Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] (8 page)

“Look,” she said. “You’re not going to take me there first. You’re not going to do anything for me. Why should I tell you anything about my business?”

“We’ll go there first,” Leaphorn said.

“But what’s the hurry? Does he know you’re coming?” She laughed.

There was genuine merriment in the sound, causing Leaphorn to take his eyes off the track he was following to look at her. It was a hearty laugh, a sound full of happy memories. “Yes and no,” she said.

“Or just yes. He knows.” She glanced at Leaphorn, her eyes still amused. “That’s like asking somebody if they know the sun’s going to come up. Of course it’s going to come up. If it doesn’t, the world ends.” She is a formidable young woman, Leaphorn thought. He didn’t want her with him when he first approached Hosteen Tso’s place.

Whether she liked it or not, she’d wait in the carryall while he determined who, or what, waited at the hogan.

Had Leaphorn’s timing been perfect, he would have arrived on the mesa rim overlooking the Tso hogan at dawn. In fact, he arrived perhaps an hour early, the moon almost down on the western horizon and the starlight just bright enough to confirm the dim shape of the buildings below. Leaphorn sat and waited. He sat far enough back from the mesa edge so that the downdrift of cooling air would not carry his scent. If the dog was there, Leaphorn didn’t want it alerted. The dog had been very much on his mind as he found his way down the dark wagon track toward the hogan and up the back slope of this small mesa. Leaphorn doubted that it would be out hunting, but anything seemed possible in this peculiar affair. The thought of the dog had increased his caution and tightened his nerves. Now, sitting motionless with his back protected by a slab of stone, he relaxed.

If the animal was prowling, he would hear it in time to react to an attack. The danger—if indeed there had been danger—was gone now.

Silence. In the dim, still, predawn universe, scent dominated sight and hearing. Leaphorn could smell the acrid perfume of the junipers just behind him, the aroma of dust and other scents so faint they defied identification. From somewhere far behind him there came a single, almost inaudible snapping sound. Perhaps a stone cooling and contracting from yesterday’s heat, perhaps a predator moving suddenly and breaking a stick, perhaps the earth growing one tick older. The sound turned Leaphorn’s thoughts back to the dog, to the eyes staring at him out of the car, to what had happened to the sheepdogs at the water hole, and to witch dogs, the Navajo Wolves, of his people’s ancient traditions. The Navajo Wolves were men and women who turned from harmony to chaos and gained the power to change themselves into coyotes, dogs, wolves or even bears, and to fly through the air, and to spread sickness among the Dinee. As a boy he had believed, fervently and fearfully, in this concept of evil. Two miles from his grandmother’s hogan was a weathered volcanic upthrust which the People avoided. In a cave there the witches supposedly gathered to initiate new members into theirthe Clan of Wolves. As a sophomore at Arizona State, he had come just as fervently to disbelieve in the ancient ways. He had visited his grandmother, and gone alone to the old volcano core. Climbing the crumbling basalt crags, feeling brave and liberated, he had found two caves—one of which seemed to lead downward into the black heart of the earth. There had been no witches, nor any sign that anything used these caves except, perhaps, a den of coyotes. But he hadn’t climbed down into the darkness. Now for many minutes, Leaphorn’s imagination had been suggesting a dim opalescence along the eastern horizon, and presently his eyes confirmed it. A ragged division between dark sky and darker earth, the shape of the Chuska Mountains on the New Mexico border. At this still point, another sound reached Leaphorn. He realized he had been aware of it earlier somewhere below the threshold of hearing. Now it became a murmuring which came and died and came again. It seemed to come from the north. Leaphorn frowned, puzzled. And then he realized what it must be. It was the sound of running water, the San Juan River moving over its rapids, sliding down its canyon toward Lake Powell. At this season the river would be low, the snow melt of the Rockies long since drained away.

Even in this stillness Leaphorn doubted if the sound muffled by the depth of its canyon would carry far. One of the river bends must bring it to within a couple of miles of Tso’s hogan. Leaphorn’s eye caught a flick of movement in the gray light below—an owl on the hunt. Or, he thought, sardonically, the ghost of Hosteen Tso haunting the old man’s hogan. The east was brightening. Leaphorn eased himself silently from the stone and moved nearer the rim. The buildings were clearly visible. He examined the setting. Directly below him, drainage had eroded a cul-de-sac from the sandstone face of the mesa. This must be where Listening Woman had communed with the earth while her patient and her assistant were being murdered.

He studied the topography. It was light enough now to make out the wagon track that connected the Tso hogan tenuously with the world of men. Down this track the killer must have come. The investigators had found only the tracks of Mrs. Cigaret’s pickup, and no hoofprints. So, the killer had come on foot, visible from the hogan for more than three hundred yards. Tso and the girl must have watched death walking toward them. They had recognized no threat, apparently. Had they seen a friend? A stranger? Below Leaphorn’s feet the track swerved toward the cliff, passing within a dozen yards of where Mrs. Cigaret had sat invisible behind a curtain of stone while the killer had walked past. What had he done then? He would have seen the ritual design painted on the old man’s chest.

That should have told him that Tso was undergoing a ceremonial diagnosis, that a Listener, or Hand Trembler, must be somewhere nearby. He might have believed the teen-age girl was the diagnostician. But not if he was a local Navajo. Then he would have known the truck belonged to Listening Woman. Leaphorn studied the grounds below him, trying to recreate the scene. The killer apparently had left immediately after the killing. At least, nothing was known to be missing from Tso’s belongings. He had simply walked away as he had come—down the track forty feet below Leaphorn’s boot tips. Leaphorn retraced this line of retreat with his eyes, then stopped. He frowned, puzzled. At that same moment, he smelled smoke.

The east was streaked with red and yellow now, providing enough light to illuminate a wavering thin blue line emerging from the smoke hole in the Tso hogan. The man was there. Leaphorn felt a fierce excitement. He took out his binoculars, adjusted them quickly, and studied the ground around the hogan. If the dog was to be part of this contest he needed to know it. He could detect no sign of the animal. The few places where tracks might show bore only boot prints.

There was no sign of droppings. Leaphorn studied places where a dog would be likely to urinate, where it might sprawl in the afternoon shade. He found nothing. He lowered the glasses and rubbed his eyes.

As he did, the door of the hogan swung open and a man emerged. He stood, one hand resting on the plank door, and stared out at the dawn. A largish man, young, wearing an unbuttoned blue shirt, white boxer shorts, and short boots not yet laced. Leaphorn studied him through the binoculars, trying to connect this man enjoying the beauty of the dawn with the grinning face seen through the windshield of the Mercedes. The hair was black, which was as he had remembered it. The man was tall, his figure foreshortened by the magnification of Leaphorn’s binoculars and the viewing angle.

Perhaps six feet, with narrow hips and a heavy muscular torso. The man examined the morning, showing more of his face now. It was a Navajo face, longish, rather bony. A shrewd, intelligent face reflecting only calm enjoyment of the morning. Discomfort in his chest made Leaphorn realize that he had been holding his breath. He breathed again. Some of the tension of the night had left him. He had hunted a sort of epitome of evil, something that would kill with reckless enjoyment. He had found a mere mortal. And yet this Navajo who stood below him inspecting the rosy dawn sky must be the same man who, just three nights ago, had run him down with a laugh.

Nothing else made sense. The man turned abruptly and ducked back into the hogan. Leaphorn lowered the binoculars and thought about it.

No glasses. No goldrims. That might simply mean that the man had them in his pocket. Leaphorn studied the layout of the buildings below him. He located a place where he could climb down the mesa without being seen and approach the hogan away from its east-facing entrance. Before he could move, the man emerged again. He was dressed now, wearing black trousers, with what looked like a purple scarf over his shoulders. He was carrying something. Through the binoculars Leaphorn identified two bottles and a small black case.

What appeared to be a white towel hung over his wrist. The man walked rapidly to the brush arbor and put the bottles, the case and the towel on the plank table there. Shaving, Leaphorn thought. But what the man was doing had nothing to do with shaving. He had taken several objects from the case and arranged them on the table. And then he stood motionless, apparently simply staring down at them. He dropped suddenly to one knee, then rose again almost immediately.

Leaphorn frowned. He examined the bottles. One seemed to be half filled with a red liquid. The other held something as clear as water.

Now the man had taken an object small and white and held it up to the light, staring at it. He held it in the fingers of both hands, as if it were heavy, or extremely fragile. Through the binoculars it appeared to be a broken piece of bread. The man was pouring the red liquid into a cup, adding a few drops of the clear, raising the cup in both hands to above eye level. His face was rapt and his lips moved slightly, as if he spoke to the cup. Abruptly Leaphorn’s memory served him—something he had witnessed years ago and which had then dominated his thoughts for weeks. Leaphorn knew what the man was doing and even the words he was speaking: his … this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven … ” Leaphorn lowered the binoculars. The man at the Tso hogan was a Roman Catholic priest. As the rules of his priesthood required of him each day, he was celebrating the Mass. Back at the carryall, Leaphorn found the girl asleep. She lay curled on the front seat, her head cushioned on her purse, her mouth slightly open. Leaphorn examined her a moment, then unlocked the driver-side door, moved her bare feet and slid under the steering wheel. “You were gone long enough,” Theodora Adams said. She sat up, pushed the hair away from her face. “Did you find the place?”

“We’re going to make this simple and easy to understand,” Leaphorn said. He started the engine. “If you’ll answer my questions about this man, I’ll take you there. If you start lying, I’ll take you back to Short Mountain. And I know enough to tell when the lying starts.”

“He was there, then,” she said. It wasn’t really a question. The girl hadn’t doubted he’d be there. But there was a new expectancy in her face “He was there,” Leaphorn said. “About six foot, black hair. That sound like the man you expected?”

“Yes,” she said. “Who is he?”

“I’m going to raise hell about this,” the girl said. “You don’t have any right.”

“Okay,” Leaphorn said. “Do that. Who is he?”

“I told you who he is. Benjamin Tso.”

“What does he do?”

“Do?” She laughed. “You mean for a living? I don’t know.”

“You’re lying,” Leaphorn said.

“Tell me, or we go back to Short Mountain.”

“He’s a priest,” the girl said. “A member of the Order of Friars Minor … a Franciscan.”

Her voice was resentful, perhaps at the information, perhaps at having been forced to reveal it. “What’s he doing here?”

“Resting.

He was tired. He had a long trip.”

“From where?”

“From Rome.”

“Italy?”

“Italy.” She laughed. “That’s where Rome is.” Leaphorn turned off the ignition. “We stop playing these games,” he said. “If you want to see this man, you’re going to tell me about it.”

“Oh, well,” she said. “What the hell?” And having decided to talk, she talked freely, enjoying the narration. She had met Tso in Rome. He had been sent there to complete his studies at the Vatican’s American College and at the Franciscan seminary outside the city.

She had gone with her father and had met Tso through the brother of her college roommate, who was also about to be ordained. Having met him, she stayed behind when her father returned to Washington. “The bottom line is we’re going to get married. To skip a little, he came out here to see about his grandfather and I came out to join him.”

You’ve skipped a lot, Leaphorn thought. You’ve skipped the part about seeing something you can’t have, and wanting it, and going after it. And the Navajo, a product of the hogan life, of the mission boarding school, and then of the seminary, seeing something he had never seen before, and not knowing how to handle it. It would have been strictly no contest, Leaphorn guessed. He remembered Tso’s rapt face staring up at the elevated bread, and felt unreasonably angry. He wanted to ask the girl how she had let Tso struggle this far off the hook. Instead he said, “He giving up being a priest?”

“Yes,” she said. “Priests can’t marry.”

“What brought him here?”

“Oh, he got a letter from his grandfather, and then, as you know, his grandfather got killed. So he said he had to come and see about it.”

“And what brings you here?” She glanced at him, eyes hostile. “He said to join him here.” Like hell he did, Leaphorn thought. He ran and you tracked him down. He started the carryall again and concentrated for a moment on steering. He doubted if he would learn anything more from Theodora Adams. Probably she and Tso were simply what they seemed to be. Rabbit and coyote. Probably Tso was simply a priest who had been inspired to escape from this woman by some instinct for self-preservation. To save what? Himself? His honor?

His soul? And probably Theodora Adams was the woman who has everything pursuing the man made desirable because he is taboo. Or perhaps Father Tso . Goldrims. If he was, Theodora Adams’s role would be something more complex than sexual infatuation. But whatever her role, Leaphorn felt she was too tough and too shrewd to reveal more than she wanted to reveal. The carryall jolted and groaned over the sloping track beneath the mesa and rolled across the expanse of packed earth that served as the yard of Hosteen Tso.