Howard Brennan was guilty. She knew it in her bones.

  But knowing and proving were different things.

  "We'll need you to come to the station," she said. "Make a formal statement about your interactions with Tommy Begay."

  "Am I under arrest?" Brennan asked mildly.

  "Not at this time. We're just gathering information."

  "Then I'll have to decline." He smiled apologetically. "At my age, travel is difficult. If you need a formal statement, you can send someone here. Though I'll want my attorney present, of course."

  "Of course," Kari echoed. She stood, Ben following her lead. "We'll be in touch, Mr. Brennan."

  At the door, Brennan called out: "Detective Blackhorse? A word of advice, from someone who's lived longer than you?"

  She turned.

  "'The past is a foreign country,' as L. P. Hartley wrote. 'They do things differently there.'"

  Kari arched an eyebrow. "Meaning?"

  "Judging yesterday by today's standards is a fool's game. And stirring up old pain serves no one—not the living, not the dead."

  "Tell that to Tommy Begay," Kari said.

  "I would," Brennan replied. "But he didn't listen when he had the chance."

  The threat was subtle but unmistakable. They left, Kari's skin crawling with the certainty that they'd just interviewed a killer. A smart one who'd had fifty years to perfect his story.

  In the Jeep, Ben let out a long breath. "He did it. Owen and Tommy both."

  "Yeah," Kari agreed. "But he's not going to confess. And he's had decades to hide evidence."

  "So what do we do?"

  Kari started the engine, her mind already working through possibilities. "We find proof. Or we find his accomplice. Because Ben? I don't think he moved Tommy's body alone. Someone helped him. Someone younger."

  "The same person who helped cover up Owen's murder?"

  "Or their successor." Kari pulled onto the road, leaving Brennan's house behind. But she had the feeling they'd be back.

  With a warrant next time.

  And hopefully, before Howard Brennan decided that Agnes Littlefeather—or someone else—needed to be silenced permanently.

  They drove in silence for several minutes, each lost in thought. As they approached the junction where their paths would diverge, Ben glanced at her. "You heading back to the station?"

  Kari shook her head slowly. "Not yet. I need to think. Clear my head." She paused, then added, "I'm going to stop by my grandmother's place."

  Ben nodded, understanding. Ruth Chee had a way of seeing through the fog of a case to its heart. "Want me to start pulling property records on Brennan? See if he owns any remote locations?"

  "Good idea. And check for any younger relatives or associates who might be helping him."

  "Will do." As she dropped him off at his vehicle, Ben added, "Tell Ruth I said hello."

  "I will." Kari watched him drive away, then turned her Jeep toward the eastern edge of the reservation, toward the small house where her grandmother waited, as she always did, with tea and wisdom and the kind of truth that couldn't be found in any case file.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ruth Chee's kitchen smelled of juniper tea and fresh frybread, scents that wrapped around Kari like a childhood blanket. She'd driven straight here after the unsettling interview with Howard Brennan, needing the grounding presence of her grandmother before facing whatever came next.

  "You look troubled," Ruth observed, not looking up from the dough she was kneading. At seventy-eight, her hands moved with the same sure rhythm they'd had when Kari was a child watching from this very table.

  "It's this case," Kari said, accepting the cup of tea Ruth pushed toward her. "The boarding school murder."

  Ruth's hands stilled for just a moment, then resumed their work. "I heard. That young man who made the videos."

  "Tommy Begay. He was investigating an incident that occurred in 1974. A student death that might have been murder." Kari oversaw her grandmother's face. "Shimá sání, someone mentioned that Mom had been asking questions about boarding schools before she died."

  Ruth turned the dough, not looking up. "Your mother asked many questions near the end. Some about the schools, yes."

  "What kind of questions?"

  "The kind that look for patterns in pain." Ruth moved to the stove, heating oil in a cast-iron skillet that had belonged to her own mother. "She wanted to know about families where the trauma repeated. Parents who went to the schools, whose children later suffered unexplained tragedies."

  Kari felt her pulse quicken. "Like the three former students who disappeared in the '90s?"

  Ruth dropped a piece of dough into the oil, watching it bubble and brown. "Your mother had lists. Names connected by invisible threads. She said the boarding schools were just the beginning—that the violence they taught spread like a sickness through generations."

  "Did she say who she suspected? Did she have specific theories?"

  "She was careful with her words, even with me." Ruth flipped the frybread with practiced ease. "But she spent time at the museum, looking at employment records. Not just who worked at the schools, but where they went after. Who they married. What children they raised."

  The possible implications chilled Kari. "She thought the violence was inherited? Passed down?"

  "Not inherited. Taught." Ruth placed the finished frybread on a plate before starting another piece. "She said trauma could be like a language—learned in childhood, spoken without thinking. The children who survived the schools sometimes became the very thing that had hurt them."

  Kari thought about Howard Brennan, so controlled in his nice house with his educated explanations. But also about the three missing witnesses, the decades of silence, the system that protected itself.

  "There's an old woman, Agnes Littlefeather," Kari said. "She worked at the school, saw things. She's terrified that speaking out will get her killed."

  Ruth's expression darkened. "Fear has long roots. In the boarding school days, speaking the truth meant punishment. Some learned that lesson so well they never unlearned it."

  "But some are starting to talk. Tommy was getting people to open up about their experiences."

  "And now he's dead." Ruth set a plate of frybread in front of Kari. "Eat. You're too thin."

  Kari obediently tore off a piece of the warm bread, though her appetite had fled. "Mom kept notebooks, research materials. Dad has them at his house. I haven't had time to go through them yet."

  "Perhaps you should make time." Ruth sat down across from her. "Your mother was methodical. If she found patterns, she would have documented them."

  "I'm afraid," Kari admitted quietly. "Afraid I'll find she was investigating the same things that got Tommy killed. That her death near Canyon de Chelly wasn't really from exposure."

  Ruth reached across the table, covering Kari's hand with her own. "Fear is wisdom when it keeps us careful. But don't let it keep you from the truth." She squeezed gently. "Your mother's spirit is restless. I feel it sometimes, especially during the thin times—dawn, dusk, the moments between sleep and waking. She has unfinished business."

  "You think she was murdered?"

  "I think she found something that others wanted hidden. Whether they killed her body or simply led her to a place where the land would claim her..." Ruth shrugged. "The result is the same."

  They sat in silence for a moment, the weight of unspoken possibilities between them.

  "Tell me about this man you suspect," Ruth finally said. "This Brennan."

  Kari described the interview—Brennan's calculated responses, his subtle threats, the way he'd dismissed Owen Peshlakai's death as tragedy rather than murder.

  "He's guilty of something," Kari concluded. "But he's also seventy-seven years old. The physical strength needed for Tommy's murder, the staging... I keep thinking he had to have help."

  "Or you're looking at the wrong guilt," Ruth suggested. "A man can be guilty of old crimes without being guilty of new ones. Sometimes the past creates its own justice."

  "What do you mean?"

  Ruth was quiet for a long moment, seeming to weigh her words. "At the boarding schools, there were different kinds of violence. The official kind—the punishments, the beatings, the forced assimilation. That was bad enough. But there was also unofficial violence. Students who learned that power meant the ability to hurt others. Who practiced on younger, weaker children what had been done to them."

  "You think a former student might be the killer? Someone who learned violence at school?"

  "I think violence is a seed that grows in unexpected soil." Ruth stood, beginning to clear the table. "Your mother understood this. She was tracking not just the original crimes but their echoes. How a beaten child becomes a beating parent. How a silenced voice becomes a silencing hand."

  "But that could be anyone," Kari said, frustrated. "Hundreds of children went through Riverside."

  "Not anyone," Ruth corrected. "Someone with specific knowledge. Someone who knew about the punishment room, about Owen Peshlakai, about the three who disappeared. Someone with reason to keep the past buried."

  "Or someone who thinks they're avenging it," Kari said slowly. "The staging at the crime scene—it could be read as honoring the boarding school's methods or condemning them."

  "Truth walks a narrow path between honor and condemnation," Ruth said cryptically.

  Before Kari could ask what she meant, her phone buzzed. Captain Yazzie's number.

  "Blackhorse," she answered.

  "We might have something," Yazzie said without preamble. "Tech recovered partial data from Tommy's camera. You need to see this."

  "On my way." She stood, pocketing the protection bundle Ruth had given her. "Shimá sání, thank you for—"

  "Kari." Ruth's voice stopped her at the door. "Be very careful. The boarding schools created many kinds of survivors. Some survived by forgetting. Some by forgiving. And some... some survived by becoming the very thing they should have fought against."

  "I'll be careful," Kari promised.

  "And child? When you have time, look at your mother's notebooks. But not alone. Some knowledge shouldn't be carried by one person."

  Kari nodded and left, driving back toward Window Rock as the afternoon sun slanted low. Ruth's words echoed in her mind: violence as a seed, trauma as an inherited language.

  What if her mother had gotten close enough to the killer to become a threat?

  The protection bundle sat warm in her pocket, its sharp scent a reminder that some plants grew in soil watered by blood. As she drove, Kari couldn't shake the feeling that she was following in her mother's footsteps in more ways than one.

  The question was whether she'd manage to avoid Anna's fate

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The tech lab at the tribal police station was a recent addition, funded by casino revenues and federal grants aimed at improving reservation law enforcement capabilities. Lisa Becenti had transformed it into a digital forensics unit that rivaled anything in the state, and she looked up from her monitors with the satisfied expression of someone who'd just solved a difficult puzzle.

  "Tell me you have good news," Kari said as she and Ben gathered around Lisa's workstation. Captain Yazzie stood behind them, his presence adding weight to the moment.

  "Good and disturbing," Lisa said. She pulled up a video file on the main screen. "Tommy's camera was recording when his attacker arrived. The impact damaged the memory card, but I recovered about forty seconds of footage."

  She hit play. The screen showed the punishment room from Tommy's perspective—he'd been filming the chair, narrating its history. His voice came through the speakers, young and passionate:

  "—where children as young as six were restrained for hours, sometimes days, for infractions as minor as speaking their native language. According to survivor testimony—"

  A sound off-camera made Tommy pause. Footsteps echo through the empty building.

  "Hello?" Tommy's voice called out. The camera swung toward the doorway. "Someone there? The building's not safe, you should be careful."

  The footsteps stopped. Then a deep, male voice:

  "You should have listened to the warnings."

  The camera caught a glimpse of a figure, average height, wearing dark clothing and what looked like a baseball cap pulled low. The impact. The camera tumbled, showing a chaotic spiral of ceiling, floor, Tommy's face twisted in pain, before cutting to static.

  "That's all?" Kari asked.

  "From the video. But..." Lisa pulled up an audio analysis program. "I isolated the voice. The modulation is deliberate—they're pitching it lower, adding gravel. But there are still identifiable patterns."

  She played the voice again, this time with visualizations showing pitch and tone variations.

  "See these peaks? Natural speech patterns are hard to completely disguise. This person is probably male, but younger than they're trying to sound. I'd estimate thirties to fifties rather than seventies."

  "So not Brennan," Ben said.

  "Not unless he's got remarkable voice control for his age," Lisa agreed. "But there's something else. The footsteps."

  She pulled up another analysis. "Listen to the rhythm. Uneven gait, favoring the left side slightly. Consistent with someone who's had an injury or has a chronic condition affecting that leg."

  "Our boot print from the scene showed wear on the left heel," Kari remembered. "Same person."

  "Almost certainly. And one more thing—" Lisa enhanced a frame from just before impact. "Look at the hand."

  It was blurry but visible—a gloved hand reaching for the camera. On the wrist, just visible beneath the glove, was what looked like a scar or marking.

  "Tattoo?" Yazzie asked.

  "Or scarring," Lisa said. "I'm working on enhancement, but it's distinctive. Curved, like a crescent or partial circle."

  Kari studied the image, her mind racing. Not Brennan, but someone connected to the boarding school history. Someone who knew Tommy would be there, who knew the significance of the punishment room.

  Still, that didn't mean Brennan was innocent. To Kari, it suggested he'd had help—an accomplice.

  "Any luck with Tommy's phone?" she asked.

  "Still missing. But I pulled his cloud backups." Lisa switched screens. "His last several calls were to people he'd interviewed about the boarding school. Including a long conversation with someone named Marcus Crow Dog, the day he died."

  "Crow Dog," Yazzie said thoughtfully. "I know that name. Activist, isn't he? Pretty militant about indigenous rights."

  "Tommy had him listed as a former Riverside student," Lisa said. "Attended from 1970 to 1975. Would have overlapped with Owen Peshlakai."

  "Another witness," Ben said. "We need to talk to him."

  "There's a pattern in Tommy's contacts," Lisa continued. "In the week before his death, he reached out to a dozen former Riverside students. Most didn't return his calls. But three did—Marcus Crow Dog, a woman named Ellen Tsosie, and..." She paused. "Dr. Rebecca Martinez at NAU."

  "The historian?" Kari asked. "Why would Tommy contact her?"

  "According to his notes, she's been researching boarding school deaths for a book. But here's the interesting part—she's not just any historian. Her father worked at Riverside. Michael Martinez, school counselor from 1972 to 1978."

  The room fell silent as they absorbed this information.

  "So we have children of employees and former students," Yazzie summarized. "All connected to Tommy's investigation."

  "Captain." Officer Begay appeared in the doorway. "Sorry to interrupt, but we've got a situation. Agnes Littlefeather just called dispatch. Says someone tried to break into her house while she was at evening mass. She's requesting immediate assistance."

  "Go," Yazzie told Kari and Ben. "And take a backup. If someone's targeting witnesses..."

  They didn't need him to finish. If Agnes was being targeted, their killer was escalating.

  ***

  Agnes Littlefeather's house showed signs of attempted entry—scratches around the back door lock, a broken window in the laundry room. She sat in her living room surrounded by three patrol officers, clutching a rosary and looking every one of her sixty-eight years.

  "They knew I was gone," she said as soon as she saw Kari. "Wednesday evening mass, I never miss it. They knew."

  "Walk us through what happened," Kari said gently, sitting beside her.

  "I came home about an hour ago. Front door was still locked, but something felt wrong. You know that feeling? Like the air has been disturbed." Agnes twisted the rosary beads. "I almost left right then, but I thought I was being paranoid. Then I saw the back door."

  Ben returned from examining the scene. "Professional job on the lock. If the deadbolt hadn't held, they'd have been in clean."

  "What do you think they were after?" Kari asked.

  Agnes's face crumpled. "The same thing Tommy wanted. The records."

  "What records?"

  "After we talked, I remembered something. Back in '74, after Owen died, I started keeping my own documentation. Not official reports—those all said what Brennan wanted them to say. But real records. What actually happened to children in that place?"

  She stood on shaky legs, moving to an old secretary's desk in the corner. From a hidden compartment behind a drawer, she pulled out a leather-bound journal.

  "Names, dates, punishments, injuries. And not just Owen. There were others who died. Not murdered maybe, but dead from neglect, from despair, from 'accidents' that weren't accidents." She handed the journal to Kari. "I thought if I kept records, someday someone would care enough to read them."

  Kari opened the journal carefully. Agnes's neat handwriting filled page after page, a catalog of institutional horrors rendered in clinical detail. Names of children, their "infractions," their punishments, the results. And yes, deaths. More than just Owen Peshlakai's.

  "Agnes," Ben said urgently, "is there anyone else who knew you kept this?"

  "I never told anyone. Not until Tommy. But..."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18