CHAPTER EIGHT
Ben Tsosie had never been good at waiting. It was a character flaw he'd long since accepted, one that had gotten him into trouble more than once over the years. His grandmother used to say he'd been born impatient, that even in the womb he'd been kicking to get out before his time.
But knowing that about himself didn't make the waiting any easier.
He sat in Captain Yazzie's office, trying to keep his frustration from showing on his face, while the captain finished a phone call that seemed to consist mostly of Yazzie saying "I understand" in increasingly tense tones.
The office was small and cluttered, every surface covered with case files and administrative paperwork, the walls lined with commendations and photographs from Yazzie's thirty-year career.
A small window looked out on the parking lot, where heat shimmered off the asphalt in waves.
Ben studied the photographs while he waited. Yazzie shaking hands with tribal council members. Yazzie accepting an award from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Yazzie was standing with a group of young officers, including a much younger Ben, at a graduation ceremony years ago.
A lifetime ago, Ben thought.
When Yazzie finally hung up, his expression was grim. He didn't speak immediately, just sat there looking at Ben with a weary resignation that suggested the news wasn't going to be good.
"That was the FBI field office in Phoenix," he said finally. "They're closing the Naalnish investigation."
Be's heart sank. "Closing it? They've only been on it for three days."
"They've completed their preliminary assessment. Their conclusion is that the death is inconclusive. They can't definitively prove murder versus accidental death."
"His skull was crushed." Ben heard his own voice rising and forced himself to stay calm. "I saw it myself. The back of his head was caved in. That wasn't an accident."
"According to the FBI forensic team, the skull trauma could have been caused by a rock fall or cave collapse.
The body's decomposition over fifteen years makes it impossible to determine whether the injury occurred before or after death.
" Yazzie's voice was flat, reciting facts he clearly didn't believe.
"Without additional evidence, they can't justify the resources required for a full homicide investigation. "
"Additional evidence? What more do they need? A signed confession from the killer?"
"Ben." Yazzie's tone carried a warning.
But Ben was already on his feet, the chair scraping against the floor as he stood.
"That's bullshit and you know it. Someone killed that boy and buried him in a cave on land that got sold for four times its value three weeks after he disappeared.
Now the FBI spends three days poking around and decides there's nothing to see here? "
"Sit down, Ben." Yazzie's voice was quiet but firm. Ben sat, though every muscle in his body was screaming at him to do something, anything, besides sit in this office and accept what he was being told.
"I don't like this any more than you do," Yazzie continued.
"Evan Naalnish deserves justice. His family deserves answers.
They've been waiting fifteen years to know what happened to their son, and now we're supposed to tell them that the federal government can't be bothered to find out.
" He shook his head slowly. "But the land where his body was found isn't ours anymore.
It belongs to Devco Holdings, which means federal jurisdiction applies, which means we have no authority to investigate. "
"What about the timing of the sale? The land was sold mere weeks after Evan disappeared, not to mention that the buyer paid four times what it was worth. Doesn't that seem suspicious to anyone with half a brain?"
"I raised that point with the FBI. Multiple times." Yazzie's jaw tightened. "They said Devco Holdings has fully cooperated with the investigation and that there's no evidence connecting the land sale to Evan's disappearance. Said the timing was coincidental."
"Coincidental." Ben nearly laughed. "A young man vanishes while exploring land that someone then pays millions to buy and fence off from the public, and that's a coincidence."
Yazzie leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Ben, I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to keep it between us. You can't even tell Kari, not yet. Can you do that?"
Ben nodded, his jaw tight.
"I made some calls after we first found out about the jurisdictional issues.
Tried to find out who's behind Devco Holdings.
It's a shell company, registered in Delaware.
The actual ownership is buried under layers of other corporations, trusts, and holding companies, each one leading to another.
I followed the trail as far as I could, called in favors from people who know how to trace these things. "
Yazzie paused. "Whoever bought that land fifteen years ago didn't want anyone to know who they were. And they went to considerable expense and effort to make sure of it."
"So we're just supposed to accept that a young man was murdered, that someone paid millions to buy the land where he was buried, and that the FBI can't be bothered to figure out who or why?"
"I'm not telling you to accept anything.
I'm telling you what the official position is.
" Yazzie held Ben's gaze. "What you do with that information on your own time is your business.
But if you go digging into this, you do it quietly.
You do it carefully. And you don't put this department in a position where the FBI can accuse us of interfering with their investigation, such as it is. "
Ben understood what the captain was really saying. Officially, the case was closed. Unofficially, Yazzie was giving him permission to keep looking, as long as he was careful about it.
"What about the family?" Ben asked. "Someone has to tell them."
"I'll handle that. They deserve to hear it from someone in person, not over the phone." Yazzie's expression softened. "It's not the news any of us wanted to give them. But at least they can finally bury their son. The FBI is releasing the remains tomorrow."
Ben left the captain's office and walked out to the parking lot, the afternoon sun harsh on his face.
The temperature had to be pushing a hundred degrees, the air shimmering with heat, but Ben barely felt it.
He stood by his truck for a long moment, hands clenched at his sides, trying to process what he'd just been told.
Inconclusive. After fifteen years of waiting, of hoping, of not knowing what had happened to her son, Dorothy Naalnish was going to be told that the FBI couldn't say for certain whether he'd been murdered.
The crushed skull that Ben had seen with his own eyes, that had so clearly been the result of violence, was being written off as possibly accidental.
A rock fall. A cave collapse. Natural causes.
Ben thought about the night he'd cut through that fence, the night he'd found Evan's remains.
He'd known he was risking his career, maybe even his freedom, by trespassing on private property.
But he'd done it anyway, because Kari's mother had believed something happened on that land, and because Ben had believed her.
Anna Chee had documented seventeen deaths over five decades. Seventeen people who'd stumbled onto something dangerous and paid for it with their lives. All of them ruled accidents or natural causes. All of them indigenous. All of them forgotten.
Was this how it worked? Was this how the powerful protected themselves, by burying inconvenient truths under layers of bureaucracy and jurisdictional complications?
By paying lawyers and accountants to create shell companies that couldn't be traced?
By pressuring federal investigators to close cases before they got too close to something that mattered?
Ben pulled out his phone and called Kari. She answered on the third ring, traffic noise in the background suggesting she was driving somewhere in that enormous, confusing city.
"Ben. What's going on?"
"The FBI closed the Naalnish case. Ruled the death inconclusive."
Silence on the other end. Then: "That's not possible. You saw the skull. I saw the photos you took."
"They're claiming it could have been a rock fall. Cave collapse. Natural causes that happened to crush the back of his head in a way that looks exactly like blunt force trauma." Ben made no effort to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Three days of investigation, and they're walking away."
"Something's wrong. Someone's pressuring them to close this."
"That's what I think too. Yazzie tried to find out who owns Devco Holdings. It's buried under shell companies, layers of them. Whoever bought that land didn't want to be found."
Kari was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was tight with the same anger Ben was feeling.
"Your mother was right about Evan. She said he was murdered, and he was.
If she was right about him, she might have been right about the other cases too. And if someone is covering this up..."
"They might have covered up the others as well." Ben finished the thought. "Including what happened to her."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication.
"Did you find anything on Elite Vision?" Kari asked. "Diana Shepherd?"
Ben winced. "I'm sorry. I got buried in the Naalnish case and your mom's files. I haven't had a chance to dig into it yet."
"It's fine. I've been making progress on my own out here."
"Did you find Tayen?"
"Not yet. But I found something else." Kari's voice changed, taking on the focused quality it always had when she was working a case.
"The model that Tayen's roommate said disappeared?
Amanda? She didn't disappear. She's dead.
Overdose, supposedly. But the agency told the roommate she went home. They lied about it."
"An agency covering up a model's death. Institutions lying about what happened to people in their care." Ben rubbed his eyes. "Where have we heard that before?"
"I know. Different city, different circumstances, but the shape of it feels the same. People disappear when they become inconvenient. Deaths that get ruled accidents or overdoses when they might be something else entirely."
"Did you find anything that connects to Tayen directly?"
"Amanda was her friend. And Amanda died the same day Tayen vanished.
A paramedic who responded to the scene thought it looked staged, but the cops wrote him off.
" Kari paused. "A detective here told me about a photographer who worked with both of them.
Blake Montgomery. He had complaints filed against him a few years ago.
Aggressive behavior, inappropriate conduct.
The complaints got dropped when the women withdrew their statements. "
"Sounds like someone worth looking into."
"That's where I'm headed now. His studio's in the Arts District." The traffic noise on her end shifted, horns honking in the distance. "I'll call you tonight. Let me know if anything changes with the FBI, if they say anything else about why they closed it so fast."
"I will."
After she hung up, Ben stood in the parking lot for another minute, watching the heat shimmer off the asphalt. Then he got in his truck and headed toward the eastern edge of the reservation.
He had a promise to keep. He'd told Kari he'd check on Ruth, and he wasn't about to break his word.
But there was another reason for the visit.
Ruth Chee had known Anna better than almost anyone.
She'd watched her daughter spend years researching those seventeen deaths, had listened to her theories and her fears.
If there were secrets in those files, secrets that connected to Devco Holdings or to whatever had really happened to Evan Naalnish, Ruth might be able to help him find them.
The drive took him through landscapes that had been home to his people for generations.
Red rock mesas rising against the blue sky, juniper forests clinging to hillsides, dry washes cutting through the earth like ancient scars.
The land here held stories. Stories of those who came before, and those who would come after.
Stories written in rock and sand and the bones of the earth itself.
Ben wondered what stories the land where Evan Naalnish had died would tell, if anyone bothered to listen. What secrets were buried there alongside his bones? What had he found that was worth killing him over, worth buying the land and fencing it off and keeping everyone away for fifteen years?
Ruth's house appeared around a bend in the road, a small structure of wood and adobe dwarfed by the vast landscape surrounding it.
Smoke rose from the chimney despite the heat, and Ben could smell something cooking as he parked and walked toward the porch.
Mutton stew, maybe, or green chili. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn't eaten since breakfast.
The old woman was waiting for him at the door, as if she'd known he was coming. Given what Ben had seen since partnering with Kari, the things that defied easy explanation, he wouldn't be surprised if she had.
"You look troubled," Ruth said, her dark eyes studying his face with an intensity that seemed to see right through him. "Come. Eat first. Then tell me what's weighing on your spirit."
Ben followed her inside, grateful for the invitation. The house was cool despite the heat outside, the thick adobe walls keeping the temperature comfortable. The smell of cooking grew stronger as he entered, and he saw a pot simmering on the stove, steam rising from the lid.
Ruth gestured to the small table where she took her meals, and Ben sat while she ladled stew into a bowl and set it before him. She poured coffee from a pot that seemed to be perpetually brewing and took the seat across from him.
"Eat," she said. "Then we'll talk about what's troubling you." She paused, then added cryptically, "You'll need your strength for what comes next."
Ben ate, wondering what Ruth knew that he didn't—and whether he was ready to hear it.