Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] (14 page)

T
HE SUNSET HAD FLARED OUT behind Beautiful Mountain when Chee’s patrol car bounced over Lucy Sam’s cattle guard and gained the pavement. In the darkening twilight his headlights did little good and Chee almost missed the unmarked turnoff. That put him on the dirt track that led southward toward Rol Hai Rock, Table Mesa, and the infinity of empty country between these massive old buttes and the Chuska range.

Lucy Sam had told him: “Watch your odometer and in about eight miles from the turnoff place you come to the top of a ridge and you can see Maryboy’s place off to the left maybe a mile.”

“It’ll be dark,” Chee said. “Is the turnoff marked?”

“There’s a little wash there, and a big cotton-wood where you turn,” she said. “It’s the only tree out there, and Maryboy keeps a ghost light burning at his hogan. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay,” Chee said, wishing she hadn’t added that ‘can’t miss it’ phrase. Those were the landmarks he always missed.

“There’s a couple of places with deep sand where you cross arroyos. If you’re going too slow, you might get stuck. But it’s a pretty good road in dry weather.”

Chee had been over this track a time or two when duty called, and did not consider it pretty good. It was bad. Too bad to warrant even one of those dim lines that were drawn on the official road map with an “unimproved” label and a footnoted warning. But Chee drove it a little faster than common sense dictated. He was excited. That boxy green vehicle must have been Hal Breedlove’s boxy green Land-Rover—the same car he’d seen at the Lazy B. One of those three men who climbed out of it must have been Breedlove. Why not suspect that one of the other two was the man who had called Breedlove at the Thunderbird Lodge three or four days later and lured him away from his wife to oblivion? He would get a description from Maryboy if the old man could provide one. And he might be able to because those who live lonely lives where fellow humans are scarce tend to remember strangers—especially those on the strange mission of risking their lives on Ship Rock. Whatever, he would learn all he could and then he would call Leaphorn.

For a reason he didn’t even try to understand, sitting across a table from the Legendary Lieutenant and telling him all this seemed extremely important to Chee. He had thought he was angry at Leaphorn for signing up with John McDermott. But Leaphorn’s clear black eyes would study him with approval. Leaphorn’s dour expression would soften into a smile. Leaphorn would think awhile and then Leaphorn would tell him how this bit of information had solved a terrible puzzle.

The odometer had clicked off almost exactly the eight prescribed miles from the turnoff and the track was topping the ridge. The moon was not yet up, but the ragged black shape of the Chuskas to the right and the flat-topped bulk of Table Mesa to the left were outlined against a sky a-dazzle with stars. Ahead an ocean of darkness stretched toward the horizon. Then the track curved past a hummock of Mormon tea, and there shone the Maryboy ghost light, punctuating the night with a bright yellow spot.

Chee made the left turn past the cottonwood Lucy Sam had described into two sandy ruts separated by a grassy ridge. They led him along a shallow wash toward the light. The track dipped down a slope and the bright spot became just a glow. He heard a thud from somewhere a long ways off. More like a sudden clapping sound. But he was too busy driving for the moment to wonder what caused it. The track had veered down the bank of the wash, tilting his police car. It entered a dense tangle of chaparral, converted by his headlights into a tunnel of brightness. He emerged from that.

The ghost light was gone.

Chee frowned, puzzled. He decided it must be just out of sight behind the screen of brush he was driving past. The track emerged from the brush into flat grassland where nothing grew higher than the sage. Still no ghost light. Why not? Maryboy had turned it off, what else? Or the bulb had burned out. Out here, Maryboy wouldn’t be on a Rural Electrification Administration power line. He’d be running a windmill generator and battery system. Perhaps the batteries had gone dead. Nonsense. And yet the only reason one puts out a ghost light is because, for some reason, he believes he is threatened by the spirits of the dead. And if he believes that, why would he turn it off before Dawn Boy has restored harmony to the world? And why would he turn it off when he’d seen he had a visitor coming? Had Maryboy been expecting someone he would want to hide from?

Chee covered the last quarter mile slower than he would have had the light still been burning. His patrol car rolled past a plank stock pen with a loading ramp for cattle. His headlights reflected from the aluminum siding of a mobile home. Beyond it he could see the remains of a truck with its back wheels removed. Beyond that a fairly new pickup stood, and behind that, a small hogan, a small goat pen, a brush arbor, and two sheds. He parked a little further from the house than he would have normally and left the motor running a bit longer. And when he turned off the ignition he rolled down the window beside him and sat listening.

There was no light in the mobile home. Cold, dry December air poured through the truck window. It brought with it the smell of sage and dust, of dead leaves, of the goat pen. It brought the dead silence of a windless winter night. A dog emerged from one of the sheds, looking old, ragged, and tired. It limped toward his truck and stopped, the glare of his headlights reflecting from its eyes.

Chee leaned out of the window toward it. “Anybody home?” he asked. The dog turned and limped back into the shed. Chee switched off the car lights and waited, uneasy, for some sign of life from the house. Tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Listened. From somewhere far away he heard the call of a burrowing owl hunting its prey. He thought. Someone turned off that damned ghost light. Therefore someone is here. I am absolutely not going back home and admit I came out here to talk to Maryboy and was too afraid of the dark to get out of the car.

Chee muttered an expletive, made sure that his official .38-caliber pistol was securely in its holster, took the flashlight from its rack, opened the car door, and got out — thankful for the policy that eliminated those dome lights that went on when the door opened. He stood beside the car, glad of the darkness, and shouted, “Hosteen Maryboy,” and a greeting in Navajo. He identified himself by clan and family. He waited.

Only silence. But the sound of his own voice, loud and clear, had burst the bubble of his nervousness. He waited as long as politeness required, walked up to the entrance, climbed the two concrete block steps that led to the door, and tapped on the screen.

Nothing. He tapped again, harder this time.

Again, no response. He tried the screen, swung it open. Tried the door. The knob turned easily in his hand.

“Hosteen Maryboy,” Chee shouted. “You’ve got company.” He listened. Nothing. And opened the door to total darkness. Flicked on his flash.

If time is measurable in such circumstances, it might have taken a few nanoseconds for Chee’s flashlight beam to traverse this tiny room from end to end and find it unoccupied. But even while this was happening, his peripheral vision was telling him otherwise. He turned the flashlight downward.

The body lay on its back, feet toward the door, as if the man had come to answer a visitor’s summons and then had been knocked directly backward.

In the moment that elapsed before Chee snapped off the flash and jumped into the darkness of the house he had reached several conclusions. The man had been shot near the center of the chest. He was probably, but not certainly, Mr. Maryboy. The claplike sound he had heard had been the fatal shot. Thus the shooter must be nearby. Having shot Maryboy, and seen Chee’s headlights, he had switched off the ghost light. And, more to the immediate point, Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee was likely to get shot himself. He leaned against the wall beside the door, drew the pistol, cocked it, and made sure the safety was off.

Chee spent the next few minutes listening to the silence and thinking his situation through. Among the aromas that came from Hosteen Maryboy’s kitchen he had picked up the acrid smell of burned gunpowder, confirming his guess that Maryboy had been shot only a few minutes ago. A frightening conclusion, it reinforced the evidence offered by the doused ghost light. The killer had not driven away. Chee would have met him on the access track. That he had walked away was possible but not likely. It would have meant abandoning his vehicle. Was it the pickup he’d noticed? Perhaps. But that was most likely Maryboy’s. The killer, having seen him coming, would have had plenty of time to move his car but no way to drive out without meeting Chee on the track.

So what options did he have?

Chee squatted beside the body, felt for a pulse, and found none. The man was dead. That reduced the urgency a little. He could wait for daylight, which would even the odds. As it now stood the killer knew exactly where he was and he didn’t have a clue. But waiting had a downside, too. It would occur to the killer sooner or later to fire a shot into the patrol car gas tank— or do something else to disable it. Then he could drive away unpursued. Or he might drain out some gasoline from any one of the vehicles, set this mobile home ablaze, and shoot Chee as he came out.

By now his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Chee could easily see the windows. The starlight that came through them—dim as it was—allowed him to make out a chair, a couch, a table, and the door that led into the kitchen.

Could the killer be there? Or in the bedroom beyond it? Not likely. He sat against the wall holding his breath, focusing every instinct on listening. He heard nothing. Still, he dreaded the thought of being shot in the back.

Chee picked up the flash, held it far from his body, pointed both his pistol and the flash at the kitchen doorway, and flicked it on. Nothing moved in the part of the room visible to him. He edged to the door, keeping the flash away from him. The kitchen was empty. And so, when repeated that process, were the bedroom and the tiny bath behind it.

Back in the living room, Chee sat on the couch and made himself as comfortable as the circumstances permitted. He weighed the options, found no new ones, imagined dawn coming, imagined the sun rising, imagined waiting and waiting, imagined finally saying to hell with it and walking out to the patrol car. Then he would either shot, or he wouldn’t be. If he wasn’t shot, he would have to get on the radio and report this affair Captain Largo.

“When did this happen?” the captain would ask, and then, “Why did you wait all night to report it?” and then, “Are you telling me that you sat in the house all night because you were afraid to come out?” And the only answer to that would be, “Yes, sir, that’s what I did.” And then a little later, Janet Pete would be asking why he was being dismissed from the Navajo Tribal Police, and he would say— But would Janet care enough to ask? And did it matter anyway?

Something mattered. Chee got up, stood beside the door, looking and listening—impressed with how bright the night now seemed outside the lightless living room. But he saw nothing, and heard nothing. He pushed open the screen and, pistol in hand, dashed to the patrol car, pulled open the door and slid in— crouched low in the seat, grabbed the mike, started the engine.

The night dispatcher responded almost instantly. “Have a homicide at the Maryboy place,” Chee said, “with the perpetrator still in the area. I need—”

The dispatcher remembered hearing the sound of two shots, closely spaced, and of breaking glass, and something she described as “scratching, squeaking, and thumping.” That was the end of the message from Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee.

A
T FIRST CHEE WAS CONSCIOUS only of something uncomfortable covering much of his head and his left eye. Then the general numbness of the left side of his face registered on his consciousness and finally some fairly serious discomfort involving his left ribs. Then he heard two voices, both female, one belonging to Janet Pete. He managed to get his right eye in focus and there she was, holding his hand and saying something he couldn’t understand. Thinking about it later, he thought it might have been “I told you so,” or something to that effect.

When he awoke again, the only one in the room was Captain Largo, who was looking at him with a puzzled expression.

“What the hell happened out there?” Largo said. “What was going on?” And then, as if touched by some rare sentiment, he said, “How you feeling, Jim? The doctor tells us he thinks you’re going to be all right.”

Chee was awake enough to doubt that Largo expected an answer and gave himself a few moments to get oriented. He was in a hospital obviously. Probably the Indian Health Service hospital at Gallup, but maybe Farmington. Obviously something bad had happened to him but he didn’t know what. Obviously again, it had something to do with his ribs, which were hurting now, and his face, which would be hurting when the numbness wore off. The captain could bring him up to date. And what day was it, any way?

“What the hell happened?” Chee asked. “Car wreck?”

“Somebody shot you, goddammit,” Largo said. “Do you know who it was?”

“Shot me? Why would somebody do that?” But even before he finished the sentence he began to remember. Hosteen Maryboy dead on the floor. Getting back into the patrol car. But was very vague and dreamlike.

“They shot you twice through the door of the patrol car,” Largo said. “It looked to Teddy Begayaye like you were driving away from the Maryboy place and the perpetrator fired two shots through the driver’s-side door. Teddy found the empties. Thirty-eights by the looks them, and of what they took out of you. But you had the window rolled down, so the slugs had got through that shatterproof glass after they punched through the metal. The doc said that probably saved you.”

Chee was more or less awake now and didn’t feel like anything had saved him. He felt terrible. He said, “Oh, yeah. I remember some of it now.”

“You remember enough to tell me who shot you? And what the hell you were doing out at the Maryboy place in the middle of the night? And who shot Maryboy? And why they shot him? Could you give us a description? Let us know what the hell we’re looking for—man, woman, or child?”

Chee got most of the way through answering most of those questions before whatever painkillers they had shot into him in the ambulance, and the emergency room, and the operating room, and since then cut in again and he started fading away. The nurse came in and was trying to shoo Largo out. But Chee was just awake enough to interrupt their argument. “Captain,” he said, hearing his voice come out soft and slurry and about a half mile away. “I think this Maryboy homicide goes all the way back to that Hal Breedlove case Joe Leaphorn was working on eleven years ago. That Fallen Man business. That skeleton up on Ship Rock. I need to talk to Leaphorn about…”

The next time he rejoined the world of the living he did so more or less completely. The pain was real, but tolerable. A nurse was doing something with the flexible tubing to which he was connected. A handsome, middle-aged woman whose name tag said SANCHEZ, she smiled at him, asked him how he was doing and if there was anything she could do for him.

“How about a damage assessment?” Chee said. “A prognosis. A condition report. The captain said he thought I might live, but how about this left eye? And what’s with the ribs?”

“The doctor will be in to see you pretty soon,” the nurse said. “He’s supposed to be the one to give the patient that sort of information.”

“Why don’t you do it?” Chee said. “I’m very, very interested.”

“Oh, why not?” she said. She picked up the chart at the foot of his bed and scanned it. She frowned, made a disapproving clicking sound with her tongue.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Chee said. “They’re not going to decide I’m too banged up to be worth repairing?”

“We’ve got two misspelled words in this,” she said. “They quit teaching doctors how to spell. But, no, I just wish I was as healthy as you are,” she said. “I guess a body shop estimator would rate you as a moderately serious fender bender. Not bad enough to total you out, and just barely bad enough to cause the insurance company to send in its inspector and raise your premium rates.”

“How about the eye?” Chee said. “It has a bandage over it.”

“Because of”—she glanced down at the chart and read—“‘multiple superficial lacerations caused by glass fragments.’ But from the looks of this, no damage was done where it might affect your vision. Maybe you’ll have some bumpy shaving on that cheek for a while, and need to grow yourself about an inch of new eyebrow. But apparently no sight impairment.”

“That’s good to hear,” Chee said. “How about the rest of me?”

She looked down at him sternly. “Now when the doctor comes in, you’ve got to act surprised. All right? Everything he tells you is news to you. And for God’s sake don’t argue with him. Don’t be saying: ‘That ain’t what Florence Nightingale told me.’ You understand?”

Chee understood. He listened. Two bullets involved. One apparently had struck the thick bone at the back of the skull a glancing blow, causing a scalp wound, heavy bleeding, and concussion. The other, apparently fired after he had fallen forward, came through the door. While the left side of his face was sprayed with debris, the slug was deflected into his left side, where it penetrated the muscles and cracked two ribs.

“I’d say you were pretty lucky,” the nurse said, looking at him over the chart. “Except maybe in your choice of friends.”

“Yeah,” Chee said, wincing. “Does that chart show who sent me those flowers?”

There were two bunches of them, one a dazzling pot of some sort of fancy chrysanthemum and the other a bouquet of mixed blossoms.

The nurse extracted the card from the bouquet. “Want me to read it to you?”

“Please,” Chee said.

“It says, ‘Learn to duck,’ and it’s signed, ‘Your Shiprock Rat Terriers.’”

“Be damned,” Chee said, and felt himself flushing with pleasure.

“Friends of yours?”

“Yes, indeed,” Chee said. “They really are.”

“And the other card reads ‘Get well quick, be more careful and we have to talk,’ and it’s signed ‘Love, Janet.’” With that Nurse Sanchez left him to think about what it might mean.

The next visitor was a well-dressed young man named Elliott Lewis, whose tidy business suit and necktie proclaimed him a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nevertheless, he displayed his identification to Chee. His interest was in the wrongful death of Austin Maryboy, such felonious events on a federal reservation being under the jurisdiction of the Bureau. Chee told him what he knew, but not what he guessed. Lewis, in the best FBI tradition, told Chee absolutely nothing.

“This thing must have made some sort of splash in the papers,” Chee said. “Am I right about that?”

Lewis was restoring his notebook and tape recorder to his briefcase. “Why you say that?”

“Because the FBI got here early.”

Lewis looked up from the housekeeping duties in his briefcase. He suppressed a grin and nodded. “It made the front page in the
Phoenix Gazette
, and the
Albuquerque Journal
, and the
Deseret News
,” he said. “And I guess you could add the
Gallup Independent, Navajo Times, Farmington Times
, and the rest of ’em.”

“How long you been assigned out here?” Chee asked.

“This is week three,” Lewis said. “I’m fresh out of the academy but I’ve heard about your reputation for chasing the headlines. And you’ll notice I’ve already got the names of the pertinent papers memorized.”

Which left Chee regretting the barb. What was Lewis but another young cop trying to get along? Maybe the Bureau would teach him its famous arrogance. But it hadn’t yet, and maybe with the old J. Edgar Hoover gang fading away, it was dropping the superman pose. Chee had worked with both kinds.

Lewis was also efficient. He asked the pertinent questions, which made it apparent that the theory of the crime appealing to the Bureau was a motive involving cattle theft—of which Maryboy was known to be a victim. Chee considered introducing mountain climbing into the conversation but decided against it. His head ached. Life was already too complicated. And how the devil could he explain it anyway? Lewis closed his notebook, switched off his tape recorder, and departed.

Chee turned his thoughts to the note Janet had signed. Remembering earlier notes, it sounded cool, considering the circumstances. Or was that his imagination? And there she was now, standing in the doorway, smiling at him, looking beautiful.

“You want a visitor?” she said. “They gave the fed first priority. I had to wait.”

“Come in,” he said, “and sit and talk to me.”

She did. But en route to the chair, she bent over, found an unbandaged place, and kissed him thoroughly.

“Now I have two reasons to be mad at you,” she said.

He waited.

“You almost got yourself killed,” she said. “That’s the worst thing. Lieutenants are supposed to send their troops out to get shot at. They’re not supposed to get shot themselves.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve got to work on it.”

“And you insulted me,” she added. “Are you recovered enough to talk about that?” No more banter now. The smile was gone.

“Did I?” Chee said.

“Don’t you think so? You implied that I had tricked you. You pretty well said that I had used you to get information to pass along to John.”

Chee didn’t respond to that. “John,” he was thinking. Not “McDermott,” or “Mr. McDermott,” but “John.”

He shrugged. “I apologize, then,” he said. “I think I misunderstood things. I had the impression the son of a bitch was your enemy. Everything I know about the man is what you told me. About how he had used you, taken advantage of his position. You the student and the hired hand. Him the famous professor and the boss. That made him your enemy, and anyone who treats you like that is my enemy.”

She sat very still, hands folded in her lap, while he said all that. “Jim,” she began, and then stopped, her lower lip between her teeth.

“I guess it shocked me,” he said. “There I was, the naive romantic, thinking of myself as Sir Galahad saving the damsel from the dragon, and I find out the damsel is out partying with the dragon.”

Janet Pete’s complexion had become slightly pink.

“I agree with some of that,” she said. “The part about you being naive. But I think we’d better talk about this later. When you’re better. I shouldn’t have brought it up now. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. I want you to hurry up and get well, and this isn’t good for you.”

“Okay,” Chee said. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”

She stopped at the door. “I hope one really good thing will come out of this,” she said. “I hope this being almost killed will cure you of being a policeman.”

“What do you mean?” Chee said, knowing full well what she meant.

“I mean you could stay in law enforcement without carrying that damned gun, and doing that sort of work. You could take your pick of half a dozen jobs in—”

“In Washington,” Chee said.

“Or elsewhere. There are dozens of offices. Dozens of agencies. In the BIA, the Justice Department. I heard of a wonderful opening in Miami. Something involving the Seminole agency.”

Chee’s head ached. He didn’t feel well. He said, “Thanks for coming, Janet. Thanks for the flowers.”

And then she was gone.

Chee drifted into a shallow sleep punctuated by uneasy dreams. He was awakened to take antibiotics and to have his temperature and vital signs checked. He dozed again, and was aroused to eat a bowl of lukewarm cream of mushroom soup, a portion of cherry Jell-O, and some banana-flavored yogurt. He was reminded that he was supposed to rise from his bed now and walk around the room for a while to get every thing working properly. While dutifully doing that, he sensed a presence behind him.

Joe Leaphorn was standing in the doorway his face wearing that expression of disapproval that Chee had learned to dread when he was the Legendary Lieutenant’s assistant and gofer.