The Fallen Man jlajc-12

by Tony Hillerman

  13

  ACTING LIEUTENANT JIM CHEE

  was parked at sunrise on the access road to Beclabito Day School because he wanted to talk to Officer Teddy Begayaye at a private place. Officer Begayaye would be driving to the office from his home at Tec Nos Pos. Chee wanted to tell him that vacation schedules were being posted today, that he was getting the Thanksgiving week vacation time he had asked for. He wanted Begayaye to provide him some sort of justification (beyond his twelve years of seniority) for approving it. Another member of Chee’s criminal investigation squad wanted the same days off, namely, Officer Manuelito. She had applied for them first, and Chee wanted to give her some reason (beyond her total lack of seniority) why she didn’t get it—thereby avoiding friction in the department. Thus Chee had parked where Begayaye could see him instead of hiding his patrol car behind the day school sign in hope of nabbing a speeder.

  But now Chee wasn’t thinking of vacation schedules. He was thinking of the date he had tonight with Janet Pete, back from whatever law business had taken her to Washington. Janet shared an apartment at Gallup with Louise Guard, another of the DNA lawyers. Chee had hopes that Louise, as much as he liked her, would be away somewhere for the evening (or, better, had found herself another apartment). He wanted to show Janet a videotape he’d borrowed of a traditional Navajo wedding. She had more or less agreed, with qualifications, that they would do the ceremony the Navajo way and that he could pick the haatalii to perform it.

  But she clearly had her doubts about it. Janet’s mother had something more socially correct in mind. However, if he lucked out and Ms. Guard actually had shoved off for somewhere, he would hold the videotape for another evening. He and Janet hadn’t seen each other for a week and there were better ways to occupy the evening.

  The vehicle rolling down U.S. 64 toward him was a camper truck, dirty and plastered with tourist stickers. Dick Finch’s vehicle. It slowed to a crawl, with Finch making a series of hand signals. Most of them were meaningless to Chee, but one of them said “follow me.”

  Chee started his engine and followed, driving eastward on 64 with Finch speeding. Chee topped the ridge. Finch’s truck had already disappeared, but a plume of dust hanging over the dirt road that led past the Rattlesnake pump station betrayed it. Chee made the left turn into the dust—thinking how quickly this arid climate could replace wet snow with blowable dirt. Just out of sight of the highway the camper was parked, with Finch standing beside it.

  Finch walked over, smiling that smile of his. Lots of white teeth.

  “Good morning,” Chee said.

  “Captain Largo wants us to work together,” Finch said. “So do my people. Get along with the Navajos, they tell me. And the Utes and the Zunis, Arizona State Police, the county mounties, and everybody. Good policy, don’t you think?”

  “Why not?” Chee said.

  “Well, there might be a reason why not,” Finch said, still smiling, waiting for Chee to say, “Like what?” Chee just looked at him until Finch tired of the game.

  “For example, somebody’s been taking a little load of heifers now and then off that grazing lease west of your Ship Rock mountain.

  They’re owned by an old codger who lives over near Toadlena. He rents grass from a fella named Maryboy, and his livestock is all mixed up with Maryboy’s and nobody keeps track of the cattle.”

  Finch waited again. So did Chee. What Finch was telling him so far was common enough. People who had grazing leases let other people use them for a fee. One of the problems of catching cattle thieves was the animals might be gone a month before anyone noticed. Finally Chee said: “What’s your point?”

  “Point is, as we say, I’ve got reason to believe that the fella picking up these animals is this fella I’ve been trying to nail. He comes back to the mountain about every six months or so and picks up a load. Does the same thing over around Bloomfield, and Whitehorse Lake, and Burnham, and other places. When I catch him, a lot of this stealing stops. My job gets easier. So a couple of months ago, I found where he got the last ones he took from that Ship Rock pasture. The son of a bitch was throwing hay over a fence at a place where he could back his truck in. Chumming them up like he was a fisherman. I imagine he’d blow his horn when he threw the hay over. Cows are curious. Worse than cats. They’d come to see about it. And they’ve got good memories. Do it about twice, and when they hear a horn they think of good alfalfa hay. Come running.” Finch laughed. Chee knew exactly where this was leading.

  “Manuelito spotted that hay, too,” Chee said. “She noticed how the fence posts had been dug up there, loosened so they can be pulled up. She took me out to show me.”

  “I saw you,” Finch said. “Watched you through my binoculars from about two miles away. Trouble is, our cow thief was probably watching, too. He’s baited that place three times now. No use wasting any more hay. It’s time to collect his cows.” Finch stared at Chee, his smile still genial. Chee felt his face flushing, which seemed to be the reaction Finch was awaiting.

  “But he ain’t going to do it now, is he? You can bet your ass he’s got a set of binoculars every bit as good as mine, and he’s careful.

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  He sees a police car parked there. Sees a couple of cops tromping around. He’s gone and he won’t be back and a lot of my hard work is down the goddamn tube.”

  “This suggests something to me,” Chee said.

  “I hoped it would. I hoped it would make you want to learn a little more about this business before you start practicing it.”

  “Actually it suggests that you screwed up. You had about four hours of talking to me on that ride up to Mancos, with me listening all the way. You told me about this Zorro you’re trying to catch—and I guess this is him. But you totally forgot to tell me about this trap you were going to spring so we could coordinate. How could you forget something like that?” Finch’s face had also become a little redder through its windburn. The smile had gone away. He stared at Chee. Looked down at his boots. When he looked up he was grinning.

  “Touché! I got a bad habit of underestimating folks. You say that woman cop with you noticed the fence posts had been dug loose. I missed that. Good-looking lady, too. You give her my congratulations, will you. Tell her any old time she wants to work alongside of me, or under me either, she’s more than welcome.”

  Chee nodded, started his engine.

  “Hold it just a minute,” Finch said, his smile looking slightly more genuine. “I didn’t stop you just to start an argument. Wondered if I could get you to be a witness for something.”

  Chee left the motor running. “For what?”

  “There’s five Angus calves at a feedlot over by Kirtland. Looks like they were branded through a wet gunnysack, like the wise guys do it, but they’re still so fresh they haven’t even scabbed over yet. And the fellow that signed the bill of sale hasn’t got any mother cows. He claimed he sold ’em off—which we can check on. On the other hand, a fellow named Bramlett is short five Angus calves off some leased pasture. I’m going over and see if there’s five wet cows there. If there is I call the feedlot and they bring the calves over and I turn on my video camera and get a tape of the mama cows saying hello to their missing calves. Letting ’em nurse, all that.”

  “So what do you need me for?”

  “It’d be a mostly Navajo jury, and the cow thief—he’s a Navajo,” Finch said. “Be good to have a Navajo cop on the witness stand.” Chee looked at his watch. By now Teddy Begayaye would be at the office celebrating getting his requested vacation time, and Manuelito would be sore about it. Too late for any preventive medicine there. But he had, after all, ruined Finch’s trap. Besides, it would give him another hour away from the office and something positive for a change to report to Captain Largo on the cow-theft front.

  “I’ll follow you,” Chee said, “and if you spee
d, you get a ticket.” Finch sped, but kept it within the Navajo Tribal Police tolerance zone. He parked beside the fence at the holding pasture at just about nine A.M.

  It was bottomland here, a pasture irrigated by a ditch from the San Juan River, and it held maybe two hundred head of Angus—young cows and their calves—last spring’s crop but still nursing. Chee parked as Finch was climbing the fence, snagging his jeans on the barbed wire.

  “I think I saw a wet one already,” he shouted, pointing into the herd, which now was moving uneasily away. “You stay back by your car.”

  Wet one?

  Chee thought. He’d been raised with sheep, not cows. But “wet” must be what you called a cow with a painfully full udder. A cow whose nursing calf was missing. Finch had been right about cow memories. Their memory connected men on foot with being roped, bulldogged, and branded. They were scattering away from Finch. So the question was, how was Finch going to locate five such cows in that milling herd and know he hadn’t just counted the same cow five times?

  Finch picked himself a spot free of cow manure, dropped to his knees, and rolled over on his back. He folded his arms under his head and lay motionless. The cows, which had shied fearfully away from him, stopped their nervous milling. They stared at Finch.

  He yawned, squirmed into a more comfortable position. A heifer, head and ears stretched forward, moved a cautious step toward him. Others followed, noses pointed, ears forward. The calves, with no memory of branding to inhibit them, were first. By eleven minutes after nine, Finch was surrounded by a ring of Angus cattle, sniffing and staring.

  As for Finch, only his head was moving, and he made an udder inspection. He arose, creating a panic, and walked through the scattering herd, already dialing his portable telephone, talking into it as he climbed the fence. He closed it, walked up to Chee’s window.

  “Five wet ones,” he said. “They’re going to bring the calves right out. I’m going to videotape it, but it’d help if you’d stick around so you can testify. You know, tell the jury that the calves ran right up to their mamas and started nursing, and their mamas let ’em do it.”

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  “That was pretty damn clever,” Chee said.

  “I told you about cows being curious,” Finch said. “They’re scared of a man standing up. Lay down and they say, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ and come on over to take a look.” He brushed off his jeans. “Drawback is you’re likely to get manure all over yourself.”

  “Well, it’s a lot quicker than chasing them all over the pasture, trying to get a look.” Finch was enjoying this approval.

  “You know where I learned that trick? I was in the dentist’s office at Farmington waiting to get a root canal. Picked up a New Yorker

  magazine and there was an article in there about a Nevada brand inspector name of Chris Collis. It was a trick he used. I called him and asked him if it really worked. He said sure.”

  Finch fished his video camera out of the truck cab, fiddled with it. Chee radioed his office, reported his location, collected his messages. One was from Joe Leaphorn. It was brief.

  A truck from the feedlot arrived bearing two men and five terrified Angus calves. Each was ear-tagged with its number and released into the pasture. Each ran, bawling, in search of its mother, found her, underwent a maternal inspection, was approved and allowed to nurse while Finch videotaped the happy reunions.

  But Chee wasn’t paying as much attention as he might have been. While Finch was counting turgid udders, Chee had checked with his office. Leaphorn wanted to talk to him again about the Fallen Man. He said he was working for the Breedlove family now.

  14

  THE QUESTION NAGGING AT JIM CHEE

  wasn’t the sort he wanted to explore on the Tribal Police radio band. He stopped at the Hogback trading post, dropped a quarter in the pay phone, and called the number Leaphorn had left. It proved to be the Anasazi Inn in Farmington, but the front desk said Leaphorn had checked out. Chee dropped in another quarter and called his own office. Jenifer answered. Yes, Leaphorn had called again. He said he was on his way back from Farmington to Window Rock and he would drop by and try to catch Chee at his office.

  Chee got there about five minutes faster than the speed limit allowed. Leaphorn’s car was in the parking lot. The man himself was perched, ramrod straight, on a chair in the waiting room, reading yesterday’s copy of Navajo Times.

  “If you have a couple of minutes, I want to pass on some information,” Leaphorn said. “Otherwise, I can catch you when you have some time.”

  “I have time,” Chee said, and ushered him into his office.

  Leaphorn sat. “I’ll be brief. I’ve taken a retainer from the Breedlove Corporation. Actually, it’s really the family, I guess. They want me to sort of reinvestigate the disappearance of Hal Breedlove.” He paused, awaited a reaction. If he was reading Chee’s studiously blank expression properly, the young man didn’t like the arrangement.

  “So it’s official business for you now,” Chee said. “At least unofficially official.”

  “Right,” Leaphorn said. “I wanted you to know that because I may be bothering you now and then. With questions.” He paused again.

  “Is that it?” Chee asked. If it was, he had some questions of his own.

  “There’s something else I wanted to tell you. I think it’s pretty clear the family thinks Hal was murdered. If they have any evidence of that they’re not telling me. Maybe it’s just that they want it to be murder. And they want to be able to prove it. They want to regain title to the ranch.”

  “Oh,” Chee said. “Did they tell you that?”

  Leaphorn hesitated, his expression quizzical. What the devil was bothering Chee? “I was thinking that would be the most likely motive,” he said. “What do you think?”

  Chee nodded noncommittally.

  “Can you tell me who you made the deal with?” he asked.

  “You mean the individual?” Leaphorn said. “I think private detectives are supposed to have a thing about client confidentiality, but I haven’t learned to think like a private eye. Never will. This is my one and only venture. George Shaw handed me my check.” He laughed, and told Chee how he’d outsmarted himself, trying to learn how big a deal this was for the Breedlove Corporation.

  “So Hal’s cousin signed the check, but the lawyer with him, you remember his name?” 43 of 102

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  “McDermott,” Leaphorn said. “John McDermott. He’s the lawyer handling it. He called me and arranged the meeting. Works for a Washington firm, but I think he used to have an office in Albuquerque. And—” He stopped, aware of Chee’s expression. “You know this guy?”

  “Indirectly,” Chee said. “He was sort of an Indian affairs specialist for an Albuquerque firm. I think he represented Peabody Coal when they were negotiating one of the coal contracts with us, and a couple of pipeline companies dealing with the Jicarillas. Then he moved to Washington and is doing the same thing on that level. I think it’s with the same law firm.” Leaphorn looked surprised. “You know a lot more about him than I do,” he said. “How’s his reputation? It okay?”

  “As a lawyer? I guess so. He used to be a professor.”

  “He struck me as arrogant. Is that your impression?”

  Chee shrugged. “I don’t know him. I just know a little about him.”

  “Well, he didn’t make a good first impression.”

  “Could you tell me when he called you? I mean made the first contact.” The question obviously surprised Leaphorn. “Let’s see,” he said. “Two or three days ago.”

  “Was it last Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday? Let’s see. Yeah. It was a call on my answering machine. I returned it.”

&n
bsp; “Morning or afternoon?”

  “I don’t know. It could have been either one. But it’s still on the recording. I think I could find out.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Chee said.

  “Will do,” Leaphorn said, and paused. “I’m trying to place the date. That would have been about the day after you got the skeleton identified. Right?”

  Chee sighed. “Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said, “you already know just what I’m thinking, don’t you?”

  “Well, I’d guess you’re wondering how that lawyer found out so quickly that the skeleton had turned out to be somebody so important to his client. No announcement had been made. Nothing in the papers until a day or so later and I don’t think it ever made the national news. Just a little story around here, and about three paragraphs in the Albuquerque Journal, and a little bit more in the Rocky Mountain News.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Chee said.

  “But you’re ahead of me on something else. I don’t know why it’s important.”

  “You couldn’t guess,” Chee said. “It’s something personal.”

  “Oh,” Leaphorn said. He ducked his head, shook it, and said, “Oh,” again. Sad, now. And then he looked up. “You know, they could have had this thing staked out, though. An important client. Maybe they had some law firm out here retained to tip them off if anything turned up that would bear in any way at all on this son-and-heir being missing. They knew he was a mountain climber. So when an unidentified body turns up . . . “ He shrugged. “Who knows how law firms operate?” he said, not believing it himself.

  “Sure,” Chee said. “Anything’s possible.”

  Leaphorn was leaving, hat in hand, but he stopped in the doorway and turned.

  “One other thing that might bear on all this,” he said. He told Chee of Sergeant Deke’s account of the man with the binoculars and the rifle on the canyon rim. “Deke said he’s going up the canyon and warn Nez that somebody may still be trying to kill him. I hope we can figure this out before they do it.”

  Chee sat for a moment looking at the closed door, thinking of Leaphorn, thinking of Janet Pete, of John McDermott back in New Mexico. Was he back in her life? Apparently he was. For the first time, the Fallen Man became more than an abstract tragedy in Chee’s mind. He buzzed Jenifer.