Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 05] (17 page)

T
hinking didn't seem to help
. Chee went to sleep that night thinking. He got up the next morning and went over to his office, still deep in thought. His only conclusion was that he must be thinking the wrong way. There was nothing much in his In basket except a note that Johnson of the
dea
was trying to reach him and a carbon of the report on the Burnt Water necklace turning up. It simply repeated what Dashee had told him, with the details filled in.

Subject named Edna Nezzie, twenty-three, unmarried, of the Graywoman Nezzie camp, north of Teec Nos Pos, had pawned the necklace at Mexican Water. It had been recognized from the description left with the post manager by Tribal Police. Subsequently, subject Nezzie had told investigating officer Eddie Begay that she had been given the necklace by a male subject she had met two nights earlier at a squaw dance next to Mexican Water. She identified the subject as a Navajo male about thirty, who had identified himself as Joseph Musket. The two had gone to a white Ford pickup Musket was driving. There they had engaged in sexual intercourse. Musket then had given the subject the necklace and they had returned to the dance. She had seen no more of him.

Chee frowned at the paper, trying to identify why something was wrong about it. Still staring at the report, he fumbled for the telephone, and dailed the operator, and asked for the number of the trading post at Teec Nos Pos. It rang five times before he got an answer.

Chee identified himself. "Just need some information. What clan is Graywoman Nezzie?"

"Nezzie," the voice said. "She's born to Standing Rock and born for Bitter Water."

"You're sure?"

"I'm one of the old lady's sons-in-law," the voice said. "Married into 'em. The father is Water Runs Together and Many Poles."

"Thanks," Chee said, and hung up. He remembered Mrs. Musket identifying herself. Born to Standing Rock Dinee, she had said, and born for the Mud Clan. So the man who had identified himself as Joseph Musket at the Mexican Water squaw dance could not possibly have been Joseph Musket. For a Navajo male to dance with a Navajo female of the same maternal clan violated the most stringent of taboos. And the intra-clan intercourse that followed was the most heinous form of incest—sure to cause sickness, sure to cause insanity, likely to bring death. If it was Musket, it could only mean that he had lied to the girl about his clan. Otherwise she would never have danced with him, gone to the truck with him, even talked to him except in the most formal fashion. And no Navajo male would engage in such a ghastly deception.

Unless, Chee thought, he was a witch.

Chee left a note to tell Largo where to find him and headed for Cameron. En route he remembered what Mrs. Musket had told him about the homecoming of Ironfingers, his urgent need for the traditional Navajo purification ceremonial, his stated intentions to rejoin the People as a herder of sheep. Such behavior was incongruous with deliberate incest—an act which any traditional Navajo knew endangered the health of the entire clan. Chee narrowed it down to two choices. Either someone had imitated Iron-fingers at the squaw dance, or Ironfingers was a madman. Or in other words, a witch.

In Cameron he bought a sack of cement at the lumberyard, and a tub at the hardware store, and a flexible plastic funnel at the drugstore. Then he made the long, lonely drive back to the Hopi Reservation, still thinking. At the windmill he left the sack of cement beside the well shaft, put the funnel beside it, and covered both with the tub, just in case the rain clouds building up again in the west produced some moisture.

He drove back down Wepo Wash to Burnt Water Trading Post and parked in the shade of the cottonwood beside West's battered and rusty jeep. By then he had-come up with only a single idea. He could stake out the cache of suitcases and nail Musket when he came to dig them up. It wasn't a very good idea. Chee didn't think he could count on Musket coming for the suitcases. More likely, Ironfingers would collect his money and tell the buyers where to pick up the goods. Chee was not interested in the buyers. He was officially, formally, and by explicit orders not interested. But Ironfingers was his business. He had been told to solve the burglary at Burnt Water. He had been told to unravel the business of witchcraft on Black Mesa. Ironfingers was the answer to the first. Ironfingers might have some answers to the second.

Chee sat. He watched the thunderheads boiling up in the west. He went through it all again. The conclusion was the same. Musket would have to come to whatever meeting place he established to get his money. He would not be likely to go dig up the suitcases. The crash scene must seem dangerous to him. Musket couldn't tell Gaines where to meet him until the last moment—to do so could give the buyers a chance to set up a trap. Chee could think of no possible way he could intercept the information. He had thought of digging up the suitcases himself, rehiding them somewhere, and leaving a note to force Musket to come to him. But more likely it would be the buyers who would find the note and come to him. That was the sort of trouble Chee didn't intend to invite. In fact, it was the sort of trouble that had been at the back of his mind ever since Johnson had warned him that the drug dealers would be looking for him. Johnson's prediction hadn't proved true—but still might. The people for whom Gaines worked might well guess that Palanzer would have needed a local helper. There was no way for Chee to know for sure that they knew about Ironfingers.

Chee fished out his notebook and reexamined what he had written while waiting for Cowboy Dashee. "Where is J. Musket?" He stared at the question. And then at another. "Why the burglary?" And then at "Who is John Doe?" He thought about the dates. Doe had died July 10, young West had died July 6. Musket had walked out of this trading post two weeks later and vanished—apparently after coming back the same night to haul off a load of pawn jewelry. Then, weeks later, he carelessly gives away a single piece. Or someone gives it away in Musket's name.

Chee climbed out of his truck and walked into the trading post. If West wasn't occupied, he'd go over the whole burglary business with him again.

West was putting an order of groceries and odds and ends into a box for a middle-aged Navajo woman. The purchase included a coil of that light, flexible rope which Navajos used to tie sheep, horses, loads on pickup trucks, and all those thousands of things which must be tied. West had left the coil for last. Now he dropped it into the box, said something to the woman, and took it out again. He measured out fifteen or twenty feet of it with quick outthrusts of his arms, and then collected this in a tangle of loops in his right hand, talking to the woman all the time. Still standing at the doorway, Chee couldn't overhear what he was saying. Whatever it was, it attracted two men who had been standing down the counter. West handed the woman the rope. All three Navajos inspected it. They were grinning. West the sorcerer was about to perform. He took the rope back, folded it into a half-dozen dangling loops in his huge right hand. His left hand extracted a knife from his coveralls pocket. He slashed through the loops, and held up eight cut ends. Then he disposed of the knife, extracted a bandanna from his pocket, covered the severed ends with the handkerchief. He was talking steadily. Chee guessed he was explaining the curing quality of his magic handkerchief. A moment later West pulled the bandanna away and with the same motion dropped the rope. It fell to the floor, a single piece again. West whipped it up, snapped it between his outstretched hands. He handed it to the woman. She inspected it, and was impressed. The two male watchers were grinning appreciatively. Chee grinned, too. A good trick, well done. He'd seen it before—a magic show done for donations on the Union Mall at the University of New Mexico. It had taken him most of the day to narrow down the only possible way the trick could be done. And that night he'd gone to the library, and found a book of magic tricks in the stacks, and confirmed that he'd been right. The trick was in creating the illusion with the gathered loops that the cord had been cut into fragments when actually only short bits had been sliced from one end—and those disposed of in a pocket when the bandanna was whipped away.

Chee stood by the doorway, remembering the three of diamonds trick, which also depended on creating an illusion—the distracting thought that it mattered which card the victim named. West was a master of this business of controlling how one thought. A master of illusion.

Chee's smile faded. His face fell into that slack, mindless appearance of totally concentrated thought. Slowly the smile appeared again, and broadened, and converted itself into a great, exultant laugh. It was loud enough to attract West's attention. He was looking at Chee, surprised. His audience was also staring.

"You want to see me?" West asked.

"Later," Chee said. He hurried out, the grin fading as his thoughts took better shape, and climbed into his pickup truck. The notebook was on the seat. He opened it, flipped to the proper page.

Across from "Why the burglary?" he wrote: "Was there a burglary?" Then he studied the other questions. Across from "Did Musket kill John Doe?" he wrote: "Was John Doe Iron-fingers?" Then he closed the notebook, started the engine, and pulled the truck out of the trading post parking lot. He would talk to West later. First, he wanted time to think this through. Had West, the magician, the sorcerer, used Jim Chee to create one of his illusions? He wanted time to answer that. But now, as he drove down the bumpy road beside Wepo Wash, toward the reddish sunset, and the towering thunderclouds which promised rain and delivered nothing, he was fairly sure that when he had thought it through he would know the answer. The answer would be yes. Yes, for all these weeks Ironfingers had been hidden behind Jim Chee's stupidity.

I
n fact
, the answer was not a definite yes. It was "probably."

With sundown, the thunderheads lost their will to grow. With the cool darkness, they lost their will to live. Chee drove slowly, arm rested on the sill of the open truck window, enjoying the breeze. Lightning still flashed yellow and white in the cloud west of him, and the dark north also produced an occasional jagged bolt. But the clouds were dying. Overhead, the stars were out. The Colorado Plateau and the Painted Desert would live with drought through another cycle of sun. But Chee was aware of this only on a secondary level. He was reaching conclusions.

The man he'd seen coming from West's office; the man West had said he'd just fired; the man West said was Joseph Musket, might not have been Musket at all. Probably wasn't, Chee thought. West had simply used Jim Chee, a brand-new policeman who'd never seen Musket, to establish on the official record that Musket was alive, and well, and being fired by West, the day after John Doe's remains had been collected on Black Mesa. He'd done it neatly, asking Chee to come in when he knew some appropriate Navajo would be available, then arousing Chee's interest in the man when it was too late to get a good look at him. The pseudo Musket, Chee guessed, would be someone from somewhere else—whom Chee wouldn't be seeing around Burnt Water.

That was the first conclusion. The second revolved around another illusion. West had probably performed his Musket deception, and then staged the pretended burglary, because Joseph Musket was already dead. Killed by whom? Probably by West himself. Why? Chee would leave that for later. There'd be a reason. There always was. Now he concentrated on the faded white line illuminated by his headlights, and on recreating what must have happened.

The cool air smelled of wet sage, and creosote bush, and ozone. For the first time in days, Chee felt in harmony with his thoughts.
Hozro
again. His mind was working as it should, on the natural path. West had found himself with the body of Musket on his hands. He had killed Musket, or someone else had done it, or Musket had simply died. And West didn't want it known. Not yet.

Perhaps he'd gotten wind of the impending drug shipment. Perhaps his son had told him. Perhaps he'd learned it from Musket. And West wanted to steal it. And if shippers knew their man at Burnt Water was dead, they might move the landing point, or call everything off. So the death and the body had been concealed.

Chee found himself appreciating the cleverness. West knew he was dealing with very dangerous men. He knew they'd come after the thief. He wanted someone besides West for them to hunt. Ironfingers got the job. Which meant he could never, ever, afford the risk of having the corpse, or even the skeleton, of anyone who met Musket's description turning up to be identified. A skeleton, even a bit of jawbone, would be enough to match against the name of a missing person who'd been in prison—whose dental charts and fingerprints and all other vital statistics would be easily available. Therefore West had put the body out along the traditional pathway of the spruce Messenger's party, where it would be found exactly when he wanted it found. He'd faked the witchcraft mutilation—the hands and feet and probably the penis, too—to eliminate the automatic fingerprinting an unidentified corpse would undergo. It was his only wrong guess—not calculating that the Hopis wouldn't report the corpse before their Niman Kachina ceremonials—and it hadn't mattered. And then—Chee grinned again, savoring the cleverness of it—West had made certain that the official record would show Musket alive and well in Burnt Water after the corpse was found. That would kill any chance of matching dental charts. He would have done that, somehow, even if the body had been reported immediately.

Chee had this sorted out by the time his pickup made the long climb up the cliff of Moenkopi Wash, passed the Hopi village, and reached the Tuba City junction. By the time he'd reached Tuba City he reached another conclusion. West was hiding the body of Palanzer for the same reason he'd made Musket forever invisible. Palanzer-plus-Musket gave the owners of the cocaine an even more logical target for their rage.

Puddles from a rain do not long survive in a desert climate. The puddles in the track to Chee's mobile home had disappeared long ago. But the ruts were still soft and driving through them would cut them deeper. Chee parked the pickup, climbed out, and began walking the last fifty yards toward his home. There was still an occasional mutter of thunder from the north, but the sky now was a blaze of stars. Chee walked on the bunch grass, thinking that much of his problem still remained. There was absolutely nothing he could prove. All he would have for Captain Largo would be speculation. No. That wasn't true. Now the remains of John Doe could be identified—unless, of course, Musket had never been to a dentist. That wasn't likely. Chee enjoyed the night, the washed-clean smell of the air. The smell, suddenly, of brewing coffee.

Chee stopped in his tracks. Coffee! From where? He stared at his trailer. Dark and silent. It was the only possible source of that rich aroma. He had placed the trailer here under this lonely cottonwood for privacy and isolation. The site gave him that. The nearest other possible coffeepot was a quarter mile away. Someone was waiting in his dark trailer. They'd grown impatient. In the darkness, they'd brewed coffee. Chee turned and walked rapidly back toward his truck. The trailer produced a sudden clatter of sound. They'd been watching since he'd driven up and parked. They'd seen him turn away. Chee's walk became a run. He had his ignition key in his hand by the time he jerked the pickup door open. He heard the trailer door bang open, the sound of running feet. Then he had the key in the ignition. The still-warm motor roared into life. Chee slammed the gears into reverse, flicked on the headlights.

The lights illuminated two running men. One of them was the younger of the two men Chee had noticed watching him in the Hopi Cultural Center dining room. The other man Chee had seen hunting at the crash site, helping Johnson in his search for the suitcases. The younger man had a pistol in his hand. Chee switched off the lights and sent the pickup truck roaring backward down the track. He didn't turn on the headlights again until he was back on the asphalt.