyote came up and grabbed the star-filled pouch. He flung the stars up into the skies, scattering them at random, ignoring Black God’s plan. Those stars, without pattern or order, according to Navajo beliefs, remained nameless to this day. Only
the stars put there by Black God had names with which to identify them.

These boys were like those random stars, without order, without definition, endowed with a potential that would never be fulfilled. Their unfocused and misdirected search for identity had doomed them from the start. They honored no one, including themselves; they were set on a course of violence that led nowhere.

Ella leaned
forward to get a clearer look at the boy in the back seat. He seemed to be trying hard to stay out of sight and avoided getting close to the windows. He was wary and cautious, sitting rigidly in the seat, though all she could see was his outline. She had a strong feeling that he was the leader.

As she shifted to one side, the boy saw her. “Cops!” he shouted, then leaned over, throwing the driver’s
side door open for the others and diving back into the shadows.

In a heartbeat, the boys took off, running to the car. The driver leaned out the window and hurled an empty beer bottle at the windshield in front of Ella.

Ella ducked, shielding her face. The glass shattered into a spiderweb pattern but, with the exception of a few tiny cubes, the windshield remained in place.

Justine dove behind
the wheel and started the engine as the boys raced down the highway.

“Don’t let them get away,” Ella said, urging her cousin to speed up as they gave pursuit. “We have them on a variety of charges now. If we catch them, we can haul them in and have the next twenty-four hours to question them.” Ella used the portable radio unit, and called in a description of the boys’ car, along with the plate
number. “The boy in the back seat recognized me. That’s why he recalled his troops. He must have eyes like a hawk to have spotted me like he did. I made sure my face was never exposed.”

“This car’s altered suspension can’t handle high speeds,” Justine said, her voice rising in alarm as the car began to shake like a paint mixer.

“Don’t slow down. They’re not that far ahead of us. We can catch
up.”

“They’re headed back to their own neighborhood. They probably have a hiding place or a garage to pull into there.”

Ella felt her blood racing with the thrill of the chase. In the dim nighttime world, colors washed out and everything became a lackluster hue of steel blue or brown. Danger, like the intensity of any life and death situation, brought back the colors. The adrenaline rush made
everything feel sharper, and sensations become more focused. She was aware of the way her heart pounded against her ribs, of the cold night air that filled her lungs with every breath.

“They’re going around that curve, and they’ll be out of sight behind the hill for a minute. An ambush, you think?” Justine asked.

“I doubt it. They don’t want a confrontation, not with cops. That’s why they’re
running. They’re only brave when they’re dealing with people they can push around.”

Justine had to slow down anyway for the curve, and it was a good thing. As they rounded the bend, the headlights revealed a scattered mass of broken bottles tossed across the road just ahead. Justine touched the brakes and swerved sharply. The vehicle lifted off the ground on one side, then left the road and plowed
across a field thick with tumbleweeds, bouncing like they were on a trampoline. Ella hung on for dear life as the prickly branches scratched the sides of the vehicle like fingernails across a chalkboard.

As they finally slid to a stop, Justine leaned back, and glanced over at Ella. “You okay?”

“Yeah, but I hate to concede another win to those little jerks,” she said, unfastening her seat belt.
“They must have thrown out a case of beer bottles. The road was like a mine field for the tires.”

“These punks are starting to annoy me,” Justine said. As they got out and looked over their damaged vehicle, Justine shook her head. “If Fred Duncan had any ideas of buying this puppy, he’s going to be sore as hell when he sees what we’ve done to the paint job and the windshield. But at least it
wasn’t a complete waste of time. We can ID at least two gang members now if we see them again.”

“I’d really hoped to get a good look at the boy in the back seat, the one who I suspected was the leader,” Ella said, kicking the beer bottles out of the road so they wouldn’t cause an accident. “He was too cautious. That’s out of character for someone with gang affiliations. Those guys are into strutting
around, maintaining a tough-guy image and staying high profile. Anything out of the norm with these guys makes me curious.”

Ella returned to the car and circled it once more. Surprisingly, they hadn’t ended up with a flat or major structural damage. “Okay, let’s get out of here. It’s time to get back to the station. Let’s see if our APB on the boys’ car gets us anywhere.”

Ella had Justine drop
her by the station, then drive to the motor pool to return the Impala. Ella also gave Justine the job of finding another car for her if the Jeep still wasn’t available. While her assistant covered that, Ella filled out a report. After her public comments about Leo Bekis, everything she did now would come under scrutiny. Her statements had undoubtedly earned her an enemy or two in high places, at
least in the legal community. Big Ed needed to be kept current on everything they did.

As she filled out the forms, she mentally sifted through the evidence, organizing her thoughts and evaluating what she knew. There was no reason to believe that Lisa’s murder was connected to anything other than the gang and the rash of local burglaries, but something kept nagging at her.

It was common knowledge
that Lisa had not allowed Wilson to move in with her, despite the fact that they were inseparable off the job, and Lisa lived alone with no family in the area. Some had speculated that it had been Wilson’s idea to wait until they were married, but Ella thought she knew him better than that.

Had Lisa been protecting her virtue and reputation, or was it possible she’d had a secret she hadn’t wanted
Wilson to know about until after they were man and wife? The gossip she’d heard through her mother suggested that Lisa wasn’t the kind to worry about propriety.

She ran a hand through her hairspray-stiff, shoulder-length hair and, grabbing a rubber band from the drawer, tied it back into a pony tail. What she needed to do was find answers and stop trying to formulate theories without anything
substantial to go on.

Hearing a knock at the door, Ella glanced up just as Big Ed walked inside her office.

“Heard you’ve been having some interesting and humbling experiences,” he said, a half-smile on his face as he sat down in the only chair in the room. “Is that why you’re hiding behind all that makeup, or are you working vice tonight?”

“The punks got away, and there’s been no luck on the
APB I put out. Don’t rub it in, Big Ed.”

“Too many of our officers haven’t been taking the gang problem seriously enough. When this story gets around, maybe they’ll realize that these kids aren’t all dumb punks.”

“They eluded us this time, but I’ll track them down. Two of those young hoodlums have graduated from shoplifting and burglary to murder. That puts them squarely on my home court. I’ll
bring them down. You can count on it.”

“Watch your back,” Big Ed said, standing up again. “By the way, I need you to go testify to a state DWI task force meeting in Santa Fe tomorrow.”

“My mother’s in the hospital, Chief. I can’t go away for any extended period of time.”

“It’ll be just a morning trip, that’s all. You can fly. The tribe will be covering it.”

“Why me? I thought you weren’t too
thrilled with my statements to the press before. You’re the spokesman for the department. You made that clear this morning.”

“It wasn’t my call. The Tribal President asked that you be sent to represent the tribe because you’ve got a personal stake in this. He wants you to remind them about the bars just off the Rez, and how liquor finds its way in here despite laws forbidding it.” He placed a
ticket for a Farmington-based airline on her desk. “Be there.”

An hour later, Ella was surprised and happy to discover her Jeep was ready for use again. According to Justine, the new protective finish the department had been putting on their vehicles had shielded the Jeep from uncured paint. The spray paint had buffed off easily, and the car re-sealed with the new finish.

After retrieving her
keys and grabbing a quick shower at the station to shed the heavy makeup, Ella drove to the hospital to spell Clifford. Her flight would leave early tomorrow morning. She’d let her mother know her plans first, then she’d have to make arrangements for Clifford or his wife Loretta to go by and make sure Two had food and water.

Her hands clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. It was a rotten
time for her to have to leave. Work was making distracting but important demands on her just at the time when she should have been free to spend time with her mother at the hospital. Frustration gnawed at her. Her brother would have said that it was her inability to embrace the two sides of her own nature that was at the root of all her problems. The
hózhq,
all that was good and beautiful, had
to be paired with the
hóchxq,
the evil and ugly, in order for balance to exist.

She wondered if he would have still been able to accept the necessity of both so readily if he’d seen the effects of that darkness through the eyes of a cop. But Clifford wasn’t a cop and never would be. He lived in a world where harmony was the only way.

Reaching the hospital, Ella slowed her vehicle down and parked.
She was walking down the hall to her mother’s room, when Clifford met her halfway. “You haven’t been here all day. Couldn’t you make time to see your own mother?”