"What was the date?" Ji asked.
Chee told him. "That was the night of the rain. Good hard rain. It would have been between seven-thirty and eight. But getting dark because the storm was coming."
"Yes," Ji said. "I remember it. I was there."
"Did you see anyone? Anything?" Janet Pete asked.
"Where?" Ji asked.
Chee suppressed a frown. It seemed a stupid question.
"Where you were. Out beyond Ship Rock," he said. "East of Red Rock on Route 33."
"I don't remember seeing anything," Ji said.
"How about after you turned north on Route 63?"
"Route 63?" Ji looked genuinely puzzled. Not too surprising. Not many people, including those who routinely drove that dusty, bumpy route, would know its map number.
"The gravel road close to Red Rock that goes north toward Biklabito and Ship Rock."
"Oh," Ji said, nodding. "No. I saw nothing. Not that I remember."
"You didn't see the fire, Nez's car burning?"
"I think I saw a glow. I thought it was the lights of a car. I really don't remember much about that now."
"Do you remember what you were doing out there?"
Ji smiled and nodded. "I remember that," he said. "It looked like it might rain. Rain clouds back over the mountains. It rains a lot in my country and I miss it out here. I thought I would drive out and enjoy it."
"How did you go?" Chee asked.
Ji thought. "I drove south on U.S. 666 toward Gallup, and then I turned west on that paved road over to Red Rock, and then circled back on the gravel road."
"Did you see a Tribal Police car?"
"Ah, yes," Ji said. "One passed me."
"Where?"
"On the Red Rock road."
That would have been Delbert's Unit 44. "Did you see it again?"
"No."
"You would have passed it," Chee said. "It had pulled off the left side of the road and driven down a dirt track."
"I didn't notice it," Ji said. "I think I would have remembered that."
"Did you meet anyone, I mean on your way home?"
Mr. Ji thought about it. "Probably," he said. "But I don't remember."
And that was exactly all they learned.
From the parking lot, they drove southward down 666, across the San Juan bridge.
"You want to go see where it happened?" he asked Janet.
She looked at him, surprised. "Do you?"
"Not exactly," he said. "But yes, I guess I do."
"You haven't been back?"
"I was in the hospital in Albuquerque for weeks," Chee said. "And then, I don't know, there just wasn't any reason."
"Okay," Janet said. "I think I should see it."
"You have a better reason than I do," Chee said. "I've got nothing to do with it anymore. It's FBI business. I'll just testify as the arresting officer."
Janet nodded. She saw no reason to comment on any of this. Chee knew she already knew it.
"I didn't do any of the investigating," he added, knowing she would have known that, too.
"Do you think the FBI took a statement from Mr. Ji?"
Chee shook his head. "He would have mentioned it."
"Doesn't it surprise you that they didn't?"
He shook his head. "Not now. Remember? You explained it to me. They have all they need for a conviction. Why waste their time?"
She was frowning. "I know I said that. But they'd seen your statement. They knew you'd met that car driving away from the scene. You described it as a white Jeepster, said who owned it. I'd think just simple curiosity." She let it trail off.
"They had their man, and their evidence," Chee said. "Why make things complicated?"
Janet thought about that. "Justice," she said.
Chee let it pass. Justice, he thought, wasn't a concept that fit very well in this affair. Besides, the sun was just dipping behind the Chuskas now. On the vast, rolling prairie that led away from the highway toward the black shape of Ship Rock every clump of sagebrush, every juniper, every snakeweed, every hummock of bunch grass cast its long blue shadow-an infinity of lines of darkness undulating across the glowing landscape. Beautiful. Chee's spirit lifted. No time to think of justice. Or of the duty he had left undone.
Janet's Toyota topped the long climb out of the San Juan Basin and earth sloped away to the south-empty, rolling gray-tan grassland with the black line of the highway receding toward the horizon like the mark of a ruling pen. Miles to the south, the sun reflected from the windshield of a northbound vehicle, a blink of brightness. Ship Rock rose like an oversized, free-form Gothic cathedral just to their right, miles away but looking close. Ten miles ahead Table Mesa sailed through its sea of buffalo grass, reminding Chee of the ultimate aircraft carrier. Across the highway from it, slanting sunlight illuminated the ragged black form of Barber Peak, a volcanic throat to geologists, a meeting place for witches in local lore.
They did the right turn off 666 onto Navajo 33, driving into the setting sun.
"Here's probably about where he was when we first made radio contact," Chee said. "Just about here." His voice sounded stiff in his own ears.
Janet nodded.
He slowed, pointing. "I was way over there, twenty-five, thirty miles behind Ship Rock, driving south on the road from Bikla-bito. I was back there behind the rock. Something like that screws up radio communication. It keeps fading in and out."
Chee cleared his throat. He pulled down the sunshade. Janet flipped down the one on the driver's side, found she was too short to be helped by it, and fished out her sunglasses. She was thinking that Chee wasn't as ready to talk about this as he'd thought he was.
"Going to be quite a sunset," she said. "Look north."
North, over Sleeping Ute Mountain in Colorado, over Utah's Abajo Mountains, great thunder,heads were reaching toward their evening climax. Their tops, reflecting in the direct sun, were snowy white and the long streamers of ice crystals blown from them seemed to glitter. But at lower levels the light that struck them had been filtered through the clouds over the Chuskas and turned into shades of rose, pink, and red.
Lower still, the failing light mottled them from pale blue-gray to the deepest blue. Overhead, the streaks of high-level cirrus clouds were being ignited by the sunset. They drove through a fiery twilight.
"There's where it happened," Chee said, nodding to the left. "He pulled off the pavement right up there, and the car was burning over by that cluster of junipers, way off there."
Janet nodded. Chee noticed her forehead, her cheeks rosy in the reflected light. Skin as smooth as silk. Her eyes were intense, staring at something. An intelligent face. A classy face. She frowned.
"What's that over on those rocks?" She gestured. "Those white marks up in that formation over there?"
"That's what was bothering Delbert," Chee said, and made a chuckling sound. "That's the artwork of our phantom vandal. Delbert noticed somebody had been painting those formations maybe six weeks ago. He wanted to catch the guy."
"It bothered him? I don't guess there's a law against it. Nothing specific anyway," she said. "But it bothers me too. Why ugly up something natural?"
"With Nez, I think it was a mixture of being bothered and thinking it was sort of weird. Who would climb up in there and waste all that time and paint turning black basalt into white? Anyway, Delbert was always talking about it. And that night, it sounded like he thought he'd seen the guy. He was laughing about it."
"Maybe he did see him," Janet said. She was staring out at the formation. "What caused all that? I know it must be volcanic but it doesn't look like the normal ones. Frankly, they don't teach you anything about geology in law school."
"In anthropology departments either," Chee said. "But from what I've been told, the volcanic action that formed Ship Rock lasted for tens of thousands of years. The pressure formed a lot of cracking in the earth's surface, and every thousand years or so-or maybe it's millions of years-there would be another bubbl
ing up of melted rock and new ridges would form. Sometimes right beside the old ones."
"Oh," Janet said.
"These run for miles and miles," Chee said. "Sort of parallel the Chuska Mountains."
"Is there a name for them?"
Chee told her.
She made a wry face. "My parents wanted me to speak perfect English. They didn't talk Navajo much around me."
"It means something like 'Long Black Ridges.' Something like that." He glanced at Janet, not knowing where she stood on the issue of Navajo witchcraft. "Lot of traditional Navajos wouldn't want to go around those lava formations-especially at night. According to Navajo mythology, at least on the east side of the Reservation, those lava flows are the dried blood of the monsters killed by the Hero Twins. I think that's one of the things that got Nez so interested. You know. Who was breaking that taboo?"
"Maybe Nez caught whoever it was, and the guy killed him," Janet said.
"And gave the pistol to Hosteen Pinto," Chee said. "You're going to have trouble selling that one."
Janet shrugged. "It's as good as anything else I've thought of," she said. "Let's take a look at it." She glanced at Chee, looking suddenly doubtful. "Or would there be a lot of snakes this time of year?"
"Always some snakes in places like that," Chee said. "But they're no problem if you use your head."
"Just thinking about snakes is a problem."
Janet said. But she turned the Toyota off the asphalt.
Getting to part of the formation where the painter worked involved maneuvering the little Toyota across about a mile of trackless stone, cactus, Russian thistle, buffalo grass, sage, and snakeweed. After dropping a wheel with a rattling jolt into a little wash, Janet switched off the ignition.
"It's easier to walk," she said. "Especially easier on my poor car."
It wasn't quite as easy as it looked. As with all large objects seen through the thin, dry, high desert air, the outcrop was bigger and more distant than it seemed. The sun had dipped well below the horizon when they climbed the steep final slope toward its base. Overhead the high clouds had faded from rose to dark red. Far to the west across Arizona, clouds over the Kaibito Plateau were blue-black, outlined by fiery yello'tv.
Janet stopped to stare.
"Did you miss these sunsets in Washington?" Chee asked.
"I'm looking at that car," she said, pointing.
Pulled behind a clump of junipers was a dark green Ford Bronco II, dirty, dented, and several years old. They detoured to walk behind it. It wore a New Mexico vanity license plate.
"reddnek," Janet read. "You think the irony was intended?"
Chee shrugged. He didn't catch the irony. The vehicle was empty. What was it doing here? Where was the driver?
"A redneck who can't spell it," she explained.
"Oh."
On the ridge beyond the vehicle, Janet stopped again. She stood, head tilted back, staring up at the massive, unbroken slab of basalt which confronted them here.
"I don't see any sign of paint," Janet said. The red light changed the color of her shirt, and her faded jeans, and her face. Her hair was disheveled, her expression intent, and, taken all together, she looked absolutely beautiful to Jim Chee. It would be a lot better, he thought, if friends didn't look like that.
"Let's see if we can find where he climbed up," he said.
That wasn't easy. The first upward possibility dead-ended on a shelf that led absolutely nowhere except up a vertical face of stone. The second, a pathway that opened inside a split in a basaltic slab, took them perhaps seventy-five yards upward and in before it finally dwindled away into an impossibly narrow crack. They found the third atop a sloping hump of debris by ducking under a tilted roof of fallen stone.
"I haven't brought up the subject of snakes," Janet said. She was brushing the dirt from her hands on her pant legs. "If I do, I hope you'll try to say something positive."
"Okay," Chee said. He thought for a minute, catching his breath. "If you like snakes, this is a fine example of the places you come to find them."
"I don't like snakes," Janet said. "I know all that BS about Navajos and snakes being friends, but I don't like them. They scare me."
"We're not supposed to be friends," Chee said. "The way it goes in the legend, First Man and Big Snake learned to respect one another. The way you do that is by not putting your hand, or your foot, or any other part of you where you can't see. That way you don't step on your little brother, or sit on him, or poke him in the eye. And in return, he buzzes his rattlers to tell you if you're getting in dangerous territory. Very efficient."
"I still don't like them," Janet said, but she was staring up into the formation. "Look. I think that's paint."
It was. Above them and to their left, Chee could see a face of the basalt cliff reflecting white. Reaching it involved climbing up a deep crack into a long, narrow pocket. But eons of erosion had filled it with enough fallen rocks and blown dust to form a floor. There Chee leaned against the stone, breathing hard, the bottom level of the paint just above his head.
"Look here," Janet said. She was kneeling on the dirt. "Can you believe this? I think somebody carried a ladder in here."
If Janet was breathing hard it didn't show. But Chee was, and was embarrassed by it. It was being out of shape, he thought. Too long in the hospital bed. Too many weeks without exercise. Climbing with one hand in a bandage hadn't been easy. He would have to get back into doing some exercises.
He took a long, deep breath and squatted beside her. Two narrow, rectangular shapes had been pressed into the earth, the proper distance apart to have been made by the feet of a ladder.
"A determined painter," Janet said. "With a plan, obviously. Why else haul a ladder up in here? He had to know he was going to be reaching up somewhere where he'd need it."
Chee was examining the holes the ladder had left. He was wishing they'd climbed in here when the light was better.
"I think that's interesting," Janet said.
He stood and brushed off his jeans with his good hand, wondering if Nez actually caught the son-of-a-bitch. Did Nez chase him? Did he even know Nez was after him?
"Did this crazy rock painter kill Nez?" Janet asked.
"Ashie Pinto shot Nez in the chest," Chee said. "But did this nutty rock painter have anything to do with it? Did he see it happen?"
"He seems nutty all right," Janet said. She had climbed halfway out of the pocket and was staring up into the broken, slanted wilderness of slabs, crags, boulders, and cliffs of the upthrust. "You can see several painted places back in there. One big squarish place, and a narrow vertical strip and some other small places."
Chee climbed up beside her.
"If he saw it happen, and I can find him, then you could just plead Pinto guilty," Chee said. "No use letting it go to trial. Just make a deal for him."
Janet let it pass, staring up into the formation. "Odd," she said.
"It doesn't seem to form any pattern," Chee agreed. "Or communicate anything or make any sense." With his knife, he scraped at the painted stone where they were standing, collecting a sample from the lower edge of the brush mark. Then he bent close, examining it in the dimming red glow of the twilight.
"He's sending some sort of signal to flying saucers," Janet said. "Or when the Mesa airliner comes over here flying down to Gallup, this says 'YOU'RE LOST' to the pilot. Or the guy who is doing it, they lost his luggage and when you look down from the airplane this is some sort of awful obscene insult."
"Look at this," Chee said.
Janet bent closer. "What?"
"It washed down a little," Chee said, indicating the flow with his finger.
"So?"
"So I think the paint was fresh when it started raining. He was still painting when the rain began."
"Ah," Janet Pete said. "So maybe there was a witness. Maybe." Her voice trailed off, turning squeaky. She shrank away from the slab where she had been leaning, away from a buzzing sound.
&
nbsp; "Jim," she whispered. "Don't tell me that's what I think it is."
"Only if you don't think it's a rattlesnake," Chee said. "Move back toward me. It's under the edge of that slab. See it?"
Janet made no effort to see it. "Let's go," she said. And went, and it was still light enough to see that the old green Bronco II was no longer parked behind the junipers.
She rolled the Toyota to a halt under the cottonwood tree that shaded Jim Chee's home-a well-scuffed and dented aluminum trailer parked on the low north bluff of the San Juan River. Chee made no move to get out. He was waiting for her to turn off the ignition. She left the motor running and the headlights on.
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 10 - Coyote Waits Page 7
