Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 02] (9 page)

This question was the focus of Leaphorn's concentration. Did the killing of Cata and of Shorty Bowlegs make sense in themselves? Or must they be part of something larger? And if the sequence was incomplete, where did the line between Cata and Bowlegs point? The question cried for every gram of Leaphorn's attention. His head ached with it.

But there were distractions. The FBI agent was talking. Once again a fly was patrolling the Zuñi Police Department office. And outside a truck whined down the asphalt of N.M. 53 with something noisily wrong with its gearbox. Leaphorn found himself thinking of the late Ernesto Cata, who had (as the Zuñis would say it) completed his path after thirteen years of life, who had been the personifier of the Fire God, an altar boy at Saint Anthony's Church, a baptized Christian, a Catholic communicant, a member of a Zuñi kiva fraternity born into the Badger Clan, who would almost certainly have become one of the "valuable men" of the Zuñi religion had not someone, for some reason, found it expedient to kill him.

The voice of Agent John O'Malley intruded itself on Leaphorn's consciousness. He raised his eyebrows at the FBI man to simulate attention.

"… ask enough people," O'Malley was saying. "We tend to find that someone finally remembers seeing something helpful. It's a matter of patiently…"

Leaphorn found his attention diverted again. Why, he was thinking, were FBI agents so often exactly like O'Malley? He saw that the white man who sat behind O'Malley had noticed the eyebrow gesture, had interpreted it for exactly what it was, and was grinning at Leaphorn a friendly, sympathetic, lopsided grin. This man was maybe fifty, with a pink, freckled, sagging, hound-dog face and a shock of sandy hair. O'Malley had introduced him simply as "Agent Baker." As O'Malley must have intended, this left the impression that Baker was another FBI agent. It had occurred to Leaphorn earlier that Baker was not, in fact, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He didn't look like one. He had bad teeth, irregular and discolored, and an air of casual sloppiness, and something about him which suggested a quick, inquisitive, impatient intelligence. Leaphorn's extensive experience with the FBI suggested that any of these three characteristics would prevent employment. The FBI people always seemed to be O'Malleys—trimmed, scrubbed, tidy, able to work untroubled by any special measure of intelligence. O'Malley was still talking. Leaphorn looked at him, wondering about this FBI policy. Where
did
they find so many O'Malleys? He had a sudden vision of an office in the Department of Justice building in Washington, a clerk sending out draft notices to all the male cheerleaders and drum majors at U.S.C., Brigham Young, Arizona State, and Notre Dame, ordering them to get their hair cut and report for duty. He suppressed a grin. Then it occurred to him that he had seen Baker before. It had been in Utah, in the office of the San Juan County sheriff, in the wake of an autopsy which showed that a Navajo rodeo performer had died of an overdose of heroin. Baker had been there, looking sloppy and amused, offering the sheriff credentials from the Narcotics Control Division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. That had been a long time ago. It had been followed by reports of arrests made in Flagstaff, and by a variety of vaguish rumors of the sort which circulate among the brethren of the law, rumors suggesting that Mr. Baker had pulled quite a coup, that he was smarter than one should expect and apparently more ruthless as well.

So Baker is a narc. Leaphorn's mind instantly sought the proper place and perspective for this new bit of information. A narcotics agent was involving himself in the deaths of Ernesto Cata and Shorty Bowlegs. Why? And why had O'Malley tried to conceal this fact from local officers? On the surface both answers were obvious. Baker was here because some federal authority somewhere suspected illicit drugs were involved in this affair. And O'Malley hadn't introduced Baker properly because he didn't want the Navajo Police, or the Zuñi Police, or the New Mexico State Police, or the McKinley County Sheriff's Office, to know a narc was at work here. But the answers raised new questions. What had aroused this federal suspicion of drugs? And who had cut the locals out of the picture? Which agency did they think would be leaking?

Leaphorn examined the FBI agent. "… if there's any physical evidence which leads us anywhere we'll find it," O'Malley was saying. "There's always something. Some little thing. But you people know this part of the country better than we do—and you know the local people…" O'Malley was a handsome man, square-jawed, long-faced, the unhealthy whiteman pallor tanned away, the light hair sunburned lighter, the mouth a quick affair of lips and cheek muscles and white teeth. Was he green enough to believe that none of the men in the room would know that Baker was a narc? Or was he arrogant enough not to care if they detected the insult?

Leaphorn glanced at Pasquaanti, who was gazing at O'Malley with placid and inscrutable interest. The Zuñi's face told Leaphorn nothing. Highsmith was slumped in his chair, fiddling with his state police uniform cap, his legs stretched in front of him and his eyes invisible to Leaphorn. Orange Naranjo's stern old face was turned toward the window, his black eyes bored and restless. Leaphorn watched him. Saw him briefly turn to examine Baker, watch O'Malley, glance back toward the window. Some vague hint of anger among the wrinkles suggested that Naranjo, too, remembered Naranjo's job, as assigned by O'Malley was to cover the non-Navajo periphery of the Zuñi reservation, talking to ranchers, road crews, telephone linemen, anyone who might have noticed anything. Leaphorn wondered how hard he would work at it. "We would be interested if someone had seen any strangers, anything unusual, maybe a light plane flying low, maybe who knows what…"

"Yeah," Naranjo said.

"Country this empty, people notice strangers," O'Malley said. Leaphorn had glanced quickly at Naranjo, curious about how he would react to this inanity,

"Yeah," Naranjo had said, looking slightly surprised.

O'Malley now looked at Leaphorn. It had been made clear earlier that the agent was not happy with Lieutenant Leaphorn. Leaphorn should not have prowled around in the Bowlegs hogan after he had found the Bowlegs body. He shouldn't have returned to the hogan at daylight this morning in his fruitless hunt for any tire tracks, footprints, or fragments that the wind might have left. Leaphorn should have backed carefully away and not interfered with the work of the experts. None of this had been said, but it had been implied in the questions with which O'Malley had interrupted Leaphorn's terse account of what had happened at the Bowlegs hogan.

"Baker and I'll head out to the Bowlegs place now," O'Malley said, "and see if there's any prints, or anything for the lab to work on. It would be helpful, Lieutenant, if you'd check among your people living around here and see what you can pick up. Sort of like Naranjo's going to do. O.K.?"

"O.K.," Leaphorn said.

O'Malley paused at the door. "We'd sure like to talk to George Bowlegs," he said to Leaphorn.

The silence Baker and O'Malley left behind them lasted maybe ten seconds. Highsmith rose, stretched, and adjusted his visored cap.

"Well, shee-it," he said. "Time to put the tired body back behind the wheel and run errands for the Effy-Bee-Eye." He grinned down at Naranjo. "Country as empty as this, people notice strangers. Bet that never occurred to you before, Orange?"

Naranjo made a wry face. "Oh, well," he said. "He's probably all right when you get to know him."

Highsmith reached for the doorknob, then paused. "Any you birds know anything that makes it look like narcotics is mixed up in this?"

Leaphorn laughed.

"You mean besides Baker being a Treasury man?" Naranjo asked.

"I was wondering about Baker," Pasquaanti said. "He didn't look like FBI." He paused. "And now I'm wondering why O'Malley didn't tell us who he was."

"They found out about that treaty you Zuñis made with the Turks to become the global center of opium production," Highsmith said. "They don't want the Zuñi Police Department to know they're investigating."

"It's like my daddy always told me," Pasquaanti said. "Never trust no goddamn Induns. That right, Lieutenant?"

"That's right," Leaphorn said. "My grandmother had a motto hanging there in the hogan when I was a kid. Said 'Beware All Blanket-Asses.'"

Naranjo put on his hat, which, despite the season, was straw.

"Somebody should have warned Custer," he said.

Highsmith was out the door now. "That motto," he shouted back at Leaphorn. "How did she spell Blanket-Ass in Navajo?"

"Capital B," Leaphorn said.

Outside the sun beat down from a dark blue sky. The air was still and cold and very dry.

"The weather's decided to behave itself," Highsmith said. "Last night I thought winter was finally going to get here."

"I don't like these late winters," Naranjo said. " Too damn dry and then when it does come, it's usually a son of a bitch."

Pasquaanti was leaning on the doorsill. Naranjo climbed into his car. "Well," he said, "I guess I'll go chasing around seeing if I can find…" The rest of it was drowned by the roar of Highsmith's engine as the state policeman made a backing turn and then shot away down New Mexico Highway 53.

Leaphorn put his carryall into gear and followed. He turned eastward, toward the intersection with the Ojo Caliente road, toward the commune which called itself Jason's Fleece. He had told O'Malley and Pasquaanti about the note George Bowlegs left for Cecil. O'Malley hadn't been interested. Pasquaanti had looked thoughtful, and finally had shaken his head and said that he'd heard Bowlegs was kind of a crazy kid, but offered no hint of explanation. Leaphorn decided he would tell Susanne of the note, and then talk to Isaacs about it, hoping for some forgotten crumb of information which might point in the direction Bowlegs had taken. The knobby rubber of his mud tires produced a spray of gravel on the county road and then a rooster tail of dust as he jolted down the wagon track toward the commune. He was thinking that while Bowlegs was hunting his kachina, something was almost certainly hunting Bowlegs. Joe Leaphorn, who almost never hurried, was hurrying now.

A YOUNG MAN with peeling sunburn and blond hair tied in a bun was working with a portable welding torch in the commune school bus. The noise it was making had covered the sound of Leaphorn's carryall rolling to a stop and he was obviously startled when he saw the policeman.

"She's busy," he told Leaphorn. "I don't think she's around here. What kind of business do you have with her?"

"Private kind," Leaphorn said mildly. "That is, unless you're a friend of George Bowlegs. We're trying to find where the Bowlegs boy got off to." Behind Hair in Bun, the blanket covering the door of the hogan of Alice Madman's ghost moved. A face appeared, stared at Leaphorn, disappeared. A second later, Halsey pushed past the blanket and emerged.

"You're a cop," Hair in Bun said.

"Like it says there," Leaphorn said, waving in the direction of the Navajo Police seal on the carryall door, "I'm Navajo fuzz." Halsey's expression had amused him and he repeated it loudly enough for Halsey to hear.

"Ya-ta-hey," Halsey said. "Sorry, but that kid you're hunting ain't been back."

"Well, then," Leaphorn said, "I'll just talk to Susanne a little more and see if she's remembered anything that might help."

"She hasn't," Halsey said. "We'll get word to you if anything comes up. No use you wasting your time."

"Don't mind," Leaphorn said. "It beats working. What you fixing on that bus?" The question was addressed to Hair in Bun. The man stared at him.

"Loose seat," Halsey said.

"Be damned," Leaphorn said. "You're welding it back instead of bolting it down? Like to see how you're doing that." He moved toward the bus door.

Hair in Bun stepped into the doorway, pulled his hands out of the bib of his overalls, and let them hang by his sides. Leaphorn stopped.

"I've got a one-track mind," he told Halsey. "The only thing I want to do is talk to Susanne and see if we can figure out a way to find that boy. But if Susanne is off somewhere, I'll kill some time by looking around some." He looked at Hair in Bun. "Starting with this bus," he said. The voice remained mild.

"I think she's over by the windmill," Halsey said. "I'll take you over there."

The path wandered maybe 150 yards down into a narrow wash and then up its sand-and-gravel bottom toward the wall of the mesa from which Leaphorn had watched the commune two nights earlier. Just under the mesa, an intermittent seep had produced a marshy spot. Some grazing leaser had drilled a shallow well, installed a windmill to pump a trickle of water into a sheep watering tank. A Russian olive beside the tank was festooned with drying shirts, jeans, overalls, and underwear. Susanne was sitting in its shade, watching them approach.

"Did you find him? Did George come home?"

"No. I was hoping we could go over it all again and maybe you'd remember something that would help."

"I don't think there's anything to remember." She shook her head. "I just don't think he told me anything except what I could remember Monday."

"Like I told you," Halsey said.

Leaphorn ignored him. "You said George asked you if you knew anything about the Zuñi religion," Leaphorn said. "Can you remember anything more about that part of the conversation?"

Behind him, Halsey laughed.

"Really. Really, I can't." She was looking past him at Halsey. "I just remember he asked me if I knew anything and I told him just what little Ted had told me about it. I'd help if I could."

"O.K.," Halsey said. "Come on, Navajo policeman, let's go."

Leaphorn turned. Halsey was standing in the path, hands in the pockets of the army fatigue jacket he was wearing, looking amused and insolent. He was a big man, tall and heavy in the shoulders. Leaphorn let his anger show in his voice.

"I'm just saying this once. This girl and I are going to talk awhile without you interrupting. We can talk here, or we can talk in the sheriffs office in Gallup. And if we go to Gallup, you and that illegal deer carcass will go along. Possession of an untagged mule deer carcass out of season will cost you maybe three hundred dollars and a little time in jail. And then you're going to go to Window Rock and talk to the Tribe's people about what the hell you're doing on Navajo land without a permit."