Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 13] (17 page)

Chee stood looking down at Nakai, remembering boyhood, remembering the
winter stories in his hogan, the summer stories at the fire beside the
sheep-camp tent, remembering the time Nakai had caught him drunk, remembering
kindness and wisdom. Then Nakai, eyes still closed, said: "Sit down. Be
easy."

Chee sat.

"Now, tell me why you came."

"I came to see you."

"No. No. You didn't know I was sick. You are busy. Some reason brought
you here. The last time it was about marrying a girl, but if you married her
you didn't invite me to do the ceremony. So I think you didn't do it."
Nakai's words came slowly, so softly Chee leaned forward to hear.

"I didn't marry her," Chee said.

"Another woman problem then?"

"No," Chee said.

The morphine was having its effect. Nakai was relaxing a little. "So
you came all the way up here to tell me you have no problems to talk to me about.
You are the only contented man in all of Dinetah."

"No," Chee said. "Not quite."

"So tell me then," Nakai said. "What brings you?"

So Chee told Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai of the death of Benjamin Kinsman, the
arrest of the Hopi eagle poacher, of Jano's unlikely story of the first and
second eagles. He told him of the death sentence and even of Janet Pete. And
finally Chee said: "Now I am finished."

Nakai had listened so silently that at times Chee—had he not known the man
so well—might have thought he was asleep. Chee waited. Twilight had faded into
total darkness while he talked and now the high, dry night sky was a-dazzle
with stars.

Chee looked at them, remembered how the impatient Coyote spirit had
scattered them across the darkness. He hunted out the summer constellations
Nakai had taught him to find, and as he found them, tried to match them with
the stories they carried in their medicine bundles. And as he thought, he
prayed to the Creator, to all the spirits who cared about such things, that the
medicine had worked, that Nakai was sleeping, that Nakai would never awaken to
his pain.

Nakai sighed. He said: "In a little while I will ask you
questions," and was silent again.

Blue Lady came out with a blanket, spread it carefully over Nakai and
adjusted the lantern. "He likes the starlight," she said. "Do
you need this?"

Chee shook his head. She turned off the flame and walked back into the
hogan.

"Could you catch the eagle without harming it?"

"Probably," Chee said. "I tried twice when I was young. I
caught the second one."

"Checking the talons and the feathers for dried blood, would the
laboratory kill it then?"

Chee considered, remembering the ferocity of eagles, remembering the
priorities of the laboratory. "Some oft hem would try to save it, but it
would die."

Nakai nodded. "You think Jano tells the truth?"

"Once I was sure there was only one eagle. Now I

don't know. Probably he is lying."

"But you don't know?"

"No."

"And never would know. Even after the federals kill the Hopi you would
wonder."

"Of course I would."

Nakai was silent again. Chee found another of the constellations. The small
one, low on the horizon. He could not remember its Navajo name, nor the story
it carried.

"Then you must get the eagle," Nakai said. "Do you still keep
your medicine
jish
? You have pollen?"

"Yes," Chee said.

"Then take your sweat bath. Make sure you remember the hunting songs.
You must tell the eagle, just as we told the buck deer, of our respect for it.
Tell it the reason we must send it with our blessings away to its next life.
Tell it that it dies to save a valuable man of the Hopi people."

"I will," Chee said. "And tell Blue Lady I need the medicine
that makes me sleep."

But Blue Lady had already sensed that. She was coming.

This time there were pills as well as a drink from the cup.

"I will try to sleep now," Nakai said, and smiled at Chee.
"Tell the eagle that he will also be saving you, my grandson."

WHERE WAS ACTING LIEUTENANT Jim Chee? He'd gone to Phoenix yesterday and
hadn't checked in this morning. Maybe he was still there. Maybe he was on his
way back. Check later. Leaphorn hung up and considered what to do. First he'd
take a shower. He flicked on the television, still tuned to the Flagstaff
station he'd been watching before sleep overcame him, and turned on the shower.

They had good showerheads in this Tuba City motel, a fine, hard jet of hot
water better than the one in his bathroom. He soaped, scrubbed, listened to the
voice of the television newscaster reporting what seemed to be a traffic death,
then a quarrel at a school board meeting. Then he heard "—murder of Navajo
policeman Benjamin Kinsman." He turned off the shower and walked, dripping
soapy water, to stand before the set.

It seemed that Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney J. D. Mickey had held a press
conference yesterday evening. He was standing behind a battery of microphones
at a podium with a tall, dark-haired man stationed uneasily slightly behind
him. The taller man was clad in a white shirt, dark tie and a well-tailored
dark business suit, which caused Leaphorn to immediately identify him as an FBI
agent—apparently a new one to this part of the world, since Leaphorn didn't
recognize him, and probably a special agent in charge, since he had come to
take credit for whatever discoveries had been made in an affair that produced
the sort of headlines upon which the Bureau fed.

"The evidence the FBI has collected makes it clear that this crime was
not only a murder done in the commission of a felony, which would make it a
capital crime under the old law, but that it fits the intent of Congress in the
passage of the legislation allowing the death penalty for such crimes committed
on federal reservations." Mickey paused, looked at his notes, adjusted his
glasses. "We didn't decide to seek the death penalty casually,"
Mickey continued. "We considered the problem confronting the Navajo Tribal
Police, and the police of the Hopis and Apaches and all the other reservation
tribes, and the same problems shared by the police of the various states. These
men and women patrol vast distances, alone in their patrol cars, without the
quick backup assistance that officers in the small, more populous states can
expect. Our police are utterly vulnerable in this situation, and their killers
have time to be miles away before help can arrive. I have the names of the
officers who have been killed in just—"

Leaphorn switched off the mortality list and ducked back into the shower. He
had known several of those men. Indeed, six of them were Navajo policemen. And
it was a story that needed to be told. So why did he resent hearing Mickey tell
it? Because Mickey was a hypocrite. He decided to skip breakfast and wait for
Chee at the police station.

Chee's car was already in the parking lot, and Acting Lieutenant Chee was
sitting behind his desk, looking downcast and exhausted. He looked up from the
file he was reading and forced a smile.

"I'll just ask a couple of questions and then I'll be out of
here," Leaphorn said. "The first one is, do you have a report yet
from the crime scene people? Did they list what they found in the Jeep?"

"This is it," Chee said, waving the file. "I just got
it."

"Oh," Leaphorn said.

"Sit down," Chee said. "Let me see what's in it."
Leaphorn sat, holding his hat in his lap. It reminded him of his days as a
rookie cop, waiting for Captain Largo to decide what to do with him.

"No fingerprints except the radio thief," Chee said. "I think
I already told you that. Good wiping job. There were prints on the owner's manual
in the glove box, presumed to be Catherine Pollard's." He glanced up at
Leaphorn, turned a page and resumed reading. "Here's the list of items
found in the Jeep," he said, and handed it across the desk to Leaphorn.
"I didn't see anything interesting on it."

It was fairly long. Leaphorn skipped the items in the glove box and door
pockets and started with the backseat. There the team had found three
filter-tip Kool cigarette butts, a Baby Ruth candy wrapper, a thermos
containing cold coffee, a cardboard box containing fourteen folded metal rodent
traps, eight larger prairie dog traps, two shovels, rope, and a satchel that
contained five pairs of latex gloves and a variety of other items that, while
the writer could only guess at their technical titles, were obviously the tools
of the vector control trade.

Leaphorn looked up from the list. Chee was watching him.

"Did you notice the spare tire, the jack and the tire tools were all
missing?" Chee asked. "I guess our radio thief didn't limit himself
to that and the battery."

"This is all of it?" Leaphorn asked. "Everything that they
found in the Jeep?"

"That's it," Chee said, frowning. "Why?"

"Krause said she always carried a respirator suit in the Jeep with
her."

"A what?"

"They call 'em PAPRS," Leaphorn said. "For Positive Air
Purifying Respirator Suit. They look a little like what the astronauts wear, or
the people who make computer chips."

"Oh," Chee said. "Maybe she left it at her motel. We can
check if you think it's important."

The telephone on Chee's desk buzzed. He picked it up, said, "Yes."
Said, "Good, that's a lot faster than I expected." Said, "Sure,
I'll hold."

He put his hand over the receiver. "They've got the report on the
bloodwork."

Leaphorn said: "Fine," but Chee was listening again. "That's
the right number of days," Chee told the telephone, and listened again,
frowned, said: "It wasn't? Then what the hell was it?" Listened
again, then said: "Well, thanks a lot."

He put down the telephone.

"It wasn't human blood," Chee said. "It was from some sort of
rodent. He said he'd guess it was from a prairie dog."

Leaphorn leaned back in his chair. "Well now," he said.

"Yeah," Chee said. He tapped his fingers on the desktop a moment,
then picked up the telephone, punched a button and said: "Hold any calls
for a while, please."

"Did you see the dried blood on the seat?" Leaphorn asked.

"I did."

"How'd it look? I mean, had it been spilled there, or smeared on, or
maybe an injured prairie dog had been put there, or dripped, or what?"

"I don't know," Chee said. "I know it didn't look like
somebody had been stabbed, or shot, and bled there. It didn't really look
natural—like what you expect to see at a homicide scene." He grimaced.
"It looked more like it had been poured out on the edge of the leather
seat. Then it had run down the side and a little onto the floor."

"She would have had access to blood," Leaphorn said. "Yeah,"
Chee said. "I thought of that."

"Why do it?" Leaphorn laughed. "It suggests she didn't have a
very high opinion of the Navajo Tribal Police."

Chee looked surprised, saw the point. "You mean we'd just take for
granted it was her blood and wouldn't check." He shook his head.
"Well, it could happen. And then we'd be looking for her body instead of
for her."

"If she did it," Leaphorn said.

"Right. If. You know, Lieutenant, I sort of wish we were back in Window
Rock right now, with that map of yours on the wall, and you'd be putting your
pins in it." He grinned at Leaphorn. "And explaining to me what happened."

"You're thinking about where the Jeep was left? So far from
anywhere?"

"I was," Chee said.

"Way too far to walk to Tuba City. Too far to walk back to Yells Back
Butte. So somebody had to meet her, or whoever drove the Jeep there, and give
them a lift."

Leaphorn said. "Like who?"

"Did I tell you about Victor Hammar?"

"Hammar? If you did, I don't remember."

"He's a graduate student at Arizona State. A biologist, like Pollard.
They were friends. Mrs. Vanders had him pegged as a stalker, a threat to her
niece. He'd been out here just a few days before she disappeared, working with
her. And he was out here the day I showed up to start my little search."
Chee's expression brightened. "Well now," he said, "I think we
should talk to Mr. Hammar."

"The trouble is he told me he was teaching his lab course at ASU the
day she vanished. I haven't looked into it, but when an alibi is that easy to
check you think it's probably true."

Chee nodded and grinned again. "I have a map." He pulled open his
desk drawer, rummaged and pulled out a folded Indian Country map. "Just
like yours." He spread it on the desktop. "Except it's not mounted so
I can stick pins in it."

Leaphorn picked up a pencil, leaned over the map and made some quick
additions to terrain features. He drew little lines to mark the cliffs of Yells
Back Butte and the saddle linking it to Black Mesa. A dot indicated the
location of the Tijinney hogan. With that Leaphorn stopped.

"What do you think?" Chee asked.

"I think we're wasting our time. We need a larger map scale."

Chee extracted a sheet of typing paper from his desk and pencilled in the
area around the butte, the roads and the terrain features. He drew a tiny
h
for the Tijinney hogan, an
l
for Woody's lab, a faint irregular line
from the hogan to represent the track in from the dirt road, and a little
j
and
k
for where Jano and Kinsman had left their vehicles. He examined
his work for a moment, then added another faint line from the saddle back to
the road.

Leaphorn was watching. "What's that?"

"I saw a flock of goats on the wrong side of the saddle and a track
leading in. I think it's a shortcut the goatherd uses so he doesn't have to
climb over," Chee said.

"I didn't know about that," Leaphorn said. He took the pencil and
added an
x
near the Yells Back cliffs. "And here is where an old
woman McGinnis called Old Lady Notah told people she had seen a snowman. The
same woman? Probably."

"Snowman? When was that?"

"We don't know the day. Maybe the day Miss Pollard disappeared. The day
Ben Kinsman got hit on the head." Leaphorn leaned back in his chair.
"She thought she'd seen a skinwalker. First it was a man, then it walked
behind a bunch of junipers and when she saw it again it was all white and
shiny."

Chee rubbed a finger against his nose, looked up at Leaphorn. "Which is
why you were asking me about that filter respirator suit, isn't it? You thought
Pollard was wearing it."

"Maybe Miss Pollard. Maybe Dr. Woody. I'll bet he has one. Or maybe
somebody else. Anyway, I'm going to go talk to that old lady if I can find her,"
Leaphorn said.

"Dr. Woody, he'd have access to animal blood, too," Chee said.
"And so would Krause, for that matter."

"And so would Hammar, our man with the iron-clad but unchecked alibi.
Now I think it might be worth the time to look into that."

They considered this for a while.

"Did you know Frank Sam Nakai?" Chee asked.

"The
hataalü
?" Leaphorn asked. "I met him a few
times. He taught curing ceremonials at the college at Tsali. And he did a
yeibichai
sing for one of Emma's uncles after he had a stroke. A fine old man,
Nakai."

"He's my maternal granduncle," Chee said. "I went to see him
last night. He's dying of cancer."

"Ah," Leaphorn said. "Another good man lost."

"Did you see the TV news this morning? The press conference J. D.
Mickey called in Phoenix?"

"Some of it," Leaphorn said.

"He's going for the death penalty, of course. The sonofabitch."

"Running for Congress," Leaphorn said. "What he said about
cops out here having no backup help, lousy radio communications, all that's
true enough."

"It's a funny thing," Chee said. "I catch Jano practically
red-handed standing over Kinsman. He was there, and nobody else was around. He
had a fine revenge motive. And then there's Jano's blood mixed with Kinsman's
on the front of Kinsman's uniform—just about where he would have cut himself on
Kinsman's buckle if they'd been struggling. You have a dead-cinch
conviction—and all Jano can do is come up with a daydream story about the eagle
he poached slashing him—and there's the eagle right there with no blood on it, so
he says not that eagle. That's the second eagle, he says. I caught one earlier
and turned it loose." Chee shook his head. "And yet, I'm beginning to
have some doubts. It's crazy."

Leaphorn let that all pass without comment.

"That other eagle story is so phony that I'm surprised Janet's not too
embarrassed to give it to the jury."

Leaphorn made a wry face, shrugged.

"Jano claims he pulled out a couple of the first eagle's tail
feathers," Chee said. "I saw one circling up there over Yells Back
with a gap in its tail plume."

"So what are you going to do?" Leaphorn asked. "Jano told me
how to locate the blind where he caught the first eagle. I'm going to get
myself a rabbit as eagle bait and go up there tomorrow and catch the bird. Or
shoot it if I can't catch it. If there's no old blood in the grooves in its
talons, or in its ankle feathers, then I don't have any more doubts."

Leaphorn considered this. "Well," he said. "Eagles are
territorial hunters. It would probably be the same bird. But the blood could be
from a rodent it caught."

"If there's dried blood anywhere, I'll take it in and let the lab
decide. You want to come along?"

"No thanks," Leaphorn said. "I'm going to go find the lady
with the goats and learn about that snowman she saw."