Spider Woman's Daughter (20 page)

“The Lizard?”

“You know him?” Jacobs, she realized, was a man of surprises.

“Lizard Nez? That guy is hot in rodeo. He hasn’t gone missing. Check to see who’s offering what prize money this month for bronc riding, and you’ll him find there.”

“Why wouldn’t Jackson tell us that?”

Slim chuckled. “I imagine it has somethin’ to do with his ferocious mama not likin’ rodeo one little bit. Not wanting her precious son in any way, shape, or form involved in cowboyin’. As I see it, Jackson’s not especially interested in gettin’ tossed in the dirt and stepped on. He goes with Lizard as sort of his manager. And to meet girls.”

Bernie thought about that. A possibility.

“Did you ever have trouble with Jackson?”

Slim chuckled. “You asked me that already. You know how kids are. Jack has a touch of what I call attitude. Some growin’ up ahead of him. But no. As long as he knows what I expect, he delivers.”

Bernie thought of Darleen. The description would fit her, too.

Slim rose, took her water glass and his. Refilled them both from the tap. Added a single ice cube from the freezer to each. Sat down again. Princess angled up and waddled toward the front porch, pushing the door open with her nose.

“What does Jackson do here?”

“I guess you could call him an apprentice or assistant or somethin’,” Slim said. “He’s good with numbers, helps with the taxes and government red tape. He works hard outside if I need that. Besides helpin’ me, he goes out to a little dig once in a while.” He glanced to the right, out past the fence, toward the horizon. “It’s all on the up and up. My own land. Jackson works those jobs with Maxie on his own time, as long as no burials are involved. He tells me he likes learnin’ a little about archaeology, but I think he knows a handsome woman when one comes his way.”

“Maxie Davis? Is she the other woman in the picture?”

Slim said, “Yeah. Maxie calls herself Dr. Davis. You know her?”

Bernie nodded. “What kind of work is she doing out here?”

Slim said, “Well, that’s a story. One of those roads from Chaco Canyon we were jawin’ about earlier, turns out it went right through the ranch, or where the ranch would have been if I’d been around a thousand years ago. Maxie told me all that. She wanted to do some diggin’ here, research. Called me out of the blue. I told her go ahead. She found a little compound. Some kind of settlement.”

“That’s interesting.”

“They’ve got all sorts of high-tech stuff now to find ruins underground,” Slim said. “But Dr. Davis—hell, I used to just call her Maxie, but now she’s Dr. Davis. She didn’t need any of that fancy stuff. She remembered seeing some of the pieces of pots out here and just followed her intuition. Bingo.”

“So I guess from the photo you knew her in the old days, too?”

“Maxie’s not the kinda gal a cowboy forgets, even though I was partial to Ellie. When Maxie came out to talk about the dig, she remembered me taking that photo of her and Ellie together, asked if I still had it. I told her no; I’d forgotten all about it. Then she asked if I had any of the photos she took when she worked with Ellie. I told her no, again.”

Slim shook his head. “Ellie holds on to all that old stuff. That Ellie’s a free spirit, but she kept an eye on her business records. She told me if she came across somethin’ similar for a new appraisal, she could cross-check. Save herself a bunch of time.”

“Did Davis say why she wanted a photo of the two of them?”

“I asked her. She said those were hard times for her and she didn’t want a record of them. Next time she came out, she asked about the photo again. I told her I’d given it to Ellie just to shut her up.”

Bernie sipped her water. Thought it over. “How did Davis help with the appraisals?

“Maxie took the pictures. Left Ellie to do the real work. I remember that on my job they came twice, first to look at the stuff. Ellie would take notes and Maxie snapped the pictures. Then they’d come back with the report. Ellie would sit out on the porch and we’d talk about the values, or just shoot the breeze, while Maxie would get new photos. Always seemed like some of hers would be fuzzy or something.”

Bernie said, “Sounds like a good team.”

Slim said, “That’s what I thought, too. But when Maxie was out just lately to work on her dig, she started askin’ me questions about Ellie’s records. Did I know where she kept ’em, things like that. I figured if Ellie hadn’t kept her up to speed, it wasn’t my place to do it. Told her to ask Ellie.”

Princess stayed fast asleep on the porch, not even raising her head for a last bark, as Bernie left. When she got back to her car, she called Chee about the Davis/Ellie connection and the mysterious Leonard Nez, rodeo star in the making. She reminded him to run a background check on Ellie, and to add Davis to the assignment.

“And Collingsworth, too?” Chee asked.

“Why not?” Then she found a spot of shade and ate her sandwich before she drove out to Mama’s house.

16

C
hee checked in at the Shiprock station, learned nothing new, and was headed out the door for the Window Rock meeting with Mrs. Benally and Largo when his intercom buzzed. A call from Largo on line one.

“What the bejesus were you doing out at Chaco Canyon?” Captain Largo did not sound happy.

Chee bristled. Largo had no right to pry into his personal life.

“We went to Santa Fe to see Leaphorn. Bernie hadn’t been to Chaco since high school, so we stopped there on the way back.”

“And got wrapped up in a potential homicide?”

“Homicide?”

“Park personnel found a body off the trail. The trail where you sent them,” Largo said.

“We met a woman who had seen something odd. It didn’t seem like anything much. We reported it to a ranger.”

“Yeah. That’s always how this stuff starts out.” Largo sighed. “Cordova wants to talk to you. Out there. He’s on his way now.”

“I already told the ranger, a guy named Stephen, everything the woman told us. What about Mrs. Benally and the meeting?”

Largo said, “You know how this all works with the feds. I’ll ask Wheeler to talk to Mrs. Benally.”

“It’s a long drive out there,” Chee said.

“Use the time to think about the Leaphorn case.” Largo paused, and Chee heard the change in his tone of voice. “How is he doing?”

Chee thought about what to say. “He’s on a bunch of machines and a lot of drugs to keep him quiet. The surgeon removed part of his skull for the swelling. Even with all that, I think he might have recognized us.”

“Did he tell you who did it? Who shot him?”

“He can’t talk yet,” Chee said. “We asked him if he knew the shooter, and Bernie could tell he wanted to write a message. But he wasn’t strong enough.”

“Damn,” Largo said.

As Chee headed out to Chaco, he reviewed what he knew about the Leaphorn shooting. The obvious suspect, Jackson Benally, didn’t fit the profile of a killer. Leonard Nez didn’t have a record of violence or any connection to the lieutenant as far as Chee could find. Garrison Tsosie? A whisper of a motive and a solid alibi.

Louisa? That was a different story. No reports of her Jeep showing up anywhere. Largo told him the feds had checked with the personnel office at Northern Arizona University and with her colleagues there. No record of any conferences she’d planned to attend that month. Not much in her file other than academic records. She listed Leaphorn as her emergency contact.

After that, the list was as broad as the lieutenant’s long career, the legwork intense, and the trail getting cold. Ellie, who rudely left Leaphorn to have lunch by himself? Some ex-con with a grudge? A random cop hater who stole the Benally car, put it back, and disappeared?

Chee pulled his police unit into the left lane, glanced at the drivers, all cruising along at the speed limit with both hands on the wheel. No doubt with their cell phones on their laps, waiting for him to pass to go back to texting while sipping their coffee, eating a sweet roll, and applying makeup or shaving. Traffic was light, the sky cloudless and blue as a pale white man’s eyes.

As he drove, Chee thought about Louisa’s account of the lieutenant and a ghost from the past. He thought about Eleanor Friedman-Bernal and what Bernie had learned about her lowball appraisals. From what Davis said, Ellie was a shifty character. Chee remembered meeting the man who nearly killed her, Randall Elliot. He had seemed civil, smart, concerned that Ellie was missing.

Chee wondered, again, what motivated a man to commit a serious crime to cover up a lesser crime. To his Navajo Police way of thinking, illegal excavation for academic prestige wasn’t much of an offense compared to battery with deadly intentions. Something else about Elliot and the case snagged at the edge of his memory. If only he could ask the lieutenant.

Chee flashed back to the visit to the hospital and thought about Bernie. He found himself continually amazed and delighted by her savvy. Bernie had great instincts, good intuition, a wonderful way of dealing with people. She would find out all about Ellie at the Double X Ranch with no problem. Then Bernie could contact her, put Leaphorn’s AIRC job to rest. She might come up with something that would raise Ellie to legitimate suspect level or, more likely, eliminate her from the suspect pool.

Chee passed the little settlement of Nageezi and turned off toward Chaco. He cruised past the few dry homesteads, a handful of bored cows standing in the sun. He thought about the lieutenant, remembering the American Automobile Association map of the Navajo Nation that hung on his wall. The lieutenant marked each type of crime with a different colored pushpin, and used the map to discover patterns. He wondered what sort of tracking Leaphorn would do to solve his own case.

Bouncing along the empty road, Chee remembered how green the lieutenant had looked on the helicopter flight back to civilization after they had rescued Ellie. That was one of the first and only times he’d sensed that his occasional boss and frequent critic had some human weakness. During that turbulent trip, Leaphorn had honored him by asking him to do a Blessing Way ceremony. He never knew what fierce evil the lieutenant had encountered in that ruin-filled canyon, and never asked.

After the death of his uncle and teacher Hosteen Nakai, Chee had discontinued his studies to become a
hataalii.
Now, he couldn’t do a traditional healing ceremony for the lieutenant, complete with sacred songs and sand paintings. But he could arrange it, make some calls today, get to work on that project. The lieutenant’s interest in the ritual had surprised him, but the man had always kept Chee off guard.

When the road forked, Chee turned onto the main branch toward the visitor center, the route he and Bernie had driven yesterday. His police unit, a heavy-duty SUV, handled the washboard, sand traps, and potholes about as well, or as poorly, as his truck had. When it rained, this road became treacherously slick. Campers, SUVs, minivans full of hapless tourists had slipped off and gotten stuck out here. That was when the visitors realized cell phones aren’t as smart as the commercials claim.

He thought about the dead woman up ahead. What would the people Karen heard have been arguing about? What if this wasn’t murder, but a hiking accident? Chee mulled it over as he pulled out to pass a white Honda with Texas plates. What if Long Sleeves had talked about suicide, and Dorky Hat invited her out here to cheer her up? The cheering-up doesn’t work. Dorky Hat gets annoyed that Long Sleeves won’t listen to reason. They argue, and Long Sleeves pulls the trigger, shoots herself.

He rejected it even before he got to the end of the scenario. If a person really wanted to kill herself, why would she agree to come here in the first place? And what kind of person runs off and abandons a suicidal friend who has a gun? Or, after the gunshot, leaves the dead or maybe just injured friend behind without calling for help?

Murder, cold-blooded assault or a shooting sparked by anger, seemed to be the only scenario that made sense. The crime would have gone undiscovered longer if it hadn’t been for Karen’s inadvertent eavesdropping and the coincidence of their meeting in the campground.

Chee noticed a dust plume rising on the road ahead and switched his air conditioner to recirculate. He caught up with a black van with New Mexico plates, passed it, and drove into the park, finally on pavement again. Just beyond Pueblo Bonito, someone had placed a Road Closed notice over the Park Service’s descriptive sign. A Chaco ranger had blocked the end of the loop with his truck to keep out the tourists. He motioned Chee’s SUV through with a wave.

Chee cruised past the empty parking lot toward two sets of stone ruins. The gate that kept visitors from driving any farther than the picnic table and trail registry stood open, and a San Juan County sheriff’s car waited there. He recognized the deputy, Tim Morris, an officer he’d worked with on a child custody case that involved a Navajo mother and an oil field father from Shiprock.

Chee rolled down the window to greet Morris. “So you’re the lucky guy who got the call?”

“That’s me,” Morris said. “How you doing? Haven’t seen you since you tied the knot. How’s married life working out?”

“Luckiest man in the world. Where’s Agent Cordova?”

Morris pointed to the mesa top. “Up that way.”

“You’re kidding.”

The deputy shook his head. “There’s a trail on the other side of those ruins that leads up the cliff side. Cordova said to tell you he’d meet you on top. Did you see the Omega van?”

“Black, big, someone’s idea of anonymous? Yeah, behind me,” Chee said. “Must be somebody new coming for the body. He’s taking those washboards too slow.”

Chee drove through. He parked next to the Crown Victoria and climbed out, slapped by the dry, penetrating heat. He found the trail that led to the Pueblo de Arroyo ruins, old stone walls that had once been buildings, up ahead. He walked for fifteen minutes, searching for the trail to Pueblo Alto, another set of ruins off the beaten path in a place that was off the beaten path to start with. He stuck to a narrow route that ascended into the boulders above the Pueblo de Arroyo ruins, startling a pair of brown snakes beautifully camouflaged to blend in to the rocks. He followed a series of little brown signs that read “Trail.”

Finally, he saw “Trail” with an arrow pointing toward the sky and noticed part of a footprint in the sand. An interesting impression, he thought, a swirly design.

Hiking turned to climbing now and involved using his hands for balance and to pull himself through the first section of the steep ascent. After that, the route required squeezing forward through a narrow slot. He paused a moment in the shade of the sandstone crevice, enjoying the coolness. If he had been wearing something other than his boots, Chee thought, the climb would have been much easier. He should have brought some water. Why is it the feds never tell you anything?

He emerged from the slot onto the mesa top to discover a flatter trail and a view that included Pueblo Arroyo, the deputy’s car, and the fed-mobile. He trotted along the path, noticing the gray rock that resembled petrified mud. The vista opened to a panorama of sun-dried country divided by the curving dry Chaco Wash. He saw a rust-colored spot on a giant piece of eroded sandstone and, when he looked at it closely, realized he was seeing fossilized shrimp. The mesa ascended gently to his left in a series of dry washes and ledges. Hiking to the top would be easier than the hike he had just made. He couldn’t see the Pueblo Alto ruins yet; that involved another span of hiking. Why had Cordova wanted him up here?

He found the FBI agent crouched near a big circle of rocks, taking pictures. Chee hailed him.

“That’s quite a climb.”

“It is,” Cordova said. “Glad you got here before the Omega team.”

“I passed them on the washboards,” Chee said. “They are at least twenty minutes out. What’s up?”

“I understand you were the one who reported something suspicious out here,” Cordova said. “You and your cute wife.”

Chee said, “A woman we met at the campground had heard something that bothered her.” He retold the story, searching his memory for Karen’s exact words against the current of jealousy Cordova raised in him. “Karen’s driving a white Camry, probably 2012. Colorado plate. She’s the one you guys need to talk to.”

Cordova asked questions about the argument story, focusing on descriptions. Chee remembered Karen describing a person in a hat running along the trail after the gunshot.

“Did she know if the person who left was a woman?”

Chee said, “I think she figured they were both women. But from her description, it could have been a boy. No deep voices involved.”

Cordova laughed. “For once, we get a break. Ever notice how some women blame all the evils of the world on men? At least, my wife does.

“Karen Dundee is your witness’s full name,” Cordova continued. “We tracked her from her campground registration and eventually found her son in Denver, who said she was planning to go to Grand Canyon next. Evidently she’s the only person in America without a cell phone. The highway patrol is tracking down the car.”

“Why did you call me out here? We could have talked about all this on the radio.”

“Two reasons.” Cordova took in the view. Put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. “The bureau is trying to be more sensitive to Native American issues, to work with the Navajo Police and other tribal law enforcement more closely. Chaco is surrounded by the reservation. Since you two called the body to our attention, it made sense for you to be the liaison in case any Native jurisdictional issues are involved.”

He smiled at Chee. “I hear you’re a good tracker. That could help here, too. And since we’re both working that Leaphorn case, I figured we could get better acquainted.”

Cordova gestured toward the spot where Chee had seen him crouching. “I noticed some footprints in the sand here. Snapped a photo of them. I’ve seen others like them up here, too. Take a look.”

Chee squatted close to the print. Different from the swirly one. Of course, he thought, this is a hiking trail. If he searched hard enough he could probably find dozens of different prints, an encyclopedia of shoe soles. Should he be grumpy about being stereotyped as an Indian scout, or complimented that the FBI was asking for his help?