Sacred Clowns (5 page)

Mrs. Kanitewa considered. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. But I think now that it might have been something he heard on the radio.”

Blizzard’s expression suggested this conversation was full of surprises. “Like what? What did he say?”

“Well, he said he had to see Mr. Sayesva again. And he ran out of the house.”

Blizzard was leaning forward now. “I mean, what did he say he’d heard on the radio? Was it a news program or what?”

“He just said he had to go see his uncle. I didn’t hear what he was listening to.”

“What did he tell you when he came back?”

“I was asleep when he came back. It was late. Here we get up early, so we go to bed early.”

Blizzard leaned back, looking thoughtful. Digesting all this. Chee formed a question. What station was the radio tuned to? What time was it when Delmar heard whatever he’d heard? He stirred, took a deep breath.

“Could you estimate what time it was when you were out in the kitchen? When Delmar . . .”

Blizzard held up his hand. “Officer Chee,” he said. “Hey, now.”

“Suppertime,” Mrs. Kanitewa said. “Just getting dark.”

Blizzard was glaring at him. Chee swallowed the next question. The radio was on the end table beside the sofa. He looked at the dial. It was tuned to KNDN. “Kay-Indun.” The fifty-thousand-watt Farmington voice of the Big Rez. KNDN-AM was all-Navajo, but the FM version was mostly English. The Kanitewa radio was tuned to FM.

“Sayesva had a telephone,” Blizzard said. “At his office in Albuquerque and in his brother’s house here. The boy could have called him from school.”

“He was bringing him something,” Mrs. Kanitewa said.

Another surprise. “What?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. Something for Mr. Sayesva. Not my business.”

“Something he wouldn’t tell his mother about?” Blizzard asked.

“Not my business.”

“Didn’t you ask? Weren’t you curious?”

“Not my business.”

“Did you see it?”

“I saw a package.”

“What did it look like?”

“Like a package,” said Mrs. Kanitewa, whose expression suggested to Chee that what little patience she once had for police had worn thin. But she shrugged, and described it. “Sort of long.” She held her hands about three feet apart. “Not big around. I thought maybe it was a poster or a picture or something like that. It was round, like one of those cardboard tubes people get to mail big pictures in.”

“You didn’t ask him what was in it?” Blizzard’s tone made it clear that he was sure she had asked him.

“No,” she said. Her expression made it clear to Chee that she was surprised Blizzard would even think such a thing.

“Where’s the package?”

“He took it with him. I didn’t see it no more.”

“Took it when he went to see Sayesva?”

She nodded.

“And he didn’t bring it back?”

Another nod.

And that was about it. There were a few details that Chee gingerly collected to keep Lieutenant Leaphorn happy. For example, the object was wrapped in a newspaper, but Mrs. Kanitewa didn’t notice which one. For example, she had no idea where her son might be staying because he’d never done this before. For example, she asked them to promise to let her know as soon as they found the boy. She didn’t have a telephone but they could call the Senas just three houses down.

Blizzard drove directly back to the access road and headed the patrol car back toward the highway.

“You think we ought to go to Sayesva’s place?” Chee suggested. “See if we can find whatever it was the kid brought for him?”

Blizzard steered around the worst of the bumps. “Tell me how that helps you find the kid,” he said, staring straight ahead. “It won’t, so I’ll take care of finding the package.”

Chee considered that answer. “But not now?”

“Later,” Blizzard said.

“When I’m not around?”

“Like you explained to me. Sayesva’s not Navajo Police business. It wouldn’t be nice to get you in trouble with your lieutenant.”

Chee let it ride. Leaphorn would ask him what was in the package and he would tell the lieutenant why he didn’t know, and about Blizzard. Maybe that would spare him working with Blizzard in the future.

“Wonder why the lady wouldn’t tell us what the kid brought home?” Blizzard asked. The tone, for Blizzard, was friendly. “Did that strike you as funny?”

“No,” Chee said. “She didn’t tell us because she didn’t know.”

Blizzard gave him a sideways glance. “Man, what are you talking about? You don’t know women, if you say that. Or you don’t know mamas.”

Chee said, “Well . . .” and then dropped it. Why try to instruct this knucklehead in the Pueblo culture? The patrol car rattled off the gravel road, onto the asphalt toward Albuquerque. Chee let his imagination wander. He saw himself scouting for the Seventh Cavalry, shooting Cheyennes. The satisfaction in that fantasy lasted a few miles. He rehearsed his report to Leaphorn. He thought about Janet Pete. He thought about how the tip of her short-cut hair curled against her neck. He thought about the funny way she had of letting a smile start, letting him get a glimpse of it, and then suppressing it—pretending she hadn’t appreciated his humor. He thought about her legs and hips in those tight jeans on the ladder above him at the Tano ceremonial. He thought about her kissing him, enthusiastically, and then catching his hand when . . .

“Why do you say she didn’t know?” Blizzard asked, frowning at the windshield. “You know these people better than I do. I’m a city boy. My daddy worked for the post office in Chicago. I don’t know a damn thing about this kind of Indians.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know, too,” Chee said. “Haven’t been around Tanos much.”

“Come on.” Blizzard was grinning at him. “I been here just two months. I need help.”

So do I, Chee thought, and you’ve been a pain in the butt. But, brother cop, brother Indian.

“Well,” Chee said. “In most pueblos Delmar would be old enough to be initiated. He’d belong to one of the religious fraternities and he’d have religious duties. The way I understand it, you keep the secrets of your fraternity—your kiva— because only the people who have to know these secrets to perform their duties are supposed to know them. If uninitiated people know them, it dilutes the power. Waters it down. So I guess Delmar was probably a member of Sayesva’s kiva. And whatever he brought his uncle was in some way religious. His mother wouldn’t ask about it because you just don’t ask about such things. And he wouldn’t tell her if she did ask. And if he had told her, she damn sure wouldn’t tell us.”

“Interesting,” Blizzard said. “Is it that way with you Navajos?”

“No,” Chee said. “Our religion is family business. Traditionally, the more who show up at a curing ceremonial and take part the better. Except for some of the clans that live next to Pueblo tribes. Some of them picked up the Pueblo idea.”

But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t totally true. The
hataalii
kept their secrets. He had been a student of Frank Sam Nakai since his middle teens, but he knew that Nakai—his uncle, his Little Father—still withheld something from him. That, too, was traditional. The
hataalii
didn’t reveal the final secret of the ceremonial he was teaching until . . . until when? Chee had never been quite sure of that. Probably until the
hataalii
knew the student was worthy.

“Interesting,” Blizzard said, and starting telling Chee something about the Cheyenne religion. It was something to do with how, a long, long time ago, a delegation of Comanches had come north and brought a string of horses with them as gifts to the Cheyennes. But the Comanches had told the Cheyennes that if they accepted the horses, they would have to change their religion because the horses would totally change their lives. Blizzard was saying something about following the migrating buffaloes. But Chee had stopped listening. It occurred to him just then that he was going to marry Janet Pete. Or try to marry her. And he was thinking about that.

LEAPHORN AND David W. Streib took the short way from Window Rock to Crownpoint and a conference with Lieutenant Ed Toddy, in whose reservation precinct Eric Dorsey had died. They followed old Navajo Route 9 past the Nazhoni Trading Post, Coyote Wash, and Standing Rock, and crossed that invisible line that separated the Big Rez from the Checkerboard. Special Agent Streib worked out of the Farmington office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since the wrongful death of Eric Dorsey was clearly a felony committed on a federal reservation and therefore a federal offense, he was responsible for the investigation. But that didn’t make it particularly interesting to him. Streib could be described as a Bureau old-timer. He should have been in an assignment much loftier than a tiny office in northwestern New Mexico from which he dealt mostly with Indian reservation business. But the whimsical sense of humor that had earned Streib his nickname of Dilly had not earned him the confidence of those selected by J. Edgar Hoover to run his FBI. And while Hoover was now long gone, Hoover’s reign had lasted longer than Streib’s ambitions. Special Agent Streib had evolved into a laid-back, contented man with lots of friends in Indian Country.

One of them was Joe Leaphorn, which was fortunate on this day because even the short way from Window Rock to Crownpoint involved some seventy miles of mostly empty road. Plenty of time for conversation. They covered Streib’s plans for building a greenhouse behind his home when he retired from the Bureau. They rehashed cases they had worked together, skirted around the sensitive subject of what Leaphorn intended to do with his accumulated leave time, and covered an assortment of gossip about the small world of Indian Country law enforcement. Just as they passed the turnoff to the Nahodshosh Chapter House, they got to the question of why anyone would want to kill a Saint Bonaventure Mission School shop teacher. Theft was clearly the number one choice, since some silver ingot and other materials seemed to be missing from Dorsey’s shop. Trouble over a girlfriend made number two as the motive. Trouble with a student made number three. No number four suggested itself.

Finally, Streib brought up the sensitive subject.

“You going with the professor?”

Leaphorn was sure he didn’t want to open this subject to discussion. Not even with Dilly.

“Where? What do you mean?”

“To China with that professor from Northern Arizona University, goddammit,” Streib said. “Bourebonette’s the name. I heard that’s the plan. What are you being so goddam coy about?”

Leaphorn had never, ever discussed accompanying Bourebonette to China with Dilly or with anyone else that he could think of. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would discuss. But it didn’t occur to him to be surprised that Dilly knew. In empty country everybody knew everything about everybody. One’s inner thoughts seemed to transmit themselves through the clear, dry air without need for verbalizing.

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “That’s the plan.”

“That’s what I heard,” Streib said.

Leaphorn looked at his watch, a $13.99 Casio digital. He pushed the proper buttons and adjusted the seconds.

“I checked it when they gave the time on the radio,” he said. “It’s a little slow. Or maybe the radio is a little fast. Probably it was exactly right. Makes you wonder why anyone would pay a hundred bucks for a watch. Or one of those five-thousand-dollar jobs.”

Streib ignored this signal to change the subject.

“That’s a hell of a long ways to go,” Streib said. “All the way to China. If you got something going with the lady, why not just stay here? Nobody would care. You’re a widower. I think she’s single. That’s what I heard.”

“I always wanted to go to China.”

“Yeah,” Streib said. “Really. I’ll bet you did.”

The skepticism provoked Leaphorn. “I used to talk about it with Emma,” he said, irritated with himself for explaining this to Streib. “But she didn’t like to travel. She went to New York with me once. And once to Washington. But it was really just to keep me company. It made her nervous, being away from the reservation. Even when we just went to Albuquerque. Or Phoenix. She’d be anxious to get home.”

“I heard the lady was doing a research project in China. Quite a coincidence.” The tone remained skeptical. “Good thing she wasn’t doing research on Antarctica or you’d be telling me of your lifelong fascination with penguins.”

“Back when I was a grad student at Arizona State I got interested,” Leaphorn said. “We had an anthro professor who was into linguistics. The evolution of languages, that sort of thing. He’d ask me how my grandfather said things, and my relatives. And he’d show me the charts he’d accumulated about the Athabascan languages up and down the Pacific Coast, Canada, Alaska, and across the straits among some of the Siberian tribes. It got me interested.”

Leaphorn looked up, made a deprecatory gesture. “You know,” he said. “Where’s my homeland? Where’d the Dineh come from? Where are my roots?”

“You Navajos came up from the underworld,” Streib said. “Up from the fourth world into the fifth world. Through a hollow reed, wasn’t it?”

“Flooded out, just like you
bilagaani,”
Leaphorn said. “You guys made yourself an ark out of gopher wood. Hauled out the animals. We had to climb through a hole in the ceiling and the animals had to climb out, too.”

“I guess my ancestors—the German ones— came out of Alsace. That part that switches back to France depending on who won the last war. But I never much wanted to go see it.”

Streib uncapped his thermos, poured coffee into a cup marked austin sam for tribal council, new lands chapter, and handed it to Leaphorn. He poured coffee into the thermos cap for himself “Maybe if I had a good-looking woman as a traveling companion I’d find Alsace more interesting.”

Leaphorn let it pass. Sipped coffee.

Streib grinned at him. “Admit it,” he said. “Knock off the bullshit about tracking down your roots. I’ve met the prof a couple of times. At cultural doings there at the university. She’s a nice-looking woman.”

Leaphorn finished his coffee slowly.

“Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed,” Streib said.

“See if you can pour me some more coffee,” Leaphorn said, passing the cup. “Without talking.”

“I’m not knocking it,” Streib said. “I think it’s a good idea. Why not? You’ve been alone now for too damn long. It’s making you cranky. The old testosterone must still be working. Young man like you. You better find yourself a permanent lady or you’ll be hanging around the squaw dances and getting yourself into trouble.”

Leaphorn thought: A year and eight months and eleven days since the nurse had awakened him in the chair in Emma’s room. She slipped away, the nurse had said. Emma had died while both of them were sleeping. Six hundred and twenty-two days. A lot longer if you counted the days before the operation, the days when the tumor had pressed against Emma’s brain and cost her her ability to think clearly. It had robbed her of her memory, her happiness, her humor, and her personality, and even—on some terrible days—of her knowledge of who she was, and who he was. He remembered those nights when she would awaken beside him confused and terrified. When . . .

“Change the subject,” Leaphorn said, and Streib instantly detected the anger in his voice.

That took them back to the killing of Eric Dorsey, routine as it seemed. A bit odd, perhaps, with no motive apparent immediately, and no promising suspects. But such things took time to develop, and the case was still fresh.

“One oddity though,” Leaphorn said. He told Streib about Delmar Kanitewa running away the day Dorsey was killed, the bludgeon murder of his uncle, and the koshare effigy in Dorsey’s shop.

“So,” Streib said. “What’s the connection?”

“Sounds unlikely,” Leaphorn said. “But maybe.”

“Or maybe not,” Dilly said. “Maybe the kid just happened to take off the same day.”

“And the boy’s uncle being killed there at Tano. How about that?”

“I know you don’t believe in coincidences,” Streib said. “But they do happen. For example, you and the lady both wanting to go take a look at China. And this looks like another one. Unless you can see some possible link.”

“I can’t,” Leaphorn said. “But I’d like it better if we had a suspect in custody.”

Which, as it happened, they did.