"No sir," Chee said. "I forgot. I had other things on my mind."
"Like what?"
Like Janet Pete, Chee thought. Like not being able to be with her. Like hurting her by telling her she was taboo. But to hell with Leaphorn. That was none of his business. "Like I think I may have solved that Todachene hit-and-run case," he said. And as soon as he said it, he regretted it. "And like what to do about Ed Zeck and Councilman Chester," he added, hoping that would change the subject.
"Ed Zeck and Councilman Chester," Leaphorn said, with a question in his voice.
"Yeah," Chee said. "What did you think of that tape? The one I left in your tape player?"
Through years of police work, of questioning people to whom he didn't want to show his reaction to their answers, Joe Leaphorn had learned to control his expression. He could hear the best news, or the worst, behind the same bland and neutral face. But not now.
His cheeks flushed, blood rushed to his forehead, the lines around his mouth tightened.
Jim Chee was looking at an enraged Leaphorn.
But it only lasted a moment. Relief replaced fury. The veils of mystery had fallen away. He wasn't the victim of some unknown malice, the target of a shrewd and secret enemy. He was a victim of simpleminded bone-headedness. No more suspension, or risk of dismissal, or hiring a lawyer to defend against a charge of conspiracy to suppress evidence. All of that could be fixed tomorrow morning. Leaphorn felt weak with relief. He leaned a hand against Chee's truck. And then he remembered what this bone headedness had cost him.
"Why did you leave that tape in my player?" His expression was neutral again, but the voice was cold.
Chee hastily explained how that had happened, and why the call telling him the Todachene suspect had confessed over KNDN up in Farmington had caused him to rush away without an explanation. "I wanted to get right on that before it got cold," Chee concluded, and looked at Leaphorn to see if the explanation had created the mollifying effect desired. If it had, he couldn't read it in Leaphorn's expression.
Leaphorn stood there studying Chee, saying nothing.
"About the Chester tape," Chee said. "You were asking me if I knew of any evidence of bribery. I know it can't be used—the tape, I mean. It must have come from an illegal telephone tap. But maybe it will persuade the federals to so something."
"What do you know about how it came to be broadcast?"
"Just what was in the police report," Chee said. "The standard 'middle-aged, middle-sized'
man walked into the Navajo Tractor Sales office. The radio station has an open mike there for announcements. He got in line with the other people and when his turn came he held the tape player up to the mike and broadcast it and then he just walked out."
"You had nothing to do with it?"
"No sir," Chee said, loudly. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"Know anything more about it?"
"No sir." Chee paused. "Except I guess Roger Applebee did it. The lawyer lobbying against that toxic waste dump." He told Leaphorn how he'd met Applebee while having lunch with Janet Pete and what Applebee had said about getting some concrete evidence.
"It can't be used in court, of course. But maybe he thought it would cause the FBI to get interested. Maybe to set up a sting. Something like that."
"I doubt it," Leaphorn said.
Chee was surprised. "Well," he said. "They're into that sort of thing now, the federals are.
Running stings. They've been nailing politicians here and there for accepting bribes. And twenty-something thousand dollars is a lot of money."
Leaphorn studied Chee a moment, sighed, and made a decision. Under the circumstances, when he was Chee's age he might have done what Chee had done.
"Councilman Chester and Ed Zeck have been in the cattle business for about twenty years," he said. "They run bred heifers on Chester's grazing lease and a Bureau of Land Management lease that Zeck holds. The twenty-something thousand dollars is exactly what it takes to pay off a Farmington Bank of New Mexico loan Chester signed to buy the heifers. Zeck sold them to the feed lot people, but he hadn't deposited the check."
"Oh," Chee said.
"Only thing wrong about the deal was the price of beef went down and they lost a little money on the project," Leaphorn said. "But Dilly Streib is going to want to talk to you about an illegal wiretap, and maybe about that radio broadcast."
"Sure," Chee said. He wanted to ask Leaphorn why he was wearing civilian clothing on a workday. Maybe he'd misunderstood.
Maybe it was tomorrow that Leaphorn was leaving for China.
"Call Streib and tell him," said Leaphorn. "And call Captain Dodge and explain the tape business to him. And let's get back to business."
"Yes sir," Chee said.
"The Todachene thing. Have you found him?"
"Well," Chee said. "I think I have the driver spotted. But I need to find the truck before we have any evidence. I haven't located it yet." He stopped, hoping Leaphorn wouldn't press him for details. Leaphorn didn't.
"Let that go for a while. We want to pick up that Kanitewa boy and find out if he saw anything that day at Eric Dorsey's sliop." He told Chee what he had learned about the Tano Lincoln Cane and the Pojoaque Lincoln Cane and about collectors of historic rarities, and his conclusions about Asher Davis.
"It's like your Todachene suspect, though," Leaphorn said. "We don't have any concrete evidence. Just circumstantial stuff. Unless the Kanitewa kid saw something helpful."
Chee cleared his throat. "You mean," he said, "Asher Davis killed Eric Dorsey?"
"Except we don't have any evidence."
"Lieutenant," Chee said. "Asher Davis was out on the Hopi Reservation when Dorsey was killed. He was out there with Cowboy Dashee, buying stuff from Dashee's relatives. About the time Dorsey was killed they were eating lunch with Dashee's uncle at the Hopi Cultural Center."
Leaphorn lost his neutral expression again. But only for a moment.
"Well, now," he said. "That's interesting."
Chee cleared his throat again.
"Lieutenant, was I wrong about you taking leave and going to China? Did I get the date wrong?"
"No," Leaphorn said. "I had to call it off. I got suspended and I had to stay for the investigation."
"My God!" Chee said. "Suspended! Why would you get suspended?"
Leaphorn told him.
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26
"THE OLD BATTLE-AX did a lot of talking," Harold Blizzard said. "She'd talk about absolutely everything except where she was hiding the kid."
"I can see I'm going to have to go out there myself," Chee said. "You just don't seem to be catching on about how to interrogate people."
"I can interrogate people all right," Blizzard said. "Normal people, I have no problem. It's you Navajos. You know that stereotype about us Indians being taciturn?" Blizzard raised a huge palm toward Chee and growled "Ugggh" to illustrate his point. "Well, that's based on the rest of us Indians. Cheyennes, Cherokees, Choctaws, Comanches, Chippewas, Modocs, Kiowas, Seminoles, Potts, Hopis. Normal Indians. But whoever decided Indians were silent hadn't run into you talkative Navajos."
"You're telling me she didn't just flat-out deny she knew where Delmar could be located?
Is that right? She just wasn't willing to tell you?"
Blizzard used his big right hand to demonstrate lips flapping. "She'd just talk about what a lousy job we policemen did in protecting people, enforcing the laws and all that. And how would she know Delmar would be safe if we had him in our custody? And how she knew we wouldn't post a guard on him, or anything like that. And on, and on."
"Did you ask her why she thought he needed a guard?"
"Sure, I did. And she'd then just give me five more minutes about how lazy we cops were.
And then I'd tell her she was judging us by the performance of you guys." Blizzard cut off his own chuckle and Chee's response to that by signaling the wait
ress and pointing to their coffee cups.
"Hey," he said. "There's your lawyer lady. We're going to need another cup."
There, indeed, was Janet Pete, standing in the entrance of the Navajo Nation Inn coffee shop, looking hesitant. She saw that Chee had seen her, and turned away. Pretending, it seemed to Chee, to be looking for someone.
"Hey, Janet," Blizzard shouted. He stood, waving. Harold Blizzard was far too large, far too loud to be ignored.
Janet came. She looked at Chee and looked away. "Hello, Harold," she said. "Hello, Jim."
Chee stood and pulled back a chair for her.
"I met a friend of yours the other day," Blizzard said. "Jim's friend, too, I guess. Fellow named Asher Davis. He said if he wasn't about sixty pounds overweight, you two could provide him a perfect alibi in that homicide over at Tano Pueblo."
"Oh," Janet said. She glanced at Chee, and away.
"He's on the list the feds gave me of people to check out. About a thousand or so."
"I guess he's right," Janet said. "He went there with Mr. Chee and Cowboy Dashee and me. And when we decided to watch the ceremony from the roof, he decided he was too heavy for it to hold him."
"That was before the clowns came out with the wagonload of stuff?" Blizzard asked. "Or was it after?"
"I think it was before," Janet said. "Yes, it was right at the very beginning."
"That's the way I remember it, too," Chee said. He was thinking Leaphorn told Streib about the Lincoln Canes, and Streib told the Albuquerque FBI, and Blizzard knows his business better than I gave him credit for. "Are you thinking of Davis as maybe a suspect?"
Blizzard gave him a stern look. "Just my native curiosity," he said.
"I understand Davis looked good for it after the business of the Lincoln Canes came out,"
Chee said. "But it turns out he was with an Apache County deputy sheriff over on the Hopi Reservation when Eric Dorsey was killed."
Blizzard looked surprised, then angry. "Goddammit," he said. "Why don't anybody ever tell anybody anything?"
"I had no idea Davis was a suspect," Janet said. "And wait a minute. I thought you were talking about the Sayesva case. What's the Dorsey killing have to do with that? Which one are you talking about?"
"Nobody tells me about anything either," Chee said. "I've been out of touch. I just heard about the phony Lincoln Canes this morning."
"Phony Lincoln whats?" Janet said. "I still haven't heard about them."
And so Chee explained, skipping—Navajo fashion—back to the very beginning with the Spanish King Charles sending canes to the Indian pueblos in the seventeenth century, from there to 1863, thence to Leaphorn's discovery of the sketch on Dorsey's desk. He concluded finally with the presumption that the package Delmar Kanitewa had taken to his koshare uncle was a copy of the Tano cane, and the koshare put it in the wagon to warn against selling pueblo artifacts.
"I'd never even heard of Lincoln Canes," Janet said, looking thoughtful. "Is it your official
'theory of the crime' now that this cane ties the two homicides together? Same killer for the man who made it and the man who used it?"
"I'd say so," Chee said. "More or less."
"How's it work?" Janet asked.
"Sort of like this," Chee said, happy that Janet was once again talking directly to him and even looking at him. Maybe we're almost back again to being old friends, he thought. And maybe that was all he could ever hope for. "Somebody hires Dorsey to make the Pojoaque cane, knowing he can sell it to a collector of Lincoln rarities because the cane from that pueblo disappeared generations ago. So he has Dorsey make such a cane, not telling Dorsey what it is or about the fraud. Then he decides to try again with the Tano cane and gets Dorsey to make it. Delmar Kanitewa shows up at the shop while Dorsey is finishing it. He shows it to the boy since he's a Tano kid. Delmar tells Dorsey what it is."
Chee paused, looked at Janet. "You have to understand this Dorsey is a genuine straight arrow. Into doing good. Now he figures something crooked must be going on and he's being used. Probably he figures the real cane is going to be stolen and this one used to replace it so the theft won't be noticed. So he gives it to Delmar to take to his uncle with a warning about the impending theft. And then the guy who commissioned it shows up to collect it, and Dorsey jumps on him about it and the guy kills Dorsey to protect his secret."
Blizzard made a wry face. "It sounds too damned complicated," he said. "I like 'em simpler. Like the janitor walks in drunk and tries to borrow money and gets turned down and gets mad and knocks off Dorsey and steals some stuff."
"I don't like that Blizzard theory at all," Janet said. "But I don't know about the other one either." She thought. "How could this guy sell the second cane? Nobody would buy it.
Collectors know about these things or they wouldn't be collecting them. They'd know that Tano Pueblo still had its Lincoln Cane. And so they'd know that the one they'd bought was a fake, or, worse yet, the one they bought was stolen."
"So they couldn't brag about it. Or show it off," Blizzard said. "So why buy it?"
"And why use Dorsey?"
"He had connections with some traders," Chee said. "We know that because he was helping some of the Navajos out on the Checkerboard get better prices for their stuff." He paused, remembering what the old woman with the ill husband had told him. "Including some old stuff that the real collectors go for."
"Okay, but I still see holes in it," Janet said.
"I have trouble with it, too," Chee admitted.
The waitress arrived, bringing Janet a cup of coffee and a refill for Chee and Blizzard.
"You know," Blizzard said. "I think maybe all three of us are in the same boat I was in at that Cheyenne Autumn movie the other night. I couldn't understand why all the Navajos were hooting and blowing their car horns. Different culture. Different perceptions. There's probably some Tano Pueblo connection here we just don't fathom." He made a wide, Blizzard-style gesture with his hands. "Different value systems, you know. Hard for us outsiders to comprehend."
"Yes," Janet said in a voice almost too low for Chee to hear. "Hard to comprehend."
"Janet," Chee said. He reached his hand toward her. "There's something I'd like to explain."
She put down her cup and sat back, not looking at him.
"Well, now," Blizzard said, hastily. "I've got work to do." He picked up the ticket. "You get the tip," he said to Chee. "See you later, Janet." And he was gone.
"Me too," Janet said. "I've got to go."
"Where?" Chee said.
"First to Crownpoint. The federals are releasing Ahkeah and I have to do the paperwork."
"I'm going that direction," Chee said. "Could I give you a ride?"
"I have to go on from there up to Aztec. I have some business at the San Juan County courthouse."
"That's right on my way," Chee said.
"I'd better take my own car," she said. "You'd have to wait for me." She got up, dropped a dollar on the table. "My share of the tip."
"Janet," Chee said. "I want to talk to you."
"I'm not sure I'd care for that."
Chee sat looking up at her. He could think of nothing to say. But his expression must have said something to her.
"What could we talk about?" she asked. "Do you think we can go back to being friends?"
Chee shook his head. "I doubt it. I don't think I could."
He put his hand out. She looked at it. Then took it. Her fingertips felt soft and warm against his skin.
"Just a few hours," he said.
"What do we talk about?"
"The weather. The landscape. Old times, maybe, if we're careful how we handle it. And I think maybe I want you to help me make up my mind about something."
She extracted her hand.
"Not about Navajo clans," he said. "About something you must have studied in law school.
Justice. Retribution. Social revenge. Ethics. All that."
She managed a smile. "I'm good at that kind of t
alk."
In fact, they talked very little on their way to Crownpoint. East of Gallup, Chee pointed to the places along the red sandstone cliffs of Mesa de los Lobos where various movies had been shot. He explained that Thoreau was pronounced "threw" because the village had been named after a railroad engineer and not the poet-essayist. He pointed southward to Little Haystack Mountain and told her how a Navajo prospector named Paddy Martinez had found a vein of radioactive pitchblende near there and opened the great Ambrosia Lake uranium mining district. He told her, finally, about the chain of events that had gotten Leaphorn suspended, and had caused the lieutenant to miss his trip to China.
"It was a stupid thing to do," he said. "Leaving that tape in there, I mean. Leaphorn didn't make much out of it, but I feel terrible about it."
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