Each of the Indian kids had a slip of paper with the name of one of the mentors. It reminded me of a school dance at the end of the year in my eighth-grade class. The boys were led into the gym single-file on one side. The girls came in on the other side. We guys were instructed that when the music began, we were to cross the gym and say to the girl directly across from us, “May I have this dance?”
It worked about as poorly as you’d imagine. The girl across from me repositioned herself to avoid me. After some hesitation, I veered to the left only to discover that Eloise Wainwright was the only girl remaining in that area. Eloise was a bright girl. She was also a head taller than me. And her father was the principal.
I suspect today’s students don’t have to endure the angst we suffered back then. For one thing, a dance arranged as a boy/girl event would likely encounter protests from LGB advocates. Maybe college kids mentoring Indian kids is also politically incorrect these days. And don’t tell me ‘Indian’ is politically incorrect. It’s the term Martin and everyone else in his pueblo use. He told me early on that ‘Native American’ makes no sense. First, America was named for Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian, and as Martin quipped, “My people don’t do spaghetti.” And ‘native’ is derived from the Latin word for birth. But the peoples who were here when the Europeans arrived do not see their connection with this land as an accident of birth. They are part of the land like the trees, animals, rivers and mountains.
Martin had drawn my name. “Why did you volunteer?” he asked.
“One of my professors suggested it. What about you?”
“My dad made me do it. What did the professor teach?”
“Math. You like math?”
“Yes.”
“What part do you like best?”
“Graphs.”
We found some paper, and I gave him a couple of equations that generated irregular curves. He graphed them perfectly. Taking a wild leap, I asked him if he could figure out how to calculate the area under one of those curves. He didn’t know the exact procedure of course, but his explanation of how it might be done was brilliant. So I decided to teach him calculus.
He taught me how to draw horses in motion. We bonded over skills neither of us has any use for. Turns out the most important thing we have in common is the belief that it is better to know than not to know, even if you never use the knowledge.
We are like family now. His sister Sunny made my special jacket. Not because I asked her to. Not because it was my birthday. But because she thought I needed it. Martin’s uncle is a gifted potter and sells his works through Spirits in Clay. Edith Warner said about her friend Maria, “It matters not that the color of skin be different, that language be not the same, that even the gods of our fathers be known by a different name. We are people, the same kind of human beings who live and love and go on, and I find myself ever forgetting that my friends are known as Indians and I am a white woman born. Perhaps that is why we are neighbors, even down in our hearts.”
I asked Martin what brought him to town.
“My feet,” he deadpanned. Then he said, “I’m now a volunteer docent at The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Just finished telling a busload of palefaces about the 19 different pueblos in New Mexico, and listening to one of them complain about the word Indian being in the name of the place. Fighting political correctness is thirsty work, so I stopped by figuring you’d buy me a beer.”
“Why should I pay for it?” I asked.
“Noblesse oblige.”
“Since when did I become part of the privileged class?”
“All the descendents of the Europeans who invaded this continent became the privileged class when they put us on reservations.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. And a beer for you.”
He smiled and said, “It’s good to be a silver-throated orator.”
I asked Angie to bring him a Tecate.
Martin asked me why Charles wanted my DNA.
“He wouldn’t tell him,” Susannah answered for me, “but I know why. He wants to compare it to some DNA they found on the dead guy Hubie found in the Plaza.”
“I didn’t find him. I just happened to pass by after he’d already been found and the ambulance and police were already there.”
“That might make sense for mister average citizen,” she replied, “but for someone with the Jessica Fletcher Syndrome, there are no coincidental bodies. It’s all part of a pattern.”
I’d decided not to rise to any further Jessica Fletcher comments, so I noted that since I hadn’t touched anything, none of my DNA could be on the dead guy.
“It wouldn’t have to be yours,” she said. “It could be from Benz.”
Martin and I looked at each other and then turned to her and said in unison, “Huh?”
“DNA from a cat solved a murder in Britain,” she said by way of explanation, although I failed to see anything explanatory in her sentence.
“Sounds like something from one of those Lilian Braun Jackson The Cat Who books,” said Martin.
I looked at him and said—by myself this time—“Huh?”
He said, “A series of murder mystery novels where the protagonist’s cat solves the mysteries.”
“That makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense is you reading murder mysteries. Why didn’t I know that?”
“I’m not proud of it. Shows the power of the dominant culture.”
Angie brought his beer. He took a sip and said, “The early books in that Cat Who series were good. But when she had the protagonist leave the city and move to Moose County, they went downhill.”
“I think they got better,” said Susannah.
“They were silly,” said Martin. “The towns in Moose County had names like Brrr, Chipmunk, and Flapjack.”
“And there are towns in New Mexico called Pie Town, Elephant Butte and Truth or Consequences. But that doesn’t make the state silly.”
“Can we get back to the cat DNA thing?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Susannah. “A few years ago, British police found a dismembered torso wrapped in a shower curtain. There were no fingerprints or anything else in the way of clues except for some cat hairs on the curtain. The DNA in those hairs was found to match the DNA of a cat named Tinker, and that led to a conviction.”
“They convicted Tinker of murder?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They convicted his owner.”
“So what does that have to do with Benz?”
“The suspect in Britain probably washed the curtain or rubbed it to make sure his prints weren’t on it. But cat hair sticks to things. So maybe the police here in Albuquerque also found cat hairs on the dead guy in the Plaza.”
“But Charles didn’t get a DNA sample from Benz. He got it from me.”
“If you read murder mysteries, Hubie, this would all be obvious to you. My guess is the dead guy in the Plaza had cat hair on him. But he didn’t own a cat. So the cat hair was transferred to him by contact with another human who does have a cat. Call him Cat Man. So the cat hair has a trace of Cat Man’s DNA on its surface which resulted from Cat Man petting his cat.”
I gave my head a quick shake and asked, “How do we know the dead guy didn’t have a cat?”
“We need to stop calling him the dead guy,” she said. “Sounds disrespectful.”
“We don’t know his name.”
“So let’s give him one.”
“How about Gurney Guy?” Martin suggested. “So how do we know Gurney Guy didn’t own a cat?”
“Simple,” said Susannah, “If he did, the police wouldn’t be trying to figure out where the cat hair came from. They’d just figure it was from his cat.”
“Actually,” I said, “they may have had good reason for thinking the cat hair wasn’t from his cat even if he did have one. Whit told me he was a snappy dresser, wore expensive
suits, had a silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket, and had manicured nails. A guy like that would have brushed off any pet hairs before going out.”
“So there you have it,” she said and sat back in her chair. “You pet Benz, some of his hair sticks to your hand. You walk by Gurney Guy, a few of the cat hairs float over and land on him, and the next thing you know, you’re a person of interest.”
Then it dawned on me. “Impossible. Gurney Guy was completely covered by a sheet.”
I don’t know which made me feel better, escaping the fear that Benz had linked me to Gurney Guy or getting out of that ridiculous conversation.
Then I remembered the crumpled paper Whit showed me. He’d said not to worry about my prints being on it after I handled it. They had already looked for prints and found none. They would know my prints, if any, were added after the death. But had they subsequently examined that paper for DNA and found some on it? And if it was mine, how would I be able to prove the DNA wasn’t on it before Whit handed it to me? He’d said, “You know I’m a better cop than that.” I was hoping that was true. And that I didn’t become Cat Man.
“Being as you two are murder mystery readers,” I said, “maybe you can explain something Whit told me. A tourist was using his phone to make a video of Old Town Plaza and happened to capture Gurney Guy as he fell over and died. The cause of death is presumed to be a puncture wound in his back that led to him bleeding to death. There were other people in the Plaza, but none of them close enough to stab him. Whit was hoping I could figure it out because he said I have an ‘encyclopedia mind’.”
“I can explain it Kemo Sabe,” said Martin deadpan. “Bow and arrow. Show me the feathers on the shaft, and I’ll tell you who did it.”
“That’s the problem. There was nothing in or around the wound. No bullet, no sharp object, nothing.”
“I’ve got it,” said Susannah. “An icicle.”
“An icicle?”
“Yes,” she said, “Simon Brett called it the perfect murder weapon.”
I looked at Martin, and he said, “A famous murder mystery writer and my personal favorite. He wrote the Charles Paris and Mrs. Pargeter series among others.”
I was still having a hard time picturing Martin reading murder mysteries.
Susannah said, “The icicle is perfect because you stab someone with one and then it melts, so there’s no murder weapon to help the police solve the murder.”
“But the video showed no one close enough to stab him.”
“He could have been stabbed a few seconds before the tourist started videoing. He feels a sudden pain, staggers a few paces trying to stay upright, and when the video begins, he’s six feet away from his attacker. So the video shows him falling but not being stabbed. And by the time the police show up, the icicle has melted. Remember it was a warm day for January.”
“That sounds unlikely. And anyway, the wound was small. I saw it.”
“Icicles can be thin, Hubie. And strong enough to puncture someone if they are frozen really hard.”
“Okay, but the real problem with that explanation is there’s no way to prove it.”
“No,” she corrected. “The weapon is gone, but that doesn’t mean the stabber is in the clear. Maybe someone saw him making an icicle or carrying one. And if someone saw him carrying an icicle, it’s not something they’d forget. We should tell Whit about it.”
Before we left, I asked Martin if he knew whether Edith Warner and Tilano had children
“Many people have asked that question. Why you asking now?”
“Sharice had a patient who told her Edith Warner was his grandmother.”
“If he’d been talking to me instead of Sharice, he might have said that Edith Warner was his Tay-tay. It means grandmother, but it’s also a term of endearment for any older woman you are close to. Calling her Tay-tay doesn’t mean they were blood relatives.”
Chapter 11
I walked to the police department the next morning, asked to see Detective Fletcher, and was told to take a seat and wait. I was happy to have all the cops around the lobby because two of the guys in shabby clothes looked dangerous. So much so that I wondered why they weren’t handcuffed. They were staring at me maliciously.
I was relieved when Whit showed up and took me back to his office where I told him about the icicle theory.
“You musta got that from the Inchaustigui girl. She reads murder mysteries and is always coming up with whacky theories about local murders. I told you no one was close enough to stab him with anything, icicle included.”
“But what if he was stabbed before the video started and the stabber had moved away and was one of those people you saw in the video? Gurney Guy takes a few steps wondering if he slipped a disk, and then the tourist starts the video that shows Gurney Guy still upright before he takes a couple of wobbly steps and falls over. And by the time the ambulance and police got there, the icicle had melted.”
“Who the hell is Gurney Guy?”
“That’s what we’ve been calling the dead guy. Susannah thought it was disrespectful to keep calling him ‘the dead guy’.”
“First time she’s ever said something makes sense to me, although I don’t see as how Gurney Guy is all that respectful.”
“So you think she may be onto something?”
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think one of them drones flew up behind him and stabbed him with a retractable shill then flew away. Now come around here and take a look at this video the tourist shot.”
It was exactly as Whit had described to me. The camera—actually a phone in this case—was panning the Plaza. Gurney Guy was walking more or less towards the camera. The three other people in view were a guy to his left, a guy to his right, and a woman behind him, all of them way too far away to stab him. The camera is panning left to right. Just as Gurney Guy is about to go out of the frame, he grimaces and takes an awkward step. The tourist must have noticed it and returned the camera’s aim to Gurney Guy, who takes two small steps then begins to stumble. The tourist hits the zoom function and I can see Gurney Guy’s face just before he hits the ground.
“See anything I mighta missed?” Whit asks.
“No. I think my untended injury theory might be right.”
Whit grabbed his coat and said, “I got to meet a couple of guys in the lobby.”
“Be careful; they look dangerous. They were staring at me”
“They are dangerous. To criminals. They’re undercover cops, Hubert.”
My next stop was the University where I entered the outer office of Dean Gangji. A cheerful woman smiled at me and said. “Good morning, Mr. Schuze. My name is Jane Robinson, Dean Gangji’s administrative assistant. I am so happy you came by because I have a great deal of paperwork for you. Do you have time to deal with it now?”
I told her I did, wondering how she knew who I was.
She picked up a thick manila folder and led me into the room where I had been railroaded into the position of interim department head.
I declined her offer of coffee. Several hours later I was wishing she had offered lunch.
The first piece of paperwork was an employment application.
I smiled at her and said, “I guess I need to tell you that Dean Gangji already offered me the job on Wednesday, and I accepted it.”
“Yes. He was so happy you agreed to serve. So now all you have to do is fill out an application.”
“So even though I never applied for the job and I already have it, I have to fill out an application?”
“Exactly,” she said, evidently pleased that I caught on so fast.
Next came retirement forms. I had an option between The Educational Retirement Board defined-benefit plan and the Alternative defined-contribution plan. I chose the latter because it was listed first and the form to enroll in it was shorter.
&nbs
p; Then came paperwork for health benefits, vision benefits, dental benefits, and disability benefits. I turned them all down.
“You don’t want health insurance?”
“I’m healthy,” I said.
The employee contribution was $200 a month. I had the job for 5 months, so I’d have to pay a thousand dollars. And likely not get a dime paid for my health care because the deductible was $1500. By the time I spent that much on health care, I’d no longer be employed at UNM.
Next I had to read and sign forms acknowledging that I read and understood policies dealing with nepotism, conflicts of interest, hazardous materials, student privacy, use and care of university equipment under my jurisdiction, affirmative action, equal educational opportunity, campus emergency plans, sick leave, vacation leave, family leave, stewardship of documents, and of course, most importantly, the parking regulations.
Then there was a form granting permission for the University to do a background check. I have been arrested several times, charged with murder which never stuck more than a few hours, and have violated the Archaeological Resources Protection Act hundreds of times. Charges don’t count. And I’ve never been caught digging for ancient pottery.
Still, the idea of a background check was a bit unnerving, especially in light of all the pictures of me that I never knew existed until Charles Webbe enlightened me about widespread surveillance.
It was after three when Ms. Robinson gave me my handbook for department heads, a “stats and data” folder, the minutes of the department head meetings for the previous semester (to bring me up to speed, she explained) and a master key to the Art Building.
The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing Page 6
