The Shape Shifter (29 page)

Delonie groaned now and then from his back seat location when they jarred over a rough place. Otherwise, it was quiet in the truck. Not that there was nothing to say.

It was a matter of being too tired for conversation.

Leaphorn yawned, rubbed his eyes.

“If I doze off, Tommy, you need to remember when we get to Lumberton you have to take the left turn. Toward Dulce. We stop at the Jicarilla Health Clinic there. Leave Mr. Delonie with them.”

“Like hell,” Delonie said. “You go off and leave me, how do I get back to my place?”

“Somebody will offer to take you,” Leaphorn said.

“They’re generous people.”

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“Oh, yeah. That’s not what I’ve heard you Navajos say about the Apaches.”

“Just offer to pay them something then,” Leaphorn said. He was tired of Delonie. Or maybe just tired in general. He leaned against the door. Yawned again. Dozed.

Came suddenly awake when Tommy braked for a stop sign at Gobernador.

“Turn left here,” Tommy said. “Right?”

“Right,” Leaphorn said.

When he awoke again, Tommy was tapping his arm.

“Dulce,” Tommy said. “Here’s the clinic.” Leaphorn opened the door, got out, stiff and sore but happy to see Delonie was getting out, too. He’d expected an argument.

“I guess you’re right,” Delonie said. “This arm is just aching now but this place in the ribs, it’s really hurting.

What do we call it? Hunting accident?”

“That’s what they’ll be expecting,” Leaphorn said.

“How about you were climbing up some rocks, the rifle fell, went off, shot you in the arm, and then you crashed down over some other rocks. Banged up your ribs.”

“I think that sounds reasonable,” Delonie said.

The triage nurse who checked Delonie in didn’t seem suspicious. But the young Apache doctor who took over seemed to have his doubts. He raised his eyebrows, looked at Leaphorn’s identification as well as Delonie’s, shook his head, got Delonie to lie on a gurney, and made another careful inspection of rib damages.

“Fell on some rocks, huh?” he said, looking up from Delonie’s rib cage at Leaphorn and making it sound like a question. “You see it happen?”

“Didn’t see it until after it happened,” Leaphorn said.

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“That rifle of his didn’t accidentally shoot him twice, did it?”

Leaphorn responded with a weak smile and a negative head shake.

“Whatever, then,” the doctor said, and rolled Delonie down the hall to wherever he intended to patch him up.

Leaphorn was asleep again before Tommy Vang got them out of Dulce, awake again momentarily the next time the truck stopped. He remained conscious long enough to ask Tommy where they were and what time it was. Tommy said Farmington and almost noon. Leaphorn said, “Due north now to Crownpoint,” and Tommy laughed, said, “You just go back to sleeping, Lieutenant. I remember where we left your pickup.”

Leaphorn did go back to sleep, and by the time they rolled into the Navajo Tribal Police substation at Crownpoint, he suddenly found himself sort of dazed, but finally wide awake.

He looked at his watch. “You made good time, Tommy.

Did some violating of the speeding laws, I guess.”

“Yes. Went very fast sometimes,” Tommy said, grinning as he said it. “I’m in a hurry to get home. I’ve been gone about thirty years.”

And he demonstrated that hurry by speeding out of the police parking lot while Leaphorn was still climbing wearily into his own truck. But he did lean out the driver’s-side window to give Leaphorn a farewell wave.

24

And now three rest and recuperation days had passed.

The Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, was sampling a grape from the basket of goodies he had brought with him to welcome former Navajo Tribal policewoman Bernadette Manuelito, now Mrs. Jim Chee, and Sergeant Chee back from their honeymoon trip to Hawaii. And Bernadette was frowning at him, looking incredulous.

“You’re saying that’s the last time you saw this Tommy Vang? He just drove away? And you just got in your truck and came back here?”

“Well, yes,” Leaphorn said. “Of course we shook hands. He said he’d call me. Took down my number and address and all that. And we wished each other luck. All that sort of thing.”

Bernie was refilling his coffee cup, looking even prettier than he remembered, but not totally happy with
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him at the moment. No matter, Leaphorn was feeling fine. Rested, refreshed, enjoying the sweet smell of the autumn breeze drifting in through those pretty white curtains, bordered with lace, which replaced the grimy blinds that once obscured the windows, noticing that this little room seemed larger now and no longer assaulted his nostrils with what he had thought of as the Jim smell, the odor of some sort of special lubricant Sergeant Chee always used on his pistol, his holster, belt, uniform straps, probably his shoes, and maybe even on his toothbrush.

Now the place smelled . . . he couldn’t think of a name for it. It simply smelled good. Sort of like that subtle perfume scent Bernie sometimes used. And through the open window, the breeze brought in the hooting sound of a dove, the chittering of robins nesting by the river, and assorted whistles and chirps of the various birds the changing seasons brought to this bend in the San Juan River. He could even hear the faint sound of the river itself gurgling along just below Chee’s old trailer home. Ah, Leaphorn was thinking, how good it is to be in home territory again.

How good it is to be retired.

But Bernie was still thinking of Tommy Vang.

“Don’t you wonder how he can possibly handle all that by himself ? I mean, getting back to Laos, wasn’t it?

Wouldn’t there be all sorts of visa problems? Things like that. And I’ll bet he didn’t even have a passport. And how about the money? You haven’t explained that.”

“Well,” Leaphorn said. And would have said more, but Chee interjected himself into the conversation.

“Bernie cares about people,” he said. “She’s a sort of dedicated worrier.”

“Maybe she should have started worrying a little ear-THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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lier,” Leaphorn said. “Done some serious worrying about what she was getting into here.”

Bernadette Manuelito Chee laughed. “No,” she said.

“Now I just add Jim to the list of people I have to worry about.”

“What I’m curious about,” said Chee, changing the subject, “is why you got involved in this in the first place.

That call you made about the Totter obituary, for example.

You still haven’t explained that. I’d like to know what that was all about.”

“I’ll try to explain that,” Leaphorn said. “But first let me give Bernie some assurance that Tommy Vang can take care of himself. Tommy had been sort of a travel agent for Delos for years, as well as cook, valet, pants presser, and so forth. He’d arrange Delos’s trips, make the reservations, get the tickets, all that sort of thing. Do it by telephone, or sometimes online with the computer, I guess. Used Delos’s credit cards. I think he worked with a Flagstaff travel agency. They knew him. Even got Delos his boarding passes. No standing in line for Delos.” Bernie was not quite satisfied. “But how about the official stuff ? Travel documents. I guess he wouldn’t need a passport to travel within this country, but if you’re going to another country, doesn’t the airline want to see if you have what it takes to land there?”

Leaphorn nodded. Thinking that was exactly the question that had troubled him. Still did a little, for that matter. But it hadn’t troubled Vang. He’d asked Tommy, and Tommy said Mr. Delos had lots of passports, lots of visa papers. From where? And Tommy said lots of blank forms from lots of countries, and eleven or twelve different passports in his travel file there in his office. “From
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different countries and with different pictures stuck in them, loose, to stick a new one in if he needed to look different.”

Bernie was looking skeptical. Leaphorn nodded. But Bernie wanted a better answer.

“So that’s how he gets on the plane then. Just uses phony papers. Same with getting off in Thailand, or Laos, or where he’s going?”

“Well, Tommy didn’t seem to have any worries about that. At least he told me he didn’t.”

“Just phony documents,” Bernie said.

“Come on, Bernie,” Chee said. “This Vang fellow knows his way around. I wouldn’t worry about him so much. But I’d like to know about some other things.

Where did he get his traveling money, for example, and just what happened to Mr. Delos? I’m guessing he must be dead. But how did that happen? And what happened to the truck Tommy Vang was driving?”

“The truck!” Bernie said, and laughed.

“I don’t know for sure about the truck,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe he drove it to Phoenix, left it in the airport parking garage, or maybe he left it parked at the Delos house in Flagstaff, and called the limo service Delos used and had them drive him to the airport. Either way, I guess the truck gets hauled off and impounded eventually. As for the other questions, I have to pause here a moment and explain something. Something personal.”

“Oh,” Bernie said.

While he thought about how he was going to do that explaining, he noticed Chee staring at him, looking grim and determined.

“No heirs, you think?” Chee asked, still concerned THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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about the future of the truck. “No Delos family back there somewhere?”

“I hope so,” Leaphorn said. “If they show up to claim that mansion of his and his property, I would dearly love to talk to them. Find out who this man was. Where he came from. All that.”

“You don’t know?” Bernie said.

Leaphorn shook his head.

“You haven’t told us much of anything about what happened to Mr. Delos, Lieutenant,” Jim Chee said. “We sort of gather that he must be dead. But what happened to him?”

Leaphorn sipped the coffee, which was much, much better than the coffee he’d remembered drinking here in Jim Chee’s home before Bernie had become Mrs. Chee.

“Sergeant Chee,” Leaphorn said. “Bernie has not yet been sworn in again as Officer Bernadette Manuelito.

Correct me, make that Officer Bernadette Chee. But I gather she will soon be back in Navajo Tribal Police uniform and resuming her duties. So you both will be sworn to uphold the law. Right?”

That provoked raised eyebrows but no answers.

“Therefore, I want you to know that if you manage to pry everything out of me, a former lawman but now retired to full standing as a
lay
man, you might find yourself with some decisions to make. And if you make them wrong, I might find myself, ah, possibly in trouble.” Chee looked glum. Bernie made a horrified face.

“A homicide? A murder? What in the world happened?”

“Let’s just drift off into a sort of vague fantasy,” Leaphorn said. “Remember this as a sort of tale-telling session. An exercise of flights of imagination. Now skip
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to the future. Imagine yourself under oath, being questioned. You are being asked what Joe Leaphorn told you about this Delos affair. I want you to be able to say that Leaphorn, old, in his dotage, and widely known in law enforcement as a tale teller, had just rambled along with a sort of fantastic account involving a shape-shifter version of skinwalkers, poisoned cherries, and things like that.

Very fantastic, not something to be taken seriously.” Chee didn’t look happy with this. “In other words, you’re not going to tell us if Delos was killed, and if so, who killed him, or any of that sort of stuff.”

“In other words,” Leaphorn said, settling back comfortably in his chair, “I am going to suggest you imagine that this Delos has gone off to one of those private hunting places on the Colorado-New Mexico border to shoot himself a trophy elk, and that he’s ordered Tommy Vang to run an errand first, and then come to the hunting cabin to pick him up, bringing along a report on what he has accomplished. You with me?”

“I guess,” Chee said, looking unhappy.

“All right, then. We’ll imagine that Leaphorn, newly retired and feeling sort of bored and disconnected, decided he wanted to make amends with an elderly woman he had offended when he was starting his police work.

And let’s imagine that led him to cross paths with a skinwalker—one of the shape-shifter variety, who about a quarter century earlier had stolen ten gallons of pinyon sap from a lady known as Grandma Peshlakai. This shape shifter had once called himself Perkins, then other un-known names, probably, and then Ray Shewnack. When their paths first crossed, he had quit using Shewnack and was calling himself Totter. You still following?” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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“Go ahead,” Bernie said. “We’re listening.” So Leaphorn went ahead with this fantasy. The only major interruption came when Chee stopped him, con-tending that cherries couldn’t be used to poison people because the poison would make them taste too terrible to swallow. Leaphorn handled that by referring Jim to the textbook on criminal poisoning, in which the tasteless, odorless, water-soluble poison was described, and from that to the still-unsolved murder of Mel Bork, in which Bork fell victim to a poisoned cherry. From that point he skipped ahead, with neither Chee nor Bernie stopping him with questions.