Zeb Hanks Mystery Box Set 1 Read online

  ZEB HANKS MYSTERY SERIES BOX SET

  BOOKS 1-3

  Mark Reps

  Also By Mark Reps

  ZEB HANKS MYSTERY SERIES

  NATIVE BLOOD

  HOLES IN THE SKY

  ADIÓS ÁNGEL

  NATIVE JUSTICE

  NATIVE BONES

  NATIVE WARRIOR

  NATIVE EARTH

  NATIVE DESTINY

  NATIVE TROUBLE

  NATIVE ROOTS (PREQUEL NOVELLA)

  THE ZEB HANKS MYSTERY SERIES 1-3

  AUDIOBOOK

  NATIVE BLOOD

  HOLES IN THE SKY

  ADIÓS ÁNGEL

  OTHER BOOKS

  BUTTERFLY (WITH PUI CHOMNAK)

  HEARTLAND HEROES

  NATIVE BLOOD

  BOOK 1 ZEB HANKS MYSTERY SERIES

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities between the good people of southeastern Arizona and tribal members of the San Carlos Indian Reservation are purely coincidental.

  NATIVE BLOOD

  Text Copyright © 2012 Mark Reps

  All Rights Reserved

  Acknowledgments

  A writer is much like a sheriff. His work defines him and the buck stops with him. However, it is the people who support him that really determine the final outcome.

  Over the last 30 years I have continually visited Graham County and the San Carlos Reservation. With each passing year, I find the people to be more and more welcoming as I learn more about the area, hear more local stories and interact with those who have lived in the area their entire lives. I would like to heartily thank the people of Graham County and the San Carlos Reservation.

  I must acknowledge my wife, Kathy, who is indefatigable in putting up with me when I get lost in the process of writing. She also lets me know when my writing is getting off the rails and edits with minimal complaining.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  1

  The driver tapped a solitary fingertip against the face of his watch. His heart drummed a taut, slightly anxious beat against his sternum. Thirteen minutes of deafening silence was beginning to erode his confidence. Reaching across the car seat, he placed his hand on his Coleman cooler. Self-assurance returned. Clarity of thought returned. Calm logic followed. He breathed easily.

  Stopping the car in the middle of the dirt road, he methodically shifted the T-bar into park. He yanked the keys from the ignition, grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and stepped out into the open night air. The blackness surrounding him further eased the pressure in his head.

  A rattlesnake, sliding through the edges of the hardened road rut, stopped to hiss at him. Using the heel of his boot, he thrust an uncoordinated kick at its head. It slithered off into the underbrush, rattling its tail. He hurled a ball of spit in its direction as he stared at the rear of the car.

  “Goddamn bitch kicked out a tail light.”

  In the darkness, he fumbled with the key until the trunk popped open. He clicked the flashlight on. He held it above his head. The bright rays shined on the young girl’s face. She didn’t move. His eyes jumped to her all too flaccid features. Her lids rested smoothly over her eyes. There was no sign of life. He placed his fingers on the side of her neck to check for a pulse. The trunk smelled of dust, sweat and oil. She was warm. He growled under his breath.

  “Goddamn it.”

  He pulled the duct tape from her mouth to give her room to breathe. He jammed his finger into her mouth, checking to see if he bound her so tightly that she might have swallowed her tongue. She hadn’t. Momentary relief. If she was dead, his years of planning were for nothing. Softly caressing her cheek with the back of his hand, he pleaded with her.

  “Come on, baby. Give me a sign. Show me what you’re made of.”

  She didn’t budge. Not the merest hint of life was present. He pressed his thumb over her eyelid. Softly at first, then with heavy pressure. She emitted a muffled cry of exquisite agony.

  “Stupid bitch! Playing possum on me. That’s disrespectin’ me. Huge mistake.”

  He slid his hand around her throat and pressed down hard enough to make her gag. She choked out a gurgled plea for him to stop.

  “I could snap your neck in two seconds flat, you dirty little scumbag. You are lucky, damn lucky that I am a patient man.”

  He slammed the trunk down hard and kicked the rear bumper, twice.

  “I oughta kill you for wreckin’ the tail light. This Mustang is a collector’s item,” he shouted.

  Her fruitless struggling began anew as he got back behind the wheel, continuing to his final destination. The vanity of her hopeless efforts sent an orgasmic tingling through his body. His head felt electric. He began to hum a favorite tune, one his father sang to him when he was falling asleep as a child. He ran his tongue over the inside of his lips. The sensual feeling excited him. The soft hum from the back of his throat became a sweet serenade as he neared his destination.

  “Hush little baby, don’t you cry. Papa’s gonna sing you a lullaby.”

  When he turned off the car, the movement in the trunk ceased. He sneered, banged a fist on the dashboard and shouted.

  “We’re here. I know you’re still in there. It’s not nice to play dead.”

  Grabbing a knapsack from the back seat, he flipped on the overhead light. He quickly inventoried what he had packed. Candles, matches, razor knife, abalone shell, latex gloves, surgical scissors, sewing kit, ceremonial dress—all present and accounted for. He placed the sack next to a cooler of dry ice. Lingering momentarily, he caressed the lid with his fingertips.

  Outside the car, he paused to gaze heavenward. In the million stars shining in the sky, he saw the divine face of his father smiling down on him. The desert winds carried a whispering voice that coaxed, “take her, take her, she’s yours.”

  He pulled his quarry from the trunk. He made certain not to hit her head on the hard metal, not for her sake but for the sake of his collector’s item, the Mustang. A lone coyote in the distance howled mournfully as he carried her to the natural rock outcropping he had preordained as an altar.

  “Lie still and you’ll be fine,” he said. “Your job is so easy. Mine is difficult. Just follow my orders.”

  As he slowly removed her dress, a silent stream of tears came rushing from the corners of her eyes, creating a watery trail over her flushed cheeks. The fluttering wings of a nighthawk as it swooped upon its hapless prey echoed in the small canyon behind him.

  Taking a clean, white handkerchief from a pocket, he softly brushed away the wetness from her face. She jerked her head away from his touch and fought to utter something through the sticky tape. He placed a finger gently on the tape over her lips, shushing her. His voice became that of a balladeer as he sang softly, sweetly.

  “Hush little darlin’ don’t say a word. Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”

  She watched through terrified eyes as the surgical gloves slipped easily over his slender fingers. Her tears froze as his pure white hands reached into the knapsack. The young girl panicked
and began to struggle violently as he held a knife above her head. On this moonless night, its razor-sharp blade reflected a thousand stars. The starlight danced chaotically on the finely honed metal. Her eyes begged for mercy. No such emotion existed in the killer’s heart.

  Freeing herself just enough to land a hard kick of her knees to his groin, the young woman’s hope rose, if only momentarily, as she watched the pain on her captor’s face. The knife slipped from his taught grip and drifted through the air in slow motion. She dug deep to find enough strength to torque her neck. She felt the falling tip of the blade as it grazed against her throat before piercing the ground. He pressed the force of his body weight against her. With hot, angry breath he whispered in her ear.

  “Don’t move, bitch. And that’s the last time I’m going to tell you.”

  Her muscles remained tense but she obeyed. She didn’t cry, didn’t even flinch until he pressed the tip of the blade against her soft belly. Suddenly and ferociously, her survival instinct demanded action. She battled with what little remaining strength her body could muster. But the challenge against his superior strength as he pinned her against the rocks and dirt was utterly pointless.

  “I said don’t fight.”

  A nighthawk flying overhead screeched out a wailing cry. Its prey yielded, uttering a dying plea.

  He placed one hand beneath her head and brought her forehead to his lips. The night became silent. As he kissed her, he drew the scalpel’s honed edge through her skin. The resistance was no more than the surface of a ripe peach offers to a sharp knife.

  “Now you get what’s coming,” he said.

  She heaved up violently as he began the process of cutting her heart from her chest. She gasped wordlessly beneath the gag. Her spine buckled with a jerk as blood drooled from her mouth beneath the duct tape. Her eyes rolled up, disappearing into her skull. Her shaking body’s final upsurge shook all remaining life from her being. All movement ceased. Her final exhalation drifted away on the desert wind.

  The killer smiled serenely as he went to work. He placed the heart in the Coleman cooler next to the dry ice. The etched abalone shell was positioned where her heart had been. He proceeded to use the sewing kit to close the wounds he had inflicted with the surgical knife. Smiling, he placed her in the ceremonial dress. It was all so easy, so right, so erotic. Carefully, he placed the candles around her at the four directions. The perfect touch, he thought. Removing the latex gloves, he placed them in his bag. He lit the candles. In the still of the night, they barely fluttered. Finally, he looked around making certain he left nothing other than what he intended. Once again, he began his fateful hymn.

  “And if that mocking bird don’t sing, Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.”

  He smiled, rejoicing in the execution of his plan.

  2

  Zeb Hanks, Graham County Sheriff, detested sitting behind a desk. When he returned to Safford after a stint as a Tucson policeman, he never imagined being overwhelmed with the same level of paperwork that drove him from the big city bureaucracy. Each new governmental form, each new rule and regulation, seemed to carry him further and further away from the job he signed up for, to serve and protect the citizens of Graham County.

  At six feet three inches and two hundred thirty pounds, he was too large for the government-issued chair. His legs cramped so tightly beneath the old wooden desk that a frequent passing thought had him imagining how tight a coffin must feel.

  Gripping a number two pencil between his slab thick fingers, he monotonously tapped a cadence with the rubber eraser against his daily calendar and stared out the window. Outside a pair of red tail hawks glided atop the mid-morning thermals. Odd, he thought, flying so closely together this early in the day and away from mating season. As a child, he had learned from the old Apaches who gathered in the town park that such anomalies were omens, harbingers of bad luck. His dad had sneered at the idea. Such talk was hogwash from the preachy mouths of half-witted drunks.

  The hawks quickly vanished from sight. Zeb’s eyes turned to a pile of paperwork resting atop his calendar. Running an idle finger across the four corners that boxed in the day’s date, October 18, Zeb silently repeated the date in his mind. October eighteenth, it meant something. But what was so important about October eighteenth? More importantly, why couldn’t he remember? Zeb chastised himself for his failing memory.

  “Helen,” he shouted. “Could you step in here for a minute? I’ve got a question.”

  Helen Nazelrod abruptly stopped her typing, pushed herself away from her secretarial desk, snorted not too discreetly through her nose and marched into the sheriff’s office. This type of interruption, part of the normal ebb and flow of working for Zeb, made her miss her former boss, Sheriff Jake Dablo. At least Jake Dablo had the courtesy not to shout. The new sheriff seemed to have left his manners in the big city.

  “Something about October eighteenth is stuck in my craw, and I can’t jar it loose. I can’t remember for the life of me what it is about today that’s so important. Got any ideas?”

  The sinewy Helen, hair wrapped tightly in a bun, was significantly more than a secretary to the sheriff’s department. A faithful county employee for over thirty years, the sixty-year-old Helen knew the system, how it worked, where the skeletons were buried and who shoveled the dirt. But her job description didn’t include being Zeb’s memory. Whereas some people forget things over time, Helen’s recall only became more acutely tuned. She publicly credited a preserved mind and a healthy body to the lifestyle coincident with being a strict Mormon. No alcohol or tobacco had ever passed her lips and none ever would. She believed a healthy diet of fresh fruits and vegetables combined with community service and daily prayer could do the same for anyone’s memory.

  Zeb, who mostly dined on burgers, bacon, eggs and chili, was irregular at Sunday service and prayed only when prompted. He was less grateful for Helen’s devotion to her faith than to her unflagging memory.

  “The 18th of October 1992. Seven years ago today Sheriff Dablo’s granddaughter, Angel, was murdered.”

  The tone was that of a scolding school marm. She may as well have added, “How could you have forgotten?” Her sullen facial expression and the objection from her steely gray eyes said it for her. Sheriff Hanks inspected the tips of his boots like a chastened child. How could he have forgotten this date? It was the day Safford had lost its innocence, a day that produced the darkest blemish ever on the collective soul of Graham County.

  The years on the street beat in Tucson had taught Zeb to bury the personal side of murder. Solved or unsolved, murder cases all had the same finality, pieces of paper jammed into a cold, metal cabinet. But Angel’s murder was different. Angel was the grandchild of Jake Dablo, the man who was his hero as well as his mentor.

  Helen stood stiffly in front of the sheriff’s oak desk, steno pad in hand, awaiting his return gaze. It was slow in coming.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  Her voice dripped with disdain. As he looked up, Sheriff Hanks’ face carried the look of a whipped puppy.

  “I’m sorry.”

  His hushed voice was barely audible.

  “Sorry?” she whispered inquiringly. “Sorry?”

  “I’m sorry I forgot the importance of October eighteenth. For Sheriff Dablo’s and his family’s sake none of the citizens of Graham County should ever forget this date.”

  Sheepishly rolling the pencil between his thumb and finger, he let it dribble over the date.

  “I’m sorry too,” replied Helen. “I’m sorry any of us have to remember. I’m sorry that none of us ever forgets. And it grieves me to no end that the devil didn’t bypass Graham County that night seven years ago.”

  Helen exited the office, leaving the door slightly ajar, true to her habit. A moment later a gust of warm wind slammed it shut. The sheriff leaned back in his chair. Placing his hands on top of a thick, black head of hair,
he brought the heels of his well-worn but freshly polished boots to his desktop. The horrible events attached to the date of October eighteenth came crashing through his memory bank with the reckless abandon of water cascading through a flooded canyon on the heels of a spring thaw. Remembering heinous deeds was more than he wanted to deal with today, or any day for that matter. But the runaway train of recollection had been set in unstoppable motion as detail after detail returned, carrying with them long repressed images. Closing his eyes only brought greater clarity to the curse of memory.

  He grabbed his old cowboy hat and pressed it against his chest. His memory brought back the child’s face, the innocent countenance of a dead little girl. It was seared into his memory. Etched in his mind alongside the dead girl’s image was that of her grandfather’s face, dour and forever broken. At the time of the murder, his return to Safford was only months old. He could leave the ghosts of the anonymous dead in Tucson. But here in Safford, his home town, the worst of all worlds lay beneath his feet, hidden in the ever-shifting desert sands. He knew from experience that when children died, theirs was not the only soul that departed the earth.

  Sheriff Hanks gazed out the window overlooking the center of his hometown. He eyes fell upon the ancient cottonwood tree in the courtyard. Here, Jimmy Song Bird had explained how true Apaches never spoke the name of the dead. To this day, even though he believed it merely an old Apache superstition, Zeb avoided saying the name of Angel Bright. To this day, neither the name of Angel Bright nor that of her mother was mentioned by even non-Apaches. But at this moment, something was different. A touch of evil permeated the air.