Naked Edge, Page 3

  He'd hiked up the butte in search of the officer in charge of this clusterfuck to try to minimize the damage, only to see Sgt. Frank Daniels--one cop he'd never liked--dragging a woman out of the lodge by her hair. In a heartbeat he'd gone from irritated to fucking pissed off. And then he'd recognized her.

  Katherine had fallen to her hands and knees, her long hair wet and hanging to the muddy ground, tears on her pretty face, the shock and fear in her eyes making him want to punch Daniels in the face, to kick his balls into his throat, to drag him around by the short hairs and see how he liked it.

  He turned on Daniels. "Do you want to tell me what in the hell you were doing?"

  The son of a bitch shrugged, as if he had no idea why Gabe was angry with him. "We got an anonymous complaint that someone had seen flames up here and--"

  "I know that!" Gabe glanced toward the blanket, making sure no gung-ho cop was about to intrude on the women as they changed into dry clothes. "What I want to know is why having a campfire without a permit merits the use of physical force. These aren't drug dealers, Daniels. They're unarmed, terrified women."

  "I'm under orders to vacate that little hut--whatever they call it." Daniels jerked a gloved thumb in the direction of the dome-shaped sweat lodge. "If they resist, we have to take it to another level."

  "It didn't seem to me that anyone was resisting, least of all the woman whose head you nearly yanked off." Gabe bent nearer, no longer masking his anger, his face inches from Daniels's. "This land is under Mountain Parks's jurisdiction. Knock off the Rambo act, got it? Now who the fuck is responsible for this mess?"

  GABE PUT IN a call to his supervisor, Chief Ranger Webb, then spent the next ten minutes trying to undo as much of the damage as he could, assuring Police Chief Barker that Indian people had always used Mesa Butte for ceremonies with the knowledge of Mountain Parks. No, Mountain Parks had never required the medicine men who ran the sweat lodges to pay for a permit because sweat lodges constituted a traditional use of the land and were religious in nature. Yes, they occasionally got phone calls from concerned citizens who saw the fires and didn't know what was going on, but no one had ever filed a formal complaint. No, there had never been any problem with litter or property damage because the participants had always been careful to clean up after themselves.

  Then Chief Barker fell back on city land-use codes, reading from his notebook. "It says here, plain as day, 'No open fires on city open space without a permit.' Do you boys over at Mountain Parks enforce the law or--"

  But Gabe didn't hear another word. "Excuse me."

  Katherine stepped out from behind the blanket, now bundled in a heavy fleece-lined denim jacket, hiking boots, and jeans, her towel rolled up and tucked beneath her arm, her wet hair hanging down her back. She walked with the other women toward several parked vehicles at the top of the access road, then split off on her own, heading toward a big, black Dodge Ram pickup.

  He came up behind her. "Katherine."

  She ignored him, unlocked the door to her truck.

  "Katherine, I'm sorry. This wasn't supposed to happen."

  She looked over her shoulder at him and jerked her door open. "No, it wasn't."

  "Someone must have called in a complaint. For some reason, dispatch routed it to the police instead of to Mountain Parks. If the call had come to us, it never would have come to this. The land is under Mountain Parks's jurisdiction, so I expect there will be some shouting on Monday morning. We'll get it sorted out."

  She tossed her towel across the seat, then turned to face him, a streak of mud on her cheek making his fingers itch to brush it away. "While you're sorting it out, think about this: tonight was a special women's lodge, called so that we could pray with a friend of ours who's sick with ovarian cancer. The police brought men with guns and dogs to stop our prayers. How would you feel if you were in church praying for a sick friend and got dragged out by your hair?"

  "I'd be angry as hell." He didn't say that he hadn't set foot in a church since grade school. "I'm sorry. I really am. But I'm not your enemy."

  "Then why are you here?" She crossed her arms over her chest.

  "It's my night on call"--lucky me--"and I was paged. I had no idea what was happening until I got here. By then it was already too late to do anything beyond damage control. I'm trying to find out how this happened, and I promise I'll do everything I can to keep it from happening again."

  She seemed to consider this, some of the anger leaving her face. "Thanks for getting that cop to back off."

  "I'm sorry he hurt you. I'm going to report it, and you should, too."

  "I will." She started to turn away, then seemed to hesitate. "And thanks again for saving my life."

  Around them, the other cars were backing up, turning, driving away, their tires crunching on the snowy gravel road.

  "Hey, I told you. You saved your own life." Then he remembered. "I have something that belongs to you."

  He felt in his pocket for the earring, held it out for her.

  For a moment she stared at it as if she didn't know what it was. Then her eyes went wide, and she took it from him. "Thank you."

  "Have dinner with me."

  What the hell? Have you lost your fucking mind, Rossiter?

  Apparently, he had. Not only had he asked her out--when was the last time he'd asked a woman to have dinner with him?--but he also seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for her answer as if it mattered.

  "I'm sorry. I ... I couldn't." She looked toward the line of red taillights heading down the road. "I need to go. We're meeting at Grandpa Red Crow's house to finish our prayers and talk about this."

  "Then how about lunch, something really informal?"

  She climbed into her truck, slid behind the wheel, the vehicle seeming almost too big for her. And for a moment she said nothing, obviously thinking it over--not the reaction Gabe was used to getting from women.

  Watch the ego, dumbass.

  She turned to look at him at last. "Okay, but only if you agree to share everything you find out about why this happened."

  Having conditions placed on an informal lunch date felt like more of a smack in the face than an outright rejection. But that didn't stop him from agreeing to it. "All right. It's a deal. How about the South Side Cafe at noon on Monday."

  "Noon on Monday." She closed the door, and the truck's engine roared to life.

  As Gabe watched her drive away, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him.

  CHAPTER 2

  KAT SPENT MOST of Sunday at Grandpa Red Crow's house, helping the other women in the kitchen while men held a talking circle and discussed how to respond to this violation of the people's rights and how to make sure it never happened again. Pauline kept teasing her about the ranger--Ranger Easy-on-the-Eyes, she called him--making the other women curious until Kat was cornered into telling about the two times he'd helped her, first saving her life after the rockslide and then stopping the other officer from hurting her at the desecrated inipi.

  "And she's going out to lunch with him tomorrow," Pauline added.

  "Yaadila!" Good grief! Kat tried not to grow annoyed, keeping her voice even, her hands busy drying dishes. "I'm not going out with him. It's a business lunch. I asked him to find out whatever he could about what went wrong Saturday night. He said the complaint should have been sent to Mountain Parks. I want to know why it wasn't."

  The ranger's dinner invitation had taken her by surprise. A part of her--the same part of her that had spent the past three months thinking about him, remembering how it had felt when he'd comforted her and held her hand--had wanted to accept his invitation just to get to know him better. But she didn't date casually.

  It wasn't that she felt no need for a man or a sex life. She was as red-blooded as the next woman. But she believed what Grandma Alice had taught her--that the joining of male and female was sacred and meant to be treated as such. Besides, she'd seen what happened when a woman trusted the wrong man. She didn't want to make the
same mistake as her mother, who'd betrayed her husband only to be betrayed herself in the end. Nor did she want to end up like so many other young Dine women, abandoned to raise a child alone on commodities and welfare.

  Long ago, she'd promised herself she wouldn't sleep with a man until she met her true half-side--her perfect, matching male half. She would wait for the one man who was meant for her, the man who was worth it, the man she loved so much that going without him felt unthinkable. And if at age twenty-six she'd begun to fear she would dry up and blow away before she met that man?

  No one had ever said that walking a good path was easy.

  She and the other young women had just finished washing the supper dishes when Glenna came and took her by the arm.

  "The old man wants you," she said, a slight smile on her lips.

  Damp dish towel in hand, Kat followed Glenna, surprised to find the living room silent, all eyes turned her way. She stood there, waiting for Grandpa Red Crow to speak and wondering if she should make more coffee.

  He stood, his face grave, one hand raised. "Not all of you know Katherine James, so I will tell you about her."

  Speaking slowly in heavily accented English, he told them how she'd come to Denver from Navajoland to work at the paper and had met him at the Denver March Powwow, where she'd gone in search of decent frybread. This, of course, made everyone laugh. When it grew quiet again, he told them how he'd invited her to an inipi and how she'd soon become a regular at the Saturday night sweats on Mesa Butte. Then he told them how she'd tried to protect the other women when the inipi had been disrupted, taking the wasicu policeman's violence onto herself.

  "I call her Kimimila--Butterfly," he said, "but that was the act of a warrior."

  "Aho!" the men called in near unison, voicing their agreement.

  "Now, the people need her to fight for them again--but in a different way."

  Amazed to find herself singled out for such recognition, she saw Grandpa Red Crow pull something out of his pocket.

  A pouch of tobacco.

  Stunned, all she could do was stare.

  He took her hand, pressed the tobacco into her palm, his dark eyes--eyes that had seen so much--looking into hers.

  "We need your help to get to the bottom of things, to find out why the inipi was stopped last night. We need the world to know what happened so that good-hearted people of all nations can help us to protect our ceremonies and ways of life. The people need you to be a journalist for them."

  Kat closed her fingers around the tobacco, touched beyond words that the elders should ask for her help in such a respectful way. But there was no question as to whether she would do as they'd asked. That's why she'd become a journalist in the first place--to protect Native people and the Earth.

  Grandpa Red Crow knew that, of course. He seemed to know more about Kat than she knew about herself, having taken her under his wing when she'd first moved to Denver. A Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man whose ancestors had walked with the great leader Tatanka lyotake--Sitting Bull--he'd accepted her without question, introducing her to Lakota ceremonies, helping her to adjust to her new home, becoming the father she'd never had. To know that he had faith in her abilities, to see the trust on his face ...

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I'm humbled by your words and grateful to have the chance to help in a meaningful way."

  He didn't smile--the moment was too serious for that--but she could see the gleam of approval in his eyes.

  KAT ARRIVED AT the office early on Monday morning, a plan of action outlined in her mind, her determination to expose this injustice strengthened by the trust Grandpa Red Crow and the other elders had placed in her, their prayers for her echoing in her mind. She doubted most people in Denver would understand what it meant to have an inipi interrupted, but explaining it to them would be her job.

  Of course, there was the possibility that Tom would refuse to let her set aside her investigation of the county's proposed solar-energy program to cover it. Tom Trent was the best editor she'd ever worked for, which helped make up for his terrible temper. But he was also meticulous in matters of journalistic ethics. Would he view Kat's presence at the inipi as a conflict of interests and give the story to someone else? Would he understand that she, as an Indian woman, could bring knowledge to her coverage of the story that no one else on the I-Team could?

  She settled in at her desk, then called the Boulder Police Department and asked for a copy of the police report from the raid. When that was done, she typed out an open-records request demanding the police dispatch logs from Saturday night, as well as all documents and e-mails in the city's files pertaining to Mesa Butte. Though that was probably casting her net a bit wide, it didn't hurt to be thorough.

  Focused on her work, she barely noticed her fellow I-Team members drift in or heard the greetings they called out to her. She had just faxed off the request to the police department and Mountain Parks when she realized that it was already time for the daily I-Team meeting.

  "Coming, Kat?" Sophie Alton-Hunter, the I-Team's prison reporter, waited for her, notepad and pen in one hand, water bottle in the other.

  One of the most courageous women Kat had ever met, Sophie had nearly been killed two years ago while trying to bring justice to abused female inmates. Now she was married to her high school sweetheart and mother to an adorable one-year-old boy. Three months along with her second baby, she seemed to glow with such happiness that Kat was surprised no one else had figured out she was pregnant yet.

  Kat grabbed her notepad and hurried over to Sophie, the two of them lagging behind the rest of the I-Team. "How are you feeling?"

  "Better, thanks." Sophie gave her an easy smile. "The morning sickness is fading, and I'm less tired than I was. Hunt has been keeping an eye on Chase so I can take lots of naps on the weekends. He's so excited about this baby. He missed out on this part of the pregnancy last time because he was still behind bars."

  Kat remembered those days, remembered how rough it had been for Sophie not knowing whether the man she loved would be a part of her and her baby's life or whether he'd spend the rest of his life in prison. "When are you going to tell Tom?"

  Tom seemed to disapprove of pregnancy, begrudging his female employees their eight weeks of maternity leave, as if a woman's bringing a new life into the world were more of an inconvenience than a cause for celebration.

  Sophie gave a sigh. "I haven't decided yet."

  In the conference room, they found Tom poring over the newspaper, one pencil tucked behind his ear, another in his hand. Built like a bull, he could be just as stubborn and intimidating. And yet, despite his temper, Kat had come to respect him as a journalist. In his own way, he was a warrior, using ink and paper to fight on behalf of those who had no voice.

  He looked up, pushing a shock of curly gray hair out of his eyes with a beefy hand, his gaze coming to rest on Sophie.

  "Alton, since you were the last through the door, you can be first in the hot seat. What've you got?"

  Sophie tucked a strand of strawberry-blond hair behind her ear and glanced down at her notes. "A prison-reform group released a study showing that most Coloradans oppose incarcerating people for nonviolent drug crimes like possession. I can look at our prison population, figure out how many beds it would free up and how much money the state would save if we put nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of behind bars. I'm guessing a solid ten inches."

  Syd Wilson, the managing editor, tapped the numbers into her calculator, doing the magical math that made the news fit, her short salt-and-pepper hair streaked with bright purple this morning. "Photos?"

  Sophie shook her head. "We might be able to work up a graph. I'll see what kind of data I can find."

  Tom turned to Natalie. "Benoit?"

  Natalie Benoit had come to Colorado from New Orleans after losing everything but her life in Hurricane Katrina. Her eyewitness coverage of the tragedy at a New Orleans hospital had made her a Pulitzer finalist, and Tom had
hired her on the spot. With long dark hair, big aqua eyes, and a charming New Orleans accent, she was pretty in a way that drew people to her. Yet she didn't seem to date and rarely socialized with the rest of the reporters. Some people thought she was stuck up, but Kat knew that wasn't true. There was something tragic about Natalie, a grief that she kept hidden. Kat didn't know what it was, and it wasn't her place to pry. But she sensed it all the same.

  Natalie flipped through her notes. "A rookie cop got shot early this morning responding to a domestic-violence call. He has a wife and a new baby. Right now he's still critical. I thought I'd look into it, talk to his family, get the latest stats on domestic violence. Probably a good fifteen to twenty inches."

  Tom turned to his left. "Ramirez, isn't that what you shot this morning?"

  Joaquin Ramirez, the photographer assigned to the I-Team, nodded. Usually the most cheerful person in the room, his face was lined by fatigue, his dark eyes full of shadows. "It was down the street from my house. I got pretty much the entire thing. The bastard shot him from the upstairs window when the officer was walking up to the door. Didn't even warn him."

  "The shooter turned the gun on his wife and then himself a short time later," Natalie said. "He died. His wife is going to make it--thank God."

  Syd punched in the numbers. "Front page?"

  Tom nodded. "Let's start it below the fold and jump to a photo spread on page three. Nothing too graphic. People need to be able to read the paper while they eat their cornflakes. Harker, what's going on downtown?"

  Matt Harker, the city reporter, sat up straighter and smoothed his wrinkled tie--the same wrinkled tie he'd worn every day since Kat had come to work at the paper. With freckles on his face and reddish hair, he had a boyish look that seemed to contradict his abilities as a serious reporter. "I got a tip over the weekend that the city's finance director has been embezzling the employee pension fund."