CU tomorrow 10 @ Navajo Inn.
After years of resisting technology, Leaphorn now realized it was a useful research tool. He didn’t see the need to learn Twitter, Instagram, and the many other applications young people couldn’t live without. But for quick, simple communication and research, the internet served a fine purpose.
He went to his office. Giddi padded in to check on him, and he gave the cat a few pats before it calmly strolled away.
He typed in “Juanita and Manuelito Navajo” and got 73,000 results before he could take the next breath. He scanned the list and quickly found one that had Juanita’s name first. He clicked on it to find a picture of her in a biil, with a necklace and high moccasin boots, a belt of large silver concho discs at her waist. She looked peaceful and strong.
He clicked on several other pages and at the end of half an hour had learned little except that doing research like this himself would take time. The library at Northern Arizona University had a fine collection of articles and photos relating to Navajo history and especially old weavings. He called up the library website and typed in his request. He knew it was Saturday, but someone could be working at the reference desk. If not, they’d see his question first thing Monday.
4
The first time Bernie ran past the spot on the trail that afternoon, she noticed the dog. It sniffed at the ground, totally uninterested in her. Good, she thought. She’d been chased by, growled at, and threatened with sharp dog teeth enough already to last a lifetime. She ran until she came to the place where the fallen cottonwood tree blocked the trail. She stopped, sipped some water, felt the good fatigue in her muscles. Time to turn back.
The dog was still there, sitting now. She slowed from a jog to a walk, her basic distrust of canines struggling with her intuition as a police officer. She stopped in front of the animal, a brown-and-black mixed breed of some sort, about forty pounds. It wore a green collar. The dog trotted off toward the river, then came back. Slowly, as though it wanted to trust her.
“Easy, fella. I’m not going to hurt you, and you aren’t going to hurt me.” She spoke calmly, as she had been trained, even though her heart was beating like a hummingbird’s. She followed it, curious as to what the animal found so intriguing. The grasses and snakeweed grew thick here along the river, but the red athletic shoe stood out. Her eyes followed the shoe to a black pant leg. The man who wore them lay facedown. The dog paced around the body and whined.
Her first thought was a heart attack.
“Hey, sir, are you OK?”
If the awkward posture hadn’t already yelled crime scene, the man’s hands secured behind his back with white plastic ties confirmed her suspicions. She squatted close to feel for a pulse, pressing her fingers firmly against the gray skin of his neck. Nothing. He had holes in his ears for earrings but wore no jewelry. Bernie stood and pulled her phone from the nylon pouch, hoping to find cell service. Not here. If she could change one thing about being a police officer, it would be to end encounters with the dead and the evil chindiis they left behind, but she knew it came with the job.
She retraced her steps, following the path she’d taken as she approached the body, this time focusing on anything else out of the ordinary that could be a clue to what had happened here. When she reached the trail, she looked at her phone again and walked until she finally saw a single bar. She dialed the substation. Sandra answered.
“I found a male body off the river trail, about halfway in. I’ll wait for backup.”
“Yikes.”
“That’s what I thought.” A man on a mountain bike pedaled by, focused on the trail. She made a mental note of his appearance. “I need you to call the Feds, too. This guy is a homicide.”
“You heard that the rookie had to go home?” Sandra didn’t wait for confirmation. “Backup could take a while. Hang in there.” Bernie typed the description of the bike person into her phone. Unlikely that he had any connection with anything, but the trail was now a crime scene. She kept the phone handy and returned to the spot on the trail closest to the body. The dog waited there. She glanced at its collar for an ID tag, but it didn’t have one, just the simple strap fastened around its neck.
She walked back toward the body, moving carefully and taking pictures of anything that seemed relevant. She looked for a dropped cigarette butt, a discarded water bottle, a footprint where the vegetation wasn’t so thick, a thread snagged on the weeds, any clue that could have been left by whoever was responsible for the dead man. She saw places where someone might have stepped close to the body but no sign that it had been dragged in from the trail. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—except for the corpse in the red shoes and torn black pants and the dog. She found no signs of struggle and no blood other than what looked like a cut on one of the victim’s hands. The dog paced and panted, walking to the body and then circling back toward her.
Bernie returned to the trail, looking for more clues as she waited for backup to arrive. She concentrated now on keeping anyone else whom the dog made curious from disturbing the scene.
A middle-aged man wearing sunglasses approached. He slowed from jogging to walking when she moved to the center of the trail. He was breathing hard.
“Sir, I’m a Navajo police officer, and this trail is closed. You need to go back to the parking lot.”
“You don’t look like a police person.” He took off his hat and glasses, wiped his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “You’re kidding. Are you serious?”
Bernie pulled out her ID as the man spoke and held it for him to see.
“Whoa. What happened?” He used the hat as a fan. “Why close the trail unless someone died out here of heatstroke or something?” The man glanced toward the river, but Bernie knew he could not see the body from where he stood.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Fred Martinez.”
“Did you see anything unusual out here today?”
“No.”
“Have you seen this dog before, Mr. Martinez?”
“Nope. I thought it was yours. Do you need any help, with anyone . . . or anything?”
“No, sir. Please go back to the parking lot.”
Martinez jogged away. The conversation with him foreshadowed the rest of the people she encountered on the trail.
Bernie knew that when backup arrived she’d still be here, either as the officer who would close the trail or as the one to keep an eye on the body and bar access to the crime scene from the river. She expected the backup person to be Chee, but she didn’t know where he might be in the sprawling district their substation covered, what call he was currently handling, or how long it would take him to arrive.
After she had done as much as she could to record the crime scene exactly as she’d found it, she sat on a tree stump that offered a view of anyone on the trail and of the weeds that concealed the victim. She turned back a bicycle rider, two teen girls ready for a run, and some other disappointed walkers and joggers. She collected their names and contact information. She also spoke to half a dozen exercisers returning to the parking lot, people who had passed the place on the trail where a detour led to the body. Even though each of them said they had seen nothing unusual, she typed in their information and suggested that someone might want to interview them in detail.