Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 13] (6 page)

"I guess so," Leaphorn said.

"If you haven't got any gas to give 'em, then they just hang around and
waste your time gossiping. Then they want to use your telephone to get some
kinfolks to come and bring 'em a can."

He glowered at Leaphorn, took another sip of bourbon. "You ever know a
Navajo to be in a hurry? You got 'em underfoot for hours. Drinking up your
water and running you out of ice cubes."

McGinnis's face was slightly pink—embarrassment caused by his admission of
humanity. "So finally I just quit paying the bills and the telephone
company cut me off. I figured keeping a little gasoline was cheaper."

"Probably," Leaphorn said.

McGinnis was glowering at him again, making sure that Leaphorn wouldn't
suspect some socially responsible purpose in this decision.

"What'd you come out here for anyway? You just got a lot of time to
waste now you're not a cop?"

"I wondered if you ever had any customers named Tijinney?"

"Tijinney?" McGinnis looked thoughtful.

"They had a place over in what used to be the Joint Use Reservation.
Over by the northwest corner of Black Mesa. Right on the Navajo-Hopi
border."

"I didn't know there was any of that outfit left," McGinnis said.
"Sickly bunch, as I remember it. Somebodyalways coming in here for me to take 'em to the doctor over at Tuba or
the clinic at Many Farms. And they did a lot of business with old Margaret
Cigaret and some of the other shamans, getting curing ceremonials done. They
was always coming in here trying to get me to donate a sheep to help feed folks
at the sings."

"You remember that map I used to keep?" Leaphorn asked.
"Where I'd record things I needed to remember? I looked at it this morning
and I noticed I'd marked down a lot of skinwalker gossip over there where they
lived. You think all that sickness would account for that?"

"Sure," McGinnis said. "But I got a feeling I know what this
is leading up to. That Kinsman boy the Hopi killed, wasn't that over there on
the old Tijinney grazing lease?"

"I think so," Leaphorn said.

McGinnis was holding his measuring cup up to the light, squinting at the
level. He poured in another ounce or two of bourbon. "Just think
so'?" he said. "I heard the federals had that business all locked up.
Didn't that young cop that used to work with you catch the man right when he
did it? Caught him right in the act, the way I heard it."

"You mean Jim Chee? Yeah, he caught a Hopi named Jano."

"So what are you working on out here?" McGinnis asked. "I
know you ain't just visiting. Aren't you supposed to be retired? What're you up
to? Working the other side?"

Leaphorn shrugged. "I'm just trying to understand some things."

"Well, now, is that a fact?" McGinnis said. "I was guessing
you were trying to find some way to prove that Hopi boy didn't do the
killing."

"Why would you think that?"

"Cowboy Dashee was in here just the other day. You remember Cowboy?
Deputy with the sheriff's office?"

"Sure."

"Well, Cowboy says the Jano boy didn't do it. He says Chee got the
wrong fella."

Leaphorn shrugged, thinking that Jano was probably kinfolks with Dashee, or
a member of his kiva. The Hopis lived in a much smaller world than the Navajos.
"Did Cowboy tell you who was the right fella?"

McGinnis had stopped rocking. He was staring at Leaphorn, looking puzzled.

"I was guessing wrong, wasn't I? Are you going to tell me what you're
up to?"

"I am seeing if I can find out what happened to a young woman who
worked for the Indian Health Service.

She was checking on plague cases. Drove out of Tuba City more than a week
ago and she still hasn't come back."

McGinnis had been rocking, holding his measuring cup in his left hand, left
elbow on the rocker's arm, his forearm moving just enough to compensate for the
motion—keeping the bourbon from splashing, keeping the surface level. But he
wasn't watching his drink. He was staring out the dusty window. Not out of it,
Leaphorn realized. McGinnis was watching a medium-sized spider working on a web
between the window frame and a high shelf. He stopped rocking, pushed himself
creakily out of the chair. "Look at that," he said. "The
sonsabitches are slow learners."

He walked to the window, crumpled a handkerchief from his overalls pocket,
chased the spider across the web with it, folded the cloth carefully around the
insect, opened the window screen, and shook it out into the yard. Obviously the
old man had a lot of practice capturing such insects. Leaphorn remembered once
seeing McGinnis capture a wasp the same way, evicting it unharmed through the
same window.

McGinnis retrieved his drink and lowered himself, groaning, back into his
chair.

"Sonofabitch will be right back first time he sees the door open,
"he said.

"I've known people to just step on them," Leaphorn said, but he
remembered his mother dealing with spiders in the same way.

"I used to do that," McGinnis said. "Even had some bug spray.
But you get older, and you look at 'em up close and you get to thinking about
it. You get to thinking they got a right to live, too. They don't kill me. I
don't kill them. You step on a beetle, it's like a little murder."

"How about eating sheep?" Leaphorn asked.

McGinnis was rocking again, ignoring him. "Very small murders, I guess
you'd have to say. But one thing leads to another."

Leaphorn sipped his Pepsi.

"Sheep? I quit eating meat a while back," McGinnis said. "But
you didn't drive all the way in here to talk about my diet. You want to talk
about that Health Department girl that run off with their truck."

"You hear anything about that?" Leaphorn asked.

"Woman named Cathy something or other, wasn't it?" McGinnis said.
"The Fleacatcher, the folks out here call her, because she collects the
damned things. She was in here a time or two, asking questions. Wanted to get
some gas once. Bought some soda pop, some crackers. Can of Spam, too. And it
wasn't a truck, either, now I think of it. It was a Jeep. A black one."

"About that black Jeep. The family's offering a thousand-dollar reward
to anybody who finds it."

McGinnis took another sip, savored it, stared out the window.

"That don't sound like they think she eloped."

"They don't," Leaphorn said. "They think somebody killed her.
What sort of questions was she asking when she was in here?"

"About sick folks. Where they might have got the fleas on 'em to get
the plague. Did they have sheepdogs? Anybody notice prairie dogs dying? Or dead
squirrels? Dead kangaroo rats?" McGinnis shrugged. "Strictly
business, she was. Seemed like a mighty tough lady. No time for kidding around.
Hard as nails. And I noticed when she was walking around, she was looking at
the floor all the time. Looking for rat droppings. And that pissed me off some.
And I said, 'Missy, what are you looking for back there behind the counter? You
lose something?' And she said, 'I'm looking for mice manure.'" McGinnis
produced a rusty laugh and slapped the arm of his rocker. "Came right out
with it without a blink and kept right on looking. Quite a lady she is."

"You heard anything about what might have happened to her?"

McGinnis laughed, took another sip of his bourbon. "Sure," he
said. "It gives folks something to talk about. Heard all kinds of things.
Heard she might have run off with Krause—that fellow she works with."
McGinnis chuckled. "That'd be like Golda Meir running off with Yasser
Arafat. Heard she might have run off with another young man who was out here
with her a time or two. Some sort of student scientist, I think he was. He
seemed kind of strange to me."

"Sounds like you don't think she and her boss got along."

"They was in here just twice that I remember," McGinnis said.
"First time they never said a word to each other. I guess that's all right
if you're stuck in the same truck all day. Second time it was snarling and snapping.
Hostile-like."

"I'd heard she didn't like him," Leaphorn said.

"It was mutual. He was paying for some stuff he got, and she walked
past him out the door and he said 'Bitch.'" Loud enough for her to hear
him?" If she was listening."

"You think he might have knocked her on the head and dumped her
somewhere?"

"I figure him for being hell on rodents and fleas, things like that.
Not humans," McGinnis said. He thought about that for a moment and
chuckled again. "Of course, couple of my customers figure the skinwalkers
got off with her."

"What do you think of that?"

"Not much," McGinnis said. "Skinwalkers get a lot of blame
around here. Sheepdog dies. Car breaks down. Kid gets the chicken pox. Roof
leaks. Skinwalkers get the blame."

"I heard she had driven out toward Yells Back Butte to do some work out
there," Leaphorn said. "There always seemed to be a lot of witching
talk around there."

"Lot of talk about that place," McGinnis said. "Had its own
legend. Old Man Tijinney was supposed to be a witch. Had a bucket of silver
dollars buried somewhere. A tub full, the way some told it. When the last of
that outfit died off people dug holes all around out there. Some of the city
kids didn't even respect the death hogan taboo. I heard they dug in there, too."

"Find anything?"

McGinnis shook his head, sipped his drink. "You ever run into that Dr.
Woody fella out there? He comes in here a time or two just about every summer.
Working on some sort of a rodent research project here and there, and I think
he has some sort of setup near the butte. He was in three or four weeks back to
get some stuff and telling me another skinwalker story. I think it's a kind of
hobby of his. Collects them. Thinks they're funny."

"Who's he get 'em from?" Leaphorn asked. It was a rare Navajo
who'd pass along a skinwalker report to anyone he didn't know pretty well.

McGinnis obviously knew exactly what Leaphorn was thinking.

"Oh, he's been coming out here for years. Long enough to speak good
Navajo. Comes and goes. Hires local folks to collect rodent information for
him. Friendly guy."

"And he told you a fresh skinwalker story? Something that happened out
near Yells Back?"

"I don't know how fresh it was," McGinnis said. "He said Old
Man Saltman told him about seeing a skinwalker standing by a bunch of boulders
at the bottom of the butte a little bit after sundown, and then disappearing
behind them, and when he came out he turned into an owl and went flopping away
like he had a broken wing."

"Turned from what into an owl?"

McGinnis looked surprised by the question. "Why, from a man. You know
how it goes. Hosteen Saltman said the owl kept flopping around as if he wanted
to be followed."

"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "And he didn't follow, of course.
That's how the story usually goes."

McGinnis laughed. "I remember about the first or second time I saw you,
I asked if you believed in skin-walkers, and you said you just believed in
people who believed in 'em, and all the trouble that caused. Is that still the
case?"

"Pretty much," Leaphorn said.

"Well then, let me tell you one I'll bet you haven't heard before.
There's an old woman who comes in here after shearing time every spring to sell
me three or four sacks of wool. Sometimes they call her Grandma Charlie, I
think it is, but I believe her name is Old Lady Notah. She was in here just
yesterday telling me about seeing a skinwalker."

McGinnis raised his glass in a toast to Leaphorn. "Now listen to this
one. She said she was out looking after a bunch of goats she has over by Black
Mesa—right on the edge of the Hopi Reservation—and she notices somebody down
the slope messing around with something on the ground. Like hunting for
something. Anyway, this fella disappears behind the junipers for a minute or
two and then emerges, and now he's different. Now he's bigger, and all white
with a big round head, and when he turned her way, his whole face
flashed."

"Flashed?"

"She said like the flash thing on her daughter's little camera."

"What did the man look like when he quit being a witch?"

"She didn't stick around to see," McGinnis said. "But wait a
minute. You ain't heard all of it yet. She said when this skinwalker turned
around he looked like he had an elephant's trunk coming out of his back. Now
how about that?"

"You're right," Leaphorn said. "That's a new one."

"And come to think of it, you can add that one to your Yells Back Butte
stories. That's about where Old Lady Notah has her grazing lease."

"Well, now," Leaphorn said, "I think I might want to talk to
her about that. I'd like to hear some more details."

"Me, too," McGinnis said, and laughed. "She said the
skinwalker looked like a snowman."

THEY'D AGREED TO MEET FOR BREAKFAST, early because Janet had to drive south
to Phoenix and Chee had to go about as far north to Tuba City. "Let's make
it seven on the dot, and not by Navajo time," Janet had said.

There he was, a little before seven, waiting for her at a table in the hotel
coffee shop, thinking about the night he'd walked into her apartment in Gallup.
He'd been carrying flowers, a videotape of a traditional Navajo wedding and the
notion that she could explain away the way she had used him, and—

He didn't want to think about that. Not now and not ever. What could change
that she'd gotten information from him and tipped off the law professor, the
man she'd told Chee she hated?

Before he'd finally slept, he decided he would simply ask her if they were
still engaged. "Janet," he would say. "Do you still want to
marry me?" Get right to the point. But this morning, with his head still
full of gloomy thoughts, he wasn't so sure. Did he really want her to say yes?
He decided she probably would. She had left her high-society inside-the-Beltway
life and come back to Indian Country, which said she really loved him. But that
would carry with it, in some subtle way, her understanding that he would climb
the ladder of success into the social strata where she felt at home.

There was another possibility. She had taken her first reservation job to
escape her law professor lover. Did this return simply mean she wanted the man
to pursue her again? Chee turned away from that thought and remembered how
sweet it had been before she had betrayed him (or, as she saw it, before he had
insulted her because of his unreasonable jealousy). He could land a federal job
in Washington. Could he be happy there? He thought of himself as a drunk,
worthless, dying of a destroyed liver. Was that what had killed Janet's Navajo
father? Had he drowned himself in whiskey to escape Janet's ruling-caste
mother?

When he'd exhausted all the dark corners that scenario offered, he turned to
an alternative. Janet had come back to him. She'd be willing to live on the Big
Rez, wife of a cop, living in what her friends would rate as slum housing,
where high culture was a second-run movie. In that line of thought, love
overcame all. But it wouldn't. She'd yearn for the life she'd given up. He
would see it. They'd be miserable.

Finally he thought of Janet as court-appointed defense attorney and of
himself as arresting officer. But by the time she walked in, exactly on time,
he was back to thinking of her as an Eastern social butterfly, and that thought
gave this Flagstaff dining room a worn, grungy look that he'd never noticed
before.

He pulled back a chair for her.

"I guess you're used to classier places in Washington," he said,
and instantly wished he hadn't so carelessly touched the nerve of their
disagreement.

Janet's smile wavered. She looked at him a moment, somberly, and looked
away. "I'll bet the coffee is better here."

"It's always fresh anyway," he said. "Or almost always."

A teenage boy delivered two mugs and a bowl filled with single-serving-size
containers labeled "non-dairy creamer."

Janet looked over her mug at him. "Jim."

Chee waited. "What?"

"Oh, nothing. I guess this is a time to talk business."

"So we take off our friend hats, and put on adversary hats?"

"Not really," Janet said. "But I'd like to know if you're
absolutely certain Robert Jano killed Officer Kinsman."

"Sure I'm certain," Chee said. He felt his face flush—"You
must have read the arrest report. I was there, wasn't I? And what do you do
with it if I say I'm not sure? Do you tell the jury that even the arresting
officer told you that he had reasonable doubts?"

He'd tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but Janet's face told him he
hadn't managed it. Another raw nerve touched.

"I'd do absolutely nothing with it," she said. "It's just
that Jano swears he didn't do it. I'll be working with him. I'd like to believe
him."

"Don't," Chee said. He sipped his coffee and put down the mug. It
occurred to him that he hadn't noticed how it tasted. He picked up one of the
containers-. "'Non-dairy creamer,'" he read. "Produced, I
understand, on non-dairy farms."

Janet managed a smile. "You know what? Doesn't this episode we're
having here remind you of the first time we met? Remember? In the holding room
at the San Juan County Jail in Aztec. You were trying to keep me from bonding
out that old man."

"And you were trying to keep me from talking to him."

"But I got him out." Janet was grinning at him now.

"But not until I got the information I wanted," Chee said.

"Okay," Janet said, still grinning. "We'll call that one a
tie. Even though you had to cheat a little."

"How about our next competition," Chee said. "Remember the
old alcoholic? You thought Leaphorn and I were picking on him. Until your
client pleaded guilty."

"That was a sad, sad case," Janet said. She sipped her coffee.
"Some things about it still bother me. Some things about this one bother
me, too."

"Like what? Like the fact Jano is a Hopi and the Hopis are peaceful
people? Nonviolent?"

"There's that, of course," Janet said. "But everything he
told me has a sort of logic to it and a lot of it can be checked out."

"Like what? What can be checked?"

"Like, for example, he said he was going to collect an eagle his kiva
needed for a ceremonial. His brothers in is religious group can confirm that.
That made it a religious pilgrimage, on which no evil thoughts are
allowed."

"Such as thoughts of revenge? Such as getting even with Kinsman for the
prior arrest? The kind of thoughts D.A. will want to suggest to the jury if
he's going for malice, premeditation. The death penalty stuff."

"Right," she said.

"They would confirm why he was going for the eagle, and the prosecution
would concede it," Chee said. |*But how do you prove that deep down Jano
didn't want 1 even the score?" Janet shrugged.

"J. D. Mickey will probably state that in his opening. He'll say that
Jano had gone onto the Navajo reservation to poach an eagle—a crime in itself.
He'll say that Officer Benjamin Kinsman of the Navajo Tribal Police had
previously arrested him doing the same crime last year and that Jano got off on
some sort of technicality. He'll say that when he saw Kinsman was after him
again, Jano was enraged. So instead of releasing the bird, getting rid of the
evidence and trying to escape, he let Kinsman catch him, caught him off-guard
and brained him."

"Is that the way Mickey is planning it?"

"I'm just guessing," Chee said.

"I have no doubt at all that Mickey will go for death. It would be the
first one since the 1994 Congress allowed federal death penalties and there
would be a media coverage circus." Janet doctored her coffee with the
nondairy creamer, tasted it. "Mickey for Congress," she intoned.
"Your law-and-order candidate."

"That's the way I see it," Chee said. "But the courts would
have to rule that Kinsman was a federal officer."

"People in criminal justice say he was." Chee shrugged.
"Probably."

"Which led the U.S. Department of Justice to unplug him from the
various life support machines," Janet said. "So Benjamin Kinsman
could hurry up and be a murder victim instead of the subject of criminal
assault. Thereby simplifying the paperwork."

"Come on, Janet," Chee said. "Be fair. Ben was already dead.
The machines were breathing for him, making his heart pump. Kinsman's spirit
had gone away."

Janet was sipping her coffee. "You're right about one thing," she
said. "This is good fresh Java. Not that weird perfumed stuff the yuppie
bars sell for four dollars a cup."

"What else could be checked out?" Chee asked. "In Jano's
version."

Janet raised her hand. "First something else," she said. "How
about that autopsy? The law requires one in homicides, sort of, but a lot of
Navajos don't like the idea and sometimes they're skipped. And I heard one of
the docs saying something about organ donations?"

"Kinsman was a Mormon. So were his parents. He'd had a donor card
registered," Chee said, studying her as he said it. "But you already
knew that. You were changing the subject."

"I'm the defense attorney," she said. "You think my client is
guilty. I've got to be careful what I tell you."

Chee nodded. "But if there's something that can be checked out that I'm
missing, something that could help his case, then I ought to know about it. I'm
not going to go out there and destroy the evidence. Don't you—"

He had started to say: "Don't you trust me?" But she would have
said she did. And then she would have returned the question, and he had no idea
how he could answer it.

She was leaning forward, elbows on table, chin resting on clasped hands,
waiting for him to finish.

"End of statement," he said. "Sure, I think he's guilty. I was
there. Had I been a little faster, I would have stopped it."

"Cowboy doesn't think he's guilty."

"Cowboy? Cowboy Dashee?"

"Yes," Janet said. "Your old friend, Deputy Sheriff Cowboy
Dashee. He told me Jano is his cousin. He's known him since childhood. They
were playmates. Close friends. Cowboy told me that thinking Robert Jano would
kill somebody with a rock is like thinking Mother Teresa would strangle the
Pope."

"Really?"

"That's what he said. His exact words, in fact."

"How come you got in touch with Cowboy?"

"I didn't. He called the D.A.'s office. Asked who'd be assigned to
handle Jano's defense. They told him a new hire would be assigned to it, and he
left a message for whoever that would be to give him a call. It was me, so I
called him."

"Well, hell," Chee said. "How come he didn't contact
me?"

"I don't have to explain that, do I? He was afraid you'd think he was
trying—"

"Sure," Chee said. "Of course."

Janet looked sympathetic. "That makes it worse for you, doesn't it? I
know you guys go way back."

"Yeah, we do," Chee said. "Cowboy's about as good a friend as
I ever had."

"Well, he's a cop, too. He'll understand."

"He's also a Hopi," Chee said. "And some wise man once told
us that blood's thicker than water." He sighed. "What did Cowboy tell
you?"

"He said Jano had caught his eagle. He was coming home with it. He
heard noises. He checked. He found the officer on the ground, head
bleeding."

Chee shook his head. "I know. That's the statement he gave us. When he
finally decided to talk about it."

"It could be true."

"Sure," Chee said. "It could be true. But how about the slash
on his forearm, and his blood mixed with Ben's? And no blood on the eagle? And
where's the perpetrator, if it wasn't Jano? Ben Kinsman didn't hit himself on
the head with that rock. It wasn't suicide."

"The eagle flew away," Janet said. "And don't be
sarcastic."

That stopped Chee cold. He sat for a long moment, just staring at her.

She looked puzzled. "What?"

"He told you the eagle flew away?"

"That's right. When he caught it, Jano was under some brush or
something," she said. "A blind, I guess, with something on a cord for
bait. He tried to grab the eagle by the legs and just got one of them, and it
slashed him on the arm and he released it."

"Janet," Chee said. "The eagle didn't fly away. It was in a
wire cage just about eight or ten feet from where Jano was standing over
Kinsman."

Janet put down her coffee cup.

Chee frowned. "He told you it got away? But he knew we had it. Why
would he tell you that?"

She shrugged. Looked down at her hands.

"And it didn't have any blood on its feathers. At least, I didn't see
any. I'm sure the lab would check for it.

"If you think I'm lying, look." He held out his hand, displaying
the still healing slash on its side. "I picked up the cage to move it.
That's where its talon caught me. Ripped the skin."

Janet's face was flushed. "You didn't have to show We anything,"
she said. "I didn't think you were lying. I'll ask Jano about it. Maybe I
misunderstood. I must have."

Chee saw Janet was embarrassed. "I'll bet I know what happened,"
he said. "Jano didn't want to talk about the eagle because it got too
close to violating kiva secrecy rules. I think it would become a symbolic
messenger to God, to the spirit world. Its role would be sacred. He just
couldn't talk about it, so he said he turned it loose."

"Maybe so," she said.

"I'll bet he just wanted to divert you. To talk about something besides
a touchy religious subject."

Janet's expression told him she doubted that.

"I'll ask him about it," Janet repeated. "I really haven't
had much chance to talk to him yet. Just a few minutes. I just got here."

"But he told you he didn't kill Kinsman. Did he tell you who did?"

"Well," Janet said, and hesitated. "You know, Jim, I have to
be careful talking about this. Let me just say that I guess whoever it was who
had hit Officer Kinsman with the rock must have heard Jano coming and went
away. Jano said it started raining about the time you got there. By the time
you had him handcuffed in the patrol car, and called in for help, and tried to
make Kinsman comfortable, any tracks would have been washed away."

Chee didn't comment on that. He had to be careful, too.

"Don't you think so? Or did you find other tracks?"

"You mean other than Jano's?"

"Of course. Did you have a chance to look for any before it started
raining?"

Chee considered the question, why she had asked it and whether she already
knew the answer.

"You want some more coffee?"

"Okay," Janet said.

Chee signaled the waiter, thinking about what he was about to do. It was
fair, if her effort to get him to state that he hadn't looked for other tracks
was fair.