"True. Anyway, yeah, you're right. I'm sure Meoqui was pretty upset with Chairman Domingo."
"And if other people know how angry he was, they might reach the same conclusion you did, Jim," Nick said. "Somebody thinks Torres killed Domingo, so they came here and shot up Torres in revenge."
"That's what I was getting at," Aguirre said. "That's what this feels like to me. A gang-style drive-by but not a random one. These guys meant to take Meoqui out."
"While I was at Domingo's house last night, these two guys came by in a dark pickup truck," Nick said. "Black, navy blue. I reported the tag, or as much of it as I was able to catch."
"We got the report," Aguirre confirmed. "We weren't able to get anything nailed down, though."
"They could have been gang types." Nick described the two young men, the smaller one with long hair and his big tattooed friend who would have stood out in any crowd.
Aguirre squinted into the sky. "The smaller one could be a guy named Ruben Solis. He's kind of a punk. One of Chairman Domingo's thugs, really, the kind of guy who'll do whatever he's told without thinking too hard about the morality of it. He hangs with a big guy named Shep Moran, who's done hard time over in Jean. Shep's got tats all up his arms, across his neck and chest. And Ruben drives a dark truck."
"Would they do something like this?"
"I hate to think anybody would," Aguirre answered. "But I wouldn't put it past them. Solis especially. Shep's the one who's done prison time, but Solis is a mean one, with a nasty temper. Definitely the ringleader of that pair. Thing is, if word gets out that he shot Meoqui – or even a rumor that he might have – then they're in trouble, too. Meoqui has a lot of friends on the rez, and some of them are just as ruthless as Solis is."
"So, what, you think we're going to see a domino effect of revenge shootings?" Brass asked. "Sure glad I came out here today. I could be home sleeping or pulling weeds."
"Hey!" Aguirre called abruptly. Nick followed his gaze. Three of the less badly wounded men were carrying Meoqui Torres to a bright red pickup truck. "Where are you taking him?"
"Tired of waiting for the ambulance," one guy said. "We're going to get him to a clinic."
Aguirre beckoned one of the tribal police officers over, a young guy who was standing around watching other people work but not doing anything particularly useful. "Follow them over there, Wilbur," he said. "Park outside the clinic, make sure there's no trouble."
"Will do," Wilbur said. He hurried to his car, an old Ford station wagon with a faded tribal police logo on the door, and got in. When the pickup truck pulled away with Torres and one other man in the back, Wilbur followed right on their tail.
Aguirre called another cop, a woman with a broad, flat face and a solid build. "Canvass the neighbors, Juanita," he said. "See if anybody saw anything." Nick couldn't see any neighbors from here, but the street curved around some low hills, and there might have been houses out of sight but within earshot. "And don't let 'em tell you they didn't hear it. This many rounds, anybody within a mile or two would have heard."
When she was walking to her vehicle, Brass approached Aguirre. "I think you and I should go find Ruben Solis and Shep Moran before someone else does."
"Probably not a bad idea. What about Stokes?"
"I'll stay here, if it's okay," Nick said. "We stomped all over this crime scene, but it should still be processed. I can work it and hand over whatever I find to you for your investigation. You'll know where to find me if you need me."
"Till the Fourth of July, from the looks of it," Brass said with a grin.
Nick held out his car keys to Aguirre. "Richie, can you have someone bring over my Yukon? I have a kit with me, but there's more equipment in the back I could use."
Aguirre took the keys and whistled for one of the other uniformed officers. "I'll take care of it," he said.
Brass put a hand on Nick's shoulder and gave him a stern look. "Keep your guard up, Nick. I got a feeling this is a long way from over."
15
After Keith Hyatt told Ray that Meoqui Torres was a filmmaker, Ray called Archie Johnson and asked him to track down some of Torres's work. Now that he had made it back, Archie summoned Ray into the A/V lab and showed him what he had turned up on the Internet.
"He's been posting clips online," Archie said, smoothing his crop of thick black hair. "I've pulled together a few for you. These are from a work in progress, he says. The working title is Epic Failure."
"A nice optimistic note."
"From what I've seen so far, optimism isn't his strong suit."
Archie clicked a couple of keys, and a computer screen filled with a blurred image that quickly focused in on the exterior of a shack on a wind-swept desert plain. There was one plant in the shot, something that might have been classified as a tree but was stunted and bent and provided little, if any, shade for the building. If the place had ever been painted, wind and blowing sand had scoured it down to a raw gray-brown color. The camera zoomed in on a window and then through it on a man sitting inside on a folding metal chair.
Then the shot cut to an interior, lit by the natural light flooding in the window. The man was middle-aged, Native American, with short hair going gray, a shirt open to the waist showing a lean, wrinkled torso, and a cigarette burning in one hand. Smoke wafted up into his face, forcing him to squint. A title at the bottom of the frame identified him as Herbert Acosta, Grey Rock Paiute.
"… thing is, it was the white people, the ones in the nineteenth and early twentieth century who were making policy at the Bureau of Indian Affairs – Bureau of Extinction Affairs, I call it – who were determined to hold us down. They couldn't destroy us militarily, but they could make us wish they had."
"Do you really think that, Herbert?" an off-screen voice asked.
"That's Torres," Archie whispered. "He's on the screen later."
"Hell yes!" Acosta jabbed at the camera with the lit cigarette. "Just look at the evidence, little cousin. It's everywhere. See, fetal alcohol syndrome? The health-care system they devised encourages that. It's easier to keep a population compliant if the individuals in it are damaged from birth. And even those who weren't damaged are then so occupied with taking care of the little ones that they're easy to push around, too." He stopped long enough to take a drag and blow out a plume of smoke, then the shot switched to a close-up of his hand, burning cigarette between his fingers. Age spots marked the back of his hand, and the webbing between the second and third knuckles was yellowed by nicotine.
"It's all about finding legal ways to keep us poor, keep us dependent, keep us like children they can manipulate. Fetal alcohol is one. Controlling our jobs is another, keeping them limited and low-paying. And casinos, don't get me started on them. They're a great way to legally steal money from the poor."
"But some of the profits go back to the tribe, right?" Torres asked
Another cut, back to the original framing. Acosta sucked on the cigarette, the tip glowing so brightly it seemed it would burn a hole through the screen. "Key word is 'some,' brother. As little as they can manage. And I'm not just talking about the Great White Father now, I'm talking about Indians, too. People like Chairman Domingo, who cut and cut the tribal rolls so they can concentrate the wealth in the hands of the few. At the expense of the many, of course. Instead of rolling the profits into services that would benefit the people who need it most, they try to make themselves and their friends – the people who are already the richest – even more wealthy. Throwing their own brothers and sisters under the bus to line their fat wallets. You ask me, Domingo and his kind are no better than the whites who stuck us on these reservations in the first place. Keeping us there, keeping us down. Squashing us like bugs if we try to stand up. One of these days, he'll get his."