Bernie reappeared at the doorway, Ramona behind her. “There’s a triple gun rack in the office,” she said. “A twelve-gauge pump shotgun in the bottom rack and the top two empty.”
“Okay,” Chee said.
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“And in the wastebasket beside the desk, there’s a thirty-ought-six ammunition box. The top’s torn off and it’s empty.” Chee nodded and came to his decision.
“Mrs. Breedlove. No one climbed the mountain on the date by your husband’s name. But on September eighteenth three people were seen climbing it. Hal was one of them. You were one. Who was the third?”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” Elisa said. “I want you to go.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Chee said. “You have the right to remain silent, and to call your lawyer if you think you need one. I don’t think you’ve done anything you could be charged with, but you never really know what a prosecuting attorney will decide.”
Officer Manuelito cleared her throat. “And anything you say can be used against you. Remember that.”
“I don’t want to say any more.”
“That’s okay,” Chee said. “But I should tell you this. Eldon isn’t here and neither is his rifle and it looks like he just reloaded it. If we have this figured out right, Eldon is going to know there is just one man left alive who could ruin this for him.” Chee paused, waiting for a response. It didn’t come. Elisa sat as if frozen, staring at him.
“It’s a man named Amos Nez. Remember him? He was your guide in Canyon de Chelly. Right after Hal’s skeleton was found on Ship Rock last Halloween, Mr. Nez was riding his horse up the canyon. Someone up on the rim shot him. He wasn’t killed, just badly hurt.”
Elisa sagged a little with that, looked down at her hands, and said, “I didn’t know that.”
“With a thirty-ought-six rifle,” Chee added.
“What day was it?”
Chee told her.
She thought a moment. Remembering. Slumped a little more.
“If anyone kills Mr. Nez the charge will be the premeditated murder of a witness. That carries the death penalty.”
“He’s my brother,” Elisa said. “Hal’s death was an accident. Sometimes he acted almost like he wanted to die. No thrills, he said, if you didn’t take a chance. He fell. When Eldon climbed down to where I was waiting, he looked like he was almost dead himself. He was devastated. He was so shaken he could hardly tell me about it.” She stopped, looking at Chee, at Bernie, back at Chee.
Waiting for our reaction, Chee thought. Waiting for us to give her absolution? No, waiting for us to say we believe what she is telling us, so that she can believe it again herself.
“I think you were driving that Land-Rover,” Chee said. “When police found it abandoned up an arroyo north of Many Farms they said there was a telephone in it.”
“But what good would it have done to call for help?” Elisa asked, her voice rising. “Hal was dead. He was all broken to pieces on that little ledge. Nobody could bring him back to life again. He was dead!”
“Was he?”
“Yes,” she shouted. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
And now Chee understood why Elisa had been so shocked when she learned the skeleton was intact—with not a bone broken. She didn’t want to believe it. Refused to believe it still. That made the next question harder to ask. What had Eldon told her of the scene at the top? Had he explained why Hal had started his descent before he signed the book? Why he falsified the register? Had he—
Ramona rushed into the room, sat beside Elisa, hugged the woman to her. She glared at Chee. “I said go away now,” she said. “Get out. No more. No more. She has suffered too much.”
“It’s all right,” Elisa said. “Ramona, when you came in did you see the Land-Rover in the garage?”
“No,” Ramona said. “Just Eldon’s pickup truck.”
Elisa looked at Chee, sighed, and said, “Then I guess he didn’t go up to see about the mare. He would have taken his truck.” Chee picked up his hat and the photographs. He thanked Mrs. Breedlove for the cooperation, apologized for bringing her bad news, and hurried out, with Bernie trotting along behind him. The wind was bitter now, and carrying those dry-as-dust first snowflakes that were the forerunners of a storm.
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“I want to get Leaphorn on the radio,” he said, as Bernie started the engine, “and maybe we’ll have to make a fast trip to Canyon de Chelly.”
Bernie was looking back at the house. “Do you think she will be all right?”
“I think so,” Chee said. “Ramona will take good care of her.”
“Ramona’s pretty shaken up, too,” Bernie said. “She was crying when she helped me look for the rifle. She said it was always the wrong men with Elisa—always having to take care of them. That Hal was a spoiled baby and Eldon was a bully. She said if it wasn’t for Eldon she’d be married to a good man who wanted to take care of her.”
“She say who?”
“I think it was Tommy Castro. Or maybe Kaster. Something like that. She was crying.” Bernie was staring back at the house, looking worried.
“Bernie,” Chee said. “It’s starting to snow. It’s probably going to be a bad one. Start the car. Go. Go. Go.”
“You’re worried about Amos Nez,” Bernie said, starting the engine. “We can just call the station at Chinle and have them stop any Land-Rover driving in. Bet Mr. Leaphorn already did that.”
“He said he would,” Chee said. “But I want to get a message to him about Demott taking off with his thirty-ought-six loaded. Maybe Eldon won’t be driving in. If you can climb seventeen hundred feet up Ship Rock, maybe you can climb down a six-hundred-foot cliff.”
26
THEY DROVE INTO THE FULL BRUNT
of the storm halfway between Mancos and Cortez, the wind buffeting the car and driving a blinding sheet of tiny dry snowflakes horizontally past their windshield.
“At least it’s sweeping the pavement clear,” Bernie said, sounding cheerful.
Chee glanced at her. She seemed to be enjoying the adventure. He wasn’t. His ribs hurt, so did the abrasions around his eye, and he was not in the mood for cheer.
“That won’t last long,” he said.
It didn’t. In Cortez, snow was driving over the curbs and the pavement was beginning to pack, and the broadcasts on the emergency channel didn’t sound promising. A last gasp of the Pacific hurricane system was pushing across Baja California into Arizona. There it met the first blast of Arctic air, pressing down the east slope of the Rockies from Canada. Interstate 40 at Flagstaff, where the two fronts had collided, was already closed by snow. So were highways through the Wasatch Range in Utah. Autumn was emphatically over on the Colorado Plateau.
They turned onto U.S. 666 to make the forty-mile run almost due south to Shiprock. With the icy wind pursuing them, the highway emptied of traffic by storm warnings, and speed limits ignored, Bernie outran the Canadian contribution to the storm. The sky lightened now. Far ahead, they could see where the Pacific half of the blizzard had reached the Chuska range. Its cold, wet air met the dry, warmer air on the New Mexico side at the ridgeline. The collision produced a towering wall of white fog, which poured down the slopes like a silent slow-motion Niagara.
“Wow,” Bernie said. “I never saw anything quite like that before.”
“The heavy cold air forces itself under the warmer stuff,” said Chee, unable to avoid a little showing off. “I’ll bet it’s twenty degrees colder at Lukachukai than it is at Red Rock—and they’re less than twenty miles apart.” They crossed the western corner of the Ute reservation, then roared into New Mexico and across the mesa high above Malpais Arroyo.
&nbs
p; “Wow,” Bernie said again. “Look at that.”
Instead Chee glanced at the speedometer and flinched.
“You drive,” he said. “I’ll check the scenery for both of us.” It was worth checking. They looked down into the vast San Juan River basin—dark with storm to the right, dappled with sunlight to the left. Ship Rock stood just at the edge of the shadow line, a grotesque sunlit thumb thrust into the sky, but through some quirk of wind and air pressure, the long bulge of the Hogback formation was already mostly dark with cloud shadow.
“I think we’re going to get home before the snow,” Bernie said.
They almost did. It caught them when Bernie pulled into the parking lot at the station—but the flakes blowing against Chee as he hurried into the building were still small and dry. The Canadian cold front was still dominating the Pacific storm.
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“You look terrible,” Jenifer said. “How do you feel?”
“I’d say well below average,” Chee said. “Did Leaphorn call?”
“Indirectly,” Jenifer said, and handed Chee three message slips and an envelope.
It was on top—a call from Sergeant Deke at the Chinle station confirming that Leaphorn had received Chee’s message about Demott leaving his ranch with his rifle. Leaphorn had gone up the canyon to the Nez place and would either bring Nez out with him or stay, depending on the weather, which was terrible.
Chee glanced at the other messages. Routine business. The envelope bore the word “Jim” in Janet’s hand. He tapped it against the back of his hand. Put it down. Called Deke.
“I’ve seen worse,” Deke said. “But it’s a bad one for this time of year. Still above zero but it won’t be for long. Blowing snow. We have Navajo 12 closed at Upper Wheatfields, and 191 between here and Ganado, and 59 north of Red Rock, and—well, hell of a night to be driving. How about there?”
“I think we’re just getting the edge of it,” Chee said. “Did Leaphorn get my message?”
“Yep. He said not to worry.”
“What do you think? Demott’s a rock climber. Is Nez going to be safe enough?”
“Except for maybe frostbite,” Deke said. “Nobody’s going to be climbing those cliffs tonight.” And so Chee opened the envelope and extracted the note.
“Jim. Sorry I missed you. Going to get a bite to eat and will come by your place—Janet.” Her car wasn’t there when he drove up, which was just as well, he thought. It would give him a little time to get the place a little warmer. He fired up the propane heater, put on the coffee, and gave the place a critical inspection. He rarely did. His trailer was simply where he lived. Sometimes it was hot, sometimes it was cold. But otherwise it was not something he gave any thought to. It looked cramped, crowded, slightly dirty, and altogether dismal. Ah, well, nothing to do about it now. He checked the refrigerator for something to offer her. Nothing much there in the snack line, but he extracted a slab of cheese and pulled a box of crackers and a bowl with a few Oreos in it off the shelf over the stove. Then he sat on the edge of the bunk, slumped, listening to the icy wind buffeting the trailer, too tired to think about what might be about to happen.
Chee must have dozed. He didn’t hear the car coming down the slope, or see the lights. A tapping at the door awakened him, and he found her standing on the step looking up at him.
“It’s freezing,” she said as he ushered her in.
“Hot coffee,” he said. Poured a cup, handed it to her, and offered her the folding chair beside the fold-out table. But she stood a moment, hugging herself and shivering, looking undecided.
“Janet,” he said. “Sit down. Relax.”
“I just need to tell you something,” she said. “I can’t stay. I need to get back to Gallup before the weather gets worse.” But she sat.
“Drink your coffee,” he said. “Warm up.”
She was looking at him over the cup. “You look awful,” she said. “They told me you’d gone up to Mancos. To see the Breedlove widow. You shouldn’t be back at work yet. You should be in bed.”
“I’m all right,” he said. And waited. Would she ask him why he’d gone to Mancos? What he’d learned?
“Why couldn’t somebody else do it?” she said. “Somebody without broken ribs.”
“Just cracked,” Chee said.
She put down her cup. He reached for it. She intercepted his hand, held it.
“Jim,” she said. “I’m going away for a while. I’m taking my accrued leave time, and my vacation, and I’m going home.”
“Home?” Chee said. “For a while. How long is that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to get my head together. Look forward and backwards.” She tried to smile but it didn’t come off well. She shrugged. “And just think.”
It occurred to Chee that he hadn’t poured himself any coffee. Oddly, he didn’t want any. It occurred to him that she wasn’t burning her bridges.
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“Think?” he said. “About us?”
“Of course.” This time the smile worked a little better.
But her hand was cold. He squeezed it. “I thought we were through that phase.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said. “You never really stopped thinking about whether we’d be compatible. Whether we really fit.”
“Don’t we?”
“We did in this fantasy I had,” she said, and waved her hands, mocking herself. “Big, good-looking guy. Sweet and smart and as far as I could tell you really cared about me. Fun on the Big Rez for a while, then a big job for you in someplace interesting.
Washington. San Francisco. New York. Boston. And the big job for me in Justice, or maybe a law firm. You and I together.
Everything perfect.”
Chee said nothing to that.
“Everything perfect,” she repeated. “The best of both worlds.” She looked at him, trying to hold the grin and not quite making it.
“With twin Porsches in the triple garage,” Chee said. “But when you got to know me, I didn’t fit the fantasy.”
“Almost,” she said. “Maybe you do, really.” Suddenly Janet’s eyes went damp. She looked away. “Or maybe I change the fantasy.” He extracted his handkerchief, frowned at it, reached into the storage drawer behind him, extracted paper napkins, and handed them to Janet. She said, “Sorry,” and wiped her eyes.
He wanted to hold her, very close. But he said, “A cold wind does that.”
“So I thought maybe as time goes by everything changes a little. I change and so do you.” He could think of nothing honest to say to that.
“But after the other evening in Gallup, when you were so angry with me, I began to understand,” she said.
“Remember once a long time ago you asked me about a schoolteacher I used to date? Somebody told you about her. From Wisconsin. Just out of college. Blonde, blue eyes, taught second grade at Crownpoint when I was a brand-new cop and stationed there. Well, it wasn’t that there was anything much wrong with me, but for her kids she wanted the good old American dream. She saw no hope for that in Navajo country. So she went away.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Janet said. “She wasn’t a Navajo.”
“But I am,” he said. “So I thought, what’s the difference? I’m darker. Rarely sunburn. Small hips. Wide shoulders. That’s racial, right? Does that matter? I think not much. So what makes me a Navajo?”
“You’re going to say culture,” Janet said. “I studied social anthropology, too.”
“I grew up knowing it’s wrong to have more than you need. It means you’re not taking care of your people. Win three races in a row, you better slow down a little. Let somebody else win. Or somebody gets drunk and runs into your car and tears you a
ll up, you don’t sue him, you want to have a sing for him to cure him of alcoholism.”
“That doesn’t get you admitted into law school,” Janet said. “Or pull you out of poverty.”
“Depends on how you define poverty.”
“It’s defined in the law books,” Janet said. “A family of x members with an annual income of under y.”
“I met a middle-aged man at a Yeibichai sing a few years ago. He ran an accounting firm in Flagstaff and came out to Burnt Water because his mother had a stroke and they were doing the cure for her. I said something about it looking like he was doing very well.
And he said, ‘No, I will be a poor man all my life.’ And I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Nobody ever taught me any songs.’”
“Ah, Jim,” she said. She rose, took the two steps required to reach the bunk where he was sitting, put her arms carefully around him and kissed him. Then she pressed the undamaged side of his face against her breast.
“I know having a Navajo dad didn’t make me a Navajo,” she said. “My culture is Stanford sorority girl, Maryland cocktail circuit, Mozart, and tickets to the Met. So maybe I have to learn not to think that being ragged, and not having indoor plumbing, and walking miles to see the dentist means poverty. I’m working on it.” Chee, engulfed in Janet’s sweater, her perfume, her softness, said something like “Ummmm.”
“But I’m not there yet,” she added, and released him.
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“I guess I should work on it from the other end, too,” he said. “I could get used to being a lieutenant, trying to work my way up.
Trying to put some value on things like—” He let that trail off.
“One thing I want you to know,” she said. “I didn’t use you.”
“You mean—”
“I mean deliberately getting information out of you so I could tell John.”
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