The Death Sommelier

By Frank Stephenson

This is the third novel featuring USGS geologist Dr. Fred Sager as the protagonist. Set on the Navajo Reservation in northeast Arizona, Fred is sent to examine the deaths of several Navajo people because their demise was originally believed to be caused by contaminated groundwater, a subject which he knows well. Through his association with the Indian Public Health Hospital in Shiprock, N.M. Fred suspects otherwise. His major distraction, however, is related to a Navajo girlfriend from his past: what's become of her? Where is she?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514476109

Frank Stephenson

Frank A. Stephenson is a professional forensic engineer. Born in Helena, MT., he finally realized that everyone does not own two sets of tires, three sets of clothes, antifreeze, ice scrapers, a snow shovel, so he moved to Phoenix. He is married to Brenda and has four grown children: Patty, Scott, Ashley, and Jennifer.

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Copyright © 2016 by Frank Stephenson.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016904427

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-7609-3

                 Softcover        978-1-5144-7611-6

                 eBook             978-1-5144-7610-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/05/2016

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Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Epilogue

References and Sources

Other novels by Frank Stephenson:

An Unlikely Journey

Bogotá Backscatter

Dedication

To Native Peoples everywhere, in particular the Navajo Nation, Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Montana, South Dakota, and the Northern Territories.

And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is pleasing to God will escape from her, but she will capture the sinner.

Ecclesiastes 7:26 NASB

"Never shall I forget the consummate coolness and particularity of detail with which some of the Indians engaged in the affair related to myself and party the exact process by which the captive trooper was tortured to death; how he was tied to a stake, strips of flesh cut from his body, arms, and legs, burning brands thrust into the bleeding wounds, the nose, lips and ears cut off, and finally, when from loss of blood, excessive pain, and anguish, the poor, bleeding, almost senseless mortal fell to the ground exhausted, the younger Indians were permitted to rush in and dispatch him with their knives."

—My Life on the Plains,

by George Armstrong Custer, 1874.

Chapter 1

Phoenix, Arizona—Late May 1999

Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, the toughest sheriff in the U.S., gingerly lowered the County Coroner’s report to the top of his desk as if it would shatter were he to do otherwise. He stared at the cover as if he had suspected the document was a sensitive bomb with a delicate trigger. ‘In a way, maybe it is.’ He thought, as he took note of his own cautionary actions. A deputy across the room stared at him. Just curious at first, but then dismayed and more than a bit worried, he spoke:

What’s the matter, Joe, you don’t look so good. You want I should get you something. Some water maybe? How ’bout a cup of Riza’s special coffee? You know the kind, you can float a horseshoe on.

No, it’s okay, just a bit queasy, could have been lunch. Joe replied, taking a deep breath then exhaling a controlled sigh as he leaned back in his chair. One thing’s for sure, that report takes the cake. In all my born days… suddenly words failed Joe as he watched a man in a dark suit enter the room. Not many men in dark suits in Phoenix in May. He could be a lawyer, or worse.

Sorry to barge in, Joe, I’m agent Spano, FBI. Looks as if you’ve just finished reading the County Coroner’s report on the Redbird girl. Am I right? Hey, what timing. This must be my lucky day.

Yes, I’ve finished this horrifying, despicable account of the most outrageous crime I’ve heard of, and yes, you’re a lot luckier than that poor girl. Joe winced and stood up, offering his hand, wondering who would wear a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie in Phoenix in the summer. Who would wear a suit of any color, much less a tie? June is only a few days away; a hundred days of a hundred degrees plus. This guy is nuts, Joe decided, and his disrespecting the dead is not appreciated.

Gives a new dimension to the expression ‘fucking her brains out,’ huh Joe?

Yes, doesn’t it though, and you’re sick for saying so. What’s the FBI want with this? As if I didn’t know, he thought.

The vic was a Navajo gal. Spano says, his tone rather uppity, his eyes glaring at the brass stars on the collar of Joe’s uniform shirt leaving agent Spano wondering, ‘who this guy Joe Arpaio thinks he is, General Eisenhower?’

Doesn’t matter if she’s Navajo, mister FBI agent man, it happened in my jurisdiction, not on the Rez. She could have been from some other planet—Washington D.C., for example, the case is still mine, and your people know that. You are just trying to throw your weight around, pick up some positive P.R. or whatever. God knows you can use something positive these days. If we need any help from the feds, I’ll let you know, agent ah…say, what did you say your name was?

Spano. Agent Spano. Here’s my card. We’ll be doing our own investigation, of course, and we hoped for a little cooperation from your department. How about it, Joe?

Yeah, sure, whatever. But why duplicate the effort? Don’t the taxpayers get any breaks? We can handle whatever comes… oh, never mind. I know how the feds think.

Moreover, Joe did know how the feds thought. ‘So this Spano person wants a little cooperation, ha. He’ll get as little as humanly possible.’ Joe’s mind still envisioning the photographic images his eyes and brain had retained from the appendix of the coroner’s report. Pictures that had unmercifully etched themselves into the backs of his retinas. His stomach churned again.

There was one photo in particular, of a round disk of the victim’s skull laying casually on the bedside night table, her long black hair still attached. It reminded Joe of the scalping ritual Native Americans used so long ago. Well, not that long ago, he thought, time is relative. The dinosaurs lived a long time ago. The report concluded that the perpetrator had used a battery-operated electric drill equipped with a hole-saw attachment normally used to cut doorknob holes in solid wooden doors. With it, the killer cut a two-inch diameter hole in the back of the young woman’s head.

The report also concluded that the perp then used a kitchen knife, a bread knife actually, taken from the victim’s own kitchen drawer, to cut an ‘X’ longitudinally through her brain stopping at a point just behind her eyes. Using petroleum jelly, he then gave himself an erection and proceeded to stick his penis through the hole in her skull and, essentially, had intercourse with her brain until he ejaculated inside her head. The coroner concluded that he needed the bread knife to loosen the brain tissue in order to ease his penetration into her brain cavity.

‘Did she know what was happening to her? Did she feel him inside her head with his greasy dick? How much pain did she endure? It said she was still alive when the ambulance and medics arrived, and semi-conscious. The report said she was TFBUNDY. Her brain had numerous ruptured blood vessels. TNTC, too numerous to count, the report said, wasn’t that the way they phrased it? Yes, TNTC, damn acronyms for everything these days, soon they’ll have to revise the dictionary, or had they done that already? But what does TFBUNDY mean? An acronym he didn’t recognize. Shit, who cares; that poor woman.’

‘Whoever did this deserves to be skinned alive and tossed into scalding hot salt water, Joe mumbled to no one in particular. What was her name? Bluebird? No, not Bluebird? Not Yellowbird, either, must be Redbird. Yeah, Elizabeth Redbird, that was it. Wonder about her next of kin, and do they live here in Phoenix? The coroner will handle all that, sure hope he passes the information on to us before the damn FBI gets it, he thought, shit, they better. The feds would sit on it for weeks otherwise.

The report said the coroner has taken samples of the petroleum jelly and the semen that they found. Good. Who called the ambulance? Must talk to the nine-one-one people. Where’s my notebook. Have to remember to write this crap down. Was she tied up when the medics found her? Yeah, she was, I remember she was tied to a chair, sitting backwards, that way he could fuck her in the back of the head. What a nut case! Who could do such a thing to another human being? Wait, she wasn’t Navajo she was Hopi. Dumb, incompetent feds. A little cooperation? Yeah, you bet. Maybe someone should fuck their brains out. No, that assumes they have any brains in the first place. Half the time, they’re as crazy as this killer.’

Still pondering his thoughts, Sheriff Joe strolled to his car, glancing at his watch out of habit and thinking about how insanely cruel this latest murder was. Nothing about it made any sense. Could it be a guise? Was there something else afoot? If so, what could it be that would make a criminal stoop… nah, the world is full of crazies. Most of them seem to arrive in Maricopa County eventually, so what else is new? What a job. Oh hell, it all pays the same anyway, so quit your bellyaching.

Just then, Joe saw one of the women he knew from the medical examiner’s office. He hailed to her, Hey, Julia, wait up.

Hi, Joe, sup, bro?

I was reading one of the ME reports this morning and… What the heck does TFBUNDY mean? Does that have something to do with Ted Bundy, the serial killer?

Julia roared, doubling over with laughter as she held her right hand to her mouth. After a moment to re-compose herself, she replied, Heavens no, Joe, it means Totally Fucked But, Unfortunately, Not Dead Yet.

You’re kidding, right? The ME would put that in an official report?

Hey, chill, Joe. Course he would. Got’s to have a sense of humor ’round here, else we all goes off our rockers. See?

Yeah, I guess so. Still, it’s a bit…oh never mind.

Hey, any truth to the rumor you is gonna run for governor? We hears it all the time from lots of folks, how ’bout it? You gonna do it?

"No. I do not want that job and I doubt I’d get it anyway. People say I’m too controversial with my tent city, pink underwear, chain gangs and green baloney sandwiches, know what I’m saying? I got more than enough to keep me busy right here. Just this past week, we’ve had five murders, seventeen stolen cars, one hundred seventy-seven burglaries, and eighteen assaults. Yeah, I have plenty to do, and the week ain’t over yet."

Surrounded by more powerful, aggressive enemies, the Crow had embraced White fur traders as allies in their persistent conflicts with the Sioux. Over the subsequent years, the Crow responded to the Whites’ requests for military assistance, helping protect travelers on the Bozeman Trail, scouting for the government, and fighting the Sioux alongside the Army. My horse fights with me and fasts with me, because if he is to carry me in battle he must know my heart, and I must know his or we shall never become brothers. I have been told that the white man, who is almost a god, and yet a great fool, does not believe that the horse has a spirit. This cannot be true. I have many times seen my horse’s soul in his eyes.

—Plenty-Coups, Chief of Crows

Chapter 2

Phoenix, AZ.—Friday, June 28, 1999

Maggie Tallsalt Begay lives near the corner of Seventh Street and Indian School Road, not far from the Phoenix Indian Hospital where she works for minimum wage as a laundry technician. At the time, all she knows of her roommate, Nizhoni Alexis Yazzie, a nineteen-year-old close friend of Maggie’s family, is that she is on vacation with her boyfriend, Chaska Six Bears, somewhere on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

It is Friday evening and the twenty-one-year-old Maggie has the rare weekend off from her hospital duties as a glorified motel housekeeper. Someone knocks on her door around six that evening, and she assumes it is one of her many girlfriends, friends consisting of other Native Americans, as well as White, Hispanic, Asian, and African American people from down the hallway.

The following Monday around noon local time and failing to report for work that morning, Maggie’s body is found. There are no indications around the doorframe of a forced entry, not one of her friends saw her Sunday.

According to the County Coroner, someone with considerable upper body strength decided to use Maggie’s skull as a piñata. A baseball bat, found near the body, provides a not-too-subtle clue. The impact, focused just above the first vertebrae, at the base of Maggie’s broad head, was powerful enough to splatter twenty percent of the contents of Maggie’s skull all over the wall five feet in front of where she had been lashed naked to a wooden kitchen chair in her rundown but previously tidy apartment.

The coroner places the time of death two days prior to when her next-door neighbor discovered the gruesome remains of Maggie Begay. Someone had repeatedly raped and sodomized Maggie, and tortured her with a lighted cigar. Cigar butts, found near the body, match the telltale round burn marks the size and shape of a nickel on Maggie’s breasts, buttocks, the soles of her feet, her tongue, and her eyelids.

A more thorough investigation by the Maricopa Sheriff’s Department reveals one other important clue. The most probable reason the perp took a baseball bat to Maggie’s head was to obliterate any evidence of the hole he had drilled in the back of her skull, centered between the ears. This time, however, the disk with hair attached is missing, but otherwise the modus operandi remained the same as a previous crime here, the name Elizabeth Redbird comes to mind.

The pattern had now been set. The killer had chosen young Native American women of below average income level, living alone. He had gained access with little use of violence, and once inside the apartment had proceeded to ravage and, ultimately, murder his victims. Brazenly, he would call nine-one-one himself and describe what he thought was a domestic argument in the apartment next door to his own. He would then make a clean getaway, probably on foot to a vehicle parked less than two blocks from the scene. There were no witnesses, so no description could be made of the man, his clothing, or what he drove. His skin color, age, height, build, all were still unknowns. This time the police psychologist beat the police artist to the spotlight.

Clearly a troubled and violent man. She said, clucking her tongue against her teeth. Probably mistreated by a woman when he was a child. Perhaps a sister, an aunt, perhaps his own mother. He, too, is probably a Native American, although that is not a given. He is strong, probably a stocky build, possibly a kind face.

Sheriff Arpaio had dealt with more than his fair share of serial killers, serial rapists, serial car thefts, and serial everything from graffiti artists to hubcap thieves. In the end, they were always caught. This guy would be, too, but how many more young women would die at his hands before that happened?

Back East, and seemingly unrelated to the local goings on, a company called Okradana continued to bleed red ink as its losses climbed ever higher in the Middle East. Word spreads that the company, losing its collective ass overseas, is having difficulty securing leasing agreements for new exploration equipment. High dollar expenditures for maintenance and repairs are slashed, crimping the operating budgets for proven reserves, a move hotly criticized by peers in the industry. Little did anyone in the United States know at the time, this company would creep into our lives sooner or later.

Shortly after the closure of the Bozeman trail in 1868, the military posts along it also folded. With these events, the Lakota Sioux convinced themselves that their troubles with the paleface soldiers had ended, and they could now concentrate on dealing with the infernal Crow Tribes and their raiding parties. Since so many Sioux had given up much of their land and freedom by agreeing to accept life on the Great Sioux Reservation, it took little convincing. The life style of these two hundred thousand inhabitants of the ‘Rez’ was not enjoyable. The buffalo had all but disappeared and the land was not fit for farming. The benevolent U.S. Government provided food, consisting of flour, sugar, and other rations; not exactly the traditional Native American fare.

Chapter 3

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Big Island, HI—Monday, June 21, 1999

Timing isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing. With a mandatory business trip to the Four Corners area hovering over me like the sword of Damocles, the last thing I needed this Monday morning was the phone call I was about to get. The Four Corners junket was doomed to be a boondoggle, postponed once before, prompting the boss to send me to Bogotá, Columbia out of spite. Makes perfect sense, trade in my rusty command of Navajo for my even rustier Latin America Spanish. Either one might as well be Croatian with a southern accent.

Allow me to introduce myself: I am a man in his late forties, never married, reasonably healthy and moderately handsome. I am six feet tall, unwillingly pushing one hundred and ninety pounds, black hair, deep brown eyes, tanned, and financially secure as far as the middle-class is concerned, which is not very secure in this day and age. I am, admittedly, high-strung, thin-skinned, inveterately suspicious and resentful of authority, unable to deal with any sort of attention or success directed toward me because of my workaholic career achievements, and I am perpetually worried that, like it or not, my best days are behind me. I am Fred Sager, Chief Scientist of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii, self-confessed womanizer, beer drinker extraordinaire, and as insecure as a teenage girl with severe acne, tiny tits, no ass, and straight mouse-brown hair. Did I mention I am flinchingly sensitive to my own troubles yet blind to the worries of others? Sadly, I am.

Speaking of being thin-skinned, it is otherwise a healthy casing and, what any qualified dermatologist would term ‘normal’ I’m certain. Why I mention this seemingly superfluous observation at this point will become patently obvious even to the most casual observer later on; trust me on this.

It is Monday, and I hate Mondays with a dread that only the Bard could have described with eloquence. I am at work in my modest government office and my coffee has finally cooled to the point I can tolerate its temperature, if not its taste. Had I known what was on my agenda this morning when I woke up, I would have gladly rolled over and stayed in bed all day long.

Not unlike others, particularly teenagers, I am someone who is different, yet wants to be accepted the same as everyone else. This is, of course, impossible, which means I have a serious illness. If you force yourself to be the same as everyone else in order to be accepted as everyone else, you cause neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia in yourself. It’s a distortion of nature, against God’s will. Therefore, I appear to be someone I am not at all like on the inside. On the surface, I am somewhat normal. Inside, I’m insecure, guilt-ridden, anxious, and possibly insane.

The phone on my desk is ringing. Every Monday morning my phone rings. Every Monday morning’s phone calls are onerous. Perhaps that is why I don’t like Mondays. As always, I answer the phone anyway and learn, much to my amazement, it is Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff, the controversial but effective sheriff of the State of Arizona’s most populous county. He is calling me at my office at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory the day after the county’s coroner filed his report in Maggie Tallsalt Begay’s murder case. I do not know any Maggie Begay, and the more he talks the more I am at first confused, then curious, then affronted.

When, throughout an entire career, a person is known as one who is constantly raging against the system, the raging can’t stop just because the system has accepted him, or has ceased to care about him. Perhaps the system is no longer paying attention, or given up. Still, the anger has to go somewhere. It’s an occupational hazard. Besides, I maintain that I am right about the hypocrisy, corruption, and unfairness of the pervasive American officialdom. I still believe that humor, intelligence, and honesty can make a difference.

Sheriff Joe begins by explaining that since Maggie’s horrible demise took place on his turf, he is therefore in charge of the investigation, and it’s the second crime of its kind in a month. Neither Maggie nor her roommate were married, neither have children, and both are, or in one case was, young Navajo women. That, like it or not on Joe’s part, brings the FBI into the investigation as well as the BIA. Maggie’s parents live wholesome lives in Farmington, New Mexico, but the whereabouts of Nizhoni, Maggie’s roomy, or Nizhoni’s parents, are not generally known.

It is later learned that, according to the Begay family, Kika Yazzie had given birth to Nizhoni out of wedlock and Kika never revealed the father’s name in all these many years, not even to her immediate, closely knit family who, knowing the timing and history, always believed Fred Sager to be the father.

The realization of what Joe has just accused me of augers into my brain with the numbing pain of a root canal. Sheriff Joe has just informed me that I have an illegitimate child by an ex-Navajo girlfriend. The ‘child’ is now around nineteen-years-old. My grip on the phone involuntarily loosens as my mind whirls and I am remembering why I hate Mondays. I’m also not a morning person, but that wasn’t the problem this time.

My eyes find the nearest window. I struggle to stand as the phone falls away from me and I hear it hit the top of my desk, then the floor. As I look at the view across Kilauea’s expansive crater, I feel my muscles begin to tense, an ache setting in. I am awash with nausea and fear. Does Sheriff Joe really believe I killed Maggie?

My thoughts wander without direction or purpose. Like an animal in a fog, I am lost, relying on instinct with no landmarks to guide me. I had buried the guilt from this affair long ago, and not without great difficulty. Now here it was again, arisen like Lazarus, a ghost from the ashes. Why me? Why now?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s phone call may well be non-existent now. My emotions and long buried memories have taken me back, into the past of my youth. The pangs of guilt have begun raining down upon my consciousness, gaining in both frequency and intensity. They’re back. It took so much effort to bury them, too. Why now, after all these years? My feet turn toward the door, as if to guide me out of the building so I could escape. That’s what I did, isn’t it, years ago? I ran away. Now I must run again. How long will I hide from the truth? Where will I run to now? My stomach is churning and my adrenaline level escalating as if waiting for death to tap my shoulder. But death would be welcome compared with life in the prison of my infinite guilt; my self-inflicted shame.

The phone cord tangles around my left foot. I bend down and pick up the phone like a robot with a short circuit. For a few seconds, my instinct places the phone to my ear. Joe is still talking. He hasn’t missed me, as he continues to fill me in on the basic news, tragic that it is. Then he begins probing in his tactful yet pugnacious way. Only half-listening, my mind still lost in the haze of shock, fear, and emotions I couldn’t describe, I consider hanging up in mid-conversation but dismissed this option with the same speed as it darted across the spinning thoughts in my confused mind.

Nizhoni has precious few belongings, Dr. Sager, but among them were two black and white pictures of you and her mother, Kika Yazzie. Looks like old Polaroid’s to me, Joe said, you know, flat, two dimensional photos, not much to go on. Joe pauses, perhaps for effect, but in my condition, the intent is lost. There are no dates on the photographs, but you both look very young, she more so than you, but you couldn’t have been more than what, twenty-five? Listen, Sager, you need to tell me about this, or I’ll gladly fly to Hawaii and beat it out of you. He’s trying to sound gruff here, but a chuckle at the end gives him away. Actually, I would love an official excuse to go to Hawaii, so don’t tempt me. He says, with the finesse and sensitivity for which Sheriff Joe is noted, but I remember that he didn’t come by the sobriquet ‘The Toughest Sheriff in America’ by pampering criminals or the inmates of his equally controversial Tent City.

During my tour of duty fifteen years ago in the agency’s Phoenix office, I observed, oft times with disgust, the press routinely and unmercifully trying to draw and quarter Joe Arpaio. This is the same newspaper that routinely obtained their ‘facts’ via one or more Ouija boards bootlegged over the Mexican border by O. Ricardo Pimentel and tucked away neatly under E. J. Montini’s portfolio of empty Joe Arpaio pizza boxes. All simply because Joe’s mission is to catch and punish crooks and undesirables. What is this man supposed to do? Entice them with cotton candy and beckon them to repent on penalty of severe punishment by God? A bible-thumping evangelist Joe is not, but he does get more than his share of publicity.

My late father, a career cop, taught me that criminals are criminals. Treating them any other way is inviting frustration, disappointment, and the inevitable apathy due to heartbreak. Besides, those that were Joe’s true enemies were either jealous cops, wannabe local heroes, or… the crooks themselves, big surprise.

Are you still there, Dr. Sager?

Uh, oh, yeah. I mumble, still dazed. Kika and I were lovers back then. That was almost twenty years ago. I blurt out, the initial shock of Joe’s news now slightly dissipated, diffused into the very bones of my body. I was working construction in Shiprock, New Mexico, living in Farmington, and commuting the thirty miles or so each way to work and back. Kika was about nineteen, I was twenty-eight. Her family knew of the affair and approved of it, probably because they loved her and wanted a better life for her, not to mention her happiness. Perhaps they saw it as a way out for her, and the whole family to escape the reservation. The Federal prison with no visible walls or bars that holds the Navajo people captive and condemns them to a life of abject poverty and strife. And to think that people call your Tent City cruel. But I never knocked her up, and I’ll submit to whatever DNA testing you want to perform. Nizhoni is not my daughter. I finish my statement with authority. At least I don’t think I knocked her up, did I? Christ, what if I did?

Sensitive, aren’t you? Joe grunts, and my memory begins to regenerate the image of his avuncular face, so often visible in the media.

"Yeah, I suppose I am sensitive. See, I was never sure whether I did the right thing by Kika or not, not to mention myself in the bargain."

Interesting. You say you were involved with this Kika, but perhaps you were not committed to her. Right, Dr. Sager? You know the difference, do you not?

Maybe that’s the problem, Sheriff, maybe I couldn’t tell the difference at the time. Know what I mean?

No. I don’t know what you mean. The difference is damn clear to me and has been since I was a kid. Either you’re committed to a relationship, or you’re simply involved in a relationship. It’s like a ham and egg breakfast.

A ham and egg breakfast? I chuckle in disbelief at his corollary.

Yeah, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. Get the idea? He replies with a grouchy tone piercing my ear through the receiver. Now, what else can you tell me about Kika and her kid?

My mind is a blur again, ashamed of myself. I couldn’t speak. What else was there to tell? I ran off and successfully hid from her for years.

Are you still there Sager?

Yes. There’s just not much else to say. I never saw or heard from Kika again. I didn’t know she had a child, but it doesn’t surprise me after all these years, she may have ten kids by now for all I know. Navajos tend to have multiple children.

You’re wrong. This gal had one child, period. That’s another reason we think you’re the father. Could be Kika never got over you, and she couldn’t stand the thought of another man in her life. You’re certain you didn’t father this Nizhoni woman? Christ, she’s the perfect age, nineteen or twenty, and the child would have been born roughly nine months after you left Shiprock. Sounds suspiciously like you could be the daddy.

I most definitely am not! I scream. Sorry, sheriff, it’s just that you’ve not only surprised me by your call this morning, you’ve dredged up a lot of memories. Some of those memories are fond ones; actually, most all of them are fond memories.

Which memories are not pleasant, Dr. Sager?

"The memories of me caving into pressure from my own family and society in general, not to marry a woman of different color, of different ethnicity. Especially my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, not to mention my so-called friends back in Montana."

What sort of pressure? What do you mean you ‘caved in’? Joe’s voice is abruptly quite soft and mellow, as if he actually cares about how I might frame my answer. It’s his grandfatherly, confidence-inspiring voice. He is good at this sort of thing, gaining your trust when he needed to extract what you otherwise wouldn’t tell him, or tell anyone else for that matter.

"The kind of pressure that says a young, educated white man doesn’t marry into a dark brown, poor as dirt, Indian family. That kind of pressure. Maybe I should have knocked her up. You know what I mean, that way my family couldn’t have done a damn thing. They wouldn’t dare, not in those days, anyway, a man that got a woman in a family-way married the woman. Not like it is today. I would have been making an honest woman out of her. The Christian thing to do. Shit, it’s even the Navajo thing to do, I think." My blood pressure is either very low or extremely high, as in mega stroke level. Why am I telling the story of my life? Why don’t I simply hang up in his ear?

Yeah, parents can fuck up an offspring’s life over time and not mean to do it, not even realize it’s happening. Trouble is, it lasts forever. He grunts.

I’m curious, sheriff, how did you track me down?

You say that like you’re on the run, Sager, are you?

Not hardly, and you know it. If I were on the run, you would have already figured that out and caught up to me long ago. You’re a pro. Now come on, how did you know I was the person in the photographs? Those are old photos, and although I still think of myself as Hollywood material, I have aged a bit. What was it?

Sorry, Sager, can’t tell you that. But… if you think of anything relevant, call me. You got my number?

I feel like making a sarcastic remark here, it was a great straight line and begging a retort from my