a furrow just beneath the skin from forehead to crown. Another had taken two rounds to the abdomen and was bleeding like mad. He was told to put pressure on the wound and got a red tag. Another had a through-and- through that had been hit in his popliteal artery. He got a wide-cuffed tourniquet and a yellow tag.
The eleven victims were all Native Americans, most in their twenties or early thirties, Nick judged, although a couple were significantly older. They wore jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers or cowboy boots. For the most part, they wore their hair long and loose. From the glimpses Nick had of the house's interior, it was a combination home and studio – he saw a lot of lighting equipment, a good-quality video camera on a tripod, and gear boxes in what would ordinarily be a living room with bare floors and plain white walls.
'What happened here?' Brass asked as he wrapped his own belt around a man's leg as a tourniquet.
The guy with the bloody rag was the most coherent one. He dropped down into a wicker chair, its cushion already sopping with blood, not that he seemed to care at that point. 'We were just sitting out here, you know, slinging the shit. These dudes pull up in a truck, slow down, and then all of a sudden they got guns out and they're blasting away at us. Couple of us were strapped, we shot back, and they rolled out.'
'Can you identify them?' Brass asked.
'Never saw them before.'
'What about anybody else?' Brass asked loudly. Nick recognized the commanding tone Brass could take when he wanted cooperation, and in a hurry. 'Anyone able to ID the shooters?'
No one answered in the affirmative. Nick didn't believe that no one had recognized the shooters, but, as in the city, there were occasions where no one wanted to identify their assailants, preferring to mete out their own brand of justice.
'Hey,' Aguirre said, 'where's Meoqui?'
'Over there,' someone replied, pointing to an unconscious man, crumpled on the floor, whom Nick had bandaged as best he could and tagged with red. He had been hit in the left thigh by a large-caliber round that had exploded a big chunk of his upper leg. Apparently spinning around from that wound, he took a second shot through the right trapezius, back to front, and then fell and hit the back of his head on the windowsill. He'd been bleeding badly when Nick found him. There was still hair and tissue on the corner of the sill, which Nick had observed with professional detachment. That was the sort of thing he would ordinarily be looking for, except in this case, he was more concerned with patching and tagging.
Aguirre went down on one knee at the activist's side. 'Meoqui, you okay?' he asked. The concern in his voice sounded authentic. Nick supposed the cop had been telling the truth. He ran short of patience with Torres but liked him in spite of that.
Torres didn't answer. Nick didn't expect him to. Best case, Torres had a concussion. Nick hoped the young man hadn't suffered any permanent brain damage, but that crack in the head was a bad one. And he'd lost plenty of blood from those bullet wounds, as well as from the scalp laceration.
His gaze ran down Torres's body. The man was short and lean, with long legs and a swimmer's build, powerful shoulders and arms revealed by his red muscle shirt. His Nikes were on the small side. Nick would have to measure to be sure, but he believed they were eight-and-a-halfs. The marks behind Domingo's house hadn't been clear enough to lift treads from, but those shoes could have made them.
Sirens wailed down the street, vehicles skidded in the din, and suddenly, the little yard and porch were overrun with cops. Nick, Brass, and Aguirre gave up what they were doing and huddled in the yard. 'No EMS yet?' Brass asked.
'The closest real hospital is in the city,' Aguirre said. 'We've got some medical clinics and a couple of traditional healers. Nothing like a trauma center, though. Best thing for these guys will be to get them into town, but somehow the ambulances never seem to hurry real fast to get here.'
'That's just wrong,' Nick said.
'You don't have to tell me.'
'Who was the target here?' Brass asked. 'Torres?'
'Maybe,' Aguirre replied. 'Like I told you, he pisses a lot of people off. He makes these movies, documentaries. Last one was kind of a hit on the film-festival circuit, I guess. Even played on cable TV. It was about one of our tribal elders, a man who's had a lot of success steering reservation kids away from joining gangs by getting them interested in traditional Indian skills and practices. He teaches them the old ceremonies, you know, some of the old ways, and then they don't want to take drugs and get into trouble, because they have a connection to the land and their ancestors.'
'Sounds like a great guy,' Nick said.
'Yeah, he is. A real treasure. Meoqui got a lot of attention and some money because of the movie's success, and I think maybe it went to his head. The film he's working on now is about institutionalized poverty on Indian reservations. He's been traveling around, shooting on different reservations, but also shooting a lot of it here. From the stories I've heard, it's very critical of some of Chairman Domingo's policies and decisions. In return, Domingo threatened to revoke Meoqui's permission to film on the rez.'
'Which could be motive for murder,' Brass said. 'If the revocation is still a threat and hasn't taken effect yet -'
'I don't think Meoqui's a killer.'
'You didn't think Calvin Tom was, either. I don't know if you have a lot of killers on this reservation, but you've got at least one whose handiwork I can see from here.'
'True. Anyway, yeah, you're right. I'm sure Meoqui was pretty upset with Chairman Domingo.'
'And if other people know how angry he was, they might reach the same conclusion you did, Jim,' Nick said. 'Somebody thinks Torres killed Domingo, so they came here and shot up Torres in revenge.'
'That's what I was getting at,' Aguirre said. 'That's what this feels like to me. A gang-style drive-by but not a random one. These guys meant to take Meoqui out.'
'While I was at Domingo's house last night, these two guys came by in a dark pickup truck,' Nick said. 'Black, navy blue. I reported the tag, or as much of it as I was able to catch.'
'We got the report,' Aguirre confirmed. 'We weren't able to get anything nailed down, though.'
'They could have been gang types.' Nick described the two young men, the smaller one with long hair and his big tattooed friend who would have stood out in any crowd.
Aguirre squinted into the sky. 'The smaller one could be a guy named Ruben Solis. He's kind of a punk. One of Chairman Domingo's thugs, really, the kind of guy who'll do whatever he's told without thinking too hard about the morality of it. He hangs with a big guy named Shep Moran, who's done hard time over in Jean. Shep's got tats all up his arms, across his neck and chest. And Ruben drives a dark truck.'
'Would they do something like this?'
'I hate to think anybody would,' Aguirre answered. 'But I wouldn't put it past them. Solis especially. Shep's the one who's done prison time, but Solis is a mean one, with a nasty temper. Definitely the ringleader of that pair. Thing is, if word gets out that he shot Meoqui – or even a rumor that he might have – then they're in trouble, too. Meoqui has a lot of friends on the rez, and some of them are just as ruthless as Solis is.'
'So, what, you think we're going to see a domino effect of revenge shootings?' Brass asked. 'Sure glad I came out here today. I could be home sleeping or pulling weeds.'
'Hey!' Aguirre called abruptly. Nick followed his gaze. Three of the less badly wounded men were carrying Meoqui Torres to a bright red pickup truck. 'Where are you taking him?'
'Tired of waiting for the ambulance,' one guy said. 'We're going to get him to a clinic.'
Aguirre beckoned one of the tribal police officers over, a young guy who was standing around watching other people work but not doing anything particularly useful. 'Follow them over there, Wilbur,' he said. 'Park outside the clinic, make sure there's no trouble.'
'Will do,' Wilbur said. He hurried to his car, an old Ford station wagon with a faded tribal police logo on the door, and got in. When the pickup truck pulled away with Torres and one other man in the back, Wilbur followed right on their tail.
Aguirre called another cop, a woman with a broad, flat face and a solid build. 'Canvass the neighbors, Juanita,' he said. 'See if anybody saw anything.' Nick couldn't see any neighbors from here, but the street curved around some low hills, and there might have been houses out of sight but within earshot. 'And don't let 'em tell you they didn't hear it. This many rounds, anybody within a mile or two would have heard.'
