Aimee Thurlo - Navajo Justice

His eyes grew dark and sparkled with the excitement of a challenge. “Anytime.” His voice was like steel and velvet. “I’m a man of honor—most of the time.”

She laughed. “I’ll remember that.” And everything else that had just happened, for as long as she lived.

Burke stood and, holding her firmly by the waist, brought her to her feet.

She gripped his shoulders, enjoying the hardness of his body. For a second their eyes met and she experienced something else that had never happened to her before—she was at a loss for words.

She was suffering from oxygen deprivation. That was the only answer that made sense. “I need to call the gas company and have them fix that leak. I should also call the police.” Hearing sirens, she looked down the street and added, “Or did you do that already?”

“I called 911 before I went after you.” As the paramedics drove up, he waved them over.

It took fifteen minutes for Laura to be checked out and for her to convince the paramedics that she was okay. Fortunately, her vital signs were normal, and the medics didn’t believe she was in any more danger. Laura agreed to see a doctor if any symptoms reappeared.

During that time the gas supply leading to the heater was turned off inside her home. After signing a release form the paramedics presented, she went to meet the gas company serviceman as he came out her door.

“I’ve opened every window I could find in there, ma’am, but you should still be careful inside. The connector leading to your furnace is damaged and will have to be replaced, and the furnace itself will need some work. You’ll still smell the chemical added to the natural gas so you can detect a leak, but that will fade pretty soon. The rest…” He shrugged. “What happened in there?”

“Someone must have broken in and trashed the place. That’s all I’ve figured out so far.” As the man walked back to his truck, Laura looked up and down the block, trying to figure out if the police were coming or not. Giving up on them, she started to go back into the house.

Just then Burke came up to her. “Can I help?” he asked.

“I’m going to take a look inside, now that it’s safe. If I remember right, my house was in a shambles. I must have had a burglar.”

“Let me go with you. And by the way, as a precaution, don’t turn on any of the lights just yet. The gas should have dissipated enough, but there’s no sense in testing it with a spark.”

As Laura walked into the living room she grasped the full extent of the damage clearly for the first time. All the things she’d loved, that had defined her home and herself, had been tossed onto the floor like trash. She saw her collection of music boxes there, chipped and cracked, some smashed beyond recognition. The small knickknacks that held little value but gave her so much pleasure, like the wind-up toy drummer bear and her collection of mice, had been stepped on, probably not even on purpose. There was so much clutter on the floor it was nearly impossible to pick a path.

“Why would anyone do this to me?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Take it one step at a time. See if there’s anything missing.” In a gesture of support, Burke placed his hand on her shoulder.

The warmth of his touch melted the coldness that enveloped her. Yet even as it comforted, it stirred other unsettling emotions.

She moved away and picked up a brightly decorated clay pot that had somehow survived undamaged. The miniature rose that had been inside it lay next to it. Laura placed the plant back into the pot along with all the soil she could scoop up.

The small act of restoration made her feel better.

“Look, but don’t touch anything else yet,” Burke said, gazing around the room. “The police will want to work the scene and check for evidence. They’ll search for fingerprints.”

As she saw the debris in the hall, Laura felt a new wave of panic slam into her. Her office. She had to check her computer. The book was finished, but she had other important files on her hard drive—the beginning of a future book, for one.

She rushed down the hall, but although the room was in shambles, her computer appeared untouched. She counted that as a major blessing, and tried to ignore the way her chest tightened as she looked at the chaos surrounding her. Files lay all over the floor, papers everywhere. Reference books had been tossed around, and some of the older ones had lost pages and had their spines broken. Taking a deep, unsteady breath, she stepped back out into the hall.

As she went into the bedrooms, she saw they had not fared well, either. Everything had been rifled through. In her room, the contents of every drawer had been dumped onto the floor. Her small jewelry box had been upended, but as she sorted through the jumble of pieces, she saw that nothing was missing, not even her most expensive watch, earrings or matching pendant.

Laura went through the rest of the house numbly. She checked for the obvious things burglars usually took, like the TV set and VCR, but both were there, intact, and none of the simple tools in the garage had even been touched.

“I just don’t understand this,” she muttered. “What on earth were they after?”

Hearing a loud knock, she returned to the living room. A police officer in a blue uniform had come in the open door and was looking around. She introduced herself and took him from room to room.

“Any idea who did this?” he asked her. Seeing her shake her head, he added, “Smells like you had a gas leak, too.”

She gave him a quick rundown of what had happened, including what the gas company serviceman had said.

“I’m going to check for the point of entry and dust that area for fingerprints, but I’ve got to tell you, we generally don’t have a lot of luck finding the perps in these cases. Our best chance is if we catch them in the act somewhere else, or fencing the stolen property. Of course, we’ll ask your neighbors if they saw or heard anyone or noticed an unfamiliar vehicle. We’ll cover all the usual bases, but after that…”

Laura felt her stomach plummet. In her books the cops always had sufficient resources and the determination to solve every crime. But this was real life, and too often victims were just that—victims. The label made her angry. Someone had broken into her home and turned her life into chaos, and she was supposed to just shrug it off?

Burke came to stand beside her. It was a small gesture, but one she appreciated. He had a commanding presence about him that she found oddly reassuring.

“What you can do is figure out how to get your life back to normal—fast,” Burke advised. “For starters, you’ll need to have dead bolts installed and a good, solid back door. I think the burglar was able to kick it in because it wasn’t constructed to stand up to punishment. Learn from this and you can keep it from ever happening again.”

“And who knows?” the officer agreed. “We may get lucky and catch the perp and recover whatever he stole from you.”

“For now, let’s finish going through the house and see what that could be,” Burke said. “You’ll need to make a list.”

It was like walking through a nightmare. Laura went down the hall with the men and, as they passed the closet containing the gas furnace, Burke stopped and crouched down beside it. The metal panel had been ripped off the heater.

“From the marks I see, it looks like they were trying to search the space between the furnace and wall,” Burke said. “Of course, in doing that, the intruder moved the furnace enough to extinguish the pilot light and break the gas connection. It looks like he damaged the furnace as well.”

As they entered Elena’s room, Laura saw a tiny silver pendant Elena cherished on the floor, along with other items from the top of her dresser. She picked the pendant up, grateful that it hadn’t been stepped on. It had been the last gift Elena had received from her husband before he died. Laura placed it inside her jacket pocket in an attempt to protect this one special thing.