Key Witness Read online

  “We’ll be gone before that guy wakes up, Patch.” The buzz had worn off, leaving him sleepy and feeling the full extent of the long day. He left his knife laying on the boulder where he sat, pulled his bedroll from the camper, and spread it out near the fire under the New Mexico sky. The sandstone bluffs surrounding Clayton Lake loomed darkly in the moonlight like ominous ghosts of past dinosaurs who had left their tracks embedded in the rocks around the lake millions of years ago. Lying awake, Abe brooded over those dinosaurs and their untimely demise, and other things lost forever. He drifted off to sleep thinking of Sharon and how much he wished she could see these stars. He hadn’t slept long, when he was awakened by the din of a revved-up motorcycle.

  2

  Abe got up at four thirty the next morning, too early even for birds. The gibbous moon had dropped below the horizon, dragging the stars with it. Only Venus remained visible, a bright beacon in the west reflecting the sun’s promise of dawn. He tripped over last night’s pile of wood, cursing under his breath as he attempted to load his gear into the truck without making noise. Working in darkness, Abe’s hand brushed against a small cloth sack on the ground by the log where Easy Jackson had sat the night before. Abe dropped it into his backpack and immediately forgot it. He hurried to his truck, barely able to see, hoping he had not left anything important behind.

  Patch wanted a walk, but Abe quickly ushered the dog into the cab with a curt, “Not now, get in the truck.” He would stop and give him food and water when they were safely down the road, far from any chance of running into Easy Jackson.

  The truck crept over muddy potholes as it made its way through the silent campground. There appeared to be more vehicles than the night before, latecomers still bedded in their tents and pop-up campers, curled in their sleeping bags. In the dim predawn light he thought he saw a Harley parked near a picnic table, but couldn’t discern the riders.

  Abe didn’t turn on his headlights until he reached the road to Clayton. From there, he followed Highway 64 where it intersected with I-25. The morning light revealed vast rolling plains dotted with black-faced cattle and small herds of grazing antelope. He looked for a radio station and found that with his crummy radio and broken antenna he had a choice of two, country or Spanish. He settled on Spanish, humming along with the ranchero music.

  After several miles Abe saw a rest stop and pulled over. While Patch ate he retrieved his map from the glove compartment and decided where to go. He once read about Chaco Canyon, an ancient Native American cultural center located in a remote part of northwestern New Mexico. The seclusion of the site appealed to him, and the visitors’ center had a campground where he could stay while he explored the area. He figured he could buy some breakfast and groceries in a town called Cuba and arrive at Chaco before lunch.

  Back on the interstate, Abe drove past signs designating various Native American tribes: Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe. He hadn’t been driving long when I-25 veered south toward a range of steep, craggy mountains and the city of Albuquerque. Abe turned northwest, away from Albuquerque onto Highway 44 and what he hoped would be a relatively short drive to Chaco Canyon.

  He entered a flat, treeless land, a high desert plateau crisscrossed with low mesas and many-branched washes. Odd-shaped rocks of clay and sandstone in hues of pink, yellow, purple, black, and white seemed to spring up from the earth like mushrooms or flat tables balancing precariously on slender pedestals. Sparse growths of stunted juniper and silvery windswept sage dotted the landscape. He saw little sign of life, but soon realized he was in Navajo country when he spotted a few six-sided clay structures, or hogans, with their nearby sheep corrals. Abe felt an immediate camaraderie with these people. They needed their space and privacy, exactly as he did.

  The sky, which had been an unruffled sea of blue in the morning, suddenly filled with ominous black clouds. “Damn monsoons, or whatever.” Patch looked at him, one ear cocked, and let out a soft whine.

  “We’re almost there, boy. You can wait a while longer.” But the farther west he drove, the more intense the storm became. A loud clap of thunder, followed by a flash of light, caused him to hunker down in his seat and grip the steering wheel. The next thing he knew, a massive thunderstorm with blinding rain pummeled the truck. Thunder crashed from all directions. Abe put the wipers on full speed but still couldn’t see six feet in front of him. He had slowed to a crawl and turned on his lights, trying to follow the white line, when he heard the blast of a horn. Abe pulled sharply to the right and felt the truck slip off the road as he caught a quick glimpse of an oil tanker speeding by. He avoided a collision, but landed in a roadside ditch full of rainwater and slippery muck.

  The storm passed as quickly as it appeared, leaving in its wake the cleansing, pungent smell of crushed sage and rain-drenched earth. He had been trying for over an hour to extricate the truck only to get the wheels buried more deeply. A few vehicles passed, more speeding tankers and some pickup trucks, but no one stopped. Abe threw the shovel aside and kicked a back tire. “Shit.”

  While he leaned against his truck and seethed, feeling dirty, sweaty, and disconsolate, a Chevy Blazer with the green-and-yellow insignia of the Navajo Nation Police drove by, made a U-turn, and stopped behind him. A woman dressed in a brown uniform with the same insignia patch on her shirt stepped out of the vehicle and approached him.

  “Having a little problem?” She simultaneously looked him over and checked his license plate. “You’re a long ways from home. Lost?”

  “No, stuck. Oil tanker ran me off the road in the rainstorm.” The brown uniform looked good on her petite body. Black hair pulled back and twisted into a tight bun accentuated a serious expression that contrasted with the laughter glinting from dark eyes. She’s enjoying my predicament, Abe fumed silently. “Can you call someone to pull me out of here?”

  “Don’t know. You may not be in my jurisdiction.” She shrugged her shoulders and gave him a noncommittal look.

  “What do you mean, not in your jurisdiction?” He felt the heat rising in his face and gritted his teeth. “All I’m asking you to do is call for help.”

  “You’re in the checkerboard area of New Mexico, Mr. New Jersey. Could be federal land, Bureau of Land Management, San Juan County, or Navajo. It’s hard to tell. Boundaries get confusing sometimes and I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes.”

  Abe knew she was having a little fun with him, which didn’t help his disposition. He bit his tongue and held back an expletive. “Look, I don’t care if it’s checkerboard, chess, or tiddledywinks. I need help to get my truck out, and I’ll be on my way.”

  The officer raised her eyebrows in a show of consternation. “Ah, you bilagáanas are so impatient.” She almost smiled, and reached down to pet Patch, who cocked his head as if listening attentively to the conversation. “I guess the Feds won’t mind if I assist a poor tourist stuck out in Navajo country. You never know what some of these wild redskins might do.” After walking around the truck and checking things out, she said, “We’re not going to need a tow truck. Get in the driver’s seat and wait until I tell you what to do. Don’t try getting out on your own; you’ll dig yourself a deeper hole.”

  Abe watched her walk back to her four-wheeled patrol vehicle as he opened the door and whistled for Patch. The way she carried herself—straight backed and regal—made her look taller than her five foot four. She looked pretty good from the back, too, he thought before getting behind the wheel of his Toyota.

  He continued watching her as she sat in her vehicle talking quietly on the police radio. Abe overheard “Code eight,” and she seemed to be giving directions, but he couldn’t catch much more of the conversation. The young female cop studied him for a few minutes before putting the radio away and starting up her four-wheel-drive SUV. A few feet in front of his truck she stopped, stepped out, and took a chain from the back, then looped one end around the tow bar of the Chevy Blazer and hooked it on the first link of chain it could reach. Then she repeated this p
rocedure with the other end of the chain, securing it to the hitch on the front end of Abe’s truck. He watched, feeling both embarrassed and relieved as she climbed back in her vehicle and pulled forward until the chain became taut, then got out and checked the hook on both ends.

  “Now put your car in neutral and be ready on the brakes.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve done this before.”

  “You could have fooled me,” the officer shot back before starting her vehicle.

  In less than two minutes, Abe’s Toyota sat on firm ground. Not wanting to look as inept as he felt, he jumped out of the cab and unhooked the chain. When she came around, he handed it to her. “Thanks a lot. Sorry to have been a bother. I really appreciate your help.” He gave her his best beguiling smile.

  She took the tow chain from him and stowed it in the back of her SUV. But no smile crossed her lips when she returned and approached Abe. She leveled her eyes at his. “I need to see some ID—your driver’s license, registration, and insurance.”

  “Sure. All right. What is this about? I’m not in trouble, am I? An oil truck ran me off the road,” he said while reaching in his back pocket for his wallet.

  “Standard procedure when we offer assistance,” she replied while taking his license. “Now return to your truck and let me have your registration, okay.”

  “Okay, okay. No problem.” He put up his hands in a gesture of either compliance or surrender. “You’re not going to give me a ticket, are you?”

  She followed him to the truck and waited while he dug through the glove compartment. Patch jumped from the driver’s seat to the passenger side, looking as if he, too, were impatient to get back on the road. With a terse “Sit tight,” the officer took his documents and returned to the patrol car.

  “As if I could go anywhere.” Abe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, stewing over his marijuana stash in the flashlight that he had taken out of the glove compartment while searching for his papers.

  Abe checked his watch and tried to control the spasmodic twitching in his left leg. He had been waiting over fifteen minutes, sweat running down his shirt back, nerves on edge, ready to get out of the truck, even though she’d told him to sit tight, when he saw flashing red-and-blue lights approaching from the west. A San Juan County Sheriff’s vehicle crossed the highway with a few quick blasts of the siren and stopped in front of his truck, blocking any thought of exit. Two burly men in olive-green khaki uniforms, star patches on their shoulders and a metal one on each of their shirts, approached him.

  “Is this your vehicle, sir?” a brown-skinned deputy with a pockmarked face asked.

  “Yeah.” Abe noticed that the Navajo policewoman had joined the two lawmen. Her hand hung loosely over her holster. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “And is your name Abraham Freeman?”

  “Yes, it is. Why?”

  The other deputy, pale skinned with a shaved head, the beginning of a beer belly stretching the buttons of his shirt, spoke up for the first time. “Get out of the vehicle, Mr. Freeman.”

  “Wait a minute. What did I do?” He stepped out of his truck while competing emotions, anger and confusion, surged through his mind. Why would I be of any interest to the cops? Twenty years ago, as a fourteen-year-old, he had been picked up for a drug violation. It was nothing, kids experimenting with pot. Something that insignificant surely wouldn’t interest the law after all this time. “Are you arresting me?”

  “I need to ask you a few questions, sir,” the Latin-looking man said. “Are you willing to come in voluntarily for questioning?”

  He considered his options. Questioning for what? Why should I? What if I said no? “No. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Then we’ll have to take you into custody,” the deputy said. “Put your hands on the hood and spread ’em.”

  “You can’t do this. What am I being arrested for?”

  “We could start with resisting arrest,” said the pink-faced deputy. “We’re taking you in for questioning in a murder case, Freeman.”

  Abe’s mouth felt full of cotton; his head swarmed with bees. Could this be about Sharon? Have they somehow found out about me? He put both palms on the Toyota hood and tried to quell his shaking and remain calm. The deputy patted down his upper body, then both legs. “I can’t leave my dog here,” Abe protested. “And my truck. What about my truck?” Patch growled at the Hispanic officer who attempted to approach the truck.

  “Your truck will be impounded,” the bald deputy said. “You can pick it up later, if you’re lucky. Dogs, they’re always a problem.” He looked at Patch as if he’d just as soon put a bullet in him. “I could take care of him for you.”

  That’s when the Navajo officer spoke up for the first time. “I’ll take the dog with me.” She pulled out a pair of handcuffs and positioned herself behind Abe. “Hands behind your back, sir; keep your feet spread wide.” She secured the cuffs around his wrists, then asked with a nonchalance, “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Patch. His name is Patch. Is he being arrested, too? When this is all cleared up, I want my dog back safe and sound. And my truck.” Though biting his lip to hold back the words he wanted to say, Abe still couldn’t resist speaking out. “You’re going to owe me an apology.”

  The two deputies exchanged glances and snickered. “Yeah, sure. We always apologize to the perps. He’s all yours, Officer Etcitty, and take the dog, too,” the Hispanic deputy said. “We sure as hell don’t want him, and everybody knows you have this soft spot for animals of all kinds.”

  She nailed him with a steely glare, but kept her lips tight.

  “What would you do if we weren’t around to save your ass, Etcitty?”

  “You’re in my jurisdiction, Valdez,” said the Navajo officer, maintaining a poker face. “I can handle it now. I’ll take Mr. Freeman to Huerfano. Thanks for the backup.” She dismissed them without further comment, then knelt down and whistled. When Patch came over, tail wagging, she picked him up and carried him to the front seat of the SUV. Abe ducked his head and crawled into the backseat, then turned to give one last look at his truck. For the next hour he glowered through the bars of the cage, staring at the back of Officer Etcitty’s head and his dog, Patch, riding shotgun beside her.

  He thought they must have driven fifty miles when they passed a steeply walled semicircular mountain jutting out of the flatlands of the high plateau. It stood alone, glowing golden orange in the afternoon sun. Less than a mile farther they reached a small, isolated complex of buildings. A large sign posted in front of a sprawling blue-and-white structure identified it as the Huerfano Chapter House and Community School. Officer Etcitty drove past the school and turned into the driveway of a cement-block building covered with faux adobe. The Huerfano Community Police Substation, Navajo Nation parking lot overflowed with both Navajo Police vehicles and the green-and-whites of the San Juan Sheriff’s Department.

  “We share space with the county for now,” the officer explained. “This is a big area to patrol and the jurisdiction lines keep changing.”

  Abe didn’t care about any of that. The day that had started off like a dream had turned into a nightmare. “Look, I have a right to know. Are you charging me with a crime of some kind? Am I under arrest? What the hell is going on?”

  Officer Etcitty unlocked the back door of the Chevy Blazer and led Abe to a side entrance in the building. Patch followed docilely behind. “You haven’t been charged, sir. You are a person of interest. We are holding you for questioning in an ongoing investigation. The State Police will be arriving shortly to conduct the interview.”

  She steered him to the end of a hallway into a small, windowless room. The institutional-green walls illuminated by overhead florescent lights cast a dreary pall on everything and everyone. The Navajo officer removed the handcuffs and told him to take a seat, indicating a metal chair bolted to the floor. A long table separated him from two chairs placed on the other side. He looked at the one-way mirror and wo
ndered who was on the other side looking in, and wished he had never come to this godforsaken part of the country. The lady cop told him to wait, then left him alone, without even his dog around to provide a little comfort.

  3

  Abe sat, elbows on the table, head propped in his hands, and tried to figure things out. Have they linked me to Sharon’s death? Do they think I murdered her? He shuddered, ran a hand through his unruly hair and a tongue over dry lips. His head felt like a train wreck and his mouth a dusty well. Random thoughts flashed through his mind. Where is Patch? He checked his pocket for his keys and remembered he had left them in the truck, along with the stash of dope. What is the penalty for possession of marijuana in New Mexico? How did they find out about Sharon? He tried to swallow, found nothing there. Sitting and waiting made him even more edgy, so he stood and paced, decided to try the door and ask for water, discovered it locked, and sat down again. He could not stop drumming his fingers on the table or tapping his foot on the hard tile floor. Abe knew he was in big trouble.

  A long moment passed before the door opened and the woman who’d pulled him out of the ditch reappeared. Following closely behind her strutted another lawman—black uniform, all spit and polish.

  “Sit down, Mr. Freeman. This is Officer James Harrigan with the New Mexico State Police,” said the female cop. “He’d like to ask you a few questions.” She handed him a Sprite, which he couldn’t help feeling grateful for.

  Abe returned to his straight-backed chair and took a long drink while the two law officers seated themselves in relative comfort across the table. He gave the Navajo cop a furtive glance and, in his nervousness, began unconsciously rapping his fingers.

  Etcitty carried a tape recorder, which she placed on the table between them; a camera beamed down from a corner near the ceiling. “Do you have any objections to this interview being recorded?”