CHAPTER TWO
Dorothy Naalnish's house sat at the end of a dirt road, the ruts deep enough to scrape the undercarriage of Kari's Jeep if she wasn't careful. She'd made this drive three times now since Ben had found the remains, and each visit felt harder than the last.
The house itself was modest but well-maintained, a single-story structure with a covered porch and a vegetable garden that showed signs of recent attention.
Wind chimes made from shells and bits of turquoise hung near the front door, their soft music carrying across the yard as Kari parked and stepped out into the afternoon heat.
She had nothing new to tell them. That was the worst part.
Three days of FBI investigation, and all she could offer was the same empty reassurances she'd given before.
We're doing everything we can. These things take time.
We'll let you know as soon as we hear anything.
The words felt hollow even in her own mind.
The front door opened before she reached the porch steps.
Dorothy Naalnish stood in the doorway, a woman in her late sixties whose face bore the particular grief of a mother who had waited fifteen years to learn her son's fate.
Her silver hair was pulled back in a traditional bun, and she wore a long skirt and velveteen blouse that reminded Kari of her grandmother Ruth.
"Detective Blackhorse." Dorothy's voice was warm despite the exhaustion in her eyes. "Come in. I just made coffee."
"Thank you, Mrs. Naalnish."
The interior of the house was cool and dim, the curtains drawn against the sun.
Photographs covered nearly every surface.
Evan as a baby, held by a younger Dorothy.
Evan at his high school graduation, grinning beneath his cap.
Evan in hiking gear, standing at the rim of a canyon with a backpack and a notebook in his hand.
The photos stopped at twenty-four, frozen in time like the young man himself.
Kari had studied these photographs during her previous visits, had memorized the face of the man whose bones now lay in an FBI evidence locker.
He'd been handsome, with his mother's high cheekbones and an easy smile that suggested someone comfortable in his own skin.
A geology enthusiast, according to his sister Charlene.
Someone who loved exploring caves and rock formations, who kept detailed notebooks about everything he found.
Someone who had found the wrong thing in the wrong place and paid for it with his life.
Dorothy poured coffee into mismatched mugs and set one in front of Kari at the small kitchen table. "Charlene wanted to be here, but she had to get back to Albuquerque. School doesn't stop just because..." She trailed off, gesturing vaguely at the air.
"I understand." Kari wrapped her hands around the mug, grateful for something to hold. "How is she doing?"
"Better than me, I think. She was only nine when Evan disappeared.
She grew up knowing he was gone, accepted it, but I.
.." Dorothy sat down across from Kari, her movements slow and deliberate.
"I spent fifteen years hoping. Every time the phone rang, every time someone knocked on the door, part of me thought it might be news.
Good news. That he'd had some kind of accident, lost his memory, been living somewhere else all this time.
" She shook her head. "Foolish, I know."
"It's not foolish. It's human."
"Maybe." Dorothy sipped her coffee. "At least now I know. That's something. We had the ceremony last week, you know. A small one, just family and a few friends. We couldn't bury him properly, not yet, but we needed to do something. To acknowledge that he's really gone."
Kari nodded. She'd heard about the memorial service from Ben, who had attended on behalf of the department. A token funeral, he'd called it. A way for the family to begin grieving properly after fifteen years of uncertainty.
"The medicine man said Evan's spirit was at peace," Dorothy continued. "That he'd been waiting for us to find him, and now he could move on." Her eyes met Kari's. "Do you believe that, Detective? That the dead can wait for us?"
The question caught Kari off guard. She thought about her mother, about the seventeen months since Anna Chee's body had been found near Spider Rock. About the questions that still haunted her, the investigation that had consumed so much of her time and energy.
"My grandmother would say yes," Kari said carefully. "She believes the dead stay close until their business is finished. Until they've been properly honored."
"And you?"
Kari considered the question. A year ago, she would have given a diplomatic non-answer, something about respecting different beliefs without committing to any of them. But the cases she'd worked since returning to the reservation had changed her perspective on many things.
"I think there are things I don't understand," she said finally. "Things that don't fit neatly into the categories I was trained to use. But I've learned to stay open to possibilities I might have dismissed before."
Dorothy smiled, the expression softening the lines of grief on her face. "Your mother would be proud to hear you say that. Anna Chee understood that some truths can't be found in books or laboratories."
"You knew my mother?"
"Not well. But she came to see me, about a year before she passed.
Asked questions about Evan. About the day he disappeared, about the land where they found his truck.
" Dorothy's brow furrowed. "I thought it was strange at the time.
A researcher interested in a fifteen-year-old missing person case.
But she seemed so certain there was something more to it. "
Kari's pulse quickened. She'd known Anna had been investigating Evan's disappearance as part of her broader research into suspicious deaths, but she hadn't realized her mother had spoken directly with the family.
"What did she ask you?"
"Everything. What Evan was like, what he was interested in, why he'd gone hiking in that particular area.
" Dorothy set down her mug. "She was especially interested in his notebooks.
Evan kept detailed records of everywhere he explored.
Drawings, measurements, descriptions of rock formations and cave systems. When he disappeared, his notebooks disappeared with him. "
"Were they ever found?"
Dorothy shook her head. "His truck was at the trailhead with his wallet and phone inside, but his backpack was gone. The notebooks would have been in there."
The words hung in the air between them. Kari forced herself to keep her expression neutral, to not reveal what she knew about the crushed skull, about the evidence of murder that the family hadn't been told.
The FBI had insisted on keeping those details confidential, and as much as Kari hated it, she understood the reasoning.
In an active homicide investigation, certain information needed to be protected.
But sitting across from Dorothy Naalnish, watching hope and grief war in the older woman's eyes, keeping such information back felt cruel.
"Mrs. Naalnish, I wish I had more to tell you about the investigation." Kari set down her own mug. "The FBI is handling things now, and they haven't shared much with us. But I promise you, as soon as I know something, you'll know it too."
"They're treating it as a homicide, aren't they?" Dorothy's voice was quiet, somber. "That's why they won't release his remains. That's why everything is taking so long."
Kari hesitated. She couldn't confirm it, but she couldn't bring herself to deny it either.
"I can't speak to what the FBI is investigating.
But I can tell you that Detective Tsosie and I are doing everything in our power to make sure Evan gets justice.
Whatever happened to him, we won't let it be forgotten. "
Dorothy studied her face for a long moment. Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her, because she nodded slowly.
"My son was murdered. I've known it for fifteen years, even when everyone told me he probably just got lost, fell somewhere, couldn't be found. Mothers know these things. We feel them." She placed her weathered hand over Kari's. "Find out who did it, Detective. Find out why. That's all I ask."
"I will." The words came out before Kari could stop them, a promise she had no authority to make and no certainty she could keep. But looking into Dorothy Naalnish's eyes, she meant every syllable.
They talked for another half hour, about Evan's childhood and his dreams, about the land that had been sold so quickly after his disappearance, about the company called Devco Holdings that had locked it down and refused to let anyone near.
Dorothy walked Kari to the door when it was time to go, pressing a small bundle wrapped in cloth into her hands.
"Blue corn bread," Dorothy explained. "My grandmother's recipe. Take it home to Ruth. Tell her Dorothy Naalnish sends her regards."
"I will. Thank you."
"And Detective?" Dorothy's hand caught Kari's arm as she turned to leave. "Your mother was on to something. I don't know what, exactly, but whatever she found scared someone enough to make her stop looking. Be careful that the same thing doesn't happen to you."
The warning echoed in Kari's mind as she walked back to her Jeep. Whatever she found scared someone enough to make her stop looking. Except Anna hadn't stopped. She'd kept investigating—right up until the day she died.
Kari sat in the driver's seat for a moment, staring at the Naalnish house with its wind chimes and its photographs and its fifteen years of unanswered questions. She thought about her mother visiting this same house, asking these same questions, following a trail that had led somewhere dangerous.
Anna had been right about Evan. The crushed skull proved that much. If she'd been right about one case, how many of the other sixteen deaths in her files were also murders disguised as accidents?
Kari started the engine and pulled away from the house, the bundle of blue corn bread warm on the passenger seat beside her. She was halfway to the main road when her phone rang.
The number wasn't one she recognized, but the area code was local. She pulled over and answered.
"Detective Blackhorse? This is Lola. Lola Chee."
The name took a moment to place. Lola was a distant cousin on her mother's side, someone Kari had seen at family gatherings as a child but hadn't spoken to in years. She was older than Kari by a decade or so and lived somewhere on the western edge of the reservation.
"Lola. It's been a long time. How are you?"
"Not good, cousin. I need your help." Lola's voice was tight with controlled urgency. "It's about my niece Tayen. Can you come see me? Today, if possible. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
Kari glanced at the clock on her dashboard. She still had reports to file, updates to give Ben, a dozen small tasks waiting at the station. But something in Lola's voice made her hesitate.
"What's going on with Tayen?"
"I'd rather explain in person. Please, Kari. I don't know who else to turn to."
Family. On the reservation, that word carried weight that outsiders rarely understood. When family asked for help, you helped. It was that simple.
"Where do you live?"
Lola gave her an address near Tuba City, about an hour's drive from her current location. Kari noted it on her phone and promised to be there before sunset.
She ended the call and sat for a moment in the silence of her Jeep, the sun beating down on the windshield. Two families now, both asking her for help. Dorothy Naalnish, who wanted to know who had killed her son. Lola Chee, who wanted something that had to do with a niece Kari had never met.
And somewhere in the background, always, the question that had driven her for seventeen months: What had really happened to Anna Chee?
Kari put the Jeep in gear and headed toward Tuba City, the bundle of blue corn bread shifting on the seat beside her as she turned onto the main road. The investigation into Evan Naalnish's death was out of her hands for now, locked behind FBI jurisdictional walls she couldn't climb.
But family was something she could do. Family was something she understood.
Whatever Lola needed, Kari would find a way to help.