The Shape Shifter (26 page)

“Oh yes,” Vang said. “I told you right. You see that little bit of white on top of that bush. Beside the house?

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See? It sort of moves when the breeze blows? That’s a white towel.”

Delonie said, “Towel?”

Leaphorn said, “Where?”

“Look at the bushes right by the uphill side of the house. Beyond the porch. On the bush.”

“That could be anything. Piece of some sort of trash caught there,” Delonie said.

Leaphorn moved the scope. Found bushes, saw a wee bit of white amid the green, looked again. Yep.

“I see it now,” he said, and handed the scope to Delonie. He said, “Mr. Vang, you got damn good eyesight. But Delonie is right. It could be anything.”

“Yes,” Vang said. “But I remember Mr. Delos told me when he went hunting he would hang out a white towel there, and when he came back from hunting, he would take it in. That was so I would know to wait for him.”

“Well, now,” Delonie said, “if Mr. Vang here is telling us right, I guess we could walk right up there and make ourselves at home.”

Leaphorn had no comment on that. He held his wrist-watch close enough to read its hands, looked out at the brightening sky, and found himself confronting the same need for self-analysis he’d felt a few days ago when he was home alone, analyzing what he had run into since he’d begun this chase of Mel Bork and the tale-teller rug.

Wondering if he had slipped prematurely into senile de-mentia. Why was he here and what did he expect to accomplish? He couldn’t quite imagine that. But on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine turning back either. So they may as well get on with it.

“Here’s what I think we should do,” Leaphorn said.

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“Mr. Vang will stay in the truck here. Sitting behind the steering wheel. Like the driver doing just what Mr. Delos probably was expecting to find. Is that right, Tommy?”

“I think so. This is what he told me to do.”

“Then Mr. Delonie and I will get out and find us a place where we can sit and watch for Mr. Delos to come back.

Either we’ll sit together, or close enough so that when Mr.

Delonie gets a good enough look to make sure he knows who it is, he can signal me, one way or another.”

“Um,” Delonie said, “then what?”

Leaphorn had been hoping he wouldn’t ask that. “I guess it will depend on a lot of things.”

“Tell me,” Delonie said. “Like what?”

“Like whether when you see him you tell us he is this Shewnack. Or whether you tell us he isn’t, and you don’t know who he is.”

“If he ain’t Shewnack, I’d vote for just driving right on out of here. Heading right on home.”

“I guess we might do that,” Leaphorn agreed. “But I’d think if it’s Delos, then I think you have some questions you’d like to ask him about that bottle of poisoned cherries he sent you. I know I’m curious about the one on top of that slice of fruitcake he sent me off with.” Delonie snorted. “He’ll point at Tommy Vang here and tell us Vang must have done that. Tell us that Tommy has been sort of crazy ever since he was a kid. All mixed up by all that violence back in Laos, or wherever it was.”

While he was listening to that, Leaphorn was thinking that Delonie was probably right. That was just about what Delos would say. And it might even be true. But if he was going to play out this game, he had better get moving. He THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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opened the truck door, which turned on the interior light, and quickly shut it.

“Let’s minimize the light,” he said to Delonie. “When I say ready, we both hop out and shut the doors behind us. Then Vang can climb over into where he’s supposed to be sitting.”

“First off,” Delonie said, “you hand me back my rifle.”

“I’ll carry it,” Leaphorn said.

“I’ll put the scope back on it,” Delonie said. “Can’t use the scope here in this closed space with it tied to a rifle barrel. But get it outside and it’s better.” Leaphorn considered this.

“I’ll tell you this, too. I ain’t getting out of this truck without that rifle,” Delonie said. “If it’s Shewnack, he’d kill me on sight. I want to have something to protect myself with.”

“So do I,” Leaphorn said. “I want to protect myself from going to jail with you if you shoot him.”

“Don’t trust me?”

“You think I should?”

Delonie laughed. Punched Leaphorn on the shoulder.

“Okay,” he said. “You keep that pistol I’ve noticed has been bulging out of your jacket pocket. I’ll take my rifle.

And I promise you I won’t kill the son of a bitch unless it comes to downright self-defense. No other choice.” He held out his hand. Leaphorn shook it.

“Now,” he said. “We get out.”

They did, quickly, and Leaphorn handed Delonie the rifle over the hood of the truck.

“Noticed you handed it butt first,” Delonie said. “I appreciated that.”

“Just good manners,” Leaphorn said.

20

The place they found as their lookout point was in an outcropping of granite slabs where a healthy growth of Forestieria and willow had developed. Besides the camouflage, it also had a deep layer of decayed pine needles and aspen leaves, providing something to sit upon. They had concluded that the hunting blind this cabin served would be off to their right, probably up the ridge line less than a mile distant. There the slope was higher and more heavily forested with Ponderosa and fir, and it would look almost directly down on the stream they had been following.

From their own location, they would be looking down on a hunter returning to the cabin from the blind with his approaches pretty well covered. Pretty well, Leaphorn thought, but not perfect. If the man they were awaiting knew they were here, he would probably be smart enough to find a way to avoid them.

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His resting place gave Leaphorn a clear view of the cabin itself, and covered most of the open space the blind–to–cabin trail would cross. Delonie, ten or so yards to his left, had a slightly different angle. He sat now, rifle supported atop the slab he was positioned behind, scanning the landscape below through the scope. Looking fairly comfortable.

Leaphorn was not comfortable, not physically nor mentally. He was leaning against the granite behind him, his bottom resting on a bed of matted leaves mixed with chunks of rock. His mind had been going over and over and over the various scenarios that were about to unfold.

Finally he’d concluded that this was sheer guesswork and drifted off into even murkier territory. If a man did appear below, walking toward the cabin, carrying a rifle, which name could be applied to him? Mr. Delos, of course, was obvious. And Delonie would, perhaps, be seeing Mr.

Shewnack. But how about Mr. Totter, whose obituary had already been written, or how about the Special Operations CIA agent whose name was . . . ? Leaphorn couldn’t recall the name the FBI gossip had given the man. It didn’t matter anyway, because before that he’d probably had yet another name, yet another persona.

Leaphorn rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, shook his head. Too tired, too sleepy. But he didn’t want to doze. He wanted to remain alert. He was remembering shape-shifter stories he’d heard down the years.

His maternal grandmother telling them about a night when she was a little girl, out on the mountain watching the sheep, and about the man with the wolf’s head cape over his shoulders coming across the grass toward her, and about how, when her father came riding up, the man THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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had changed into a woman, and was running away, and how as she ran, she changed into a big brown bird and flew into the woods.

That was when he was too young for the school bus trip into the classrooms, but through the years he’d heard scores of other such tales of encounters with the
ye-na-l’o-si
, and the
an’t-i-zi
people who practiced other forms of witchcraft. The last really impressive story he’d heard came from the driver of a Kerr-McGee drilling rig. A Texan who’d never heard of skinwalkers or shape shifters or anything about Navajo witchcraft problems. Leaphorn remembered the young man, standing beside his truck, telling him about it. The driver said he’d had his truck in third gear, making the long climb on U.S. 163 from Kay-enta toward Mexican Hat. His load had been heavy and the engine was straining. Then he noticed this man running along beside the truck, waving at him to stop. He’d described the runner just as the skinwalkers are usually described—wearing something that looked like a wolf’s head. He’d checked his odometer and saw he was doing twenty-three miles an hour. Too damn fast for a normal human, he’d said, so when he got over the ridge he stepped on the gas.

Leaphorn could still see the driver, standing beside his truck at the Mexican Hat service station, looking puzzled and a little scared, telling his story, saying that it wasn’t until he got the truck up to almost fifty on the down slope that the man fell behind. “When I looked in the rearview mirror, there was nothing there but a big gray animal sitting beside the road. Looked like an oversized dog, to me. Now you’re an Indian policeman. How do you explain that?”

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And, of course, Leaphorn had to say he couldn’t.

Beside him Delonie stirred.

“Getting plenty light enough now for the elk to be out,” he said. “Our man should be getting—” Then came the sound of a shot, a sort of slapping sound, carried a long, long way on the still, cool morning air. Then came a second echo, followed by an even fainter one. A moment later, the clap sound of second shot, and a second series of echoes.

They sat in silence. The echoes died away. No third shot followed.

“What do you think?” Delonie asked. “He hit his elk and then finished him off. Or he missed him once. Or maybe he missed him twice?”

Leaphorn was seeing the row of trophy heads on the Delos wall.

“I’d say he shot his big bull elk twice,” he said.

“I was hoping he missed. The elk would have run away, and he’d be coming right back to get something to eat.”

“It doesn’t work that way here,” Leaphorn said. “The way Tommy described it to me, Mr. Delos doesn’t have to go out there and bleed what he shoots, and then get the carcass back to his truck like us common people. He gets on his cell phone, calls the ranch office, tells them he got his elk. And they know where, of course, because they set up the blind for him. Then they drive out and do the work for him.”

“Oh,” Delonie said. “I didn’t know they go that far.”

“Even farther,” Leaphorn said. “Vang told me they fly into the Flagstaff airport in their little Piper something or other, fly him back to the landing strip at the ranch, THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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and deliver him to that house down there. If Vang hadn’t brought that pickup truck in for him, he’d call them from here and they’d come and pick him up and then they’d fly him back to Flagstaff again. It all goes on the credit card, I guess.”

“So we wait for the bastard,” Delonie said.

They did. Minutes ticked by. The sky became brighter and brighter, with the fog banks rimming the mountains glowing, then turning a dazzling red, reflecting light from the cabin windows.

“Mr. Vang still out there in the pickup, I see,” Delonie said, breaking a long silence. “Looks like he might be asleep.”

“I’m close to that myself,” Leaphorn said. He rubbed his eyes again, took another hard look at the cabin, suddenly felt Delonie’s harsh whisper.

“There he is,” Delonie said. Pointing. “Down beyond the truck, coming out of the brush there by the creek.

Creeping along.”

“I see him now,” Leaphorn said. In the dim dawn light the figure seemed to be a tall man wearing a hat with floppy brims and what looked like the mixed gray-tan-green camouflage uniform modern hunters seem to favor, with a heavy-looking rifle hanging from its carrying strap over his left shoulder. Leaphorn glanced at Delonie, who was motionless, staring through the scope.

“Recognize him?”

“It could be Shewnack,” Delonie said. “Wish he’d take that damned hat off. I need better light to tell anything.” The figure was moving very slowly toward the rear of the pickup, as if the man was stalking it. He stopped behind the truck, motionless. Trying, Leaphorn guessed,
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to determine if he could see anything helpful through the rear window.

“He’s big and tall like Shewnack,” Delonie said, still staring through the scope. “I’d guess it could be him. But that hat covers too much of his face from this angle.”

“I think we better get closer. Maybe just go right on down.”

“Go down and knock that silly hat off of him,” Delonie said. “See what he’s got to say for himself.”

“Sooner the better,” Leaphorn said, pushing himself stiffly erect, feeling the reminder his leg muscles were sending him that he was getting older and was, techni-cally at least, in retirement. The groaning sound Delonie was making suggested he was feeling the same symptoms of elderliness.

They moved cautiously away from the granite outcrop and the brushy growth that had hidden them, Leaphorn feeling for the pistol in his jacket pocket, using thumb and forefinger to assure himself that the safety would slide off easily. Below them, the man in hunting garb was at the side of the truck now, opening the door, holding it open, Tommy Vang was climbing out, standing to face him. No handshake offered, Leaphorn noticed. Just talking. A big man to a little man. The big man making a gesture, which Leaphorn interpreted as angry. The big man taking Tommy by the arm, perhaps shaking him, although Leaphorn wasn’t sure of that. Then the two were walking toward the house, big man in front, Tommy following. And then the two disappeared onto the porch, out of sight.