Redhawk's Heart
Autore
Aimée Thurlo
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Chapter 1
Ashe drove up to the small, one-story, wood-frame-andstucco house the Johnsons leased from the tribe. It was set at the base of a hill above the bluffs, about two miles from the school the Johnsons ran.
He scanned the area quickly, but he couldn’t see either of his foster parents around, and no other officers had responded yet. That wasn’t surprising, considering the tribal police’s chronic manpower shortage. As he pulled up and parked beside the Johnsons’ faded green van, Ashe caught a glimpse of movement to his left. A figure running from the back of the house disappeared into the tall sagebrush on the hillside.
Ashe jumped out of the carryall, pistol in hand, and identified himself, ordering the running man to stop. Although he must have heard Ashe, he just picked up speed. Ashe’s gut knotted as he suppressed the instinct to pursue the fleeing suspect. As a police officer, his priority had to be those inside the house. Fear stabbed through him. He would make sure his foster parents were all right, then go after the fugitive. Fox’s car was gone, he noted gratefully. Hopefully, she was attending summer class at the college. He jogged toward the front porch, his gaze darting everywhere, alert to a danger he sensed but could not see.
Everything looked still—disturbingly so. One thing that had always marked the Johnson household was the constant flurry of activity at this time of the year. Alice Johnson spent her mornings gardening, or baking pies for the church and setting them out along the wide porch rail to cool. Nick Johnson was perpetually in the garage, building or repairing furniture. With school scheduled to begin in less than a month, he would be working now to make sure every desk and table was in good condition. Yet, instead, there was only silence.
Fear held him in an icy grip. If anyone had hurt his foster parents, they’d answer to him. He reached the porch steps and noted that the front door was closed. Ashe suddenly heard a car racing up the drive behind him. He turned as an unfamiliar vehicle slid to a stop, throwing a cloud of dust and gravel into the air. Weapon in hand, Ashe crouched behind a post. The new arrival was not a tribal police vehicle but an unmarked, generic-looking sedan that had “government” written all over it.
He’d never seen the beautiful, shapely woman who emerged from the dusty gray sedan before. The sun danced on her shoulder-length reddish-blond hair, making it gleam like melting gold. As she strode up to the house, her movements were graceful and feminine, yet held a hint of challenge.
“Stop where you are,” he ordered.
When her gaze met his, he noted the quick, speculative look she gave him. Her eyes were weighing everything. He knew then, without a doubt, that she was some kind of cop, too.
She held up a gold badge. “Casey Feist, FBI,” she said.
“A suspect just took off,” he said, gesturing uphill. Ashe listened again for sounds coming from inside the house. Either no one was home or... He didn’t want to contemplate the possibility. “Check inside the buildings,” he added quickly. “A man and woman in their mid-fifties should be at home right now. I’ll be back.”
Ashe didn’t give the woman agent a chance to argue. FBI training didn’t generally stress tracking skills and he was certain he could track someone out here far better than she could. After all, he had been trained as a tracker, was at home in the desert, and there were few people who knew this particular piece of property as well as he did. He ran over to where he’d last seen the figure and crouched down, focusing on the boot tracks that led into a drought-hardened arroyo. The suspect obviously didn’t know how to avoid leaving a trail. Had he gone around the base of the hill, it would have been far more difficult for anyone to follow because of the rocky ground. Instead, however, the fugitive had stayed on the relatively smooth, softer ground of the arroyo, where he could make better speed.
Ashe increased his pace, and as he broke through an area where tumbleweeds had gathered, he saw the darkly clad suspect about thirty yards ahead, climbing up the steep ten-foot side of the arroyo. The man pulled himself up onto the top, stood, and glanced behind him. Ashe instantly noted the suspect was wearing a ski mask, and that he was armed. His gut turned to solid ice as intuition told him there was death on the man’s trail.
Dropping to one knee, Ashe aimed his own weapon. “Police officer! Don’t move!”
The man dived away, hiding from Ashe, who couldn’t see out of the arroyo from his position at the bottom.
Ashe ran to the arroyo’s side, leaped up high, and grabbed on to the top of the vertical bank, pulling himself up and out with the ease of familiarity. As he emerged, the suspect, who’d paused behind a clump of nearby brush, fired two shots.
Ashe rolled for cover, regretting not having peered over the top of the arroyo first to check for an ambush. Anger had clouded his judgment, and now he might pay the ultimate price. He zigzagged in a random pattern as he headed for the cluster of sagebrush to his left. More bullets whined by his head.
Suddenly he heard a burst of gunfire from somewhere behind him. He didn’t have to look to know that the FBI woman had followed him. She was giving him covering fire now, forcing the suspect to take shelter.
Trying not to speculate on what she’d found at the house, Ashe dived for safety behind a two-foot-high ridge of hardened sand.
The barrage of gunfire forced his adversary back into the thick brush of the bosque, which paralleled the river not more than a hundred yards away. Ashe took advantage of the moment, jumped up and continued his pursuit, using the tall vegetation to screen himself from view. Intuition told him that catching the fleeing man was imperative.
He was a fast runner with plenty of staying power, but despite his speed and his familiarity with the terrain, Ashe knew he’d lost his suspect for now when he heard the noisy rattle of a motorcycle engine starting up. He caught a glimpse of blue smoke and a dark-colored dirt bike as it roared out of the bosque and disappeared over the hill.
“He got away,” the woman said, and cursed softly as she joined him.
Ashe bit back a curt response, wondering why she’d felt it necessary to state the obvious. He gazed down at her, momentarily distracted from his annoyance by the luster of her hair and the way the loose, flame-colored strands caressed her cheeks. As his gaze drifted down, he noticed a dark crimson stain in the center of her chest. His gut turned into a lump of ice. “Were you hit?”
Even as he said it, he knew it couldn’t be so. A wound like that would have killed or completely incapacitated her. Another thought pushed in from the edges of his mind. He held himself still, waiting for her answer, but he felt as if something was slowly breaking inside him.
“I’m fine.” She holstered her weapon and reached for the cell phone attached to her belt. “More tribal cops arrived at the scene, so I hurried to join the pursuit.”
“If you’re not hurt, who was?” He felt nothing inside him but horror as the answer came unbidden to his mind, even before she responded.
“The man and woman in the house are both dead,” she said quietly. “Did you know them?”
Ashe could only nod. Rage, sorrow and despair ricocheted wildly inside him. The agony that pierced him was overwhelming. Knowing he needed to take action to stay sane, Ashe started running back to the house.
He heard the FBI woman telephoning in a brief description of the dirt bike and the perp as she tried to keep up with him. He was grateful that she was taking care of that, because right now, he knew only one responsibility: He had to see his foster parents for himself and try to figure out what had happened.
Ashe concentrated on putting one foot before the other, never breaking stride until he reached the front porch. There were two Navajo tribal police units parked out front beside his carryall and the FBI woman’s sedan. Slowing to a walk, he took a deep breath, then entered the house, waving his badge in the air so the other cops who’d arrived could see it. It was an automatic gesture, but unnecessary. He knew all these officers, and they knew him.
Navajo beliefs had given him a deep aversion to death and anything connected with it but, now, other emotions drove him. A part of him still hoped it was all a mistake; that no one had died here—or else it was someone he didn’t know. He was aware that all eyes were on him as he knelt beside the bodies. One was covered by a handmade orange-and-black-checkered blanket he remembered from his boyhood days. Alice Johnson had finished crocheting it one Christmas. Memories filled his mind, but he pushed them back, forcing the cop in him to come through. Taking a deep breath, he pulled back the blanket.
Alice Johnson’s battered face was almost more than he could take. He choked back his grief. A dear part of his world was irrevocably lost. It didn’t seem possible. The scene before him became agonizingly surreal.
He pushed back his pain, letting the years of training as a cop come to his aid. It was the only way he had to help her now. He forced himself to do what had to be done, and studied the body for physical evidence.
Her lower arms were bruised and battered. Though now free, her hands had been bound together at some point with electrical cord, probably from the table lamp. Sections of that cord still remained on her wrists. She’d obviously resisted, been restrained, then shot sometime later.
He swallowed the bitterness at the back of his throat, fighting to hold himself together. His hands shook as he pulled the blanket back over the body and whispered goodbye. He had to get through this, and he would, no matter what it cost him.
He stood slowly and went to the other figure. Nick Johnson had also been badly beaten. He had multiple gunshot wounds and lay in a pool of blood. His hands, too, showed evidence that he’d been tied.
Ashe rose to his feet unsteadily. Displaced furniture and broken ceramic figurines suggested a struggle must have taken place. As a cop he was used to dealing with violence, but this was personal. He needed to get some air. He started toward the door when he saw the FBI agent, Casey Feist, enter.
Questions that hadn’t occurred to him earlier suddenly crowded his beleaguered mind. What had she been doing here in the first place, and so soon after the killings? The FBI didn’t routinely hang around the Rez responding to police calls. They only showed up when they were already working a case, or had somebody to arrest. Her presence disturbed him and filled him with the need to protect the privacy of the family who’d raised him; it was all they had left. He stopped in front of her, blocking her way.
“The rest of us here answered the call because this is our territory and our job. But you’re an outsider,” Ashe said, forcing his voice to remain steady and strong. “What brought the FBI here so quickly?”
“The Bureau has temporarily assigned me to the Four Corners area. I’ve been monitoring local police frequencies, trying to become familiar with the Reservation and your department’s operations. When I heard this call, I figured I’d come by and observe your officers in action.”
He hadn’t missed the brief hesitation—a pause right before she answered. It made him suspect she was coming up with an off-the-cuff cover story. But to what end? The badge clipped to her belt was real enough. He gave her a long, knife-edged, suspect-wilting stare, but she didn’t flinch or look away.
Ashe dropped his gaze, openly studying her bloodstained blouse and making no effort to disguise the questions it evoked.
Understanding, she nodded and explained. “When I entered the house, I saw the woman move,” she said, glancing down at Alice Johnson’s body. “She was barely alive. I called for an EMT, then cut the cords on her wrists with my pocketknife and tried to make her comfortable. But it was too late to do much else. She died in my arms.”
Ashe tried to find his voice. “Did she say anything?” he managed.
“She asked that I tell her three kids that she loved them all,” she said in a shaky voice. “That was it.”
Sorrow and dark despair filled his soul. He struggled against those feelings, knowing he wouldn’t be any good to anyone unless he could keep his thinking clear.
Ashe stepped away, letting her pass, then looked outside. Someone was checking the grounds. Recognizing John Nakai, an officer he’d known all his life, Ashe met him near the door. “Where’s Fox?” he managed, not using her given name as was customary in his tribe. Names were thought to have power that should be safeguarded by avoiding their use whenever possible.
“There’s no sign of her,” Nakai said. “Her car’s not here, either, as you probably already noticed.”
“Call the college. Check and see if she’s still around campus.” Ashe forced himself to concentrate. It was too late to help his foster parents, but there was still Katrina, and that worried him. If the killer was after his entire foster family, she could be in mortal danger.
Ashe walked outside and studied the ground by the garage where Katrina always parked. The tracks here were not fresh. She hadn’t been home for two hours or more. That, hopefully, had saved her life.
Casey came off the porch and toward him. Though he hadn’t been looking in her direction, Ashe had sensed her approach. There was a vibrancy about her that seemed to charge the air around her. It touched him in a way nothing ever had before. Even now, in the midst of death, she reminded him that life continued and that its warmth would eventually soothe his pain.
“What is it, Agent Feist?”
“I just learned from one of the officers that you’re Detective Ashe Redhawk. I need you to tell me everything you can about the victims. Murder on the Reservation is a federal crime, so this case now falls under my jurisdiction.”
“I know.” It took every bit of willpower he possessed to remain outwardly calm. “The people inside are—were—my foster parents. Their daughter, who also lives here, will be coming home from her college classes, and might be in danger. She’s the one I’m worried about now.”
The newcomer’s hazel eyes shimmered with a gentle softness that stole past his defenses, warming the cold emptiness inside him.
No. He fought against those feelings, struggling to stay focused. Casey Feist was a beautiful Anglo woman, but clearly one who did not belong here. This was the Dinétah, the land of his tribe—a people who had seen too many hardships and whose spirit was tested with each sunrise.
“Do you know who might have committed these crimes? Who were their enemies?” Casey pressed, cutting into his thoughts.
“They had none that would do this,” he answered. “There were, of course, those who didn’t believe their school belonged here—too many Anglo ways in what they taught. But they were respected. Everyone and everything has a place. That is part of our way.”
“Were you close enough to them to have known something about their dealings with the community?”
“Yes. I grew up here. These people gave my brother and me our second chance. We came from Rock Ridge—south of Shiprock—to live with them after our parents died in an auto accident. Our clan is poor and no one could afford to take in two more mouths to feed. My brother and I owe these people,” he said, pursing his lips and pointing Navajo-style toward the house. Rage filled him as he thought of the brutality and senselessness of their deaths. They would be avenged. He’d see to that.
Officer Nakai came running up to them, a worried frown on his face. “Fox didn’t attend her noon class, but she was at her ten o’clock session.”
Ashe nodded, looking at his watch. “Keep checking.”
He closed his eyes and cleared his thoughts. For a moment, he concentrated on the way the wind felt against his skin and the heat of the sun against his back. Control. Without it there was no harmony, no beauty. Now, more than ever, he needed to draw strength from the beliefs that sustained him.
Gathering himself, he opened his eyes once again. There were plans to be made, difficult decisions to be weighed and then implemented. And most important of all, there were questions to be answered.
“You were here when I arrived,” Casey reminded. “How did you get here so fast?”
Ashe knew where she was heading. She was trying to figure out whether he should be considered a suspect. He bit back his outrage. “When I heard the call, I was on my way to my trailer, which isn’t far from here. I’d spent the last few hours at our family shrine at Rock Ridge.”
“Did anyone go with you, or did you see anyone this morning?”
Ashe met her gaze with a steely one of his own and held it until she looked down at the notepad she carried. “No. No one can corroborate what I’ve told you.”
“I’d like you to come back inside the house with me now, Detective Redhawk. I know this will be difficult, but I need you to look around the house very carefully. Maybe you can spot something that’s not right, or that’s missing from the premises. There are no obvious signs that burglary was the motive, and we’re going to need some leads. Time’s already working against us.”
“The killer will be found,” Ashe said, conviction making his voice reverberate. “I’ll see to that myself. Right now I’d like to supervise the officers recording the physical evidence, like the plaster casts they’re making of the boot prints and the motorcycle treads the fugitive left behind. There should also be shell casings—the shooter used a semiautomatic.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I know you’re a cop—”
“I’m a detective. And I know how to work a crime scene.” He kept his voice cool and steady. He had no intention of backing off. Things would go more smoothly, however, if he could convince her that he was capable of working this case despite his ties to the victims.
“That may be so, but it’s also true that you have a personal stake in this case and your perspective will be skewed. Leave this case to me, Detective. I know what I’m doing, too.”
“Maybe, but you’ll still need my help. The procedures you’re used to following don’t always work here. That’s the reality of the situation on the Navajo Nation, and you might as well accept it.” He strode toward the house, leaving her standing alone outside in the shimmering heat. FBI or not, she was on his turf. Someone had declared war on his family, and he had no intention of letting someone else fight this battle for him.
CASEY FEIST STARED AT Ashe Redhawk as he walked off, then quickly followed him to the house. She knew all about him, though he didn’t know that, and he fascinated her. Yet, until now, everything she’d learned had been based on anecdotes and on personnel reports as impersonal as the police jargon that filled them.
Now that she’d actually met the man face-to-face, he intrigued her more than ever. There were obviously many different sides to his nature. With his shoulder-length black hair and powerful build, Ashe Redhawk looked like a legendary Native American warrior from a painting of the Old West.
As the tribal officers examined the crime scene, she noted how the other cops responded to him. Detective Ashe Redhawk was a man used to taking charge, and she had a feeling few people ever challenged his authority. There was a dark, dangerous edge to him, straining against the iron-willed control. Intuition told her he could be a formidable friend—or an equally dangerous enemy.
Casey didn’t interfere when Ashe reluctantly crouched by his foster father’s body again as if a new thought had suddenly occurred to him. He studied the man’s hands, careful not to touch the body in any way. From what she knew about Navajos, that was probably not just due to his police training. Before she took this assignment, Casey had been briefed about the tribe’s customs, and remembered learning about their fear of the dead. Navajo religious beliefs held that the good in a man merged with Universal Harmony when he died, but the chindi—all that was bad—remained behind to create illness and problems for the living. Even mentioning the names of the dead was considered dangerous, because it was said to summon the chindi.
He glanced up at her. “There are fibers of what I think may be wool on his hands, the same color as the ski mask the suspect was wearing. I figure that there was a struggle, and my father managed to unmask the assailant. That cost my parents their lives.” His jaw clenched.
There was a broken look in his eyes despite the steadiness of his voice. Casey’s heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to face the death of someone dear. She’d lost her mother years back. Yet, despite the sympathy she felt for him, she refrained from offering any words of comfort. Under the circumstances, the last thing he probably wanted to hear were soothing platitudes that as yet had no power to ease his pain. He needed to cling to his professionalism now more than ever, to keep himself together.
“Why don’t you look around the house?” she urged again. “You’re the only one who can tell me if anything’s been stolen or if the killer has left something behind.”
Ashe stood slowly, strain and weariness evident in the way he held himself. Then, as if he’d suddenly realized the image he projected, he threw back his shoulders and walked with apparently renewed energy around the room.
“This makes no sense to me,” he said. “My foster parents were kind and gentle people. They went out of their way to help others.”
Officer Nakai came up to them. “The officer I sent to campus says, so far, nobody has seen Fox since that early class. He’ll take another look around, then move on to the local college hangouts.”
“It’s not like her to change her routine, and even less like her to skip a class,” Ashe said. “Take one of the officers from here and check out every coffee shop and store in the area.”
“Wait a second,” Casey interrupted. “We need these men here to continue processing the crime scene. This is exactly what I was trying to warn you about. You’re too close to this case.” She paused, then in a gentle voice added, “Go home, or start your own search, if you prefer. Katrina may just be studying, or out with her boyfriend. We have no reason to believe she’s in any danger.”
Officer Nakai gave Ashe a sympathetic look and glanced back at Casey. “It is our custom to avoid mentioning names, particularly around traditionalists like the detective.”
“I know about your custom of not naming the dead. But I only mentioned their daughter, whom I assume is still fine. I saw her name on some schoolwork inside.”
Ashe exhaled softly and, after thanking Nakai for his consideration, looked at Casey. “We believe names have power. Repeating them wears them out. If a name is kept in reserve, its owner can use its power in times of danger. That’s why I tend to use only her nickname. But I’m a cop, and I don’t expect the manner in which we do our job to change or adapt itself to traditional ways. You did not offend me.”
“Thank you for understanding,” she said. “And try not to worry too much about that young woman. Just remember that you have no hard evidence to suspect she’s in danger.”
“The timing is wrong for any other possibility. I don’t believe in coincidence,” he said. “The killer arrived here sometime before Fox would normally have come home. If all he’d wanted to do was kill my foster parents, he wouldn’t have tied them up first, or beaten them—possibly to gain information.” He pointed to three cigarette butts ground into the floor. “My foster parents don’t smoke. The perp stayed around after killing them because he was waiting for Fox to arrive. He may have planned to deal with her next. The only thing that drove him off was my arrival. The thing that concerns me most now is that Fox should have been home long before I got here.”
Casey considered the information. This cop might be too close to this case, but he had an orderly, logical mind. Still, there was much he didn’t know, facts she could not share with him yet.
Ashe looked down at his foster father’s desk and the papers that were scattered everywhere. “This mess was not my foster father’s doing,” he said, his voice slow and heavy with sorrow. “He was a stickler for neatness. The perp was searching for something. That’s consistent with the beatings, too. He was looking for something he couldn’t find, or else he needed information.”
“About what? Do you have any ideas?”
“No, and I’d have to go through all his papers before I could even make a guess. But you’ll want to have everything on this desk dusted for prints first. In the meantime, I’ve got to concentrate on finding Fox.”
“Is it possible, in any way, that she may have been a part of what happened here? Was Fox getting along with her parents?”
“She is not involved in this, except as a potential victim,” Ashe stated flatly, anger evident in his tone. “Fox is a gentle person, and she dearly loved her parents.”
“Maybe she drove up, saw or heard part of what was going on, and fled. A female made the call to the station reporting the disturbance here—I heard that much on the radio. Maybe Fox was the one who called. She could be hiding somewhere, afraid to come home now.”
“That’s one possibility, but she also may have been kidnapped. The most recent set of tracks around the area where Fox parks her car are from this morning. Maybe she was taken close to the highway by a partner of the killer, and her car was taken, too.”
His concern was real. But, as much as she wanted to, there was nothing Casey could do to ease his mind. With a heaviness of spirit, she accepted the burden her profession placed on her, as she had many times in the past To disclose the little she knew would have been to risk compromising the job she’d been sent to do.
A tall, young-looking Anglo man wearing a Western-cut suit and exuding an air of self-importance suddenly came into the house. She didn’t know who he was, but her guess was he was some kind of lawyer. From what she could see, the men in the room all seemed intent on looking busy and not catching his eye.
Oblivious to the collective indifference he was receiving, the man came up to her and extended his hand. He was obviously sweating in a suit at this time of year, yet he persisted in wearing a jacket and tie and drenching himself in expensive cologne. “I’m Ben Prescott, the county district attorney. You must be Special Agent Feist. The tribal police captain told me about you.”
She nodded and shook his hand briefly. His touch held the practiced false sincerity of a politician.
“We’re glad to have the cooperation and expertise of the Bureau on board,” Prescott added smoothly. “I’d like to close this case quickly. It’s an election year and I’m trying to make my temporary appointment here permanent. Do you have a suspect yet?”
“No names, just a description so far. Our investigation is just beginning,” Casey answered.
“I shouldn’t have to remind you that, after the first twenty-four hours, the chances of catching the criminal decrease substantially.”
Casey now understood why everyone had treated this man like a walking plague from the moment he’d arrived. He was still wet behind the ears, and had just enough knowledge of investigative matters to be irritating. “We learned that at the academy, sir,” she retorted. “We’re doing our best.”
“Good. Keep me informed every step of the way, especially regarding any evidence you uncover. And remember, I want some arrests ASAP.”
Prescott drifted over to another unfortunate officer as Casey refocused her attention on what Ashe was doing. Ashe’s gaze was riveted on the contents of a file scattered on the floor near the desk. Having put on rubber gloves, he was sifting through the papers carefully. But it was the pain mirrored on his face that drew her to him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“These are adoption papers. According to them, Fox was not my foster parents’ natural daughter. I never knew that. I never thought of my foster parents as people with secrets, but it looks like I was wrong.”
She heard the sorrowful disappointment lacing through his words, and every fiber in her body responded to it. She wanted to offer this man some comfort, but knew she could not. Power, grace and strength defined him. For now, his own courage would have to be enough to keep him going. But, as he turned his gaze on her, she felt herself drawn to him on a level she’d never experienced before.
It was all she could do to force herself not to reach out to him, and to look away. “Do you think the adoption is somehow connected to the murders?”
“I don’t know, but I’m certain this was something Fox was never told. She wouldn’t have kept it from me or my brother.”
Casey heard an uncharacteristic hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“Too many secrets,” he added in a whisper-soft voice.
Emotions she couldn’t quite define flickered on his face and then, in a heartbeat, were gone.
Casey watched him move through the room. As he passed through the different shades of lighting, his face became a fascinating blend of clearly defined angles and planes. He was the most striking man she’d ever met. Yet it was his composure in the face of chaos—that ultimate proof of his courage—that drew her the most.
Instinct warned her that danger lay ahead for her in this case, but her course was set. She’d been sent to find answers, and she would start by learning more about this enigmatic, compelling man.
