The Witch's Tongue (32 page)

The solemn attorney from the federal prosecutor’s office felt somewhat ill at ease. For one thing, the mean-looking old woman seated across the kitchen table from him was rumored to be some sort of witch. For another, the towering tribal investigator was standing behind him. And Charlie Moon had not said a word since introducing the fed to his aunt.

The lawyer unbuckled a worn alligator briefcase, produced a stack of twelve color prints, pushed them across the table to Daisy Perika. “This is merely for a preliminary identification. Please take your time.” He watched her face with considerable anticipation, but was unable to read anything on that wrinkled parchment.

The old woman slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed reading spectacles, examined the first image, the second, the third, thumbed her way through the assortment of digitized images. There were a variety of turquoise pendants, most looked like they might have been purchased recently in Durango. A few looked like the older stuff one sees in a pawn shop or Navajo trading post. On occasion, she would move a photograph back and forth to find the optimum focus. On the picture labeled “Exhibit Nine,” she froze.

The lawyer leaned forward, expectation fairly dripping off his chin.

Daisy removed her eyeglasses, tapped a finger on the print. “That’s it.”

The fed had been holding his breath. “Are you willing to be legally deposed to the effect that this ornament was the property of the late Officer James Wolfe?”

She looked to her nephew for guidance.

Moon translated. “You ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that’s Jim Wolfe’s pendant?”

“Sure.” She pointed at the photograph. “He wore it around his neck. Most people didn’t know it was there, because he kept it under his shirt.” Her mouth crinkled into a sad little smile. “It was a kind of good-luck charm.”

The lawyer sensed a potential problem here. “Mrs. Perika, if the pendant was always under his shirt, how would you be in a position to know—”

“Because I doctored him,” she snapped. “That white SUPD cop was all cut up after he had the run-in with that crazy Apache that jumped out of a tree on him.”

He jotted a comment into a small notebook. “By the term
Apache—
are you referring to Mr. Felix Navarone?”

Daisy nodded.

The somber lawyer turned to the tribal police investigator, allowed himself a smile. “When he was admitted to Mercy Medical Center in Durango, Mr. Navarone had the pendant depicted in Exhibit Nine on his person. With your aunt’s sworn statement, we should be able to convict him of the homicide of Officer Wolfe.” He took a long look at the photograph. “I wonder why Mr. Navarone bothered to take such a trivial thing from his victim.”

Moon’s eyes were asking his aunt the same question.

Daisy Perika avoided her nephew’s flinty gaze. Unlike Charlie Moon, Felix Navarone was a traditional Indian—the Apache would have immediately recognized the famous Hasteen K’os Largo pendant.

The lawyer shook his head. “I mean—it was such a foolish thing to do.”

The tribal elder smiled at the Harvard graduate. “Oh, you know how covetous some people can be. Felix must’ve took one look at that pretty lump of stone hanging around that white man’s neck—and he had to have it.”
Just like me
.

HAVING HAD
no response to the messages he had left on Lila Mae McTeague’s answering machine, Charlie Moon dialed the Durango FBI office.

The telephone was answered on the third ring. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The Ute exchanged greetings with Special Agent Stanley Newman, tried to sound as if his inquiry were of almost no importance. “Uh—is Agent McTeague around?”

Newman snorted, reverted to his New Jersey accent: “What’s it to ya?”

“Well, I thought I might have a word with her.”

“She’s powdering her nose, Chucky.” Newman made a toothy possum grin. “But even if she was here, she wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

“She still mad at me over this Yellow Jacket business?”

“Sure. But don’t take it too hard, big guy. McTeague is one of them high-strung dames.”

The tribal investigator said his good-bye, hung up.

Stanley Newman was startled by his partner’s sudden appearance. The tall, strikingly good-looking woman leaned on his desk, eyed him like a kingfisher eyes a minnow. He showed her his palms, spoke with the feigned innocence of a wide-eyed choirboy. “Hey—what’d I do?”

“Since when do you take my telephone calls and discuss my personal life? And what’s this ‘high-strung dame’ stuff?’”

Newman switched to his ugly-bulldog face. “Lissen here—I ain’t no easygoing Charlie Moon, so don’t think you can push
me
around. I’m the silver-back gorilla in this office—I’ll take any calls that come in and say whatever I feel like to whoever’s on the line.” He poked a stubby finger at her. “And if I see a dame who’s wound up way too tight, what should I call her—pleasant? Agreeable? Sweet? Nice?” He bared his teeth to produce a hideously nasty grin. “High—strung—dame,” he said.

Special Agent McTeague reached for Newman’s favorite coffee mug—the green one with
ATLANTIC CITY
—1988 stenciled on the side. “If a ceramic object such as this happens to shatter, what should one call the pieces—shards? Fragments? Flinders? Smithereens?”

The bulldog face paled. “Hey—don’t you dare—put that down!”

She did. It hit the floor hard. “Flinders,” she said.

Standing at a second-story window, Chief of Police Scott Parris watched Betty Lou ease up to the curb. He turned to his desk, pressed the Speak button on the intercom. “He’s here.” He listened to the response, nodded at the unseen communicant. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. I’ll buzz you when it’s time.”

PARRIS GAVE
his best friend a hearty handshake. “Hey, Charlie—thanks for coming over on short notice.”

“You’re practically welcome.” The tribal investigator looked around the spacious corner office. “So what am I here for?”

Granite Creek’s top cop pointed at a white cardboard box on the conference table.

The Ute gave it a wary look. “What’s in it?”

“Three guesses.”

“Disgusting piece of road kill?”

“Dang,” Parris said with genuine regret, “I should’ve thought of that.”

“Okay—fried chicken from the Mountain Man Bar and Grille?”

The chief of the Granite Creek PD shook his head. “Better still.”

Moon leaned close, sniffed. “Sugar and spice.” He frowned at his buddy. “You brought me all the way into town for a snack?”

“Hey—you got a problem with that?”

“Nope.” The Ute opened the box, helped himself to a still-warm jelly-filled pastry.

Scott Parris seated himself behind the desk, gave the tribal investigator a curious look. “Okay, Charlie—now tell me what’n blazes has been going on.”

“Well, let me gather my thoughts.” As the rancher converted the rich confection into sweet satisfaction, he concentrated his gaze on the slowly rotating blades of a ceiling fan. “About a week ago, a cougar took a calf over by Pine Knob. Last night, a couple of the new cowhands got into a nasty scrap over a hand of Texas Hold ’Em. One of the players got carved up some, the one that knifed him hit the road. There’s a fine little ranch next door to the Columbine that’s been put up for sale and my foreman thinks I should buy it and—”

“You know what I’m talking about, wise guy.”

“Do I?”

Parris tapped a finger on his temple. “Remember who I am—and what is my noble calling in life.”

“You mean like hassling jaywalkers and fixing parking tickets?”

“Besides that.”

Moon looked to be completely bumfuzzled. “Could you give me a hint?”

“I’ll tell you straight out—the shooting of Ralph Briggs.”

“That incident has never left my mind. As you may recall, I was there at the time.”

“So let me in on what you’ve been up to.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“Okay. Here’s specific. What got you interested in one Mr. Eduardo Ganado as a prime suspect in the Cassidy burglary? And why didn’t you tell me?”

“I will address the first question.”

“What about the second one?”

“I choose to pretend I did not hear it.”

The chief of police felt the burn of acid in his throat.

Charlie Moon opened the grease-spotted cardboard carton once more with gusto, selected a heavily glazed doughnut. “I began to feel somewhat antsy when I went to visit Eddie Ganado and he came out to meet me with a shotgun. He claimed he’d had a prowler, but I guess he must’ve been worried that I’d found out he’d shot Ralph Briggs and was intending to put the cuffs on him. And while I was there, I realized he’d lied to me about how his hair got pulled out by the roots.” The Ute gourmet tasted the sugar-crusted toroid, judged it to be more than adequate. “That wily Navajo had spun me a wild yarn about how a big pine was leaning toward his house, claimed he was using a chain saw to cut the tree down when the infernal thing grabbed him by the hair, yanked most of it out.”

Parris was troubled by the image. “This guy actually expected you to believe a tree deliberately pulled his hair out?”

“I may well have been mistaken,” Moon said. “But it was my impression that Ganado was referring to the chain saw.”

“Oh—right. And you did not find this anecdote to be entirely plausible?”

“On the contrary, it was a fairly solid story. But when I stopped by Ganado’s place, I did not see a fresh pine stump in his yard—or a pine left standing that could fall on his house. And on toppa that, he did not have a propane tank.”

“Whoa, cowboy—you’ve done rode off and left me. What does a propane tank have to do with the price of pickled peppers?”

Moon gestured with a crescent of doughnut. “If Ganado does not have propane, he is doing his cooking and heating by more traditional means. Which means he’ll store up all the wood he can collect before winter sets in. So if he takes down a pine tree in his yard, he’ll cut it up and put in on his wood pile to age for a while. But all Ganado had stacked against his garage was cottonwood—and not half enough of that to get through December.”

“Okay, so he lied about the chain-saw business. But that still doesn’t suggest that he’d caught his hair in—” Parris bit off the rest of the sentence.

The tribal investigator grinned. “Caught his hair in
what
?”

“Never mind.”

“There was another thing,” Moon said. “Ganado had these funny-looking scars on his face. They were round, about the size of dimes—and white. They looked like burns to me. But I couldn’t figure how he could’ve got them from a chain saw.”

Our heavy hitter is swinging wild
. “And what did you deduce from this?”

“At the moment, I would rather not say.”

“Hah—on account of you don’t have the least idea
how
he got his hair yanked out!”

“You misunderstand.” Moon’s expression radiated a pure, childlike innocence. “I will not say because—I am cursed with excessive modesty.”

“Hah.”

“You already said that.”

“Okay Mr. Humble Pie—then tell me as much as excessive modesty allows.”

“Well, there might be some small thing I could mention.” The Ute put a Styrofoam cup under the spigot on a coffee urn, pressed the lever down. “Ganado’s spiffy Pontiac convertible—which he’d already told me was the only wheels he owned—was getting badly spotted by sticky tree sap. This would not have happened if he’d parked it in the garage. And Ganado was very fussy about that car.”

“So you figured Ganado had moved his Pontiac out of the garage so he could hide Gourd Rattle’s van inside.”

“Eventually, the thought did cross my mind,” the tribal investigator said. “Where did you get these fine doughnuts?”

“New place around the corner. Fat David’s Gourmet Bakery and Small Engine Repair.”

“Sounds like David is a man of multiple talents.” The Ute took the last bite.

Parris took note of the Seth Thomas clock on the wall. “Charlie, there is something I almost forgot to tell you. Something that will make you happy.”

“Happiness is a good thing.” Moon licked his fingers. “You have my undivided attention.”

“Largely as a result of your aunt Daisy identifying Jim Wolfe’s turquoise pendant, Mr. Navarone’s attorney has plea-bargained her client for two cases of voluntary manslaughter—Jim Wolfe and Jacob Gourd Rattle, of course. Just yesterday, Felix Navarone made his formal confession.”

“This is news to me—and the kind I like to hear.”

Parris beamed at his friend. “Would you like to see my very favorite new TV program of the season, produced and directed by the United States Department of Justice?”

“Navarone’s confession? How did you get the tape so fast?”

The white man blushed pink. “Uh—it was hand delivered to me just this morning.”

“Hand delivered to you by who?”

“By
whom
.”

Moon pondered the pithy grammatical issue. “You sure about that?”

“Not in an absolute sense.” But the criticism had distracted the Ute from his question. Parris had the VCR control unit in his hairy paw. “You don’t want to suffer through the recitation of the plea agreement, how Mr. Navarone agrees to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—in exchange for fifteen years in one of Uncle Sammy’s finest slammers. I will fast-forward directly to the good stuff.”

The tribal investigator seated himself in a comfortable armchair. “Let ’er rip. I am primed and ready to be highly entertained.”

DOWNSTAIRS, AND
situated immediately beneath the grand office of the Granite Creek chief of police, was a mildly oppressive cafeteria, furnished with a long dining table flanked by an assortment of gaudy plastic chairs and a half-dozen vending machines that—in exchange for silver-plated copper coins—offered up such delicacies as Dr Peppers, Milky Ways, and Moon Pies. At this hour, it was empty of GCPD employees. A single lonely soul paced back and forth, occasionally pausing to sip at a cup of acidic black coffee—and count the minutes.