Head Wounds Page 10

  He could easily contain all of them, secure the girls, interrogate the two women, and do a search if necessary. But what if the women refused to cooperate? Or denied knowledge of the money? He would have to hurt them. How far should he go to get truthful answers? And if that failed, an exhaustive search would take some time. Perhaps too much time.

  Night was a good time to strike. But a better time would be when no one was home. When no one need be hurt, as Father suggested. At least, not yet.

  He stood just as a vehicle swung up the driveway, catching him in the headlights. He froze momentarily, the high beams blinding him, then bolted down into the arroyo, running, unable to see clearly. His foot caught on a rock, twisted his ankle, and he went down hard, landing on the side of his face. He got up, jaw aching, skin rubbed raw, and hobbled away as fast as he could, listening for pursuit.

  Clayton barged through Blossom’s front door, visually sweeping the room, sidearm drawn. He announced himself and called out to his mother. It was her SUV parked outside.

  Isabel answered from the kitchen. Clayton found her backed up in a corner, her arm around Blossom, a carving knife in her free hand.

  “The girls!” Isabel exclaimed.

  Clayton nodded. “Stay put.”

  The commotion had woken them. He brought them into the kitchen, wide-eyed and fearful. Blossom gathered her granddaughters in her arms.

  “What’s going on?” Isabel asked.

  “An intruder outside. He ran when I turned up the driveway.” Clayton looked at Blossom. “Do you have a weapon in the house?”

  “A shotgun on the top shelf of the pantry with a box of shells.”

  “Good. Get it and load it,” he said to Isabel as he retreated from the kitchen to the front room. “Use it if you have to. And call 911. Explain what happened and ask them to send the police immediately.”

  Isabel opened the pantry door. “Where are you going?”

  “There’s only one way this guy can be headed, and that’s down to the highway. I might be able to intercept him before he gets away.”

  “Be careful,” Isabel called as Clayton turned and ran out of the house.

  Hampered by his twisted ankle, Fernando Olguin stuck to the arroyo until it petered out some distance behind the village center close to a manufactured home with lights on inside and two vehicles parked near the front door. There was no cover in the open field beyond.

  He sank down under a large juniper tree, pain throbbing from his foot to his knee, his face wet with sweat and blood. He wiped his eyes and concentrated on what to do next. Cloud cover under a weak quarter moon made it hard to see. Unfamiliar with the terrain, he wasn’t sure of the best way to get to his vehicle without detection.

  As his heavy breathing slowed, he listened intently for any sound of a car on nearby dirt roads or the crunch of footfalls on the frozen ground. All was quiet.

  Staying put wasn’t an option. He’d have to risk it. Gingerly he got to his feet, opened his parka, unholstered his 9mm semiautomatic, stuck it in a front pocket, and set off at the fastest pace he could muster. As he reached the open field, the sound of car tires on a dirt road goaded him forward. He’d barely crossed the open field and found cover in the dark shadow of a building when a vehicle passed and turned onto the paved street behind the village center.

  Nobody was out hoofing it on any of the roads below Blossom’s house, which wasn’t surprising given the freezing night. Clayton slowed his unit as he passed behind the tribal grocery store, looking for anyone hiding in the shadows. Seeing no one, he made a complete circle around the village center and began checking the vehicles parked in front of the still-open store. None of them matched the description or license plate information Truman Balatche had provided.

  He spotted the car in front of the tribal cultural center and museum, drove across the lot to the post office, killed the engine, and waited. Within a few minutes a figure in a hooded parka hobbled into sight, head lowered, left leg apparently injured. From size and shape, Clayton figured it was a male. Was he a drunk on his way to hitchhike a ride on the highway to Ruidoso? Crossing over to the hospital on the other side? Going to the store for a burrito and soda?

  The parka looked the same, but Clayton didn’t want to make a mistake based on a fleeting glimpse of the man at Blossom’s house.

  He stayed put until the man veered in the direction of the car at the tribal cultural center. He cranked the engine. The man stopped, turned, and looked back, his hand reaching into a pocket. Clayton accelerated and braked to a stop ten feet away just as the man dropped prone and opened fire.

  Clayton bailed and dug for his sidearm. Bullets shattered the windshield, smashed into the open driver’s door. He rolled, rounds zinging, splatting the pavement next to his head.

  He stopped, steadied, and fired repeatedly until the only sound he heard was the metallic click of an empty magazine. He reloaded quickly and got to his feet, weapon pointed at the motionless figure on the ground. A lifeless hand still clutched a semiautomatic. Clayton kicked it away and looked at the body. Two of his rounds had torn through the man’s head, one above the left eye and one below the lower lip. The blood on the pavement spread out like a brown satin pillow.

  The gunfight had drawn the customers and staff out of the store. People were shouting, pointing. Sirens wailed.

  The dead man was no stalker or voyeur. Only a pro would have dropped so suddenly and surely into a prone firing position.

  “Shit!” Clayton said to himself. This was not the way he wanted it to go. He held up his shield to the people who were so eager to witness the bloody aftermath and ordered them to stay back.

  CHAPTER 8

  Suspicious deaths, fatal shootings, and murders on Indian lands automatically belonged to the FBI. That included all police-involved events. At Mescalero, the officers were Bureau of Indian Affairs federal cops, not appointed by tribal authorities.

  Clayton wasn’t a big fan of either agency. But since he was on the rez and clearly outside his jurisdiction, he had no control over the situation.

  Expecting a long, drawn-out night, he made quick calls to Grace at home and the Doña Ana SO before the BIA cops arrived. He told Grace he’d been in a gunfight on the rez and reassured her that he was unhurt. By radio he gave dispatch a brief summary of the event and requested Captain Rodney be sent to his location ASAP.

  Three marked units, tires squealing, screeched to a stop ten feet away. With hands raised, Clayton displayed his shield over his head and yelled he was a cop, which only momentarily kept three nervous, pumped-up BIA officers at bay with their weapons drawn. They boxed him in, ignored his credentials, and secured his sidearm. They put him facedown on the pavement and cuffed his wrists to the back. He remained pressed against the cold, damp concrete, his cheek bleeding from the pebbles ground into his face, until Doña Ana County SO dispatch confirmed that he was a legitimate police officer on official business.

  Brought to his feet by the BIA sergeant and roughly uncuffed, he shivered, wiped the bloody crust from his cheek, and silently cursed the man. His wrists ached from the tightly ratcheted cuffs that had pinched hard against bone.

  “Can I have my weapon and ID back?” Clayton asked.

  “No can do,” the sergeant said briskly, turning to the other two officers. He told them to move the crowd to the front of the store and hold them there. As the onlookers shuffled back, they used their smartphones to record the drama, light flashes peppering the night like huge fireflies.

  “I want to take a look at the victim and search his vehicle,” Clayton said, reining in an impulse to put the overweight cop on the ground and grind a knee on his neck.

  The sergeant shook his head. “Can’t do it. The FBI agent en route from Roswell wants nothing touched until she gets here.”

  Clayton took a deep, calming breath. “The dead man may have murdered three people in Las Cruces. I’m the investigating case officer. It’s important that I gather whatever evidence I can find.” />
  “You’ll have to wait.”

  “I admire your spirit of professional cooperation,” Clayton snapped, tired of playing nice.

  The sergeant shrugged and touched Clayton’s elbow. “You’ll wait in my unit.”

  Clayton jerked his arm away. “Unless you’re charging me with a crime, back off. I’m staying right here.”

  The sergeant shrugged. “Fine. But if you go near the body or the vehicle, I’ll detain you. Got it?”

  Clayton stared at the sergeant. With high cheekbones, dark eyes, a broad nose, and brown skin, he was decidedly Indian-looking. His name tag read MACKENZIE CLOUD. “Ute?” he guessed.

  “Southern Ute.”

  Apache enemy. Clayton took one step back. “It figures.”

  “Stay put,” Sergeant Cloud said as he went to peer inside the victim’s vehicle.

  FBI Special Agent Linda Foster-Nelson, all of five-foot-three and just on the light side of a hundred and ten pounds, was a brash, know-it-all Fed. Without the FBI jacket and the weapon strapped to her belt, she could easily pass for a pleasant-looking kindergarten teacher. However, she suffered from the typical FBI rookie affliction—common to officers newly released into the field on their own—of taking herself too seriously.

  It wasn’t endearing. She curtly dismissed Clayton’s request to search the victim or his vehicle.

  He told her not to be stupid, which won him the right to observe the further proceedings locked in the backseat cage of Sergeant Cloud’s unit. Frustrated, he watched as the crime scene perimeter was established, photos of the victim were taken, and evidence from the vehicle was gathered, including a tablet computer, two smartphones, and an arsenal of assault weapons, long rifles, shotguns, magazines, and boxes of ammunition. All of it nicely and neatly spread out on tarp on the pavement behind the victim’s vehicle.

  Foster-Nelson and Sergeant Cloud were bagging and tagging evidence, including the victim’s forged law enforcement ID and shield, when Sheriff Vasquez and Captain Rodney arrived.

  “You locked my detective in a police cruiser?” Vasquez snapped at Foster-Nelson, towering over her. “Jesus, I’ll have your head on a platter.”

  Foster-Nelson opened her mouth.

  “Don’t say a fucking word,” Vasquez thundered.

  Foster-Nelson rallied. “You have no jurisdiction here, Sheriff. I suggest you don’t make a scene.”

  Bright red in the face, Vasquez clamped his mouth shut.

  Frank Rodney opened the back door to the unit and looked in. “You okay?”

  Clayton climbed out. “Yeah.”

  “At least you aren’t cuffed.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Rodney shook his head in dismay. “Why?”

  “The victim carried federal police credentials,” Clayton answered. “She locked me in the unit waiting on confirmation of his identity.”

  “You killed a Fed?”

  “He was no Fed.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “I am.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Clayton made it quick and pertinent. He covered the reports he’d gotten from residents about a man flashing a shield on the rez and asking questions about Lucy Nautzile’s family. He summarized the description of the man and his vehicle he’d received from several citizens. Finding the individual outside Blossom’s house and chasing him. Finally, the shoot-out.

  “Think he’s our killer?”

  “I have my doubts, but he tried to take me out like a pro.”

  Rodney grunted. “Let’s go cooperate with the FBI.”

  “I’ll let you handle that part.”

  Computer inquiries to national law enforcement data systems soon confirmed that the dead man’s Department of Homeland Security police credentials and personal identification documents, including a Texas driver’s license and credit cards issued by a Mexican bank, were fake. His handgun was unregistered, and the labels had been removed from all of his clothing. There were no lodging, meal, or gasoline receipts found on the body or in the vehicle. An envelope containing $4,623 was tucked inside a briefcase. Seventy-six dollars was discovered in a wallet carried in the victim’s back pocket.

  A record check of the victim’s purported name, Lawrence Anico, along with his physical description and fingerprints taken at the scene, yielded no match. There were no hits on cross-checked law enforcement personnel databases. This particular Lawrence Anico, now dead, didn’t exist. Twice.

  Only the car had a traceable history. It had been rented from a national chain at the San Antonio airport. Over fourteen hundred miles had been added to the odometer, more than twice the driving distance from San Antonio to Mescalero. The GPS tracking device on the rental showed that the driver had crisscrossed into Mexico at border towns several times, staying overnight in Fort Stockton, and stopping in Alpine and Presidio before moving on to Van Horn and making a final push to El Paso and Las Cruces. From there it had been local travel, finally arriving at the rez early that afternoon.

  By phone, Frank Rodney called two detectives back in to work, gave them the vehicle’s GPS information, and ordered a telephone canvass of every hotel, motel, bed-and-breakfast, and Airbnb rental along the vehicle’s route. He wanted to know if Nautzile and Goggin had stayed in any of the locations, and if a man posing as a Department of Homeland Security special agent had been asking questions about them.

  Chastised but unbowed, Special Agent Foster-Nelson refused the sheriff’s request to turn over the collected evidence to his office. By phone, she’d consulted with the special agent in charge of the Albuquerque Division, who concurred. A killing on the rez by anybody, cop or not, meant the Feds owned it, including the evidence.

  “That totally sucks,” Clayton snapped at Foster-Nelson. “You’re impeding my investigation.”

  Foster-Nelson held her cool. “You have admitted to the fatal shooting of the victim, Detective Istee. Before I can release you, I need to take your statement.”

  “Let’s get it over with,” Clayton replied.

  Sheriff Vasquez and Captain Rodney drove Clayton to the nearby police department, where they took up sentry duty outside the interrogation room. Facing a television camera and speaking into a table microphone, Clayton spent the next ninety minutes answering Foster-Nelson’s questions, explaining the basics of his investigation and finally going over in detail the gunfight outside the tribal grocery store.

  When he finished, Foster-Nelson stood and turned off the camera. “That’s all for now. I may want to speak with you again to clarify some points.”

  She returned his credentials and handgun. “We may need your weapon for ballistic testing,” she added.

  Drained, exhausted, but still completely pissed, Clayton didn’t budge from the chair. “I want access to all the information you get about the victim, a complete list of the evidence gathered at the scene, and the results of any forensic examinations, tests, or lab work.”

  Foster-Nelson smiled frostily. “I’m sure we’ll be able to accommodate your request in good time.”

  Slowly, he stood. “You’re going to make one great bureaucrat.”

  Foster-Nelson opened the door. “How kind of you to say.”

  On the short drive to Clayton’s unit, Vasquez told him he’d spoken to Grace and reassured her that everything was okay.

  “Did you tell her what happened?”

  “Only that you had been attacked without provocation. I want a lid kept on this until we know more.”

  Clayton held back a sigh. Grace would have her claws out if he tried to sidestep or short-circuit what happened. “I’ll call her.”

  “Are you driving home tonight?” Vasquez asked as he pulled beside Clayton’s unmarked vehicle.

  Clayton nodded. “I’ll check on Blossom and my mother and call Grace from there.”

  “You’re on administrative duty as of now,” Vasquez noted. “Get some sleep and call in tomorrow afternoon. Don’t come to the office.”

  “W
e need to talk about what happens next,” Clayton said. “I don’t want the operation with Agent Harjo shut down. Not after this.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rodney said.

  “We’ll talk,” Vasquez added.

  The body of the dead man on the pavement had been covered. The crowd had dispersed. Only the BIA cops were there watching over the corpse, waiting for a medical investigator, emergency lights still flashing on all three squad cars.

  Clayton reached for the door latch. “This wasn’t our killer. He was good, but not that good.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Vasquez replied.

  “Maybe he wasn’t here to kill you or anyone else,” Rodney suggested.

  Clayton stepped out. “Then why the arsenal in the trunk of his car?”

  “Self-protection?” Rodney proposed, straight-faced.

  Clayton laughed as they drove off.

  The officer who’d responded to the 911 call at Blossom’s house was gone. Isabel answered Clayton’s knock at the front door. The girls were snuggled with their grandmother on the couch in the small living room watching a DVD cartoon movie about a boy’s search for his lost dog. Clayton asked if everything was okay and got nods and smiles in return.

  In the kitchen, Isabel poured him a cup of coffee and they sat together at the table. Clayton didn’t have to tell her much about what had happened. In the age of smartphones, breaking news stories—especially anything to do with gun violence, natural disasters, or man-made catastrophes—were uploaded on social media almost instantly.

  As soon as the gunfight started, cell phones in Mescalero had begun ringing, photos were downloaded, and videos streamed. Isabel handed him her phone. A text notification scrolled across the screen about a fatal police shooting on a New Mexico Apache reservation. It had gone national on a major web browser news feed.