nodded.
“And please call me Kee.”
She preferred to call him prime suspect.
“What do you do down there on your rez, Ava?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m not sure. You have a certain directness to you.”
The pause seemed especially long. He stared at her and she noted the golden flecks in his deep brown eyes.
“So what do you do down there on the flats?” he asked again.
“I used to work for the casino. Dealer. High rollers, mostly. But I’m taking a break.” Actually that was her sister’s bio but she wasn’t going to tell him she was ROTC, had done four years of active duty in Germany and had just finished her four additional years on reserve while completing police training, and recently earned her gold shield. Given how her sister had completely withdrawn from society after her husband’s death and buried herself in a bottle, she doubted that Sara would have the opportunity to blow her cover.
The small talk continued. He told her what she already knew, that their clinic had only seven employees. Two physicians. One administrator, Betty Mills, and five nurses, one of whom—Lori Mott Redhorse—was well on her way to becoming a midwife. Lori was also Kee’s sister-in-law and the one who’d first made the connection between the clinic and the six missing women from his tribe.
Ava had already spoken with Lori and believed she was one of the good guys. The woman seemed interested in finding the missing teenagers and willing to do all she could to help the investigation. Not the actions of someone guilty of a crime.
“I thought there were three physicians,” Ava said when she caught an inaccuracy in Redhorse’s story.
“Oh, yes. That’s right. Dr. Day is on loan from FEMA. That’s my roommate, temporarily, until we get the all-clear to move back home.” Since Ava had searched the trailer, she was aware of the roommate situation. But Dr. Day hadn’t been around long enough to be a suspect, so she’d focused entirely on Dr. Kee Redhorse.
“I didn’t know that FEMA provided doctors.”
“Oh, yeah. And they have emergency medical response teams. Our clinic is currently set up in two of their mobile medical units. Crowded, but we are getting the job done. It’s been good to have another set of hands during the crisis. We’ve been super busy but we’ll lose Day soon.”
She quirked a brow. “That so?”
He casually slipped a hand into his back pocket. She watched his hands, wondering if he had a weapon. Kee kept talking.
“Once we get back to the clinic in Piňon Flats and out of those trailers, I’m sure they’ll recall him. Too bad, he’s a nice guy.”
There was something implied in his tone. She took a guess. “But not a good doctor?”
The side of his mouth quirked. His tell, she decided, that little gesture that said she had made the right guess. “He’s adequate.”
“But not Native.”
Kee made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Oh, I don’t mind that. But he is from Minnesota. So he thinks it’s too hot up here.”
“He’d hate Saguaro Flats.”
Now Kee did laugh. The sound buzzed over her skin and the hairs on her neck lifted at the pure musical joy in that deep male rumble of delight. She was reconsidering her strategy. Ava had not anticipated liking her suspect.
“His specialty is emergency medicine. He’s less interested in ongoing treatment of chronic conditions and I think he’s had his fill of diabetes and high blood pressure.”
“I see.”
Woody discovered an abandoned soda bottle, which he trotted over to Ava with. Her attempts to retrieve it from his mouth resulted in another game of chase.
“He can have it,” said Ava, recognizing defeat first. She turned back to her questioning. “How do you like working at the clinic?”
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Oh, I like it, but I really prefer emergency medicine, too. Plus I’m only here part-time. Just finishing up my residency. Dr. Hauser, he’s our head physician, he arranged for me to split my time between here and Darabee Hospital.”
Ava crinkled up her face. “Sounds busy.”
Kee shrugged, a good-natured expression on his face. “It is. Doesn’t leave much time for a social life—or even a chance to catch up with the people in my own family. And since the dam collapse the clinic hours have been crazy. But I love the work and with my loans...” He held a hand to his throat and pretended to be strangling. “Gotta get a position in a hospital. Plan is to leave for a few years to get the best salary possible. I hope to come back someday.”
That didn’t mesh with a man making oodles of money from the Russian mob unless he knew that his tribal police force had made connections between the missing girls and his clinic. Then crying poverty was smart. His little brother was on the force. Had Officer Jake Redhorse given Kee some insider info?
“Medical school is expensive,” she said, hoping she sounded sympathetic. Her computer-hacking had exposed he was in up to his eyeballs in debt and had a really good motive for wanting to make a boatload of fast cash.
“I’ve had some assistance from the tribe. Dr. Hauser helped me qualify for a grant that covered some of it.”
She made a mental note to check on that.
“Sounds like a great guy.” Or a dangerous criminal, she thought.
“Yeah. He is. Hector is the one who encouraged me to practice medicine. I had a leg-length discrepancy as a kid.” He shrugged. “He took an interest.”
She thought of the photo she’d seen in his room in the FEMA trailer. He’d been younger, with a single crutch under one thin arm.
“I had lots of surgeries down in Phoenix.” He held his arms wide. “Now I’m the shortest male in my family.”
He wasn’t short, by any means. She marked him at nearly six feet.
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Well, they can’t add to the shorter leg. You know, make you taller. So they make corrections by reducing the size of the longer limb.”
She flinched as she imagined someone sawing through her lower leg bone.
“Yeah, exactly. Lost three inches. But they even up within an eighth of an inch.” He bent slightly at the waist and presented his straight legs for her examination. They were fine muscular legs. She could see that even through the denim of his jeans. “Hector arranged for all that and the therapy. Pulled strings and it was all taken care of.”
So Hector was a string puller and Kee was forever in his debt. How far would Kee go to pay him back?
“It was a hard time. My dad was...gone.”
