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."

"I think I've seen enough for now," Ray said. Archie stopped the video. "Send the rest to my computer, and I'll look at it when I can. I have to make a phone call." He started out the door but stopped and swung around. "And thanks, Archie. That's good stuff."

Ray called Nick as he headed for his "office," a cramped space in the morgue that Doc Robbins had made generously available to him. It was small, but it suited him, and it was better than hauling all his gear around all day long.

"Stokes," Nick answered.

"How's it going out there. Nick?"

"Could be better. It's a bloodbath here. Ray. A bunch of people were shot, and I'm afraid that more might be on the way."

"Oh, no. Any fatalities?" Ray asked.

"Yes, some. Not everybody. That guy Meoqui Torres you mentioned is among the wounded. Shooting was a drive-by at his place."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Speaking of Torres, I just watched a clip from his new movie. It's pretty incendiary."

"That's kind of his reputation."

"If you can, check into a man named Herbert Acosta. He's Grey Rock, and I think he lives on the reservation. He made an implicit threat against Robert Domingo, on tape."

"Herbert Acosta, huh? I'll let Brass know. I'm working the shooting scene while he and our tribal police escort are running around."

"He got the easy part, huh? Okay, I'll finish up what I'm doing here, and then I'll head out your way to see if I can help. Watch your back. Nick."

"Always, Ray," Nick said. "Thanks."

Nick called Brass and told him what Ray had said about Herbert Acosta. He heard Brass relay the information to Aguirre, heard Aguirre chuckle without humor.

"Acosta?" the tribal cop said. "Tell him he's too late."

"What do you mean?"

"You see that older guy at Meoqui's? Skinny guy, gray hair?"

"The dead one."

"Yeah, the dead one. That was Herbert Acosta."

"You catch that, Nick?" Brass asked into the phone.

"Yeah, I got it. Paramedics just rolled up. I'll try to process Acosta before he's taken away, see if I can connect him to Domingo's house."

"You do that," Brass said. "I'll talk to you later."

16

"I'm certain, Detective Willows -"

"I'm not a detective, Doctor Boullet. I'm a criminalist. You can call me Supervisor Willows, or you can call me Catherine."

"Very well, Supervisor Willows," the doctor amended. Somewhat pointedly, Catherine thought. Hutch Boullet had a pinched face, with a pursed mouth, small eyes, and a high forehead. He looked as if he spent more time playing tennis than examining patients, but the dramatic view of the city's skyline from the window of his spacious office suggested that he had a profitable practice. Of course, with the Cameron family as patients, he might not need any others. "At any rate, you're a law-enforcement officer, so I'm sure you understand that I cannot release any information about my patients without their express consent. You're familiar with doctor-patient confidentiality, of course."

"I am, Doctor," Catherine assured him. She had come there on a hunch, and he had not been happy to carve out some time from his day to see her. She could have called first, but for all she knew, that might have sent him scurrying to the nearest tennis court. At least this way, she had caught him in the office. "And I wouldn't ask if it wasn't vitally important.''

"I don't care if the fate of the free world depends on it. I can't do it."

"Here's the thing," she said. She had to get through to this guy somehow, but so far, he had proven difficult to crack. "My DNA tech has made a positive match between some hairs and fluids found in Daria Cameron's condo and some other hairs and pieces of fingernail found inside a tent at a homeless encampment."