The Shape Shifter (23 page)

“But how can anyone read the future?” Leaphorn asked. “Here you are, being friendly to a stranger.”
208

TONY HILLERMAN

“Yeah,” Delonie said, and laughed. A bitter sound.

“So what happened next?”

“He keeps showing up at the Handys’ place. Driving a pale blue Cadillac four door. Bought gasoline the first time and got out and checked his tire pressure and his oil.” Delonie produced a wry smile. “Remember when people did that? I mean ask the gasoline pumper to do it for them? Well, he did it himself. That’s how friendly he was. And then he went in, got himself some cigarettes, talked to Ellie and Handy. Did a lot of smiling, being friendly. That kept on happening for a while.” Delonie stopped. Stared out the window. Shook his head. “Pretty soon, dumb as I am, I could see Ellie was a hell of a lot more interested in Shewnack than she was in me. And pretty soon he’d be coming about quitting time, and we’d go down the road a ways, or maybe back over to the Acoma tribes casino, and eat something and so-cialize. Sometime play a little poker. And Shewnack was filling us in on his career as a policeman, mostly talking about how really dumb criminals made the job so easy for the cops. He was full of stories about that. Then he would tell us how easy it would be out here in the wide open country to get a lot of money by pulling stuff off. Not so many cops out here. Not well trained. Not all that smart, either. Said the secret was knowing how to not leave any evidence behind. So on, so forth. Full of good yarns about how it happened, and how cops really weren’t all that interested in doing the work to catch people. Underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked. We heard that a lot from Shewnack. Just let nature take its course and the dumb criminals will catch themselves. Anyway, I admit it was kind of interesting, and Ellie got real caught up in THE SHAPE SHIFTER

209

it. One day she asked him how he would organize one if he wanted to rob a place, and he said, you mean like where you guys work, and she said yeah, how would you do that? And he said, well the real pros we run into now and then in California do a lot of planning. First, will there be enough profit involved for it to be worth the time. And he said Handy’s store wouldn’t be a prospect, because the day’s take would just be a few hundred bucks.” Delonie stopped, drank coffee, stared out the window at the bird activity.

“Knowing what I know now, I’m sure he knew better even when he said that, but Ellie fell for it. She told him that Handy never takes his money into the bank more than once a week, and sometimes it’s a whole month before he drives it into the bank in Gallup. Told him he keeps the money in a hidden safe. So forth. Anyway, sweet Ellie wasn’t deceptive at all. Any question Shewnack had, she answered.

And then, when the time came, what does he do to her?” Delonie left that question hang, staring out the glass door into the patio.

“Those birds get even livelier than that in the spring,” he said. “Birds get to thinking about nesting, pairing up.

Even the Gambel quails are coming in, laying their eggs under the heavy brush out there. And after the hatch, they bring the young ones into the patio sometimes.

Daddy quail sits on the wall and keeps an eye out for cats or hawks or anything he thinks looks dangerous. And the mama quail sort of herds them around. Teaches ’em to run into the bushes or hide under things when she gives

’em the danger warning.”

Delonie’s lips had curved into a sad smile now, remembering this.

210

TONY HILLERMAN

“I used to get Ellie to come out here sometimes and watch them with me.” He shook his head. “Very good company, Ellie was. She should have married me like I asked her. I think she would have if Shewnack hadn’t come along.”

“I talked to the police who handled that case,” Leaphorn said. “They told me how nice they thought she was.”

“Prison changed her, I guess,” Delonie said. “Did me, too. When I finally got out, I tried to find her, but she didn’t want to see me anymore. I finally gave up. Then, just a while back, I heard she was dead.”

“You knew Bennie Begay is dead, too?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“That means you are a very important person to this man who calls himself Shewnack. The only one left who could identify him with that double murder.”

“If he wasn’t already burned up,” Delonie said.

“You believe that?”

“Well, should I believe you or the famous old Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“We’ll give you a choice,” Leaphorn said, and began connecting the dots of time and place between a man calling himself Shewnack leaving Handy’s store with the loot, and a man who called himself Totter appearing back in the high, dry Four Corners Country and buying himself an old trading post and gallery. Then the fire destroying a man Totter had hired, who the FBI decided was Shewnack. Then Totter cashing in, disappearing.

“Then,” Leaphorn continued, but Delonie held up his hand.

“And then we learn that Mr. Totter is dead, too,” he said. “How does that work in this blueprint of yours?” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

211

“It didn’t, but then we checked on the obituary notice, turns out it was false. The man who called himself Totter didn’t die.”

“Still alive? Where?”

“Just outside Flagstaff now, if we’re right. We think he’s a man who used to be a CIA agent in Vietnam. Mr.

Vang here knew him when he was calling himself George Perkins. The way this funny trail leads, he got caught stealing CIA bribery money, got bumped out of the CIA, took Tommy Vang here out of a Hmong refugee camp, settled—if we can call it that—in San Francisco. As Tommy told you, he was gone a lot on trips. He was gone, for example, in the long period before the Handys were killed, and he was gone again for a long time when Totter was taking over that trading post and doing his business from there. Then—”

Delonie held up his hand again.

“Let me finish that for you. Then, when those of us doing time for the Handys started getting out on parole, he decided we’d see him and turn him in. So he hired himself a helper, burned him up, left evidence to persuade the FBI this was Shewnack, thereby eliminating that problem. That it?”

“Just about,” Leaphorn said.

“Pretty weak connection, seems to me. You want me to think this Jason Delos is Shewnack?” Leaphorn nodded.

“You left out that rug,” Tommy Vang said. “And you left out how Totter stole that pinyon sap so the fire wouldn’t look like arson.”

“Pinyon sap?” Delonie said. “And a rug?” He was grinning. “I know this Shewnack sort of proved I’m stupid,
212

TONY HILLERMAN

but I’ve learned some from that. What are you trying to sell me here?”

Leaphorn explained the rug, explained—rather lamely—the sap, the lard buckets, the very hot fire without any sign of those fire-spreading chemicals the arson investigators are trained to look for.

Delonie thought about it, nodded. “If I was the grand jury, I’d guess maybe I’d be interested in all this. But I think I’d be asking for more evidence. Isn’t this all pretty much just circumstantial?” He laughed. “Notice that language I’m using. We learn that doing time in prison. Lots of guard-house lawyers in there. But I think I’d be wondering what you are trying to accomplish with all this.” Leaphorn was wondering, too. Wondering what he was doing here. He was tired. His back hurt. He was supposed to be retired. Delonie was right. If they had Delonie on the witness stand ready to swear Jason Delos was actually Ray Shewnack, the defense attorney would note Delonie was a paroled convict and repeatedly note the total, absolute, utter lack of any concrete evidence.

To hell with it, Leaphorn thought.

“I guess you’d have to say we’re trying to save your life, Mr. Delonie. To keep this ‘raised from the ashes’ Ray Shewnack from erasing you as the only threat left.” He pulled the little gift box from his jacket pocket.

Handed it to Delonie. “Here’s the present he sent you.”

“What do you mean, save my life?” Delonie asked.

He took the little box, held it gingerly, turned it over, read the note on it, tapped it with his finger.

“Who wrote this?”

“I wrote it,” Tommy said. “Mr. Delos spoke it to me and told me to write it down.”

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

213

“Who is it supposed to be from? From this Delos man?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “It’s a little bottle of cherries. The big ones he uses in the bourbon drinks he likes to make.”

Delonie tore open the wrapping, pulled the box apart, extracted the bottle, examined it carefully.

“Nice thing to send somebody,” Delonie said. “If I thought this Delos was actually that Ray Shewnack, I’d be very surprised. I never did think he had any use for me.

He smiled at everybody, and slapped your back, but you could tell.”

“It won’t have any Delos fingerprints on it,” Leaphorn said. “Neither that slick paper wrapping nor the bottle, nor the bottle top. Nobody handled it, except Mr. Vang here. Delos even had Tommy press his thumb down on the bottle cap. Perfect place for a thumbprint.” Delonie twisted the cap open, laid it aside, looked into the bottle, sniffed it.

“Smells fine,” he said.

Tommy Vang was looking extremely nervous, leaning forward, reaching toward Mr. Delonie. “Don’t eat it.”

“We think it’s poison,” Leaphorn said.

Delonie frowned. “These cherries?”

He reached into his pocket, took out a jackknife, opened it, pried out a cherry, and let it roll onto the table.

He stared at it, said, “Looks good.”

“I think if you take a real close look at it, you’re going to find a little puncture hole in it someplace. Where a needle gave it a shot of something like strychnine. Something you wouldn’t want in your stomach.” Delonie used the knife to roll the cherry onto a piece
214

TONY HILLERMAN

of paper, picked it up, studied it. Put it down, frowned at Leaphorn. “Little bitty hole,” he said.

“A Flagstaff private investigator, former cop named Bork, went to see Mr. Delos about this rug we told you about. Asked a bunch of questions about how Delos got it when it was one of the art things supposed to be burned up in Totter’s fire. Delos gave him a little lunch to take home with him. It had a slice of fruitcake with it, and Mr.

Delos had put one of these very special cherries on the top of the slice. Hour or so later on the way home Mr. Bork died of poisoning.”

“Oh,” Delonie said.

“Then I came along to find out what had happened to Bork. I asked Mr. Delos a lot of questions about that rug, how he came to have it, so forth. He had Mr. Vang make me a little lunch, too. Put a slice of fruitcake in it, put one of these cherries on top.”

“I didn’t,” Tommy said. “Mr. Delos did that always.

Used them as decorations. Just for somebody special, he would say. And put it on top. I didn’t know he was punching those holes in them.”

“Why didn’t it poison you?” Delonie asked.

“I don’t like fruitcake and I didn’t get around to stealing the cherry off the top, and finally Vang here heard what had happened to Mr. Bork. It made him nervous. So he found me and tried to take the lunch back.” Delonie rolled two more cherries out of the bottle, looked at them, then looked out the sliding glass door, considering the activity among the birds.

“About this time of day, we usually have a bunch of crows showing up. If I’m not home, they crowd out the smaller birds and pig out on the bird food. Not just eat THE SHAPE SHIFTER

215

it, they scatter it all around. I run ’em off. Used to have a shotgun I could thin them out with, but the probation officer wouldn’t let me keep that.”

“You thinking about poisoning them?” Leaphorn asked.

“Crows will eat just about anything. They’d gobble these up. If they really are poison, that would be fewer crows around to steal the eggs out of other birds’ nests.

Looks like a way to show whether you’re telling the truth.”

And so Delonie put the cherries back into the jar, slid open the glass door, and walked out into the patio. Some of the bigger birds fled, but Leaphorn noticed that most of the smaller ones seemed to recognize him as harmless.

He placed four of the cherries in a line atop the wall, and one on each of the roofs of four of the bird feeders, came back through the door, turned to survey his handiwork, then hurried back out again. He retrieved the cherries from the feeder roof, put them back into the bottle, came in, and slid the door shut, and stood far enough inside to be invisible to the birds, watching.

“In case you wondered why I wanted those cherries back,” he said. “While them cherries would be way too big for the wrens, and finches, and the little ones to handle, putting them right on the feeders might tempt the doves, or the bigger ones. Them birds have to deal with all sorts of predators. Hawks, crows, snakes, rats, stray cats. Killing a few crows just does my birds a favor, but I didn’t want to kill any of the good ones.”

Leaphorn looked at his watch. “How long would you guess we’ll be waiting to see if this works?” Delonie laughed. “Not long,” he said. “Crows are
216

TONY HILLERMAN

smart. They watch. In fact, there was a little flock of the local crows up in the trees back there watching when I came out. They’re not here all the time because they know I have those feeders rigged so they can’t get their big heads into most of them. But when they see me come out carrying something that looks like it might be food, they start flying in a hurry. They want to beat the little birds to it.”

Even as Delonie was saying that, two crows arrived, landing in a pinyon just beyond the wall. Three others followed. One noticed the cherries, landed on the wall.

Picked up a cherry, found it a little too large to swallow, and flew back into the pinyon with it. Minutes passed. The sight of the cherries attracted another crow to the wall. It speared a cherry and stayed on the wall and worked away at getting it torn up enough to swallow. Then he pecked another one, knocked it off the wall, and flew down into the patio to find it. A third crow grabbed the remaining cherry, held it in his beak briefly. Put it back on the wall, pecked at it. It fell into the grass below, and the crow flew down looking for it.