Changing Woman Read online

  Praise for Changing Woman

  “The authors present a good look at the complexities of the gaming issue while maintaining the character-driven essence of the series. Ella, balanced between mother and daughter, modernist and traditionalist, job and family, remains the captivating focal point of this excellent series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The book is packed with action. I liked the careful attention to police procedure and the detailed description that let me ‘see’ the crisis at the power station. I highly recommend Changing Woman.”

  —Mystery News

  Praise for Red Mesa

  “Fans of Tony Hillerman’s Jim Leaphorn and Jim Chee, and of Jean Hager’s investigator, Molly Bearpaw, should appreciate the way the Thurlos mix Native American lore with modern situations and forensics technique. Even readers unfamiliar with the Native American subgenre will be intrigued by the richly complex Ella and her fight to bring integrity to her work and personal life.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A great tale. The Thurlos’ talent resides in deep and thorough characterizations that lift their Native American police procedurals to a plane shared by the likes of Hillerman.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Praise for Shooting Chant

  “Enough background is given to know that this is not the first book featuring Ella Clah, but not so much as to make the reader feel as if they’ve missed too much to make sense of the characters or plot. Shooting Chant is well written, descriptive, entertaining. It will provide readers looking for a suspenseful read with a lead character who is intelligent, dedicated, likeable, and quite appealing.”

  —Albuquerque Journal

  “If it’s just too long between Tony Hillerman novels, the mysteries of Aimée and David Thurlo will help you bridge the canyons. If you prefer your mysteries with a little green chile and New Mexico grit, you’ll want to add the Thurlos to your reading list.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  CHANGING

  WOMAN

  Also by Aimée & David Thurlo

  ELLA CLAH NOVELS

  Blackening Song

  Death Walker

  Bad Medicine

  Enemy Way

  Shooting Chant

  Red Mesa

  Changing Woman

  Tracking Bear

  LEE NEZ NOVELS

  Second Sunrise

  Blood Retribution (coming)

  SISTER AGATHA NOVELS

  Bad Faith

  Thief in Retreat (coming)

  Second Sunrise

  CHANGING

  WOMAN

  AIMÉE & DAVID THURLO

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  To those Navajo Tribal Police officers who put

  their lives on the line every day to serve

  and protect the Navajo Nation

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CHANGING WOMAN

  Copyright © 2002 by Aimée & David Thurlo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN: 0-812-56870-2

  Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2001054772

  First edition: March 2002

  First mass market edition: April 2003

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Carl and others with knowledge of the Four Corners Power Plant and the San Juan Generating Station for answering our questions and providing us with the information needed to create the fictional facility depicted in our Ella Clah mysteries.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Tracking Bear

  PROLOGUE

  Special Investigator Ella Clah of the Navajo Tribal Police turned right at the intersection near the center of Shiprock. The reservation town overflowed the San Juan River valley on both sides and spread onto the higher land to the southwest and northwest.

  Ahead of Ella’s route were a few more businesses, then the narrow, one-way steel-truss 1930s-era bridge that crossed the San Juan River to Shiprock’s southwest side. Alongside the classic old structure, just to the south, was a flat eastbound concrete monster.

  It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, but the distant sun was already low on the horizon. It was January, when the snow usually kicked in for New Mexico, but although the twenty-eight-degree temperature outside was cooperating, the sky was dry, and so was Mother Earth.

  Ella was looking forward to getting home tonight. The same warm, sturdy house her father had built a lifetime ago was one Ella now shared with her two-year-old daughter and her mother. There was a sense of permanence and continuity about living there that made the place all the more dear to her.

  Ella glanced around, automatically studying the surrounding area. As she drove by the Totah Café, she noticed a man in white clothing running toward the back of the building, holding a fire extinguisher.

  Ready to help, Ella checked for oncoming vehicles, then slowed and swung her police unit, an unmarked blue Jeep, into the restaurant’s parking lot. She accelerated slightly until she caught up with Charlie Jim, one of the Totah’s cooks.

  “Where’s the fire, Charlie?” Ella pulled up alongside him and kept pace, noting that he could barely take a breath. The short run was obviously very taxing to Charlie, a thin, unhealthy-looking man in his late fifties who she knew chain-smoked. Charlie was sweating despite the outside temperature.

  He slowed down to a fast walk gratefully, realizing who was speaking to him. “I’d just stepped outside for a cigarette when someone in an old tan pickup came by and tossed something that was still smoking into the Dumpster,” he said in a wheezy voice. “I ran back inside and grabbed the fire extinguisher. I think it’s those vandals again.”

  She stopped the Jeep and glanced ahead, but couldn’t see any smoke coming from the heavy metal Dumpster, which was screened on the cafe’s side by a high wall of painted cinder blocks. As Charlie approached the Dumpster Ella jumped out of her vehicle and followed him.

  Her thoughts automatically shifted to the petty vandalism that had been plaguing this part of the Rez the past few months. Last weekend several vehicles at a local church
had their tires flattened by the removal of the valve stems while their owners were attending an evening service. A few days later, a plate glass window at a private home had been broken by a thrown brick, and just last night several mailboxes in a housing area east of Shiprock had been knocked off their posts. The incidents had been increasing in number and severity lately, and she hoped setting fires wasn’t the latest escalation the frustrated department was facing.

  Charlie set the extinguisher down on the asphalt, then before Ella could stop him, threw open the hinged lid, ducking back in case the sudden intake of oxygen resulted in flames.

  “I guess the garbage must have already smothered whatever they threw in.” Charlie peered over the edge into the Dumpster, standing on tiptoe as Ella looked around for something to stand on so they could get a better view. “I don’t see—” Looking toward the back of the Dumpster, he cursed loudly. “Oh, crap. Run!”

  Ella wanted to take a quick look for herself, but Charlie’s expression warned her that there was no time to waste.

  “What’s inside, Charlie?” she yelled, taking off after him.

  Abruptly, an enormous blast punched through the air like a clap of thunder. Ella was thrown facedown onto the parking lot, and a large chunk of torn sheet metal bounced across the pavement like a piece of cardboard in the wind, coming to rest against the side of the building with a loud clang.

  A wave of heat blew past Ella, and she stayed down a moment longer.

  Ella stood up slowly, turning to look at the damage. The Dumpster had split open like a big, rectangular banana, and the cinder blocks in the wall had been scattered like so many children’s blocks. Charlie was still hugging the ground, his arms wrapped around his head and neck for protection. The fire extinguisher he’d carried out with him was halfway out to the street, spinning like a top and spewing its white chemical everywhere.

  “Charlie!” she yelled. “You okay?”

  “I think so. But my arm hurts, and my chest... it feels tight.”

  “Did you get hit by flying debris?” Ella started moving toward her Jeep to call the fire department as well as a rescue unit. Charlie’s face was the color of ashes and, remembering her impression that he was stressed out already, it seemed like a wise course of action.

  “No, but I’m feeling . . .” He groaned and clutched his chest, then lay back down on the asphalt.

  “Charlie?” Ella ran the rest of the way to her Jeep, and grabbed her handheld off the seat. Requesting the EMTs and fire department, she hurried back to where Charlie was lying.

  “Is Charlie going to be okay?” Mary Lou Bitsillie, a waitress and an old friend of Ella’s, asked, running up to join her. “He has a bad heart.”

  Charlie had already lost consciousness. Ella crouched down beside him, and reached for the cook’s pulse. His wrist was so thin she could tell immediately that his heart had stopped. She placed her head down on his chest, but couldn’t hear any heart sounds.

  “I’m going to have to give him CPR, Mary Lou. Can you help me out?” Ella scrambled around, scooting up close so she could bring pressure on his chest directly.

  “We’ve all had the first-aid course. I’ll do the breathing part,” Mary Lou said with a nod.

  Ella leaned over and began the pressure immediately, working with Mary Lou, who gave him mouth-to-mouth in a steady cycle. Someone came up behind them and placed a coat over Charlie, and one over Mary Lou’s shoulders. Ella already had a jacket on.

  Ella glanced around, hoping to see or hear the emergency units, absently noting a half dozen restaurant employees and patrons standing outside near the side door, watching the column of black smoke and flames rising from the shattered Dumpster. “Come on, Charlie, give us a heartbeat,” she whispered.

  At that precise moment, she heard the soft click and whir of an automatic camera. Some tourist had just taken her photo. Looking up, she saw that another had a video camera and was alternately filming the burning Dumpster, then their efforts with Charlie like some amateur Hitchcock. The story and photos would be all over the Rez in a matter of hours, and on the ten o’clock news for sure. Anything that made the Rez cops look like they were losing the battle against vandalism always traveled at the speed of light.

  Then Charlie coughed, and opened his eyes, and Ella didn’t care about the cameras anymore.

  ONE

  Yesterday’s “garbage bomb” and Charlie’s near-death had made the evening news, even on Albuquerque TV, and more video had aired of the burning Dumpster and shattered cinder-block wall than of Ella’s and Mary Lou’s success with Charlie. For some reason any event with fire footage usually made the lead story on the TV news. The photo that had run in the newspaper, unfortunately, was one showing her lying flat on her face with the burning trash in the background.

  Since the incident, she’d received thanks from Charlie and his family, but she’d also received four calls from the news people about the bomb. It would take a while before things died down.

  Now, alone in her bedroom, Ella sat at the small table that held her desktop computer and waited. She’d have to return to the police station soon, but the only way her contact, “Coyote,” ever surfaced was through her Internet provider.

  The bitterly cold January winds swept down the hillside behind her mother’s home, rattling dust and sand against the window. It was said that Wind carried news, but Wind had met its equal in this age of computers.

  Coyote’s information so far had been as good as gold, though all she really knew about him was that he was probably an undercover cop—federal, most likely. His knowledge of her background in the FBI and his use of certain terms all supported that theory.

  Hearing a soft bell tone, she glanced down at the screen and saw the instant message box. Coyote was on line. As she read the message, she reached over and hit the print command. The message would vanish from the screen the second she logged off, and there would be no record of it anywhere. It was now or never.

  Ella thought of the many times she’d tried to track down Coyote, despite his warnings not to try. She’d been discreet, but persistent. Yet, despite all the methods available to her, she’d turned up nothing.

  “Shimá, come eat,” Dawn said, using the Navajo word for “mother” her grandmother Rose had taught her. When Ella didn’t stand up right away, Dawn crawled up onto Ella’s lap.

  “Hi, sweetie.” Ella brushed a kiss on her daughter’s chubby little cheek as she typed a question for Coyote. If the past was any indication, unless she was fast, he’d log off before she even finished the sentence. “Go back to the kitchen and tell your shimasání, your grandmother, that I’ll be there in one minute.” Ella smiled as her daughter scampered off. Rose wouldn’t allow Dawn to call her grandma. The Navajo equivalent was all she would accept.

  Ella leaned back in her garage sale captain’s chair and read Coyote’s message again as she waited for his reply. His warnings were always unsettling, and this time was no exception.

  The petty crimes all over the Rez are being engineered to make the cops and tribal government look bad. They want politicians voted out and new people brought in who are more in favor of tribal gaming.

  Ella stared at the clear-cut message. Coyote’s case was more involved than the happenings on the Navajo Nation. He was trying to find evidence against a group of Intertribal Native American activists he claimed were trying to gain control of gambling operations on tribal lands across the nation. Coyote believed the Dinetah was their main target now.

  But without more evidence she couldn’t do a thing. The question she’d typed was the same as always. What proof could he give her so she could act? But he hadn’t answered her and, now, he was off-line.

  Ella took the printout and placed it in an unlabeled file folder along with the rest. Sensing that someone had come into her room, Ella turned and smiled as she saw her mother standing inside the doorway.

  “Since your daughter’s father canceled his visit again, I think we should eat now. You’ll
have to leave for the station before long.”

  Ella nodded. Rose Destea, her mother, was in her sixties and her once raven hair was now a dozen shades of gray and white. She’d slowed down some in the past few years, but she was still a force to be reckoned with and had a stubborn streak a mile long.

  Rose came up behind her and read the message on the computer screen. ““‘Coyote,’” huh? That’s not a Navajo writing you. Must be an Anglo trying to sound like an Indian.”

  Ella shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t really know. But, Mom, this is confidential police business, so you can’t tell anyone. Only Big Ed knows about Coyote, and that’s because he’s my boss and the chief of police.”

  “I won’t say anything, daughter. But I’m still very worried. You could have been killed by that bomb yesterday.”

  “I know. The police force is doing its best, but the situation is a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance.”

  “Yes, I know. I read enough of that message to know that there’s more to what’s happening than has been made public,” Rose answered.

  “The bottom line is that we really aren’t sure what we’re dealing with yet.”

  “Just remember that you have to be more careful these days. You can’t afford to take as many chances as you did before. You now have a daughter who needs you.”

  Ella could hear Dawn playing with Two, the family dog, out in the living room. The pair had become fast friends. “She’s changed everything for me, Mom, but I’m still a cop. I have a duty to the tribe. But it’s because of her that I wear a vest practically all the time, even in summer when it’s sweltering.”

  “I wish you would find another line of work.”

  “Mom, we should all be grateful I have a job that’s secure. A lot of our people are scrambling for work right now. If I wasn’t a cop, I’d probably be out looking frantically for a job off the Rez, hoping to find something that paid me enough to be able to provide for our family.”