Wind and Lies, page 5
But Joshua didn’t care how he had gotten the case. Hell, that’s what contacts were for. He only cared that it would give him some publicity representing hotshots instead of murderers, rapists, and impoverished Indians. And such was the way a private practice was built.
He had been at the BIA all Monday morning, working on putting out specifications for bids on construction of a public health hospital in Sells. Joshua’s office was inelegant, to say the least. It was tiny and cramped and had a packed mud floor and one smeary window. But the swivel chair was comfortable, if a bit rickety, and he had Frances Hendly to answer the phone and do occasional secretarial work. Frances, Edgar’s wife, worked as the BIA receptionist.
Pima County had recently enacted a county sales tax, which when added the state tax was three percent, and the merchants were fearful that it was going to cost them a lot of business. Joshua had filed suit in federal court against Pima County, alleging that the tax was an unconstitutional violation of the commerce clause, a restraint on interstate trade. He had gotten great press over the lawsuit, for a change, and he had picked up a big-time divorce as a result. If he could win the tax suit, things would really start to look up.
Francisco Romero walked into Joshua’s office at three o’clock in the afternoon. Joshua glanced up from the papers on his desk as the Papago chief sat down in a chair in front of the desk.
“Good to see you, Chief.”
Romero’s face was haggard. He was not a man who made small talk easily, particularly in English.
“They charge Julio Moraga aggravate assault.”
Joshua nodded. “Yes, I heard.”
“He gotta stand trial federal court,” Romero said. “He got no chance there.”
Joshua shrugged. “He put the guy in the hospital with a broken nose. What do you expect?”
“Is not right. Julio only want to get what we suppose to have.”
“But he can’t break a man’s nose over it,” Joshua said.
The chief stared hotly at Joshua. “You help him.”
“Listen, Chief. He punched out a white man in front of twenty witnesses.”
“Twenty Indian witnesses.”
“Sure, that’s true. But at least one of them, the old woman, will have to testify. She told Chuy Leyva and Roy Collins what happened. If she refuses to testify, she can be charged with obstruction of justice.”
“Ain’t no justice here for Indians. This is important case for us. What Julio done is for all of us, and it happen here on our reservation. He gotta only be tried in tribal court. We are sovereign nation.”
Joshua shook his head. “That isn’t going to happen, Chief. He’s already been indicted by the federal grand jury. It’s federal law that an Indian who commits a felony on a non-Indian, even on a reservation, is subject to federal law. I guarantee you that the assistant U.S. attorney, Tim Essert, isn’t going to turn the case over to the tribal court.”
“Make him,” Romero said simply.
Joshua shook his head and shrugged. “How in hell am I supposed to do that, Chief?”
“I dunno,” Romero said, “but before you meet rich girl, you care much more about what happen here than you care now.”
Joshua flinched at the insult. He swallowed hard to keep down his anger.
“You gotta help him,” Romero said, his voice softer, his eyes beseeching. “He done something for tribe. Now tribe do something for him.” He got up quickly and left the office.
Joshua swiveled angrily in his chair and stared out the window. First Hanna, now Francisco Romero. They were wrong.
They were wrong, weren’t they?
“I talked to Paul Richmond,” Chuy Leyva said into the telephone.
“Who’s that?” Roy Collins asked.
“The principal of the school in Sells.”
“Oh, yeah, right. What’d he say?”
Chuy paused. He was in his little cubbyhole office next to Joshua’s at the BIA. He unconsciously lowered his voice a bit. “He said that Melinda Lopez was hot and heavy with Edgar Hendly.” Chuy could hear Roy swallow at the other end of the line. Roy’s voice came a little shallower, through a constricted throat.
“You kidding?”
“No. I’m sorry to say I’m not.”
“Damn! That’s terrible.”
“One more thing. Richmond said that the Mormon guy, Porter, was trying to convert her. They gave her some food and some clothes, and she was talking seriously about joining the group. She wasn’t making enough money working just three days a week for the tribe, They didn’t have more work for her, and she didn’t want to go back home and live with her parents.”
“How in hell does this Richmond know so much about Melinda Lopez?”
“He says that they went out a couple of times, movies, bowling, nothing serious. He says she was real pretty, he liked her.”
“What’s he say about Porter? Maybe the old bastard wanted to do more than just convert her, and she didn’t go for it.”
“Richmond said he didn’t know anything more than what he told me.”
“Okay,” Roy said. “Is Edgar there?”
“He was when I came in a few minutes ago.”
“I’m coming over. You want to be in on it this time?”
Chuy breathed deeply. “Yeah, I better be.”
It was Monday afternoon. The body of Melinda Lopez had been found a week ago, and there was still no firm lead to the killer. Dr. Stanley Wolfe, the Pima County coroner, had done a postmortem on the body, but it yielded no answers. “The normal factors of timing the death,” Dr. Wolfe wrote, “such as body temperature, lividity, and rigor mortis, are simply of no avail here. The body was post rigor in an advanced stage of decomposition, which, coupled with daytime temperatures exceeding a hundred degrees, hastened the deterioration of the blood and the decomposition of the cerebrospinal fluid. The most advanced techniques for measuring the elapsed time by examination of the concentrations of sugar, protein, urea, lactic acid, and non-protein nitrogen in the spinal fluid are generally inconclusive after seventy hours following death. They were inconclusive here, leading to the high probability that death occurred more than seventy hours prior to the autopsy. That would place the time of death prior to the evening hours of Friday, April 30. The degree of decomposition of the brain tissue and the heart muscle lead to the reasonable probability that death occurred within the preceding twenty-four-hour period, being from six o’clock p.m. on April 29 to the same time the next day. The vulva has been excised in a non-surgical fashion and is not presented with the body. Proteinaceous smears of vaginal deposits were unable to be tested from what remained of the uterus, since the area had been invaded extensively by blood, rats, and insects.”
In other words, she had been stabbed to death sometime between Thursday evening and Friday evening, and it was unknown if rape or even consensual sex had been a factor.
Chuy waited nervously for Roy Collins to arrive. He felt as though it was wrong even to approach Edgar with such things. Edgar hadn’t killed anybody. But Chuy had interviewed Felix and Richmond, and he had simply been doing his job as a cop. It would be the same with Edgar. Just doing his job. Of course, this time it looked like Edgar may have been less than entirely candid when he had first been questioned by Collins. Maybe Edgar did know Melinda Lopez a little better than he had let on. Maybe he had even had something going with her. Stranger things were known to happen.
The thought was immensely distasteful to Chuy, but there it was. Paul Richmond said that Melinda had refused to go out with him after she started going out with Edgar. Edgar had started coming to the Big Res two, three times a week, ever since he first met Melinda. She had told Paul that Edgar had promised her that he was going to leave his wife. Paul had gone by her house several times, late in the evening, and Edgar’s car had been parked outside and there were no lights on in the house.
Chuy had spoken to Richmond first on the telephone last Wednesday, and after hearing what he had to say, he had driven to Sells this morning to talk to him in person. He wanted to see if he was believable, if he had some other ax to grind. And what he saw had scared him a little. Richmond was a slender, blond, attractive young man, private school educated at Brophy Prep in Phoenix, and a graduate of Arizona State College at Tempe four years ago. Last year he had left a good teaching job in Tucson to come to the Big Res and be the principal of the tiny three-room school, because he felt that he should do something more important with his life than just chase a few bucks and a cushy job. If Chuy had been casting the role of honest witness, he could not have found anyone more suited for the part.
A half hour later, Roy came into Chuy’s office, and Chuy told him everything that Paul Richmond had said. Roy shook his head unhappily and shrugged.
“Well, let’s get it over with,” he said.
He and Chuy walked down the hallway, past the reception area, where Frances Hendly sat typing behind a sliding window, to the end office. Edgar was reading something, and his glasses had slid down almost to the tip of his nose. Roy knocked lightly on the doorjamb. Edgar glanced up. He raised his arms.
“I surrender. Take me t’ the firm’ squad.”
“What did you do?” Collins asked, laughing.
“I dunno, but it must a been awful bad to bring the Bureau and the Indin police to see me.”
“I’m sorry, Edgar,” Roy said, standing stiffly in front of the desk. “I have to ask you a few more questions about the Lopez girl.”
Edgar studied Roy’s face. He got up from the desk and walked to the door, shut it quietly, and returned to his chair. He sat back slowly and gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. Roy and Chuy sat down.
“We’ve been doing the routine interviews with people who knew her,” Roy said. “Chuy talked to Paul Richmond.”
“The principal at the school in Sells?”
Roy nodded.
Edgar held up splayed hands. “So what?”
“He told Chuy that he and Melinda had been dating until she met you, and that Melinda told him you were going to leave your wife for her. He said you spent some nights with her at her house.”
Edgar’s mouth dropped open. He stared at Roy and then Chuy in surprise, then chortled. “Holy shit! Me screwin’ that little girl? Well, it actually wouldn’t be such a bad idea, cept’n a course she’s dead.”
Roy stared hard at Edgar. Edgar’s face sobered. “Yer not kiddin’?”
Roy shook his head.
“Well, ain’t that a crock a shit,” Edgar drawled. “First my pal Chief Romero says I was pluggin’ the girl, now friend whoever says I was. I sure wish they’d a let me know when I was screwin’ her so I coulda come and enjoyed it.”
“Why are they saying this?” Roy asked.
Edgar shrugged. “Wish I knew. Alls I can figure is that this Josiah Porter’s put ‘em up to it. You know them Mormons are damn powerful when they come to the Res lookin’ to save souls. They’re white people, but they care about the Indins like none a the rest a the white folks do. They throw around a little money, and suddenly they got Indins followin’ ‘em around doin’ what they’re told. I’m the one that filed the lawsuit to eject Porter’s ass off the Res, and I don’t reckon he’s too fond a me. And I don’t know, but I’d stake a nickel or two that Porter was after this Lopez girl. She was a hell of a good looker. Maybe this Richmond fella is a Mormon. I hired him, but I cain’t remember what he put down for religion on his application.”
He got up from his chair and walked over to a filing cabinet against the side wall. He opened the second shelf and thumbed through several files. He pulled one out, brought it to his desk, and sat down.
“Well, all he put down here for religion is Christian. Did ya ask him?” He looked at Chuy.
Chuy shook his head. “Didn’t think of it.”
“I think ya oughta go on back to the Big Res and talk to this Richmond a little more. I guess he wanted to have somethin’ goin’ with Melinda, and I’d bet he planted the bug about me’n her in Chief Romero’s ear, and he was probably put up to it by Porter. I think Porter’s the crazy som bitch killed her.”
Chuy looked at Roy. “That could be it. Richmond said that Melinda was thinking seriously about joining the cult. They were giving her food and clothes, and she wasn’t making enough money just working for the tribe. If she could get free room and board with the Mormons for just saying a few prayers, it would be a good deal for her. And as pretty and young as she was, Porter couldn’t help but be attracted to her. The only thorn in his side was Edgar trying to throw him off the reservation.”
Roy nodded. His expression relaxed from strain to relief. “I think that’s right.” He stood up. “Edgar, sorry about this. It’s the last time, I promise.”
Edgar stood up and shook his hand. “Just doin’ yer job. Don’t worry ‘bout it.” He shook Chuy’s hand, and the two men left his office.
They stood beside Roy’s dull gray Ford with the Great Seal of the United States peeling off the driver’s door.
Roy looked soberly at Chuy. “He’s lying.”
Chuy grimaced. Then he nodded slowly.
“I want you to go back to Sells and turn over every rock till we find out why. Talk to Porter. Also, that Indian cop who was seeing her, what was his name?”
“Roberto Felix.”
“You said you had a funny feeling talking to him.”
“Yeah, he was just kind of strange. Maybe nothing to it, just me.” Chuy shrugged.
“Well, check him out some more. And see what you can find out about this Richmond. I don’t like zeroing in on Edgar. He may have screwed her, but he didn’t kill her. But maybe Roberto Felix or Richmond got jealous. Or Porter.”
Chuy nodded.
Chapter 4
The next morning Joshua went downtown to the Pima County law library at the courthouse to do some research on the tax matter. After about two hours he went into the courtyard, bought a Coke and a bag of potato chips from the blind man who ran the concession stand, and went back into the library. He was tired of tax for the moment, so he took the United States Code Index off the shelf and looked up the Major Crimes Act. It was in Title 18. He replaced the Index, took out the volume containing Title 18, walked back to the table, and munched potato chips as he read Section 1153.
He stopped munching and stared at the statute. He read it again, and aggravated assault was not among the offenses listed which automatically gave the FBI and the federal courts jurisdiction. Assault with a deadly weapon was there, and murder, rape, robbery, and the other principal felonies, but not aggravated assault. He blinked and swallowed and read it again. He sat up stiffly in the chair and pushed away the almost empty bag of chips. He paged forward slowly to make sure that there wasn’t a separate statute for assaults and batteries. Then he paged backward and read Title 18 Section 1152:
Except as otherwise expressly provided by law, the general laws of the United States as to the punishment of offenses…shall extend to Indian country.
This section shall not extend to offenses committed by one Indian against the person or property of another Indian, nor to any Indian committing any offense in the Indian country who has been punished by the local law of the tribe.
Joshua literally leapt to his feet. He stood reading the two statutes three times more to make certain that he had not misunderstood. Satisfied, he sat down and copied them verbatim on his legal pad.
He drove quickly back to his office and laboriously hand-wrote an application for a writ of habeas corpus and several other necessary documents. He tried to call the tribal office in Sells, but as usual no one answered. He brought the papers to Frances and asked her if she could have them ready by mid-afternoon. Then he called the tribal office again. This time Francisco Romero answered. After Joshua explained the situation to him briefly, the chief said that he would try to get the three-judge tribal court assembled by two o’clock, when Joshua would arrive.
When Joshua entered the small tribal court building in Sells, it was a few minutes before two. Only Francisco Romero and Danilo Delacruz had arrived. While they waited for Manuel Rios, the third judge, Joshua explained his legal maneuvering to the two men. Romero nodded vigorously, and his eyes looked much softer than they had in Joshua’s office yesterday.
Rios came in at quarter past two, and by twenty minutes after two, the Papago tribal court had tried and convicted Julio Moraga of disturbing the peace and fined him one dollar.
Joshua typed the “Judgment and Sentence” on a sheet of white paper, and the three judges signed it on the bottom.
Back in Tucson almost two hours later, Joshua picked up the typed documents at the BIA and sped downtown to the Federal Building, which housed the post office, the U.S. marshal’s office and detention cell, and the U.S. district courtroom.
“I never saw you look quite so eager,” Judge Robert “Buck” Buchanan said as his secretary ushered Joshua into chambers. “You get paid today or something?”
“No, Your Honor, this is better than money.”
The judge rolled his eyes.
“I take it you’ve heard and read about the voter-registration hassle out of San Xavier on Sunday?”
Buchanan nodded. “Sure. I impaneled the grand jury yesterday that indicted Moraga.”
Joshua handed the judge the papers that Frances Hendly had prepared. Buchanan sat up slowly in his big swivel chair and stiffened at his desk as he read. After five minutes of intense reading, he buzzed for his secretary. She came in a moment later.
