The Fallen Man jlajc-12

by Tony Hillerman

  They set the date for one P.M.

  at the Navajo Inn. That allowed time for the lunch-hour crowd to thin and for McDermott to make the two-hundred-mile drive from Albuquerque. It also gave Leaphorn the morning hours to collect information on the telephone, talking to friends in the ranching business, a Denver banker, a cattle broker, learning all he could about the Lazy B ranch and the past history of the Breedloves.

  That done, he drove down to the Inn and waited in the office lobby. A white Lexus pulled into the parking area and two men emerged: one tall and slender with graying blond hair, the other six inches shorter, dark-haired, sun-browned, with the heavy-shouldered, slim-waisted build of one who lifts weights and plays handball. Ten minutes early, but it was probably McDermott and who? An assistant, perhaps.

  Leaphorn met them at the entrance, went through the introductions, and ushered them in to the quiet corner table he’d arranged to hold.

  “Shaw,” Leaphorn said. “George Shaw? Is that correct?”

  “Right,” the dark man said. “Hal Breedlove was my cousin. My best friend, too, for that matter. I was the executor of the estate when Elisa had him declared legally dead.”

  “A sad situation,” Leaphorn said.

  “Yes,” Shaw said. “And strange.”

  “Why do you say that?” Leaphorn could think of a dozen ways Breedlove’s death was strange. But which one would Mr. Shaw pick?

  “Well,” Shaw said. “Why wasn’t the fall reported, for one thing?” 29 of 102

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  “You don’t think he made the climb alone?”

  “Of course not. He couldn’t have,” Shaw said. “I couldn’t do it, and I was a grade or two better at rock climbing than Hal. Nobody could.”

  Leaphorn recommended the chicken enchilada, and they all ordered it. McDermott inquired whether Leaphorn had considered their offer. Leaphorn said he had. Would he accept, then? They’d like to get moving on it right away. Leaphorn said he needed some more information. Their orders arrived. Delicious, thought Leaphorn, who had been dining mostly on his own cooking. McDermott ate thoughtfully. Shaw took a large bite, rich with green chile, and frowned at his fork.

  “What sort of information?” McDermott asked.

  “What am I looking for?” Leaphorn said.

  “As I told you,” McDermott said, “we can’t be too specific. We just want to know that we have every bit of information that’s available. We’d like to know why Harold Breedlove left Canyon de Chelly, and precisely when, and who he met and where they went. Anything that might concern his widow and her affairs at that time. We want to know everything that might cast light on this business.” McDermott gave Leaphorn a small, deprecatory smile. “Everything,” he said.

  “My first question was what I would be looking for,” Leaphorn said. “My second one is why? This must be expensive, if Mr. Shaw here is willing to pay me a thousand a week through your law firm, you will be charging him, what? The rate for an Albuquerque lawyer I know about used to be a hundred and ten dollars an hour. But that was long ago, and that was Albuquerque. Double it for a Washington firm? Would that be about right?”

  “It isn’t cheap,” McDermott said.

  “And maybe I find nothing useful at all. Probably you learn nothing. Tracks are cold after eleven years. But let us say that you learn the widow conspired to do away with her husband. I don’t know for sure but I’d guess then she couldn’t inherit. So the family gets the ranch back. What’s it worth? Wonderful house, I hear, if someone rich wants to live in it way out there. Maybe a hundred head of cattle. I’m told there’s still an old mortgage Harold’s widow took out six years ago to pay off her husband’s debts. How much could you get for that ranch?”

  “It’s a matter of justice,” McDermott said. “I am not privy to the family’s motives, but I presume they want some equity for Harold’s death.”

  Leaphorn smiled.

  Shaw had been sipping his coffee. He drained the cup and slammed it into the saucer with a clatter.

  “We want to see Harold’s killer hanged,” he said. “Isn’t that what they do out here? Hang ’em?”

  “Not lately,” Leaphorn said. “The mountain is on the New Mexico side of the reservation and New Mexico uses the gas chamber.

  But it would probably be federal jurisdiction. We Navajos don’t have a death penalty and the federal government doesn’t hang people.” He signaled the waiter, had their coffee replenished, sipped his own, and put down the cup.

  “If I take this job I don’t want to be wasting my time,” he said. “I would look for motives. An obvious one is inheritance of the ranch. That gives you two obvious suspects—the widow and her brother. But neither of them could have done it—at least not in the period right after Harold disappeared. The next possibility would be the widow’s boyfriend, if she had one. So I would examine all that. Premeditated murder usually involves a lot of trouble and risk. I never knew of one that didn’t grow out of a strong motivation.”

  Neither Shaw nor Breedlove responded to that.

  “Usually greed,” Leaphorn said.

  “Love,” said Shaw. “Or lust.”

  “Which does not seem to have been consummated, from what I know now,” Leaphorn said. “The widow remained single. When I was investigating the disappearance years ago I snooped around a little looking for a boyfriend. I couldn’t pick up any gossip that suggested a love triangle was involved.”

  “Easy enough to keep that quiet,” Shaw said.

  “Not out here it isn’t,” Leaphorn said. “I would be more interested in an economic motive.” He looked at Shaw. “If this is a crime it’s a white man’s crime. No Navajo would kill anyone on that sacred mountain. I doubt if a Navajo would be disrespectful enough even to climb it. Among my people, murder tends to be motivated by whiskey or sexual jealousy. Among white people, I’ve noticed crime is more likely to be motivated by money. So if I take the job, I’d be turning on my computer and tapping into the metal market statistics and price trends.”

  Shaw gave McDermott a sidewise glance, which McDermott didn’t notice. He was staring at Leaphorn.

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  “Why?”

  “Because the gossipers around Mancos say Edgar Breedlove bought the ranch more because his prospectors had found molybdenum deposits on it than for its grazing. They say the price of moly ore rose enough about ten or fifteen years ago to make development profitable. They say Harold, or the Breedlove family, or somebody, was negotiating for a mineral lease and the Mancos Chamber of Commerce had high hopes of a big mining payroll. But then Harold disappeared and before you know it the price was down again.

  I’d want to find out if any of that was true.”

  “I see,” McDermott said. “Yes, it would have made the ranch more valuable and made the motive stronger.”

  “What the hell,” Shaw said. “We were keeping quiet about it because news like that leaks out, it causes problems. With local politicians, with the tree-huggers, with everybody else.”

  “Okay,” Leaphorn said. “I guess if I take this job, then I’m safe in figuring the ranch is worth a lot more than the grass growing on it.”

  “What do you say?” Shaw said, his voice impatient. “Can we count on you to do some digging for us?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll call your office.”

  “We’ll be here a day or two,” Shaw said. “And we’re in a hurry. Why not a decision right now?” A hurry, Leaphorn thought. After all these years. “I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he said. “But you haven’t answered my question about the value of the ranch.”

  McDermott looked grim. “You’d be safe to assume it was worth killing for.” 11

  “TWISTING THE TAI
L OF A COW

  will encourage her to move forward,” the text declared. “If the tail is held up over the back, it serves as a mild restraint. In both cases, the handler should hold the tail close to the base to avoid breaking it, and stand to the side to avoid being kicked.” The paragraph was at the top of the fourth-from-final page of a training manual supplied by the Navajo Nation for training brand inspectors of its Resource Enforcement Agency. Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee read it, put down the manual, and rubbed his eyes. He was not on the payroll of the tribe’s REA. But since Captain Largo was forcing him to do its job he’d borrowed an REA brand inspector manual and was plowing his way through it. He’d covered the legal sections relating to grazing rights, trespass, brand registration, bills of sale, when and how livestock could be moved over the reservation boundary, and disease quarantine rules, and was now into advice about handling livestock without getting hurt. To Chee, who had been kicked by several horses but never by a cow, the advice seemed sound. Besides, it diverted him from the paperwork—vacation schedules, justifications for overtime pay, patrol car mileage reports, and so forth—that was awaiting action on his cluttered desk. He picked up the manual.

  “The ear twitch can be used to divert attention from other parts of the body,” the next paragraph began. “It should be used with care to avoid damage to the ear cartilage. To make the twitch, fasten a loop of cord or rope around the base of the horns. The rope is then carried around the ear and a half-hitch formed. The end of the rope is pulled to apply restraint.” Chee studied the adjoining illustration of a sleepy-looking cow wearing an ear twitch. Chee’s childhood experience had been with sheep, on which an ear twitch wouldn’t be needed. Still, he figured he could make one easily enough.

  The next paragraph concerned a “rope casting harness” with which a person working alone could tie up a mature cow or bull without the risk of strangulation that was involved with usual bulldogging techniques. It looked easy, too, but required a lot of rope.

  Two pages to go and he’d be finished with this.

  Then the telephone rang.

  The voice on the telephone belonged to Officer Manuelito.

  “Lieutenant,” she said, “I’ve found something I think you should know about.”

  “Tell me,” Chee said.

  “Out near Ship Rock, that place where the fence posts had been dug out. You remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, the snow is gone now and you can see where before it snowed somebody had thrown out a bunch of hay.”

  “Ah,” Chee said.

  “Like they wanted to attract the cattle. Make them easy to get a rope on. To get ’em into a chute. Into your trailer.” 31 of 102

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  “Manuelito,” Chee said. “Have you finished interviewing that list of possible witnesses in that shooting business?” Silence. Finally, “Most of them. Some of them I’m still looking for.”

  “Do they live out near Ship Rock?”

  “Well, no. But—”

  “Don’t say but,” Chee said. He shifted his weight in his chair, aware that his back hurt from too much sitting, aware that out in the natural world the sun was bright, the sky a dark blue, the chamisa had turned gold and the snakeweed a brilliant yellow. He sighed.

  “Manuelito,” he said. “Have you gone out to talk to the Sam woman about whether she’s seen anything suspicious?”

  “No, sir,” Officer Manuelito said, sounding surprised. “You told me to—”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “The Burnham trading post,” she said. “The people there said they hadn’t seen anything at the girl dance. But I think they did.”

  “Probably,” Chee said. “They just didn’t want to get the shooter into trouble. So come on in now, and buzz me when you get here, and we’ll go out and see if Lucy Sam has seen anything interesting.”

  “Yes, sir,” Officer Manuelito said, and she sounded like she thought that was a good idea. It seemed like a good idea to Chee, too.

  The tossing hay over the fence business sounded like Zorro’s trademark as described by Finch, and that sounded like an opportunity to beat that arrogant bastard at his own game.

  Officer Manuelito looked better today. Her uniform was tidy, hair black as a raven’s wing and neatly combed, and no mud on her face. But she still displayed a slight tendency toward bossiness.

  “Turn up there,” she ordered, pointing to the road that led toward Ship Rock, “and I’ll show you the hay.” Chee remembered very well the location of the loosened fence posts, but the beauty of the morning had turned him amiable. With Manuelito, he would work on correcting one fault at a time, leaving this one for a rainy day. He turned as ordered, parked when told to park, and followed her over to the fence. With the snow cover now evaporated, it was easy to see that the dirt had been dug away from the posts. It was also easy to see, scattered among the sage, juniper, and rabbit brush, what was left of several bales of alfalfa after the cattle had dined.

  “Did you tell Delmar Yazzie about this?” Chee asked.

  Officer Manuelito looked puzzled. “Yazzie?”

  “Yazzie,” Chee said. “The resource-enforcement ranger who works out of Shiprock. Mr. Yazzie is the man responsible for keeping people from stealing cattle.”

  Officer Manuelito looked flustered. “No, sir,” she said. “I thought we could sort of stake this place out. Keep an eye on it, you know. Whoever is putting out this hay bait will be back and once he gets the cows used to coming here, he’ll—”

  “He’ll rig himself up a sort of chute,” Chee said, “and back his trailer in here, and drive a few of ’em on it, and . . . “ Chee paused. Her flustered look had been replaced by the smile of youthful enthusiasm. But now Chee’s impatient tone had caused the smile to go away.

  Acting Lieutenant Chee had intended to tell Officer Manuelito some of what he’d learned in digesting the brand inspector training manual. If they did indeed catch the cattle thief and managed to get a conviction, the absolute maximum penalty for his crime would be a fine “not to exceed $100” and a jail term “not to exceed six months.” That’s what it said in section 1356 of subchapter six of chapter seven of the Livestock Inspection and Control Manual. Reading that section just after Manuelito’s call had fueled Chee’s urge to get out of the office and into the sunlight. But why was he venting his bad mood on this rookie cop? Even interrupting her to do it—an inexcusable rudeness for any Navajo. It wasn’t her fault, it was Captain Largo’s. And besides, Finch had hurt his pride. He wanted to deflate that pompous jerk by catching Finch’s Zorro before Finch got him. Manuelito looked like a valuable help in that project.

  Chee swallowed, cleared his throat. “. . . and then we’d have an easy conviction,” he concluded.

  Officer Manuelito’s expression had become unreadable. A hard lady to mislead.

  “And put a stop to one cow thief,” he added, conscious of how lame it sounded. “Well, let’s go. Let’s see if anyone’s at home at the Sam place.”

  The Rural Electrification Administration had run a power line across the empty landscape off in the direction of the Chuska Mountains, which took it within a few miles of the Sam place, and the Navajo Communication Company had followed by linking such inhabited spots as Rattlesnake and Red Rock to the world with its own telephone lines. But the Sam outfit had either been too 32 of 102

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  far off the route to make a connection feasible, or the Sam family had opted to preserve its privacy. Thus the fence posts that lined the dirt track leading to the Sam hogan were not draped with telephone wire, and thus there had been no way for Jim Chee to warn Ms. Sam of the impending visit.

  But as he geared down into low to creep over the cattle guard and onto the trac
k leading into the Sam grazing lease, he noticed the old boot hanging on the gate post was right side up. Someone must be home.

  “I hope someone’s here,” Officer Manuelito said.

  “They are,” Chee said. He nodded toward the boot.

  Officer Manuelito frowned, not understanding.

  “The boot’s turned up,” Chee said. “When you’re leaving, and nobody’s going to be home, you turn the boot upside down. Empty.

  Nobody home. That saves your visitor from driving all the way up to the hogan.”

  “Oh,” Manuelito said. “I didn’t know that. We lived over near Keams Canyon before Mom moved to Red Rock.” She sounded impressed. Chee became aware that he was showing off. And enjoying it. He nodded, said: “Yep. You probably had a different signal over there.” And thought it would be embarrassing now if nobody was home. The trouble with cattle guard signaling was that people forgot to stop and change the boot.

  But Lucy Sam’s pickup was resting in front of her double-wide mobile home and Lucy Sam was peering out of the screen door at them. Chee let the patrol car roll to a stop amid a flock of startled chickens. They waited, giving Ms. Sam the time required to prepare herself for receiving visitors. It also gave Chee time to inspect the place.

  The mobile home was one of the flimsier models but it had been placed solidly on a base of concrete blocks to keep the wind from blowing under it. A small satellite dish sat on its roof, helping a row of old tires hold down the aluminum panels as well as bringing in a television signal. Beside this insubstantial residence stood the Sam hogan, solidly built of sandstone slabs with its door facing properly eastward. Chee’s practiced eyes could tell that it had been built to the specifications prescribed for the People by Changing Woman, their giver of laws. Beyond the hogan was a hay shed with a plank holding pen for cattle, a windmill with attendant water tank, and, on top of the shed, a small wind generator, its fan blades spinning in the morning breeze. Down the slope a rusty and long-deceased Ford F100 pickup rested on blocks with its wheels missing. Farther down stood an outhouse. Beyond this untidy clutter of rural living, the view stretched away forever.