The Witch's Tongue (34 page)

“So understood.” The fed nodded at the prisoner. “You may continue.”

“What happened,” Navarone said, “was Eddie bopped Jake upside of the head—knocked him right off the ledge and down into Snake Canyon.”

“
KING KONG
,” Moon said.

Parris turned to his friend with a quizzical look. “What?”

“The lady under the spotted lizard may’ve been a little bit drunk, but Kicks Dogs wasn’t quite asleep and she wasn’t altogether dreaming. She saw King Kong fall off the Empire State Building. Heard him hit the street with a
thump!
”

The chief of the GCPD shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

ON THE
video display, Felix Navarone continued his narrative.

“
WHEN HE
knocked Jake off the edge of the mesa, dopey old Eddie tripped over his own feet and fell down and banged his knee on a rock. He was limping some, but he followed me down the trail into the canyon to check on Jake. Right off we could tell that nasty old Ute was dead. Eddie says, ‘Felix—we gotta get outta here.’ I says, ‘Look, this Ute must have a camp around here someplace. And unless he walked ten miles in or rode a horse, he must have some wheels up there on the mesa, ‘cause that’s the only way to drive in.’ Then I searched Jake, and found a car key in his pocket. ‘When he turns up missing,’ I says to Eddie, ‘those Ute cops will send some people out to look for him. Maybe somebody knows he’s here, maybe not. But either way we’ll be a lot better off if there’s no sign left of his camp. And we gotta move his car a few miles up the road.’ Eddie says, ‘Yeah—we need to make it look like Jake was somewhere else.’ I say, ‘Eddie, I’ll hide Jake’s body someplace. And if I can find his camp, I’ll clean it up so nobody’ll know he was in the canyon. While I’m doing that, you go up on the mesa and look for his wheels.’ Eddie complains some about his knee, but says he guesses he can make it back up the trail if he takes his time. So I give Eddie Jake’s car key and that’s what we did. After Eddie hikes back up onto the mesa, it didn’t take him very long to find Jake’s clunky old Dodge van. And it didn’t take me but a coupla minutes to find the place where Jake was camped. It was right there in Snake Canyon, and not far from where he landed when he fell off the mesa. But this is the strange part—Jake had dug a big hole where he’d set up camp, and he’d covered it up with a buffalo robe. It looked like a grave.” Felix Navarone’s face twisted into a puzzled expression. “Maybe he
knew
he was gonna die that night.” He turned to his lawyer. “Sometimes they do.”

She nodded, as if this made perfect sense.

The Apache proceeded with his confession: “Anyway, I put Jake’s body in the hole and covered it up with rocks and dirt and smoothed it over real nice. Right then, it starts to snow, and it’s about time for the sun to come up. So I picked up his gear and lugged it up the trail to the top of Three Sisters Mesa. I found Eddie, and we stashed Jake’s stuff in his Dodge van.”

PARRIS STOPPED
the tape, turned to eye the tribal investigator. “You have any idea why Mr. Gourd Rattle dug a trench in ground?”

Moon got up to refill his coffee cup. “Like the Apache said—it was a grave.”

“Grave for who?”

“Jacob dug it for himself.”

“You figure he intended to commit suicide?”

“No.” Moon stirred in six spoons of sugar. “Jacob went into Snake Canyon on a vision quest. He must’ve needed some kind of healing. The pit is used to ‘bury’ the visionary’s body—this is supposed to encourage the soul to go free. And the man seeking the vision must be alone. That’s why Jacob sent his wife away.”

“If you say so.” Parris glanced at the video monitor where the talkative Apache was frozen with his mouth gaped open. He pushed the VCR Play button. Navarone’s affliction with electronic lockjaw was instantly cured.

THE VERBAL
deposition was interrupted when a tough-looking young man brought a tray to the table. There was coffee and cream for the defense counsel, a Cherry Coke for the prisoner, a bowl of Ginger Snaps for anyone who wished to indulge. After the Justice Department employee disappeared off camera, Sour Face tapped his pencil on the table, waited for the prisoner to take a couple of swigs of the sugary drink. “So now you had possession of the dead man’s vehicle and his camping gear.”

Felix Navarone’s head bobbed in a nod. “Right.”

“Did you find any weapons in Mr. Gourd Rattle’s vehicle?”

Navarone got the go-ahead nod from his lawyer. “Yeah,” he said. “Eddie found a .22 pistol in the glove compartment. It was wrapped in a rag.”

The federal attorney reached under the table, produced a transparent evidence bag, pushed it across the table. “Mr. Navarone, is this the firearm your partner found in Mr. Gourd Rattle’s van?”

A shrug from the Apache. “Looks like it.”

“Who took possession of this firearm?”

“Eddie did.” An amused shrug. “That Navajo liked guns.”

The fed withdrew the evidence. “You have already stated that your intention was to leave Mr. Gourd Rattle’s vehicle and camping gear at some distance from the general area where his body and the stolen goods might be found.”

“That was the plan all right.” The prisoner seemed to be reading the fine print on the Coke can. “But sometimes things don’t work out the way you expect.” The videotaped felon paused to shake his head, grin at the beginning of his long string of bad luck. “It was stupid, I guess, but we never thought of Jake having somebody with him in Snake Canyon. It was two or three days later we heard about his woman waking up the next morning and finding her old man gone. I guess the snow must’ve covered up his grave by then. If Kicks Dogs hadn’t reported him missing—things might’ve turned out all right for me and Eddie.”

CHARLIE MOON
snatched the VCR control off Parris’s desk, pressed the Pause button.

Annoyed at this unseemly appropriation of his “clicker,” the chief of police glared at the presumptuous Ute. “Why did you do that?”

“It must be all the sugar and caffeine—I seem to have lost some of my excessive modesty.”

“I sense that you are about to make a brag.”

“I would rather make a buck.”

“I don’t doubt it. Give it your best shot.”

“Felix Navarone is about to tell us how Eddie Ganado lost his hair.” Charlie Moon grinned at Parris. “But you know that, ’cause you’ve already seen the tape. I, on the other hand, am not an overpaid administrator who waits to hear a confession. I am a real, working cop who has to figure out what’s going on
before
the bad guy spills his guts.”

“And you’re telling me you know.”

“If the price is right.”

A smile crinkled the corners of Parris’s mouth. “Are you suggesting a wager?”

Moon’s grin got wider. “You bet.”

“Very well, I think I will.” Parris reached for his billfold, emptied it of bills, laid all his money down.

The Ute took a look at the attractive stack of greenbacks. “How much is that?”

The chief of police assumed a superior expression. “I am so sure of winning that I did not bother to count it.”

Moon hesitated. “At the moment, I am a little short of hard cash.”

This produced a smirk on the white man’s face. “Go ahead—backwater if you’re having second thoughts.”

“Will you take my IOU?”

“Natch. Now tell me—how did Mr. Ganado lose his hair?”

“It was those little white spots on his skin that got me to thinking. It looked to me like Ganado was splashed with something hot.”

“Splashed?”

“As with a liquid. The kind which—when it’s under pressure—has a boiling point well in excess of two hundred and twelve Fahrenheit degrees. Naturally, this varies with the concentration of antifreeze.”

Parris looked glumly at his money, said a silent good-bye.

Moon was very pleased with himself. “Way I figure it, either Felix Navarone or Eddie Ganado was driving Jacob’s van away from Three Sisters Mesa when it broke down. But it must’ve been Eddie that stuck his head under the hood, trying to see was wrong—and Eddie’s hair got caught in the fan belt. Aside from getting scalped by an engine—”

“What?”

“Not Injun
—engine
.”

“Oh.”

“Like I was saying, aside from getting scalped by an internal combustion engine, that poor accident-prone Navajo got his head banged pretty hard against the radiator about six dozen times before Felix Navarone could shut off the motor and—”