Page 20 of Close By (Kari Blackhorse #1)

Natoni called out in Diné, his voice carrying across the yard without need for amplification. Kari recognized enough of the language to follow the essence of his message: Family is here. We will protect you. Come out and walk with us.

For several long moments, nothing happened. The news helicopter circled overhead, its camera undoubtedly capturing the tense scene for the evening broadcast. Behind them, Daniels watched with barely contained frustration, his hand hovering near his sidearm.

Then, almost imperceptibly, one curtain moved. A face appeared briefly at the window—broad features, intense eyes—before disappearing again.

Natoni called out once more, adding something Kari didn’t fully catch—a reference to their grandfather, it seemed, and to honor.

The front door opened slowly. Thomas Begay stood in the doorway, an imposing figure despite his obvious fear—tall and broadly built, with powerful shoulders and hands that could indeed break a neck if their owner chose to.

He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, his long hair pulled back in a traditional bun. No weapon was visible.

“Keep your hands where they can see them,” Natoni instructed his cousin in English.

Thomas complied, raising his hands to shoulder height. “I have done nothing wrong,” he said, his deep voice carrying clearly. “Why do they come to my home with guns?”

“They want to ask you questions about the deaths of Dr. Harrington and a woman named Rachel Delgado,” Kari said, maintaining a respectful distance. “We can do this calmly, with respect. But you need to come with us now.”

Thomas’s gaze moved past them to the assembled officers, the media vehicles, the federal agents with their tactical gear. “This is not about questions,” he said with quiet dignity. “This is about finding someone to blame.”

“Perhaps,” Tsosie said honestly. “But running or resisting will only make things worse. Come with us. Let us help navigate this.”

A moment of silent communication passed between the cousins, some understanding that Kari wasn’t privy to. Then Thomas stepped forward, hands still raised.

“No handcuffs,” Kari said in a voice meant to carry to the officers behind them. “Mr. Begay is cooperating fully.”

As they walked slowly back toward the perimeter, Daniels moved forward with another agent, clearly intending to take custody. Kari positioned herself between them and Thomas.

“Captain Yazzie specified that we would bring Mr. Begay in for questioning,” she said. “Tribal police custody.”

Daniels’s expression flickered with barely controlled anger. “This is a federal investigation—”

“On tribal land,” Yazzie interrupted, appearing beside them. “Mr. Begay will be questioned at our facility, with federal observers present if you wish. But he remains in our custody unless and until formal charges are filed.”

The jurisdictional standoff lasted only seconds, though it felt longer. Finally, Daniels stepped back with a tight nod.

“Agent Keller will accompany you,” he said, gesturing to the female agent who had assisted with his presentation. “I expect full access to the interview and all findings.”

“Of course,” Yazzie agreed with professional courtesy.

As Thomas was escorted to a tribal police vehicle—without handcuffs but with officers at his elbows—Kari noted his physical capability.

He moved with the balanced strength of someone who worked with his hands, who knew the land intimately.

He certainly possessed the strength to have killed Mark Harrington in the manner described by the medical examiner.

But capability wasn’t the same as culpability. And everything Kari had learned from Dr. Redford pointed away from someone with Thomas’s background and knowledge, regardless of how neatly he fit Daniels’s profile on paper.

“Good work,” Tsosie said quietly as they watched Thomas being placed in the back of a tribal police SUV. “Could have gone much worse.”

“It’s not over,” Kari replied, feeling Daniels’s gaze boring into her back. “This just moves the confrontation to the interview room.”

“At least there won’t be news helicopters and rifles pointed at a tribal member’s home,” Tsosie said. “That’s a victory, however small.”

Kari wasn’t so sure. As she looked at Thomas’s impassive face through the vehicle window, she saw a man who understood exactly what was happening—a man being fitted into a narrative created by outsiders who saw him as a convenient solution to their problem.

The same narrative she and Dr. Redford had recognized as deliberately fabricated by the actual killer.

“I want to interview him,” she told Tsosie as they walked back to their vehicles. “Before Daniels gets his psychological profile hooks into him.”

Tsosie nodded. “Yazzie will make sure of it. But Kari…” He paused, his expression troubled. “If Thomas isn’t our killer, we’re back at the beginning while the real murderer is still out there. And now they know we’re looking in the wrong direction.”

The helicopter made another pass overhead, capturing footage of the tribal police vehicles departing with their suspect. Whatever happened next would play out under the harsh spotlight of media attention, with a community already on edge watching every move.

Kari felt the weight of competing responsibilities pressing down on her—to truth, to justice, to her community, to the victims. Somewhere in the tangled web of cultural misunderstanding and deliberate misdirection lay the path to the actual killer.

She just hoped she could find it before anyone else died for crossing boundaries they didn’t even know existed.