Enemy Way (16 page)

Five minutes later, she had Carolyn Roanhorse on the phone. Fortunately it was still early enough that Carolyn hadn’t left for work either. “My brother made me feel guilty this morning, so I think it’s time for me to do something for Mom. She needs me now, and I can’t let her down. How do you feel about sneaking Two into the hospital this morning?”

“You know, I think it’s a great
idea. We all need a break, something to make us feel young.” Carolyn said. “It’s been a long time since I pulled a stunt like this.”

“Me, too,” Ella said, then chuckled. “And I’ve worked out a great plan. All I need is for you to fill in the details.”

*   *   *

Two was on the front porch looking for a spot of sunlight when Ella went to get him. A shift change at the hospital was due about the
time she’d get there, which would make it ideal. People going off duty would be sleepy and eager to leave, and those coming on duty would be dragging their feet until the first cup of coffee kicked in. Getting the dog’s old blanket, Ella whistled and Two ran up to the car and jumped inside. “Get ready, boy. You’re about to go undercover.”

The dog tilted his head to one side and looked at her.

“It’s on a need to know basis, but I’m counting on you to behave.”

Ella drove to the hospital, an undeniable excitement spreading through her. Carolyn was right. They needed hijinks like these, not only for her mother’s sake, but for all of them. Of course they weren’t kids anymore, and the price, if they were caught, would be severe. If things went wrong, Ella suspected she’d be banned from the
hospital, which would make matters difficult while her mother was still there. For Carolyn, the price could be higher. Ella began to have serious second thoughts about involving her friend.

Ella parked near the rear doors leading to the service elevator on the ground floor. This was the most direct way to the morgue, one floor below in the basement. Picking up Two with a grunt and covering him
with his old blanket, she hurried down the hall to the elevator. A janitor gave her a curious look, but Ella was past him and inside the elevator before he could ask any questions.

As the doors slid open, at the basement level, Carolyn met her. “Everything’s set. Your mother will go to the service elevator on her floor.”

Ella set Two down, but kept the blanket over the dog, resisting the animal’s
efforts to shake it off. “Let’s limit your involvement, okay? Just make sure no one else gets on this elevator.”

Carolyn reached behind her and pulled a gurney with a zippered body bag into view.

Ella’s eyes widened. “You borrowed a corpse?”

“No, of course not. It’s mostly laundry and a pillow. But it’ll do. I’ll station myself in the elevator with you. Then even if someone plans on getting
in, they’ll gladly let the elevator go when they see this lump.”

Ella laughed. “Are you sure you want to take this big a role in this?”

Carolyn nodded. “Look, in my job, you need to find ways to decompress, and this certainly fits the bill.”

“Okay. We’ll stop for my mom, then go all the way up to the roof and keep the elevator there. Now, all I have to do is keep Two from barking at the wrong
time.”

They made it up to the Rose’s floor undetected, but as soon as the door opened and Two saw Rose, he barked. Ella pushed Rose’s wheelchair into the elevator quickly as Carolyn rolled the gurney in an angle, allowing her to pass.

Dr. Natoni walked by just as the elevator doors started to close and Two let out another sharp bark. The doctor’s eyes widened but Carolyn began to cough loudly,
leaning over the body bag.

Ella reached beneath the blanket and clamped her hand around Two’s muzzle as the doors slid shut. “He knows,” she said, picturing Dr. Natoni’s perplexed gaze in her mind.

“If he says anything, deny it. I’ll assure him it was a sound that came from the corpse passing gas.”

Ella looked at her mom and seeing Rose’s wide-eyed look, burst out laughing. “Don’t worry, Mom,
there’s no corpse in there. It’s just a bunch of laundry.”

Two wriggled out from under the blanket and, placing his front paws on Rose’s lap, barked again. His tail was thumping wildly.

“Quiet, dummy!” Ella ordered.

Rose hugged the dog. “I’ve missed you, boy.”

Ella saw the delighted look on her mother’s face and knew the risk had been more than worth it. As the doors opened onto the roof,
a blast of cold air hit them, but neither Rose nor Two seemed to mind. Ella reached over and closed the doors again, and Carolyn switched the elevator off with a key so it wouldn’t move, or set off any alarm.

Carolyn looked at Rose and Two, then back at Ella. “This was a very good thing we pulled off here today,” she said softly.

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“I don’t know how you two managed this,
but I’m sure glad you did,” Rose said, and laughed as Two tugged playfully at the folds of her jacket. “I can’t get up right now, boy, but soon, maybe.”

“If you believe that, you’ll make it happen,” Ella said quietly.

“I want my life back, Daughter,” Rose said slowly. “I miss home and my daily routines. Though I have to admit I’m glad I wasn’t there when those gangsters turned our home into
Swiss cheese. Your brother already told me.”

“It won’t happen again. The house will be repaired this week and, by the time you get home, you won’t be able to tell it ever happened. The damage wasn’t major. We’ll have to replace a few lamps and windows, and patch some walls, that’s all,” Ella said.

Rose smiled. “I can always tell when you’re downplaying things for my benefit, but that’s all right.
I know you’ll handle things at home until I can get back.”

“Count on it.” Ella glanced at her watch. “We have to go now. I don’t want to give Dr. Natoni too much time to think about what he heard.”

As they released the elevator and began to travel back down to her mother’s floor, Carolyn glanced at Rose. “Do you think you can make it back to your room alone?”

Rose nodded. “Of course. And don’t
worry. If Dr. Natoni’s still on the floor, or even waiting by the elevator, he may give you a hard time, but I don’t think he’ll cause you any serious trouble.”

“I hope you’re right,” Carolyn said.

“I am,” Rose answered confidently. “The biggest problem you’re going to have is when you hold the elevator doors open for me while I get out. You’ll be vulnerable during those few seconds.”

“You’re
right,” Carolyn said, biting her lower lip pensively. “If Two barks, or tries to go with you…”

The doors slid open and, before Carolyn could block the way, Dr. Natoni slipped inside.

Two barked and Ella coughed loudly.

“Nice try, but it won’t wash. I know what you’re pulling.” He smiled at Rose. “And it’s my guess that you put them up to this.”

“You always say that you want what’s best for
the patient. Well, this is good for me,” Rose argued.

“I agree,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “And I’m not your problem. I’m off duty now, but I thought I’d come to warn you that the hospital director, Andrew Slowman, is out on an early morning inspection right now. He’s looking through records that are stored in the room next to the elevator down in the basement. I saw him going over
the files when I went down to the pharmacy a few minutes ago. You better not get off on that floor.”

“I’ve got to. No way I can sneak this squirmy beast down the main hall on the first floor and right out the front door.”

Rose looked at Carolyn, then at her daughter. “Put him in that body bag.”

“Mom, he’ll squirm, and people will run away screaming.”

“No, he won’t. Two understands me.” She
took the blanket off the dog and leaned over, whispering something Ella couldn’t hear. When Rose sat up finally, she was smiling. “Just put him in there.”

Carolyn glanced at Ella who shrugged. Working together, they lifted the dog into the bag.

“Lie down,” her mother said calmly.

To Ella’s surprise, Two did.

“Stay there now.” Rose took something from her pocket, and handed it to Two. “Zip
the bag up, but leave it open enough so he can breathe. And work fast!” Rose got out of the elevator with Dr. Natoni’s help.

As the doors slid shut, Ella glanced at Carolyn, then back at the dog. “What did she give him?” The animal wasn’t moving—much. She could detect a slight back and forth motion and the sounds of chewing.

“I haven’t got a clue,” Carolyn said, “but this is as good as it’ll
get. Do as she said and work fast.”

The doors slid open as they arrived at the basement. Ella and Carolyn had just started to wheel the gurney out when Andrew Slowman appeared. He stepped back, and then moved around them quickly, getting into the elevator as they emerged from it. As the doors started to slide shut, Two sneezed.

Slowman’s eyes grew wide as he stared at the bag. “What—”

The door
slid shut before he could say anything else. Carolyn laughed. “Get out of here. He’ll come back, but I’ll dazzle him with ten thousand terms he won’t understand, mostly because I’ll be making them up, and then regale him with specifics about muscle contractions in corpses. By the end of the lecture, he won’t eat for a week.”

Ella laughed. Picking up Two and throwing the blanket over him, she
hurried out the back entrance to the hospital.

Ella drove home with the window on Two’s side rolled halfway down so he could stick his head out. She was freezing but nothing could mar the warmth inside her that came from knowing she’d managed to keep her promise to her mother. The best part was that, for the first time since the accident, her mother was talking about taking back her life. Ella
couldn’t have asked for anything better.

After dropping Two off at the house, she hurried on to work.

The moment she walked inside, Ella felt a tension in the station that made the air almost electric. As she walked down the hall, that feeling intensified. People were looking at her, and she could hear the whispers behind her as she walked past them. Now what? Didn’t she have enough on her hands?

As she stepped into her office, Justine bolted out of Ella’s chair. “Sorry, boss. I was just reading the paper. The headline caught my attention.”

“Let me guess. I’m featured.” Ella went around the desk and sat down in the chair Justine had quickly vacated. The headline read ‘Good Cop—Bad Cop?’ Directly beneath that was her photo and an article on police brutality. Several officers, citizens,
and a local attorney had been interviewed on the topic. Although the author of the article clearly emphasized that the excessive force and defamation charges against Ella had not been proven, the attorney’s comments were particularly interesting.

“I see one of the Farmington attorneys couldn’t resist the opportunity to drum up a little business. He’s pledging to take on any case where excessive
force is the issue, and using me as a prime example of why the public needs his protection. If I was as violent as he claims, I’d go punch his lights out right now, the cockroach.”

Hearing a throat being cleared, Ella glanced up and saw Big Ed standing in the doorway. Justine started for the door, but he stopped her. “Stay. This concerns you both.” He closed the door behind himself.

Justine
stood beside the desk, and Ella leaned back in her chair, waiting.

Big Ed took a seat across from Ella and for an interminable time, said nothing, his eyes closed.

Ella knew better than to say anything. Yet, as each second ticked by, she started to wonder if her boss had fallen asleep. That didn’t seem like Big Ed, but his breathing was so steady that she wasn’t sure.

Finally, Big Ed opened
his eyes and he focused on her. “I’m under fire from Bekis’s friends in the tribal government for keeping you on the job, but I can take the heat if it’s justified. What I need from you now is some cooperation.”

“Whatever I can do,” Ella said, opening her hands in a gesture of acquiescence.

“I want you to take Justine along with you whenever you’re out in the field. Also, get a tape recorder
and use it during all your interactions with citizens. Make it a sound-activated unit, and wear it all the time, like our patrol officers. There are people who want to see you go down in flames, so you have to start covering your butt at every turn. Understood?”

“You want Justine with me everywhere? Chief, that’s impossible. She’s got work of her own to do in the lab, and our manpower situation
isn’t such—”

He held up a hand. “It wasn’t a request.”

Ella clamped her mouth shut. “It’ll be done.”

“One more thing. Are you sure the Many Devils were the ones who took potshots at you last night?” Big Ed asked.

“It sure looks like it, based upon the evidence. But my brother reminded me about others who have tried to take me out in recent months.” She pointed out what Clifford had suggested
concerning The Brotherhood.

“Just keep your eyes open, and don’t go walking into any traps. A bullet doesn’t care who fired it.” Big Ed stood, and looked toward Justine. “That goes for both of you, of course.”

As he left, Ella stood up and paced. “I can’t believe all this is happening to me. The legal troubles as coming to me almost as fast as the bullets.”

“You have real friends in this department,
though, and our boss is probably the biggest one.”

Ella heard the undertone in her assistant’s words and knew the meaning behind what was left unspoken. “But some people in the department probably believe I did what that Bekis and his sister claim, yet they support me because they think it was justified,” she said finishing Justine’s thought.

Justine shook her head. “Yes, I guess not everyone
believes you went by the book. They’ll back you, cops stick together, but there’s more than one officer who believes that you went overboard a bit physically when you arrested Gladys Bekis. When Michael and Jimmy Frank support your story, some take it at face value, others don’t.”

“Wonderful. So I have their loyalty, even though they think I go around roughing up prisoners.”

Justine nodded.
“Well, it could be worse, you know.”

Ella sighed. “Anything new on Lisa’s murder?”

Before she could answer, Neskahi knocked on the open door and came inside. “Sorry, I’m a bit late.”