Death and Desire Read online

  I was trembling and breathless, but I blurted out, “On the Navajo Nation between Tuba City and Flag, a Navajo dressed like a coyote ran behind the Rav. I could feel his breath on my ear! Bidziil says he is a shapeshifter intent on stealing my power.”

  Louis jumped to his feet, his eyes wide, his mouth slack.

  “Do you believe in shapeshifting?” I asked.

  He surprised me with his answer. “I won’t tell you I don’t believe.” He paced the small office, agitated and combing his hair with his fingers.

  “You think they’re real? That it really happened out there?” I asked, incredulously. “Why? Have you seen one?”

  “No, I haven’t.” He rolled his shoulders. “But I’ve lived here most of my life and heard the stories my Navajo friends tell. One of them just wasted away after a shapeshifter made a charm of bone dust from his dead infant son. Did you look into the shapeshifter’s eyes?” he asked urgently.

  “A few seconds. It’s not rational. Human cells can’t mutate into animal cells and then back again.”

  “You’re trying to bind evil within the boundaries of western scientific thought. Evil is not bound by rational science.”

  “This is creeping me out. I believe evil is done by humans in human form.”

  “I’m good with that, too, but I believe there are things we can’t explain. Like Navajos who practice the Witchery Way and can shapeshift.”

  I made the gimme gesture with my hands. “Talk to me.”

  He sighed. “The most common animal shapeshift is the coyote. Navajos avoid coyotes and call them ‘The Trickster.’ Shapeshifters curse people—suck the power and soul out of them, and the person sickens and dies.”

  “How long is too long?” I was worried about the few seconds I had looked into those glowing red eyes.

  “Longer than your couple of seconds,” he reassured me. “But you need some protection.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I tried to convince myself more than Louis. “Mac’s a great watchdog—he barks at anything that moves. I have the Smith & Wesson, too.”

  “Good dog. Great little firearm. You can take care of any human threat, but you can’t shoot to death a shapeshifter.”

  “What do you mean? Bullets won’t kill him?”

  “Yeah, we’re talking about a creature that walks through walls, turns himself into a cold mist, and travels supernaturally. Bullets don’t harm a shapeshifter. They must be shot with an arrow tipped in ashes.”

  “Well great, Louis.” I sighed. “That’s not likely to happen, but maybe a gunshot will scare him away.” I immediately regretted the comment. Louis was trying to help me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snarked at you. I’m scared.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders. “Me too. Can you hit a target?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Eric and I will go to the range and check you out. Little practice won’t hurt any of us. Now that Niyol has been murdered, I feel like I need to shoot a target or two.”

  I touched Louis’s hand. “I had a temporary flight of imagination out there on an isolated stretch of road. I may have even unconsciously known something about shapeshifters and my mind just created the vision. I can’t morph into a coyote.”

  “Yep, I don’t believe you can either. But you’re not a practicing Navajo witch whose patron saint is the coyote. You need to contact a Singer for a blessing.”

  “Enough,” I squeaked. I paced the small cubicle on Louis’s heels. “I need to do something constructive.” I stacked all the paper on my desk into parallel piles like the neat freak I was. “Let’s work on the story about the reopening of the old mine.”

  “I’m game.”

  “Opening an old uranium mine is a nice cover story. Looting graves and selling ancient pottery is a better story.”

  “Whoa . . . Okay.” He rubbed his chin. “Witches gather corpse dust to use in their charms. You’re interested in looted burial sites. Maybe that’s what drew the Ant iihnii to you.”

  “Are you going to get a blessing?” I asked him.

  “Gal, I’m not seeing them. You are.”

  “Okay. Got it. Consider it being worked on.” I flopped in my chair. “Why don’t we do some work, act normal, and put this aside for a while?”

  Louis walked over to me, leaned into my face, and said, “Sure, we can do that.” He lightly touched my back between the shoulders. “As long as you remember, Eric and I got your back.”

  “I feel better knowing you’re there.”

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” he said.

  “I want you to go with me to Dinetah Mining.” I pulled out my cell and called the Dinetah Mining and Engineering news and information number, a fancy name for their public-relations office whose job it was to keep their image of a dutiful, environmentally sensitive mining company spit polished. A cheerful receptionist answered and put me through to Charlie Ramos, head of PR.

  “Hello, Mr. Ramos. I’m Taylor McWhorter from KNAZ.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I’d like to talk with Mr. Chavez about reopening the mine.”

  “Of course. How about tomorrow around two? That will give me time to get one of our engineers lined up. After you speak with Mr. Chavez, our engineer can take you out where they are building a road,” he replied.

  “Perfect. I’ll be bringing a cameraman with me. Thanks for the opportunity.” Way too easy. Ramos had something he wanted to showcase with a little TV coverage.

  Louis and I left the station for the mining company on a bright spring morning that still had a bite of winter in the wind. “What exactly do you want me to get in the cover footage?” Louis shifted the camera bag on the floor of my Rav.

  “Footage in those finger canyons without being obvious about it. We’re shooting a straight interview with Chavez in the construction trailer and then the engineer is taking us on a tour of the grounds. That’ll be your opportunity.”

  “Are we looking for heavy equipment tracks in those canyons?”

  “Definitely.” I turned to him. “Or any signs of digging in the canyon walls. I looked at a topo map and the whole area where they’re building the road is riddled with finger canyons. Some of them go back for miles to dead ends. Others dump out into dry streambeds. Rain sluiced down those canyon walls for thousands of years, picking up all kinds of artifacts and reburying them.”

  I searched the small parking area for a spot of hard-packed sand, angling the wheels before I put the Rav in park. As soon as we stepped out of the car, loud Mexican music, not the popular Tejano genre, boomed around us. I grew up in New Mexico, but this music was different. More languid and soulful.

  The mine headquarters was a cluster of buildings, two large Quonset huts and a couple of metal buildings that might have held supplies. Dinetah’s construction trailer, set apart from the others, had a makeshift wooden sidewalk up to the door. The wind funneled sand under the trailer, throwing up piles of grit around the door. “What the hell is that awful smell?” Louis asked.

  “Some chemical stink. God only knows what it’s doing to our lungs.”

  Louis yanked the door open. “Get inside quick.”

  The receptionist looked up when we entered. “You must be the guys from KNAZ.” Her English bore a soft Spanish patois. “I watch you guys every night.” She thrust out her hand, a ring on each finger and her thumb.

  “We’re those guys. Thanks for watching.” I shook her jeweled hand. “Mr. Chavez is expecting us.”

  She scooted out from behind her battered metal desk. “Let me see if he’s ready for you.” She knocked softly before she opened a well-oiled metal door. “He’ll see you now,” she called from the doorway.

  I was surprised at Mr. Chavez’s office. The office was well appointed with a dark wood executive desk and credenza, nice side chairs, and a gorgeous old Persian carpet on the floor. He rose and I studied him as he crossed the room to us. Medium height, erect bearing, short, styled hair, and smooth manicured nails. His
face was a mask of supercilious authority.

  “Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you, Mr. Chavez. This is Louis Dubois, my field producer and cameraman. He’ll get your microphone set.”

  Mr. Chavez shook hands with Louis.

  “We’ll sit across the desk from each other. Light good for you, Louis?” I asked.

  He read his light meter. “Perfect. We won’t need any portable lights.”

  Louis adjusted Chavez’s chair and got him seated. He clipped the microphone on Mr. Chavez’s tie.

  “Are you a local from Arizona?” I asked to put him at ease.

  “No, I’m from Mexico City. Of course, I am a citizen of this country also. I studied mining at the Instituto Technologico in Mexico City.”

  “Ready when you are, Taylor,” Louis said.

  Chavez straightened in his chair. “And in three, two, one . . .” Louis counted us down. The red light blinked and Louis pointed at me.

  “Mr. Chavez, thank you for having us here at Dinetah Mining and Engineering.”

  He nodded his approval.

  “You reopened the mine recently. Dinetah Mining was founded by Naalish Tsosie. How long has uranium been mined here?”

  “Mr. Tsosie was mining here in the 1930s, but long before his operation, in the late-nineteenth century, they were mining ore here with picks and shovels. Burros hauled out the ore.”

  “Mr. Tsosie closed the mine because he thought it was played out. What prompted you to reopen it?”

  “Our experts told us that new ways of mining would make the business profitable. Oilmen extract oil and gas from old fields through fracking. Miners have developed new ways of separating the uranium from the rock. We remove vast amounts of rock from the mine and crush it.”

  “Crushing releases the uranium?”

  “No.” He sniffed. Educating me was a chore for him. “The crushed rock is dumped into large pits. We spray the crushed ore for ninety days with the leaching agent, loosening the uranium’s bond with the rock. We pump out the solution to our on-site plant for processing. It’s called leach-pit mining.”

  “What is the leaching agent?”

  “Sulfuric acid.”

  “Wells are the primary source of water for most of us on the Colorado Plateau. Is the groundwater safe?”

  “Of course,” he said irritably. “The pits are lined with six feet of heavy clay. Clay is impermeable to acid. We take every precaution.”

  “It’s not only the groundwater at risk, is it Mr. Chavez? There are millions of tons of radioactive tailings from the uranium mine, all leaking radon gas. The wind drifts the dust and gas over much of the reservation.”

  Chavez stiffened in his chair, clasped his hands together on the desk, leaned forward, and spoke into the camera lens. “Heap leaching produces a different kind of tailing from block or cave mining. The majority of the uranium is removed from the tailings by the acid. We take our commitment to the environment very seriously.”

  “But the mine tailings are radioactive. Do you monitor the release of pollutants from the tailings?”

  He sniffed again. “Of course. We are well within safe limits. We have never had a problem.”

  “We noticed armed guards at the gate as we came onto the property. Why do you need them?”

  “The mine is a soft target for terrorists. An explosive device in the mine would release high levels of pollutants into the jet stream. Again, every precaution has been taken. We are good neighbors to our Navajo friends.”

  He leaned back satisfied with his environmentally sensitive performance. “Now you may visit the mining site.”

  I thanked him for his time while Louis rolled a few frames of cover footage of the office.

  At the door of the trailer, Chavez introduced us to Jose Torres, his site engineer. Chavez nodded and left us in “Torres’s capable hands.” Torres motioned us to follow him. We slogged through the shifting sand, much of which was now inside my shoes, to a late-model four-wheel drive Jeep. Torres drove to a pit surrounded by chain-link fencing, where he parked and got out of the Jeep, jangling the car keys. Louis and I walked behind him to the fence. Yellow water lapped in the crevices between the crushed ore. Louis pulled his T-shirt over his nose. “The stink is god-awful.”

  My eyes watered and my nasal passages burned. I buried my nose in the crook of my arm. Louis adjusted his focus and slowly panned the pit.

  Torres held a handkerchief over his nose. “You get used to the smell,” he said cheerfully. Louis and I backed away from the fence. Torres coughed into his hand. “That’s the worst of it.”

  “How do they handle the wind drift when they spray the acid on the rock?”

  “The men wear protective gear, and no one else is allowed near the pits when they’re spraying.”

  “How far does the wind carry the acid spray?” The stench clung in my nose and lungs. My skin felt like I had mild sunburn.

  “Not far. It’s safe. The men’s barrack is upwind of the prevailing winds. And the acid-uranium mixture sinks to the bottom of the pit and is pumped out. Nothing leaches into the groundwater,” he reassured us.

  We followed Torres back to the Jeep. “We’ll ride out to the mine site where we’re building a new road.” Louis and I climbed in the back and I caught Louis’s eye.

  I tapped Torres on the shoulder. “What happens if something blunders into that acid pit?”

  “Be hard to have an accident like that.” He shook his head. “The fence is six feet tall and there’s a roll of concertina wire on top of that. On the days they truck in crushed ore or spray, a supervisor is called to unlock the gate and relock it as soon as the truck dumps its load or the sprayers are finished.”

  Torres parked the Jeep on the side of a graded roadbed. Louis shot a close up and then widened to cover the scene. Diesel smoke mixed with the stink of the acid pit. Men shouted over the rumble of engines and constant blare of the Mexican music. Most of them had a neckerchief pulled up over their nose and mouth. Ahead, a yellow Cat gouged a scar on the earth. Louis held the camera steady on the heavy machinery.

  “What is the music the men are listening to?” I asked.

  “Corridos.” Torres smiled. “The Mexican people have always sung ballads about their heroes.” He motioned me ahead on a sandy trail. Phrases of the song and the sad melody stuck in my head.

  “You turn up any artifacts when you dig out here?”

  Torres stared at me bright-eyed. “Nah, not much of that stuff around here.”

  “If you do turn something up, what would you do?”

  He shrugged. “Call the super, I guess. Above my pay grade.”

  Over Torres’s shoulder, I could see Louis using a long lens to photograph the depths of the finger canyon.

  We stood watching an earthmover add to the mound of dirt on the side of the road. “Where will this new road go?”

  “Back side of the mine. We need a road that can handle heavy truck traffic. Back in Tsosie’s day, trucks and dozers weren’t as heavy.”

  Louis caught my eye. I had stalled Torres long enough. “I think we’ve got plenty to work with Mr. Torres.” I extended my hand. “If you’ll just give us a lift back to our car.”

  “Sure thing.”

  When he parked by my vehicle, I asked, “What are the other buildings for?”

  He pointed to one of the Quonset huts. “That’s the workers’ dorm, and the metal buildings are a machine shop and storage for food and supplies for the miners.”

  “What’s the other Quonset hut for?”

  He gave me his easy smile. “Mechanics’ shop. We take the big graders and Cats in there to work on them out of the blowing sand.”

  Chapter 6

  Louis and I sat in a cramped video-edit bay and dumped the footage on the timeline. “Girl, why did you have such a hard-on for Chavez? Which story are you after? Is it going to be pot hunting or pollution or uranium mining?”

  “Why can’t it be all three?”

  He shrugged his
shoulder. “Can be what you want. You’re the reporter. How’d you know all that environmental stuff you sprang on Chavez?”

  I touched my cell. “Homework. There’s an expert in the environmental engineering department over at the university.”

  “Gal, my head is swimming—grave robbing, dirty mining, Niyol killed . . .”

  “Look, here’s what we have,” I said recapping my thoughts. “Three dead Navajos who were all associated with the mine, Niyol, his friend Sani Begay, and Naalish Tsosie, the former operator. Chavez benefited from each of their deaths, and now none of them can talk about looting Anasazi graves or being replaced with illegal workers.”

  “What makes you think those Hispanics are illegals?”

  “They have to know about the grave robbing and they wouldn’t all stay quiet if they weren’t illegals. All Chavez has to do is toss them out of the Quonset hut and they’ll get picked up by the border patrol. Those men get fed and housed and can send a little of their paycheck home to their families in Mexico. Sweet deal for them and they aren’t going to screw it up.”

  “Are you ratting Chavez out to the Border Patrol?”

  “Eventually, but not before I know about Niyol’s story of pot hunting and the financial documents.”

  “Right,” Louis said drily. “I forgot about the funky accounting probs. Thanks for giving me something else to think about.”

  “Chavez needs the workers to do his dirty work so he’s not sending them back to Mexico. We have time to follow a couple of angles so let’s start the video and see what we have.”

  We scrolled through the first segments of the interview and the walk around the pit. We were back where Dinetah was grading the roadbed adjacent to the little canyon. “Oh,” I gasped watching the tape. “Stop the video. Now back it up slowly. There. Enlarge that frame. See that?” I tapped the screen. “Back in that finger canyon is a hogan. Go to the next frame. Zoom in more. There’s a woman.”

  “She’s all hunched over, looks pretty old to be living out there by herself.” Louis squinted at the monitor.