Exposure (A Rita Todacheene Novel)
“spins a compelling tale of crime, the supernatural, and Navajo culture with vivid style and evocative storytelling.”
When a novel begins with a sentence like this: “The little girl’s breath smelled of blood and gunpowder,” it is all but impossible not to read on. The sense of foreboding in those few words pays off repeatedly through the pages of Ramona Emerson’s second novel featuring Navajo forensic photographer and investigator Rita Todachee.
But Rita is no ordinary crime scene photographer. In addition to seeing murder victims through the viewfinder of her camera she sees their lingering ghosts, who sometimes assist in solving the crime. Rumors and reports of her peculiar ability do not sit well with her colleagues in the Albuquerque Police Department. Even an otherwise supporter tells her, “I’m a doctor, Rita. I believe in science.”
Rita is supposed to be on leave as the story begins, recovering from a gunshot wound—“I died for a second last year,” she says later in the book—but is called out to a home where every member of a large family but one has been murdered. The ghosts of the dead children are still present, hence the novel’s opening line.
The trauma of her wound, the anguish of the work, and the ill will of her colleagues cause Rita to question the job. “What was I doing aside from depositing a paycheck and driving myself into madness?” she says. “I had no friends, no boyfriend and no life, really, outside of work.”
“Madness” is not merely a figure of speech here. Rita becomes increasingly ill, physically as well as spiritually and emotionally, and leaves the city to return to her grandmother’s home in a small town near Gallup on the Navajo Reservation where she attempts to heal.
Rita’s story is not the only one in the novel. The other features Brother Gabriel, a curate of sorts for Gallup’s Sacred Heart Cathedral, assisting the downtrodden through an outreach program. The survivor of a violent childhood and the deaths of his parents, then suffering abuse in a Catholic orphanage, and later instructed in the religious practices of the passionate and often bloody Penitentes, he comes to see it his duty to assist others in ways far beyond his calling.
Brother Gabriel believes “they”—flocks of ravens—are guiding him. “God had chosen to hide me in the shadows to see the evil and the goodness of men, they said. To bring them to death or to usher them to life. The world was rife with those who needed their souls guided, straight to hell or salvation, and God had seen fit to make me their guide.” His attachment to the ravens is so intense that when he kills he feels the presence of wings trying to emerge from shoulder blades scarred by scourging, whether killing to relieve street people of their misery or to punish sinners who exploit them by providing drugs, soliciting prostitution, or denying aid.
His madness intensifies and focuses on Rosemary, a young Navajo woman, homeless, pregnant, and often on the streets. He comes to believe that the ravens want her, and will not be satisfied until he offers up the sacrifice of Rosemary and her baby. “I wanted to taste of her. I wanted to pull her skin and her flesh with my beak and taste her in my mouth,” he muses. “I wondered if her baby would taste the same.”
As Brother Gabriel falls deeper into madness, Rita finds a measure of peace through the ministrations of a traditional Navajo healer. “I spent the next week in Mr. Bitsilly’s hogan, listening to him sing for me. I drifted in and out of consciousness for days, trying to understand who was dead and who was alive. I was truly in between worlds, that place where the spirit goes when it can’t decide what is next.”
But her peace is interrupted when the Gallup Police Department requests her assistance. With the department shorthanded, and with Rita believing she must face her fears if she is to finally overcome them, she agrees to help. Upon reaching the crime scene the anxiety returns. “I was scared. I held my chest, pressing my tadadíín bag [a pouch containing items contributing to healing] tight to my heart. My body tingled with anxiety. Was I wrong to return to the job so soon?”
Rita’s assistance with the initial murder and her agreement to help with subsequent killings puts her on a collision course with Brother Gabriel in a deadly cat and mouse game through the winter streets of Gallup, as well as a continuing struggle with the ghosts of the victims.
Ramona Emerson, a Diné writer and filmmaker, spins a compelling tale of crime, the supernatural, and Navajo culture with vivid style and evocative storytelling.