Spider Woman's Daughter (21 page)

Cordova gazed south toward the vast country, dotted with unexcavated ruins. “When the office got the call from park security that they’d found the body, the ranger here suggested that it might be suicide. What do you think?”

“I don’t think this was suicide. Maybe Dorky Hat . . . ” Chee paused. “Karen gave the women nicknames, and Bernie and I kept them. Anyway, maybe the one in the hat was trying to talk the other woman, Long Sleeves we called her, out of killing herself. Or during the argument Dorky Hat killed Long Sleeves, but not on purpose. Long Sleeves is ready to pull the trigger, Dorky Hat struggles to get the gun. It goes off, and Dorky Hat gets scared and runs. But I don’t think it was suicide.”

“All right, then.” The way Cordova said it, Chee knew that it meant
Discussion closed
. Cordova led the way to the cliff side, careful to walk only on the rock. He had on dress shoes, Chee noticed, also bad for hiking.

Cordova stopped. “Take a look at this.”

Chee followed his gaze to the edge of the sandstone cliff. He noticed a fenced area beyond it, below on the canyon floor.

“That’s Richard Wetherill’s grave. Have you heard of him?”

“Probably,” Cordova said. “Remind me.”

“He was the first person who did any excavations here. Had a trading post at Chaco, too.” Chee could see the grave marker for Wetherill inside the fence and a simple unpaved trail from the parking lot to the burial site.

He told Cordova more about Wetherill and his wife Marietta, and about the controversy around his murder by a Navajo employee.

When he was done, Cordova nodded. “That’s not what I wanted you to see. Notice those rocks?”

Chee examined the honey-colored cliffs, scanning the ledges and the boulders and vertical sandstone slabs that had broken free and tumbled down centuries ago, or maybe only decades ago. Behind the cliff that created a towering natural wall for the cemetery, he saw a body wedged in the rock. “Have you been down there?”

“Yes. She fell from up here.”

Chee thought about how to ask what he needed to know. “You worked many suicides?”

“I was a beat cop before I joined the feds.” Cordova’s tone was cold. “I know the difference. Animals have been at her, but this was a gunshot to the chest. Women don’t usually off themselves that way. ”

So, Chee thought, the questions about suicide were a test. He didn’t regret showing off about Richard Wetherill as much as he had a few minutes ago.

“Any ID?”

“Not that I found. No suicide note either. If she had anything, the killer may have taken it. The Omega crew gets paid to deal with maggots and body parts. They might find something. But feel free to look before they get here.”

“Why climb all the way up here to murder somebody?”

“I’ve been considering that,” Cordova said. “Maybe these two were partners. Lovers. Long Sleeves tells Dorky Hat it’s over while they’re hiking. She has a gun because they’re camping. Spontaneous crime of passion.”

“I like the crime-of-passion aspect,” Chee said. “There are lots of places to kill somebody out here where a body could stay for years before somebody found it. This isn’t one of them. That supports the impulsive aspect.”

“It seems isolated enough to me,” Cordova said. “She could have been out here for months without being discovered.”

Chee looked at the cliff side, tracing the trajectory of the fall in his mind. He saw the ledges and outcroppings where the victim’s body would have hit, bounced to hit again, and finally stopped. Cordova was right: the woman had fallen from around the place where they now stood. And he doubted the positioning was accidental. If the shooting had been elsewhere, the body would have needed a push to fall from the mesa top. At this overlook, the percussion from the chest blast would have sent it flying backward.

“Did you notice these swirl tracks anywhere else?” Chee pointed to a track in a place where sand had blown into a slight flat place on the rock.

“No. To tell you the truth, I didn’t see those down there.”

“Do you remember the victim’s boots?”

“Hikers. Leather-and-fabric combination. Smallish. I didn’t see the brand.”

“The soles?”

“Hmmm. I don’t recall.”

Chee glanced down at Cordova’s dusty shoes. Expensive. The FBI paid well.

“I’m going to snoop around a little,” he said. Chee walked along the mesa top, looking for more hollows carved out by wind and water that might hold tracks. The surface was mostly rock. He found nothing at first, then a cigarette butt, which called his attention to a small patch of sand with a partial impression of swirled sole. Then a slightly larger print, waffle sole. Then a trace of a smooth sole from a larger shoe—Cordova, not watching where he stepped.

Chee squatted down and motioned Cordova over to the next shallow sandy basin. “You might want to get a photo of these prints, the swirl and the waffle track. The cigarette butt over there might be part of this, too.”

“Unfiltered,” Cordova said. “Like the Camels I used to smoke.” He pointed at the swirly print. “You think this might be Dorky Hat?”

“Could be.”

“Interesting that little bowl is perfectly round,” Cordova said.

“Man-made,” Chee said. “They call these pecked basins. Water collectors. They are up here because of the stone circles.” Chee moved next to some large stones. “Look for more rocks like these, and you’ll begin to see a pattern.”

“Hmmm,” Cordova said.

“When I was at UNM, the archaeology department was doing all sorts of work here. They think these circles had ceremonial uses. The catchment basins were for water for the people who came up here for ceremonies. Or for a ceremony that needed water.”

Cordova said, “I think we’re done. Let me know if you have any insights.”

A raven glided over the cliff side, and Chee watched it settle on the rocks next to where the dead woman lay. “I’ll check around down there before they move her. Keep the birds from doing any more damage.”

Cordova said, “Make sure I didn’t miss anything.”

Chee nodded, not sure if Cordova was joking. “Is that trail we took the only way down?”

“That’s what park security told me.”

As he headed off, Chee smiled at the change in his mood. Without Cordova’s summons, he never would have climbed up here. It was beautiful. Sensational. He had read that farther along, past where they had stopped to look down on the body, you could see the wide roadbeds the people of Chaco built and some of the steps they’d carved into the rock. He’d have to bring Bernie here.

After he climbed down, Chee crept along the base of the cliff face, moving toward the body, hunting for places a gun might have lodged itself. Discovering black-and-white potshards, lizard tracks, elk droppings. Even having seen the woman from the mesa, he had trouble finding her until he drew close enough for the unforgettable smell of death to lead the way. He heard a vehicle on the road and saw the black SUV parking near the Wetherill cemetery. Chee hurried.

His approach up into the boulder field scared the raven onto a pile of rocks. It perched, keeping an eye on him, biding its time. Chee neared the body, hoping for tracks and finding a few spots that held the three-toed impressions left by ravens, some coyote paw prints, and the ropelike path of a snake. He saw no shoe or boot tracks, no sign that whoever killed her had climbed down to make sure she was dead.

The victim would have been about five foot three, Chee figured. And as well as he could determine, she was dead when she fell.

He filled his lungs with fresh air and pulled his shirt over his nose to help with the smell. He walked to where the victim’s cheeks, eyes, lips, and nose would have been. Predators love soft tissue. He noticed brown hair with gray at the temples. A glint of light caught his eye, something on the wrist reflecting the sun. He pushed the shirtsleeve away with the toe of his boot. Beneath it, a wide silver bracelet. Sand-cast with a heart design. He bent over the corpse to see the bottom of her boots. Waffle soles. A common pattern, but her feet seemed to be the right size to match the tracks on the mesa top.

He straightened up, took several long strides away from the body. Grabbed a breath of fresher air as he scanned the area, surveying the slope that angled below her. No backpack or wallet had worked its way loose during the flight down the cliff face. No weapon.

Chee took the trail back the way he had come, feeling the heat of the sun through his shirt and the sweat beneath his hat. He tried to calm his roiling stomach, forget the sight of what had once been a human face. The old ones advised staying away from the dead, and he agreed with the soundness of this ancient wisdom every time the job brought him together with someone like Long Sleeves.

Chee heard the voices and saw the hazard jackets of the Omega crew. As they came closer, he noticed a familiar face, a retired cop he knew from Farmington.

“Hey, Jim Chee,” the man said. “Hot day for a hike.”

“Right,” Chee said. “Bad place for a body.”

“Is there a good place?”

Back at the parking lot he found Cordova sitting in his car, engine running. Chee felt the cool rush of his air-conditioning when the FBI man rolled down the window.

“Anything else?”

“You might want to check in those rocks a bit to the right, up from the body,” he said. “One of those fancy water bottles. Hasn’t been there long enough to get sunburned. Might help with the ID.”

“Okay,” Cordova said.

“Her boots probably made the waffle prints you photographed.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“She’s wearing a bracelet.” Chee described it.

“Like the one Bernie saw?”

“Seems like it.”

“Thanks for coming out today,” Cordova said. “This gal might have been the one who shot Leaphorn.”

Chee’s Navajo Police unit was stifling, hotter even than the air outside. He left the doors open a minute, then climbed onto the scorching seat, started the engine, turned the air-con up full blast, and rolled down the windows. He drove with the wind blowing away recollections of the rancid odor of death. He stopped at the visitor center for a drink of water and to say hello to Wakara, the park’s head of security, a Ute from near Cortez, and tell him what he’d learned.

Wakara said, “The drought has meant more dead elk around here. Without you and Bernie, we might have figured that was drawing the birds. Not a dead person.”

Chee called Largo from Wakara’s office.

“So, all the feds need to do is ID the body and then figure out why this white woman would want to shoot Leaphorn,” Largo said.

“That’s what Wakara said, too,” Chee told him. “Piece of cake.”

“Tell him hello for me,” Largo said. “By the way, we got the results of two of those background checks you wanted. Collingsworth and Friedman or Friedman-Bernal?”

“Yeah?”

“Both clean, as far as we can tell,” Largo said. “Still working on Davis. Evidently Maxie is a nickname. You don’t know her real first name, do you?”

“Never heard it.”

“Never mind,” Largo said. “You need to get back to the Shiprock office. Mrs. Benally wants to talk to you about Leonard Nez.”

“She’s coming to Shiprock?”

“Yeah,” Largo said. “You’re in luck. She has a sister who lives there.” Largo told him the time Mrs. Benally expected to arrive. “Good luck with that.”

As he got close to home, Chee remembered the cat. He’d stop at the house quickly since it was on the way to the station and leave it some food, make sure it had water. When he climbed out of his unit, he noticed the dirt on the floor mat. He had a little time before Mrs. Benally was due, so he looked unsuccessfully in the logical places for the vacuum. It had been a wedding gift from some of his relatives, presented with much joking about how he would be the one to use it.

He called Bernie on her cell. From the TV in the background, he knew she was at her mother’s house.

“You’re vacuuming?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “I was out at Chaco again today. Now my unit is full of sand.”

She told him where to find it. “While you’re at it, the house could use some attention, too. Cat hair. What were you doing back at Chaco?”

“I got called to help Cordova.” He told about the bracelet.

“If that woman is the one who shot Leaphorn, why is she dead? How did she get the Benally car? And who is she?”

“Good questions,” Chee said. ‘I’m going to check with Cordova when I get to the office, see how the feds are doing on the answers.”

17

B
ernie hung up the phone and tried to push away her frustration. She ought to be helping Chee. Not with the vacuuming. With the case.

Mama had smiled when she drove up. “Oldest daughter, I was not expecting to see you today. You are a blessing.” Then Mama went back to work sweeping the porch slowly, systematically. The paint had faded on her old broom, the straw worn down to six inches from the base.

Bernie said, “Is Sister here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“She went somewhere in the car,” Mama said. “Don’t worry about her so much. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

Bernie moved a couple of kitchen chairs out to the porch, and she and Mama sat in the shade. She talked about meeting Slim Jacobs that morning and about her visit to Chaco Canyon.

“I have never been to that place,” Mama said. “But I remember it from the old stories.”

Bernie knew the stories, too. The story of the Great Gambler who enslaved the Pueblo people who lived there by winning their possessions, wives, children, and finally the men themselves. A Navajo man, with the help of the Holy People, beat the Gambler at his own games and freed the Pueblos. Bernie also remembered the story of how the fifth Diné clan joined with the four original clans at Chaco Canyon, moving with the People to the banks of the San Juan River.

They heard the car before they saw it, music blaring from the speakers through the open windows. Darleen pulled into the driveway, hit the brake, generated a cloud of dust.

“Hey, Sister,” Darleen yelled at her. “You come around? Good fa you.”

Bernie said, “I finished an interview and figured I’d stop by. You were driving pretty fast there, like one of those NASCAR guys.”

Darleen stumbled as she climbed out of the car, leaving the door open, engine running. She leaned against the roof.

“I like fast,” Darleen said.

Bernie jogged to the car, reached past Darleen, close enough to smell the alcohol, and turned off the ignition. She saw three crushed beer cans on the passenger floor.

“You shouldn’t drive when you’ve been drinking. You could die. Die or kill somebody.”

Darleen laughed. “I’m gonna die anyway. What sa difference? You’re a cop. Arrest me.” She moved away from the car, swaying, nearly losing her balance.

Bernie put her arms out to catch her if she fell. Darleen lurched away.

“Lee me alone,” Darleen said. “Doan touch me. I’m none a your bidness.”

Mama said, “Youngest daughter, are you sick?”

“Yeah.” Darleen wiped at her mouth. “Sick a bein’ trapped here wid you. Sick of Miz Law n Order who knows every single goddamn thing pickin’ on me for everythin’ I do.”

Mama said something in Navajo, something harsh concerning Darleen’s swearing.

Another car pulled up, a dust-colored Chevy. Bernie recognized the driver: Stoop Boy, Charley Zah. He yelled out the window at Darleen. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. We’re late. Get in.” Darleen had started toward his car even before it stopped.

“She can’t go anywhere with you,” Bernie said. “She’s drunk.”

“What’s new?” he said.

Darleen trotted over with a lopsided gait. Stoop Boy pushed open the passenger door, and she lurched in.

“I’ll take care of her,” Sloop Boy said. “Don’t worry.”

“Where are you going? When will you be back? It’s not safe for her to be out like that.” Bernie’s words disappeared in the sound of tires crunching on the gravel, the rumble of the engine.

Mama made the clicking sound she did when things weren’t right. “You should have made her stay here.”

“How? She’s a grown woman.”

“You are her big sister,” Mama said. “You have to take care of her. That is why we have families, relatives. We have to take care of each other.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Bernie said.

Mama shook her head. “It’s not enough. Your sister needs you. She is too young to be so angry.”

Bernie felt grief settle in with the same precise efficiency as her mother’s work with the broom on the porch. She had seen too much of the evil that alcohol brought. She didn’t need to experience it again with her baby sister.

“I think she’s beginning to hate me,” Bernie said. “Every time I try to help, try to tell her what to do, she just gets mad.”

“I know.” Mama patted her hand. “You do what you can. These things take time.”

It’s not fair, Bernie thought. Why did she have to be the dependable one and Darleen always the problem child? “I wish Sister would live up to her responsibilities.”

“Don’t concern yourself about that today.” Mama wrapped her bony fingers around Bernie’s forearm. “Be happy. You and I can spend the day together, my daughter. I am hoping that you will find the book again with the picture of the rug about the Holy People.”

“I’d like to see that again, too,” Bernie said.

She helped Mama over the threshold and into the house and then to the bathroom. She went into the kitchen and poured them each a glass of water. Even though she seldom drank alcohol, a cold Bud would taste great. She smiled at the thought. Darleen’s problem with alcohol inspiring her to want a beer?

Bernie found the book, and Mama sat with her at the kitchen table, carefully studying the photograph of Hosteen Klah and his rug. She would enjoy her mother, Bernie decided, and not let Darleen’s craziness spoil that.

Bernie noticed some magazines and catalogs from an auction of Native American art and artifacts on the table. “These are interesting. Where did they come from?”

“Stella got them at the library, on that free shelf,” Mama said. “She saw one of my old rugs in the catalog with the blue cover. Look how much they have for the starting bid.” Bernie thumbed through to find the page. The full-color photograph showed the rug to good advantage.

“I remember watching you make that rug when I was a little girl. Then we drove it over to the Crownpoint auction.”

Mama laughed. “Only rich people could buy it now. They could buy a refrigerator for that money. They could get a refrigerator, and have enough left for one of those rugs that look like Navajo. You know, the ones that they make in Mexico.”

Bernie chuckled. “You did beautiful work, Mama. The world doesn’t have many women who know how to make something so fine. That rug is worth more than twenty refrigerators. It’s priceless.”

Mama glanced at her gnarled hands. “Are you weaving now?”

“Not yet,” Bernie said.

“You have to practice,” Mama said. “Every day, like you used to.”

Bernie leafed through the catalog. “These pots remind me of the ones my friend was researching.” Showing the pictures to Mama, she noticed that the starting bids for the cylinders were twice as high as those for the rounder bowls, even though the bowls were larger. Interesting, she thought.

“Your friend was the one who got shot?” Mama asked.

Bernie nodded. She handed the catalog, open to the pots, to Mama, who looked at the pictures closely. “Made by the old ones,” she said. “Touched by their hands.”

When Mama went into the bedroom for a nap, Bernie sat on the edge of the bed. Mama said, “I am thinking about Darleen. When she comes back, I will tell her she is not welcome in my house when she’s drinking.” And then, for the first time Bernie could remember since her father died, Mama started to cry.

After Mama fell asleep, Bernie thought about how to handle things if Mama actually did tell Darleen to stop drinking or leave—and Darleen left. She reviewed the mental list of relatives who might help, with no immediate candidates, then pushed the potential problem aside. Maybe Mama’s threat would get Darleen to shape up—but she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

She found her old textbooks again, and after twenty minutes, she discovered the information she wanted. The cylindrical pots the AIRC was about to acquire, if they had been made at Pueblo Bonito or one of the other Great Houses rather than at an outlier, were very rare. The Pueblo ancestors made little pottery in the great stone settlements. Most of the pottery uncovered in the Chaco ruins had been created outside the canyon and hauled in over those mysterious ancient roadways. The rarity of the design, the scarcity of Chaco-made pots in general, and the fact that the pots would have survived intact for a thousand years meant that they were close to priceless. Why had the EFB appraisal valued them so low?

An idea flashed in her brain. What if the pots were not Chacoan, like the Navajo rugs made in Mexico that Mama mentioned? What if the low appraisal was actually correct?

The buzz of her cell phone broke her concentration. Chee, she thought. But the voice on the other end of the line belonged to Captain Largo. He got right to business.

“I’d like you back on Monday,” he said. “Bigman’s got vacation scheduled, so we’ll be a little short otherwise at Shiprock. That work?”

That gave her four days to clear up the appraisal for the AIRC, find Ellie Friedman, find out who shot Leaphorn. And arrange a caregiver for Mama if Darleen got mad and left or kept drinking.

“That works for me,” Bernie said.

“You doin’ okay?”

Bernie said, “I’ll be a whole lot better when we figure out who shot the lieutenant.”

“Me too,” Largo said. “By the way, Mrs. Benally seems to have tracked down Leonard Nez.”

“That’s good news. What did he say?”

“I don’t know yet. Chee’s on it. You’ll probably hear before I do.”