CHAPTER SEVEN
Kari slid into a booth near the back, the red vinyl seat cracked and faded from decades of use.
The walls were covered with photographs: black and white images of the café's early days, color shots of customers posing with the owners, faded newspaper clippings celebrating various milestones.
A jukebox in the corner played Patsy Cline, the volume low enough to allow conversation but loud enough to mask it from anyone who might be listening.
She'd chosen this place deliberately. It was off the main highway, frequented mostly by locals, far enough from Chinle that she was unlikely to run into anyone from the department.
More importantly, it had no security cameras—the owner, a heavyset Navajo woman named Dolores, had strong opinions about surveillance and privacy that Kari happened to share.
Paul Daniels arrived ten minutes later, sliding into the booth across from her with the practiced ease of a man who had conducted countless conversations in places just like this.
He looked tired—more tired than she'd seen him since Ben's rescue, the kind of exhaustion that came from carrying too much weight for too long.
Dolores appeared with two cups of coffee, set them down without being asked, and retreated to her post behind the counter. She'd known Kari since childhood, had known Anna before that, and understood without being told that some conversations needed space.
"Thanks for meeting me," Kari said.
"You said it was important." Paul wrapped his hands around his cup without drinking.
The coffee here was strong enough to strip paint, but most people didn't come to the Thunderbird for the coffee.
They came for the privacy and for Dolores's fry bread, which was legendary across three counties. "I'm guessing this is about Ben."
"It's about everything. Ben, the Naalnish case, Devco, my mother's research." Kari lowered her voice, though there was no one close enough to overhear. The elderly couple near the window had left, and a trucker at the counter was focused on his breakfast.
"We're stuck, Paul. Ben's out of the hospital, but he can't report what really happened without tipping off whoever's leaking information.
I can't investigate Devco without drawing attention.
And meanwhile, whoever killed Evan Naalnish—whoever killed my mother—is just sitting there, waiting us out. "
Paul nodded slowly. "The Bureau has closed the book on Naalnish, and my supervisors have made it very clear that my continued interest in the case is unwelcome.
" He finally took a sip of coffee, grimacing at the bitterness.
"I've been trying to work back channels, see if I can find anyone willing to talk off the record.
But everyone's either scared or has probably been bought off. "
"So what do we do?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Paul leaned back against the booth, his eyes drifting to the photographs on the wall.
"I've been doing this job for thirty years, Kari.
I've seen cases like this before—powerful people protecting their interests, evidence disappearing, witnesses going silent.
Most of the time, the cover-up wins. The system is designed to protect itself, and the people running the system have a lot of practice at making problems go away. "
"That's not an answer."
"No, it's not. It's context." He met her eyes. "You want answers? Here's what I know: we're outgunned, outmanned, and outmaneuvered. They have resources we can't match and connections we can't trace. Every move we make, they're ready. Every door we try to open, they've already locked it."
Kari was getting frustrated. She didn't need him to just rehash how bad things were—God knew she did it often enough in her own head. "So we just give up? Accept that they've won?"
"I didn't say that. I said most of the time the cover-up wins.
But there are exceptions. Cases where someone finds the right pressure point, the right piece of evidence that can't be buried.
Cases where the conspiracy gets sloppy, or starts turning on itself.
" Paul paused. "The question is how we find that opening. "
Kari turned her coffee cup in circles, watching the dark liquid swirl. "What if we went public? Took everything we have to the media, let them run with it?"
"With what evidence? Ben's testimony that he can't give without revealing that he lied to the FBI?
Your mother's research is suggestive but not conclusive.
My suspicions, which are based on patterns and instincts rather than proof?
" Paul shook his head. "We go public now, we look like conspiracy theorists.
Devco's lawyers would tear us apart, and whoever's protecting them would use the opportunity to bury the investigation for good. "
"What about going around the FBI? Taking it to another agency—DEA, ATF, someone with different jurisdiction?"
"Same problem. We don't have enough to justify opening a new investigation, and the moment we start shopping this around, word gets back to whoever's blocking us. They'll know we're still digging, and they'll take steps to make sure we can't dig anymore."
"Steps like what happened to Ben?"
"Maybe. Or maybe something worse." Paul's voice was heavy. "These people have killed before, Kari. Evan Naalnish, your mother, probably others we don't even know about. If they decide we're a serious threat, they won't just try to scare us off. They'll eliminate the threat permanently."
Kari thought about her last conversation with Ben. She knew the stakes, alright. But that didn't make waiting or keeping quiet any easier.
"We need to be smart about this," Paul continued. "We need more information, more resources, more people we can trust to help us analyze what we have." He hesitated, as if a thought had just occurred to him.
"What?" Kari asked. "What is it?"
"You're not going to like it."
"I don't care. Tell me."
He nodded, as if coming to a decision. "There's someone who might be able to help. Someone with experience in exactly this kind of investigation, who's outside the current system but knows how it works from the inside."
Kari's stomach tightened. Suddenly, she had a feeling she knew what was coming.
"Your father."
The words settled between them like stones dropped into still water. Kari took a breath, then another, giving herself time to respond without reacting.
"Paul, we've been down this road. I asked him for help after I first saw my mother's research. You know what he said?" She kept her voice level, but the frustration bled through anyway. "He said he had a life. Other commitments. He couldn't get involved."
"That was months ago. Things have changed."
"Have they?" Kari shook her head. "My father moved on a long time ago, Paul.
He's got his position at the university, his research, his life in Flagstaff.
He's got Linda." She said the name without bitterness, just acknowledgment of a fact.
"When my mother left him and came back to the reservation, he let her go.
Built a whole new existence without her.
And that's fine—people grow apart, marriages end.
But he also let go of everything she cared about. Including her research."
"He took it seriously when you showed it to him. You told me yourself—he spent a week going through those files, found the patterns Anna had documented."
"And then he handed me a thumb drive and wished me luck." Kari's jaw tightened. "He validated her work, Paul. He confirmed that she was right, that people were being killed. And then he stepped back and let me walk out the door alone, because getting involved would have been inconvenient for him."
Kari sensed she was being unfair. Her own bitterness surprised her, because until that moment she hadn't realized the resentment she harbored toward her father for distancing himself from all this.
She was angry that he didn't care more about what had happened to his ex-wife, angry that he didn't try harder to support his daughter, angry that he could live his life without agonizing over what had happened to Anna.
Angry that he, apparently, didn't feel the pain the way she did.
Paul was quiet for a moment, stirring his coffee. The jukebox had switched to Johnny Cash, the Man in Black singing about walking the line.
"I'm not going to defend his choices," Paul said finally.
"James has always been better at analyzing problems than solving them.
Better at understanding people from a distance than connecting with them up close.
It's what made him good at the Bureau, and it's probably what made him a difficult husband. "
"He dismissed her research for years. Did you know that? While she was alive, while she was trying to put the pieces together, he thought she was seeing conspiracies where there weren't any. He told me himself—he didn't take her seriously until it was too late."
Kari looked down at her coffee, watching the dark surface ripple as her hands trembled. "My mother reached out to him. Before she died. She asked for his help accessing federal records, and he never followed up. He got busy, he let it slide, and a few months later she was dead."
She took a breath, forcing herself to soften. "I don't hate my father, Paul. I spent half my teenage years living with him in Flagstaff, shuttling back and forth between his world and my mother's. He's not a bad person. He's just... not someone I can count on. Not when it matters."
"What if this time is different?"
"Why would it be?"
Paul leaned forward, his voice low and earnest. "Because Ben almost died. Because this conspiracy almost killed someone right in front of you, and suddenly it's not just old case files and patterns on paper. It's real, and as much as I hate to say it, his own daughter's life may be at risk."
"He's used to that, given my line of work."