Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] (4 page)

“We’ve got company,” Mrs. Breedlove said, barely raising her voice. “In here.”

Chee stood. A man wearing dusty jeans, a faded jean jacket with a torn sleeve, and well-worn boots walked into the room. He held a battered gray felt hat in his right hand.

“Mr. Chee,” said Mrs. Breedlove, “this is my brother Eldon. Eldon Demott.”

“Oh,” Demott said. “Hello.” He shifted his hat to his left hand and offered Chee the right one. His grip was like his sister’s and his expression was a mixture of curiosity, worry, and fatigue.

“They think they’ve found Hal,” Elisa Breedlove said. “You remember talking about that skeleton on Ship Rock. The Navajo police think it must be him.”

Demott was eyeing the little stack of climbing equipment on the table. He sighed, slapped the hat against his leg. “I was wrong then, if it really is Hal,” he said. “That makes him a better climber than I gave him credit for, climbing that sucker by himself and getting that high.” He snorted. “And a hell of a lot crazier, too.”

“Do you recognize any of this?” Chee asked, indicating the equipment.

Demott picked up the nylon belt and examined it. He was a small man. Wiry. A man built of sun-scorched leather, bone, and gristle, with a strong jaw and a receding hairline that made him look older than he probably was.

“It’s pretty faded out but it used to be red,” he said, and tossed it back to the tabletop. He looked at his sister, his face full of concern and sympathy. “Hal’s was red, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” she said.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “And how about this jumar? Didn’t you fix one for Hal once?”

“By God,” Demott said, and picked it up. It reminded Chee of an oversized steel pretzel with a sort of ratchet device connected. Chee had wondered about it and concluded that the ratchet would allow a rope to slip in one direction and not the other. Thus, it must be used to allow a climber to pull himself up a cliff. Demott obviously knew what it was for. He was examining the place where the ratchet had been welded to the steel.

“I remember I couldn’t fix it. Hal and you took it into Mancos and had Gus weld it,” Demott said to Elisa. “It sure looks like the same one.”

“I guess we can close this up then,” Chee said. “I don’t see any reason for you going down to Shiprock to look at the bones. Unless you want to.”

Demott was inspecting one of the climbing shoes. “The soles must be all the same,” he said. “At least all I ever saw was just soft, smooth rubber like this. And his were white. And he had little feet, too.” He glanced at Elisa. “How about the clothing? That look like Hal’s?”

“The jacket, yes,” she said. “I think that’s Hal’s jacket.”

Something in her tone caused Chee to glance back at her. She held her lips pressed together, face tense, determined somehow not to cry. Her brother didn’t see that. He was studying the artifacts on the table.

“It’s pretty tore up,” Demott said, poking the clothing with a finger. “You think coyotes? But from what the paper said, it would be too high for them.”

“Way too high,” Chee said.

“Birds, then,” Demott said. “Ravens. Vultures and—” He cut that off, with a repentant glance at Elisa.

Chee picked up the evidence valise and stuffed the tattered clothing into it, getting it out of Elisa’s sight.

“I think I should go to Shiprock,” Elisa said. She looked away from Chee and out the window. “To take care of things. Hal would have wanted to be cremated, I think. And his ashes scattered in the San Juan Mountains.”

“Yeah,” Demott said. “Over in the La Plata range. On Mount Hesperus. That was his very favorite.”

“We call it Dibe Nitsaa,” Chee said. He thought of a dead man’s ashes drifting down on serene slopes that the spirit called First Man had built to protect the Navajos from evil. First Man had decorated the mountain with jet-black jewelry to fend off all bad things. But what could protect it from the invincible ignorance of this white culture? These were good, kind people, he thought, who wouldn’t knowingly use corpse powder, the Navajo symbol for the ultimate evil, to desecrate a holy place. But then climbing Ship Rock to prove that man was the dominating master of the universe was also a desecration.

“It’s our Sacred Mountain of the North,” Chee said. “Was that what Mr. Breedlove was trying to do? Put his feet on top of all our sacred places?” Having said it, Chee instantly regretted it. This was not the time or place to show his resentment.

He glanced at Demott, who was looking at him, surprised. But Elisa Breedlove was still staring out the window.

“Hal wasn’t like that,” she said. “He was just trying to find some happiness,” she said. “Nobody had ever taught him anything about sacred things. The only god the Breedloves ever worshiped was cast out of gold.”

“I don’t think Hal knew anything about your mythology,” Demott agreed. “It’s just that Hesperus is over thirteen thousand feet and an easy climb. I like them high and easy and I guess Hal did, too.”

Chee considered that. “Why Ship Rock, then? I know it’s killed some people. I’ve heard it’s one of the hardest climbs.”

“Yeah,” Demott said. “Why Ship Rock? And why by himself? And if he wasn’t by himself, how come his friends just left him there? Didn’t even report it.”

Chee didn’t comment on that. Elisa was still staring blindly out the window.

“How high did he get?” Demott asked.

Chee shrugged. “Close to the top, I think. I think the rescue party said the skeleton was just a couple hundred feet down from the crest.”

“I knew he was good, but if he got that high all by himself he was even better than I thought,” Demott said. “He’d gotten past the hardest parts.”

“He’d always wanted to climb Ship Rock,” Elisa said. “Remember?”

“I guess so,” Demott said thoughtfully. “I remember him talking about climbing El Diente and Lizard’s Head. I thought they were next on his agenda.” He turned to Chee, frowning. “Have you fellows looked into who else he might have climbed with? I have trouble believing he did that alone. I guess he could have and he was reckless enough to try it. But it damn sure wouldn’t be easy. Not getting that high.”

“It’s not a criminal case,” Chee said. “We’re just trying to close up an old missing person file.”

“But who the hell would go off and leave a fallen man like that? Not even report so the rescue people could go get him? You think they was afraid you Navajos would arrest ’em for trespassing?” He shook his head. “Or the way things are now, maybe they thought they’d get sued.” He laughed, put on his hat. “But I got to get moving. Good to meet you, Mr. Chee,” he said, and was gone.

“I’ve got to be going, too,” Chee said. He dumped the rest of the equipment in the valise.

She walked with him to the door, opened it for him. He pulled at the valise zipper, then stopped. He should really leave this stuff with her. She was the widow. It was her property.

“Mr. Chee,” she said. “The skeleton. Were the bones all broken up?”

“No,” Chee said. “Nothing broken. And all the joints were still articulated.”

From Elisa’s expression he first thought she didn’t understand that anthropology jargon. “I mean, the skeleton was all together in one piece. And nothing was broken.”

“Nothing was broken?” she repeated.

“Nothing.” And then he realized the expression reflected disbelief. And shock.

Why shock? Had Mrs. Breedlove expected her husband’s body to be broken apart? Why would she? If he asked her why, she’d say it must have been a long fall.

He zipped the valise closed. He’d keep these artifacts from the Fallen Man, at least for a while.

H
E MET JANET AT THE CARRIAGE INN in Farmington, halfway between his trailer at Shiprock and the San Juan County courthouse at Aztec where she had been defending a Checkerboard Reservation Navajo on a grand theft charge. He arrived late— but not very late—and her kidding about his watch being on Navajo time lacked its usual vigor. She looked absolutely used up, he thought. Beautiful but tired, and maybe the fatigue explained the diminution of the usual spark, of the delight he usually sensed in her when she first saw him. Or maybe it was because he was weary himself. Anyway, just being with her, seeing her across the table, cheered him. He took her hand.

“Janet, you work too hard,” Chee said. “You should marry me and let me take you away from all this.”

“I intend to marry you,” she said, rewarding him with a weary smile. “You keep forgetting that. But all you do is keep making more work for me. Arresting these poor innocent people.”

“That sounds to me like you won today,” Chee said. “Charmed the jury again?”

“It didn’t take any charm. This time it wouldn’t have been reasonable to have even a reasonable doubt. His brother-in-law did it and the state cops totally screwed up the investigation.”

“Do you have to go right back to Window Rock tomorrow? Why not take a day off? Tell ’em you are doing the post-trial paperwork. Maybe preparing a false arrest suit or something.”

“Ah, Jim,” she said. “I have to drive down there tonight.”

“Tonight! That’s crazy. That’s more than two hours on a dangerous road,” he said. “You’re tired. Get some sleep. What’s the hurry?”

She looked apologetic. Shrugged. “No choice, Jim. I’d love to stay over. Can’t do it. Duty calls.”

“Ah, come on,” Chee said. “Duty can wait.”

Janet squeezed his hand. “Really,” she said. “I have to go to Washington. On a bunch of legal stuff with Justice and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I have to be there day after tomorrow ready to argue.” She shrugged, made a wry face. “So I have to pack tonight and drive to Albuquerque tomorrow to catch my plane.”

Chee picked up the menu, said, “Like I’ve been telling you, you work way too hard.” He tried to keep it out, but the disappointment again showed in his voice.

“And as I told you, it’s the fault of you policemen,” she said, smiling her tired smile. “Arresting too many innocent people.”

“I haven’t had much luck at arresting people lately,” he said. “I can’t even catch any guilty ones.”

The Carriage Inn had printed a handsome menu on which nothing changed but the prices. Variety was provided by the cooks, who came and went. Chee decided to presume that the current one was adept at preparing Mexican foods.

“Why not try the chile rellenos?”

Janet grimaced. “That’s what you said last time. This time I’m trying the fish.”

“Too far from the ocean for fish,” Chee said. But now he remembered that his last time here the cook had converted the rellenos to something like leather. Maybe he’d order the chicken-fried steak.

“It’s trout,” Janet said. “A local fish. The waiter told me they steal ’em out of the fish hatchery ponds.”

“Okay then,” Chee said. “Trout for me, too.”

“You look totally worn-out,” she said. “Is Captain Largo getting to be too much for you?”

“I spent the day with a redneck New Mexico brand inspector,” Chee said. “We drove all the way up to Mancos with him talking every inch of the way. Then back again, him still talking.”

“About what? Cows?”

“People. Mr. Finch works on the theory that you catch cattle rustlers by knowing everything about everybody who owns cattle. I guess it’s a pretty good system, but then he passed all that information along to me. You want to know anything about anybody who raises cows in the Four Corners area? Or hauls them? Or runs feedlots? Just ask me.”

“Finch?” she said. “I’ve run into him twice in court.” She shook her head, smiling.

“Who won?”

“He did. Both times.”

“Oh, well,” Chee said. “It’s too bad, but sometimes justice triumphs over you public defenders. Were your clients guilty?”

“Probably. They said they weren’t. But this Finch guy is smart.”

Chee did not want to talk about Finch.

“You know, Janet,” he said. “Sometime we need to talk about…”

She put down the menu and looked at him over her glasses. “Sometime, but not tonight. What took you and Mr. Finch to Mancos?”

No. Not tonight, Chee thought. They would just go over the same ground. She’d say that if the police were doing their jobs properly there really wasn’t a conflict of interest if a public defender was the wife of a cop. And he’d say, yeah, but what if the cop had arrested the very guy she was defending and was a witness? What if she were cross-examining her own husband as a hostile witness? And she’d fall back on her Stanford Law School lecture notes and tell him that all she wanted to extract from anyone was the exact truth. And he’d say, but sometimes the lawyer isn’t after quite 100 percent of the truth, and she’d say that some evidence can’t be admitted, and he’d say, as an attorney it would be easy for her to get a job with a private firm, and she’d remind him he’d turned down an offer from the Arizona Department of Public Safety and was a cinch for a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs law-and-order division if he would take it. And he’d say, that would mean leaving the reservation, and she’d say, why not? Did he want to spend his life here? And that would open a new can of worms. No. Tonight he’d let her change the subject.

The waiter came. Janet ordered a glass of white wine. Chee had coffee.

“I went to Mancos to tell a widow that we’d found her husband’s skeleton,” Chee said. “Mr. Finch went along because it gave him an excuse to contemplate the cows in the lady’s feedlot.”

“All you found were dry bones? Her husband must have been away a lot. I’ll bet he was a policeman,” she said, and laughed.

Chee let that pass.

“Was it the skeleton they spotted up on Ship Rock about Halloween?” she asked, sounding mildly repentant.

Chee nodded. “He turned out to be a guy named Harold Breedlove. He owned a big ranch near Mancos.”

“Breedlove,” Janet said. “That sounds familiar.” The waiter came—a lanky, rawboned Navajo who listened attentively to Janet’s questions about the wine and seemed to understand them no better than did Chee. He would ask the cook. About the trout he was on familiar ground. “Very fresh,” he said, and hurried off.

Janet was looking thoughtful. “Breedlove,” she said, and shook her head. “I remember the paper said there was no identification on him. So how’d you get him identified? Dental chart?”

“Joe Leaphorn had a hunch,” Chee said.

“The legend-in-his-own-time lieutenant? I thought he’d retired.”

“He did,” Chee said. “But he remembered a missing person case he’d worked on way back. This guy who disappeared was a mountain climber and an inheritance was involved, and—”

“Hey,” Janet said. “Breedlove. I remember now.”

Remember what? Chee thought. And why? This had happened long before Janet had joined the DNA, and become a resident reservation Navajo instead of one in name only, and entered his life, and made him happy. His expression had a question in it.

“From when I was with Granger-hyphen-Smith in Albuquerque. Just out of law school,” she said. “The firm represented the Breedlove family. They had public land grazing leases, some mineral rights deals with the Jicarilla Apaches, some water rights arrangements with the Utes.” She threw out her hands to signify an endless variety of concerns. “There were some dealings with the Navajo Nation, too. Anyway, I remember the widow was having the husband declared legally dead so she could inherit from him. The family wanted that looked into.”

She stopped, looking slightly abashed. Picked up the menu again. “I’ll definitely have the trout,” she said.

“Were they suspicious?” Chee asked.

“I presume so,” she said, still looking at the menu. “I remember it did look funny. The guy inherits a trust and two or three days later he vanishes. Vanishes under what you’d have to consider unusual circumstances.”

The waiter came. Chee watched Janet order trout, watched the waiter admire her. A classy lady, Janet. From what Chee had learned about law firms as a cop, lawyers didn’t chat about their clients’ business to rookie interns. It was unethical. Or at least unprofessional.

He knew the answer but he asked it anyway. “Did you work on it? The looking into it?”

“Not directly,” Janet said. She sipped her water.

Chee looked at her.

She flushed slightly. “The Breedlove Corporation was John McDermott’s client. His job,” she said. “I guess because he handled all things Indian for the firm. And the Breedlove family had all these tribal connections.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I guess not,” Janet said. “I don’t remember the family having us intervene in the case.”

“The family?” Chee said. “Do you remember who, specifically?”

“I don’t,” she said. “John was dealing with an attorney in New York. I guess he was representing the rest of the Breedloves. Or maybe the family corporation. Or whatever.” She shrugged. “What did you think of Finch, aside from him being so talkative?”

John, Chee thought. John. Professor John McDermott. Her old mentor at Stanford. The man who had hired her at Albuquerque when he went into private practice there, and took her to Washington when he transferred, and made her his mistress, used her, and broke her heart.

“I wonder what made them suspicious?” Chee said. “Aside from the circumstances.”

“I don’t know,” Janet said.

Their trout arrived. Rainbows, neatly split, neatly placed on a bed of wild rice. Flanked by small carrots and boiled new potatoes. Janet broke off a tiny piece of trout and ate it.

Beautiful, Chee thought. The perfect skin, the oval face, the dark eyes that expressed so much. He found himself wishing he was a poet, a singer of ballads. Chee knew a lot of songs but they were the chants the shaman sings at the curing ceremonials, recounting the deeds of the spirits. No one had taught him how to sing to someone as beautiful as this.

He ate a bite of trout.

“If I had been driving a patrol car yesterday instead of my old pickup,” he said, “I could have given a speeding ticket to a guy driving a white Porsche convertible. Really flying. But I was driving my truck.”

“Wow,” Janet said, looking delighted. “My favorite car. I have a fantasy about tooling around Paris in one of those. With the top down.”

Maybe she looked happy because he was changing the subject. Moving away from unhappy ground. But to Chee the trout now seemed to have no taste at all.