Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 02] (20 page)

It was then that Leaphorn noticed the prayer plume. George must have been carrying it in his hand, holding it out, offering it. And when the bullet struck, the boy had fallen on it. It was beautifully made, its willow butt smoothed and painted, its blue-and-yellow songbird feathers neatly arranged. And tied to the willow with a thong was the cold stone symmetry of a perfect Stone Age lance point. This one unbroken—slender, formed with parallel flaking, a relic from seven or eight thousand years in the past—a perfect offering to the gods.

Leaphorn took off his jacket and spread it carefully over the face of George Bowlegs. From somewhere in the dark across the plaza he heard the brief sound of flutes and chanting as a door opened and closed at one of the Shalako houses. Behind him there was the mutter of conversation. Three people, huddled in their coats against the snow, hurried across the plaza and disappeared in the alley toward the Shalako house he had left. No one seemed to have heard the muffled shot. No one except whoever had seized the killer and pulled him into the empty house. Leaphorn walked back down the alley, keeping against the wall and examining the footprints in the snow. The killer had been running. He wore boots. Size ten, Leaphorn guessed. Perhaps eleven. Apparently he had seen Leaphorn after he had fired the shot. But as he passed this doorway someone, something, had stopped him. Leaphorn studied the trampled snow, but already the tracks were softened and blurred by fresh-falling flakes.

Inside the empty building, Leaphorn took his time. There was no longer any reason to hurry and he meticulously sorted out what the snow tracks had to tell him. There had been three persons wearing moccasins. Leading from the alley into the doorway there were drag marks left by boot heels. The moccasins trailed snow through two empty rooms, left fresh tracks in a third, roofless room, and then departed over a fallen wall onto the street. Here the tracks indicated that two of the men bore a heavy burden. Leaphorn followed them for perhaps fifty yards. The tracks were fading fast and he lost them where they crossed a village street that had been heavily used. He was motivated only by a mild curiosity now. Everything was finished.

Back in the alley, he stared down at the body of George Bowlegs. Snow had whitened Leaphorn's coat and the boy's too-small denims. Leaphorn squatted and picked up the dead boy, his arms under the legs and shoulders. He guessed he was again violating O'Malley's procedures by moving the body. But he would not allow this boy to lie here alone in the icy darkness. He walked out of the alley, cradling the body, surprised at how light it seemed. And then stopped, conscious of a final irony. He was taking Bowlegs home. But where was home for this boy who had hunted heaven?

INSIDE TED ISAACS' homemade camper, it was an odd mixture of hot and cold. Outside, the landscape was a white wilderness of blowing snow, and the camper groaned and creaked with the buffeting gusts. The kerosene heater roared, but icy air seeped through cracks and crevices, eddying around Leaphorn's snow-covered boots and up the legs of his trousers.

"I can't say I expected any company today," Isaacs said, "but I'm glad you came. When this lets up and they get the roads opened a little, I'm going to that commune and see about Susie. And I wanted to ask—"

"She left yesterday," Leaphorn said. "Halsey kicked her out. She went with me hunting for George Bowlegs Thursday and the last time I saw her she was at the Zuñi police station. That was about noon yesterday. The federal officers were talking to her."

"Where is she now?" Isaacs said. "Is she still there?"

"I don't know," Leaphorn said.

"My God!" Isaacs said. "I hope she isn't out in this snow." He looked at Leaphorn. "She didn't have anyplace to go."

"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "That's what I was telling you a couple of days ago." He didn't try to keep the anger from his voice. "Here, I came to bring you something." He fished the broken lance tip from his pocket and handed it to Isaacs.

"Parallel flaked," Isaacs said. "Where'd you fi…" His voice trailed off. He turned abruptly to the file case, jerked open a drawer, and rummaged. When he closed the drawer he had a second piece of flint in his hand.

"George Bowlegs had it," Leaphorn said. "He buried it where he killed a deer over southwest of here. Sort of a fetish offering."

Isaacs was staring at him.

"Does it match?" Leaphorn asked. "It does, doesn't it?"

"I think so." The anthropologist put both pieces on the Formica table, the broken butt he had slipped out of the envelope from the filing cabinet and the tip Bowlegs had buried. Both were of pinkish streaked silicified wood. Isaacs' fingers adjusted them. They fit perfectly.

Isaacs looked up, his face strained. "Man," he said. "If Reynolds finds out that boy got this, he'll kill me." He paused. "But how could he have gotten it? I never let him do any digging out there. Or any sorting, either. He couldn't have…"

"Cata gave it to him," Leaphorn said. "Cata stole it out of that box in the back of Reynolds' pickup truck, along with some other artifacts. Like I told you the last time I was out here. And he gave some of it to George."

"But Reynolds said nothing was missing," Isaacs said. He paused, staring at Leaphorn. "Wait a minute," he said. "He couldn't have gotten this out of Reynolds' truck. Reynolds couldn't have had it." He stopped again. Suddenly he looked sick.

"He couldn't have, but he did," Leaphorn said. "Reynolds was salting the site. Isn't that your word for it? Salting? Anyway, he was planting stuff for you to find."

"I don't believe it," Isaacs said. He sat down. His stricken face said he did believe it. His eyes were looking past Leaphorn at the wreckage of everything.

"Ernesto did his little bit of stealing just at the wrong time," Leaphorn said. "It spoiled a lot of work. Reynolds had gotten himself a supply of the sort of flint Folsom Man liked. That was easy enough. And then he prepared his evidence. I'd guess he made some bits and pieces of paralleled flaked artifacts. He'd have saved the chips and the broken stuff and all. And then he started roughing out some pressure-flaked Folsom-type artifacts from the very same patterned flint. He didn't really need the fine finished product—which you say is hard to counterfeit. All he needed was the unfinished, broken stuff." Leaphorn paused, waiting for Isaacs to say something. Isaacs stared blindly at the wall. "Maybe the Reynolds theory is true," Leaphorn said. "It sounds sensible enough. But I guess Reynolds wasn't willing to wait to prove it. That ridicule must have infuriated him. He wanted to make his critics eat crow."

"Yeah," Isaacs said.

"I don't exactly know how he did it. Probably made himself some sort of tonglike gadget to hold the flint and punch them down to the hard layer where you were finding the stuff. He couldn't do it in advance because he had to place the planted stuff in the right location relative to the genuine artifacts you were finding."

"Yeah," Isaacs said. "He'd check in here a lot about sundown or so and we'd go over what I'd found and where I'd find it. And then while I was cooking supper, he'd take his flashlight and go out there and inspect the dig. That would be when he did it. And that's why everything seerned to fit so perfectly." Isaacs slammed his fist into his palm. "My God! It was perfect. Nobody could have even argued." He looked up at Leaphorn. "And then Cata stole some of the stuff he was planting. So Reynolds killed Cata?"

"Do you think that's enough reason for him to kill the boy?" Leaphorn asked. It was something that puzzled him.

"Of course," Isaacs said. "Hell, yes. Once he found out some of his artifacts were missing and Cata had 'em, I guess he'd have to do it." Leaphorn's doubt seemed to puzzle Isaacs. "Maybe you don't know how serious it would be to salt a site. My God! It's unthinkable. This whole science is based on everybody being beyond suspicion. When this gets out Reynolds will be worse than finished. Nobody will touch him, or his books, or trust anything he ever had anything to do with." Isaacs slumped on his stool, contemplating. "It's like—" he began. But he could think of no suitably hideous analogy.

Like murdering a boy, Leaphorn thought. Worse than that, obviously, in Isaacs' view. Even worse than three murders. In Isaacs' scale of values, killing was a simple byproduct of the serious offense, something Reynolds would need to do to protect his reputation.

"It's just unthinkable," Isaacs concluded. "How did you figure it out?"

"Remember when you found the parts of those broken points right together? That bothered me. It would seem more natural when you've spent an hour trying to make something and all of a sudden it breaks to lose your temper and throw it half a mile. You don't just politely drop it at your feet. Not if it keeps happening."

"I guess that bothered me a little, too," Isaacs said. "Only I didn't let myself think about it."

"When Reynolds chased Cata away from the truck he must have checked right away and found some of his stuff was gone." Leaphorn fished the unbroken point from his pocket and handed it to Isaacs. "This had been taken, too, and probably other material. It was bad enough Cata having it. But
when
he got it was fatal. What if he got a guilty conscience and brought it back and gave it to you? You'd ask where he got it and when, and then you'd have known Reynolds was putting the stuff in the ground for you to find. Or if the site got to be famous—and Reynolds knew that would happen—then Cata was sure to talk."

"So he went out to kill Cata," Isaacs said. "Well, that makes sense."

"I think he just went out to get the stuff back. I think he rigged himself up a kachina mask so Cata wouldn't recognize him and planned to scare the boy into giving him the stuff. But the boy tried to get away from him."

"If you haven't arrested him yet, he's supposed to be in Tucson this weekend, but he's coming back Monday," Isaacs said.

"He wasn't in Tucson. When Reynolds killed Cata he found the boy had just part of the missing stuff with him. The most damaging pieces were missing. And then he learned that Bowlegs had been here with him. So Bowlegs must have this most important fragment." Leaphorn tapped the broken lance tip. "You'd already found the butt and Bowlegs had the tip. So he had to go hunting for George. He had to catch him and make sure he got the tip back before he could kill him. Now Reynolds was covering up a murder, too. He wore the kachina mask when he was prowling around the commune seeing if George was there. If someone saw Reynolds, Reynolds was in trouble. If somebody reported seeing a kachina, you'd think they were crazy, or drunk, or just superstitious."

"But he didn't get George, did he?" Isaacs said suddenly. "He didn't get George?"

"He killed George last night," Leaphorn said. "He almost caught him Friday night, and when George came back to Zuñi, where we could pick him up, he simply had to kill him. I guess he figured that even if we found the artifact we'd have a hell of a time proving anything without George to testify."

"You'll need this, then." Isaacs pushed the broken point toward him. "That'll be some evidence, anyway. I'll bet you can hang him."

"We'll never find him," Leaphorn said. "I guess you'd say there's an old law that takes precedence over the white man's penal code. It says 'Thou shall not profane the Sacred Ways of Zuñi.' " He explained to Isaacs about the footprints in the alley. "I don't think anybody is ever going to know what happened to Reynolds. A few days from now, somebody will come across his pickup wherever he left it and he'll go into the records as a missing person."

He pushed the point back toward Isaacs.

"I don't need these," Leaphorn said. "The FBI has jurisdiction in this business and the FBI isn't interested in Indian superstitions and broken stones and all that. It's got another solution in mind."

Isaacs picked up the points, juggled them in his palm. Then he stared at Leaphorn.

"Do whatever you want to do," Leaphorn said. "I'm finished with all of this. I had just one little job. I screwed it up. I was supposed to find George Bowlegs. He's found, but not soon enough. I told the FBI man what I saw and what I heard last night. But I didn't tell him what I guessed. He didn't ask me, and I didn't tell him."

"What you're saying is that nobody but you and I and Reynolds knows this site was fixed," Isaacs said. "And you're saying Reynolds is dead…"

"And I'm saying that when I leave here, I'm going to the Ramah chapter house and get back to work on a deal involving a down payment on a pickup truck."

Isaacs was still staring at him, wordlessly.

"Come on," Leaphorn said. "Can't you understand what I'm saying?" His voice was angry. He took the lance tip from Isaacs' palm, opened the jaws of the vise on the workbench, and held the flint between them while he screwed the vise closed. Under the pressure, the flint crumbled into fragments. "I'm saying," Leaphorn gritted through his teeth, "just how much do you want fame and fortune and a faculty job? A couple of days ago you wanted it worse than you wanted that girl of yours. How about now? You want it bad enough to lie a little? I'm saying nobody's going to guess this bastard of a dig was salted unless you tell them it was—and then maybe they won't believe you. Who in hell would believe the great Chester Reynolds would salt a dig? You think they'd believe a Navajo cop?" Leaphorn dusted the flint dust from his fingers. "A cop who doesn't have a shred of evidence?"

Joe Leaphorn opened the camper door and stepped out in the snow. "I'm trying to learn more about white men," he said. "You wanted all that worse than you wanted your woman. What else will you give up for it?"

He'd left his carryall on the shoulder of the highway. The motor was still warm and it started easily, the chains making a muted song where the wind had left clear spots on the pavement. He would make a circle up N.M. 53 to Interstate 40 in case Susie was trying to hitchhike, and if she was he'd give her a ride into Gallup and loan her the ten-dollar bill he had in his billfold. And maybe someday he would write a note to O'Malley and let him know who killed Ernesto Cata. But probably not.