"Like what?"
"Well, hell. Like who we're trying to find. He might walk right past me."
Chandler laughed. "I don't think that's likely. This guy who is being looked for is dead."
"Dead?"
"And we're not trying to find him. Or if we do, we'll never admit it. We'll just hide him again."
Sherman, not enjoying this, said, "I don't like playing children's guessing games. What are you paying me to do?"
Chandler took a folded envelope out of his shirt pocket.
"There's a list of stuff in here. Where you can find me, phone number, all that. And a list of instructions. Information I need. Names. All that. Then I want you to locate Tuve, find that woman who posted bond for him. If she went back to where she came from, find her address and what she does there. If she stayed out here, find out where and what she's doing. Who she's talking to, all that."
Sherman took the envelope, extracted the note inside, read it, stared at Chandler.
"I'll still say I could be a lot more useful, and quicker, if I know what our goal is in all this."
Chandler nodded. He gave Sherman a quick summary starting with the airlines colliding, then moving on to the diamond case padlocked to the arm. But how much of this did he want Sherman to know?
"It was a man named Clarke," he continued. "Like most of the victims, his body was never recovered."
Sherman was frowning. "You going to tell me we're looking for this Clarke bird? Dead for how many years?"
"No. I was going to tell you that a daughter of his old girlfriend got a psychic message through some spiritualist that Clarke had his arm torn off in the crash, and he sent her psychic orders to find it and bury it properly with the rest of his corpse so it would quit hurting him in the spirit world."
"Come on," Sherman said. "Get serious." He laughed.
"The one she wants is the arm that had the case of diamonds handcuffed to it."
Sherman considered that for a moment, said, "Oh, I guess I get the picture."
"I'm not quite certain I get it myself. But it seems like the interests you and me are representing here are the foundation which inherited all that Clarke fortune. And probably the insurance, which paid out its hundred thousand dollars maximum airline flight fee for the jewels, and somebody interested in patching Clarke's body back together."
"And you figure that burial sentiment is actually based on trying to get those diamonds, right?"
"Well, a civil suit is now hung up in court. A woman is claiming to be an out-of-wedlock granddaughter of Old Man Clarke and therefore the valid heiress to the Clarke billions. And that lawsuit was months after the news that even old bones can yield DNA evidence to prove family lineage."
"I've heard about that crash, I think," Sherman said. "Long, long time ago, wasn't it? And we're trying to find the bones of that guy carrying the diamonds." He shook his head, laughed. "You serious?"
"Well, actually it's not that simple. Here we have one side of a two-sided game. People on the other side are trying to find those bones and use them to capture the Clarke fortune," Chandler said. "Our job is to make sure that poor fellow's bones stay lost and never get dragged into a courtroom."
Sherman considered that, face solemn. Then he smiled. "Yeah," he said. "That sounds like a worthy cause with righteous purposes. And I can see how that would be a lot easier."
Chandler nodded.
"Finding old bones down in that canyon is worse than hunting the needle in the haystack. It's like hunting the needle in a whole farm full of haystacks. And not even knowing which farm it's on. So maybe we could just be happy with keeping anyone else from finding them."
"Yes," Chandler said. "Easier to find the hunter than the needle."
"You sound like maybe you have a plan," Sherman said. "I'd like to hear it. You know, it helps me if I understand what you're trying to do."
"You're getting the idea now," Chandler said. "First, we understand our goal. Our goal is not-underline that, not-not to find the bones. Our goal is to keep somebody else from finding them. We want to find 'em, that's good, but only because then we can make sure the other folks don't get their hands on them. You understand that?"
"Sure," Sherman said, looking slightly resentful. "I already said I understood it."
"That's the first thing to understand. Now, the second thing is this. We know that case full of diamonds was handcuffed to the owner's arm. To the bones in question. We have to presume that the Tuve diamond, and that trading post burglary diamond, came from that package. Thus they are the only clues to where those bones might be. The other side, the bad guys, know as much about that as we do. Maybe more. So our goal is to get there first. Got it?"
"Of course," he said, and then thought about it awhile. "Then do what? My impression is that your paycheck depends on the other side never getting hold of those bones. At least not long enough to get them into court. Right? So what do we do if the other side gets there first?"
"I guess that would depend on how much you wanted to earn that big bonus," Chandler said. "I guess you'd do whatever the situation demanded. You know. To get those bones away from the bad guys."
Sherman spent another moment thinking.
"Arizona is a death penalty state," he said. "For murder done in commission of a felony, anyway. But I'll bet you already knew that."
"I did," Chandler agreed. "I also know the bottom of that canyon is loaded with dangerous places. Falling rocks. Folks swept away in the river rapids. Drowning. People slipping and tumbling down the cliffs."
Sherman nodded. Grinned at Chandler. "Wouldn't you hate to be the district attorney trying to prove somebody was pushed instead of just slipped? I mean, when nobody saw what happened?"
"Sounds like a case of reasonable doubt to me," Chandler said. "Okay, then. Here's what I want you to do. And the very first thing, right now, today, is locate Billy Tuve."
"Any idea where?"
"He lives on Second Mesa. You heard his uncle saying he'd come to take him home. He lives with his mama in a little village. Kykotsmovi, however you pronounce it. Shouldn't be hard to find it."
"Find him and what?"
"Find him and bring him to me."
"Then what?"
"Then we take him down to the bottom of the canyon, to the area where he got the diamond. Then he shows us how to find where the man he got it from came from. When we find that man, then we find the left arm bones of this Clarke guy and what's left of the diamonds he was carrying."
"And split them?"
"Well, I presume the man who's hiring us would want them himself. But I don't think he has them counted."
Sherman laughed. "He wouldn't miss a few of 'em."
11
The plan, carefully drawn up by Sergeant Jim Chee, involved having Bernie spend the evening with him at his Shiprock trailer, during which they would enjoy themselves and pack up the assorted stuff they needed for the junket into the depth of the Grand Canyon. Then they would head westward to Tuba City. Meanwhile, Cowboy Dashee would have gone to Kykotsmovi on the Hopi Second Mesa and picked up Billy Tuve at his family home there. That done, Dashee would bring Tuve to the grocery store/service station at Tuba, where they'd meet Chee and Bernie. From there, Cowboy would lead the way on a back-road shortcut to Moenkopi, thence westward via an unimproved and unnamed dirt road to a place on the East Rim just north of the Little Colorado Canyon gorge. They would park there. Dashee and Tuve, both members of the prestigious Hopi Bear Clan and thus both Salt Trail initiates, would lead them down, down, down into the depths. Once at the bottom, Tuve would show them exactly where he had traded his folding shovel for the diamond, and the direction he'd seen the owner of gem take to retrieve it.
As such careful and detailed plans tend to do, this one began falling apart in phase one.
"I'm not going to drive all the way to Shiprock this afternoon to spend the night with you, Mr. Chee, in that old trailer," said Bernadette Manuelito. "I have to get my stuff together. Get m
y boots, and hiking stuff, sleeping bag, all that. You have to meet Dashee anyway. Can't you pick me up on the way? I'll meet you over at Yah-ta-hey. At the trading post."
Chee sighed. "We're meeting Dashee at Tuba City at five A.M.," he said. "So I guess we could meet at Yah-ta-hey. But we'd have to leave Yah-ta-hey about three A.M., I'd say. Can you handle getting up that early?"
"Hey, man," Bernie said. "You're forgetting I've been a Border Patrolman."
Indeed, Bernie seemed wide awake as well as loaded with water bottles, foodstuff, and luggage when he pulled up at Yah-ta-hey. However, after a hundred miles and a lot of talking of wedding plans, snuggling, and so forth, they saw no sign of Dashee or Billy Tuve at their Tuba City meeting place. Chee looked at his watch and grumbled. "When I'm late, Cowboy always gives me that `Navajo time' complaint," he said. "As if the Hopis were perfect."
"If I were you I'd just call him. Find out what happened."
Chee extracted his cell phone, dialed Dashee's cell number, let it ring, heard Dashee's voice.
"Is this Chee?" Dashee said. "I was just going to call you. Tuve's gone."
It wasn't a good connection.
"Tuve's what? Gone where?"
"When I got to his place, his mother was there. She said a car drove up yesterday about suppertime. She was out seeing about the sheep, but she saw Billy out in front talking to somebody. When she got back to the house, the car was driving away. She went on in, looking for Billy, but he was gone."
Chee considered that. Said, "What do you think?"
"Now I don't know what to think," Dashee said. "But then I told Billy's mother maybe the sheriff had come to get him. Needed some more information from him. Or maybe the bail bond business had been canceled."
"That sounds reasonable," Chee said.
"Sure does, but it wasn't. On the way down off Second Mesa I met a McKinley County Sheriff's car going up the slope. Flagged him down. He said he was going out to Tuve's place to pick him up. Said more evidence had come in and Tuve's bail had been revoked."
"This is interesting," Chee said. "So what do you think happened to him?"
"I don't have a clue. It doesn't seem to make any sense. But I've got an idea."
Bernie tapped Chee on the arm, said, "What's interesting, and who is the `him' that something happened to? Was it Billy Tuve?"
Cowboy was talking into Chee's other ear.
"Hold it a second, Cowboy. I'll bring Bernie up to date on this."
"My idea," said Cowboy, "is that Craig woman who bailed him out came and got him. Remember, she wanted him to take her down into the canyon. Show her where he got the diamond."
"I remember," Chee said. "But I also remember he told her he wouldn't do it. And then she said, well, she'd go anyway. Or something like that."
"What's he telling you?" Bernie asked.
"Shut up a minute, will you, Cowboy?" Chee said. He put the phone on his lap, told Bernie what Cowboy had told him, and reclaimed the telephone.
"Well, anyway, I don't have any better ideas. Where are you? And what do we do now?"
Cowboy, it developed, was just rolling over the hump on 264 and dropping down into the Moenkopi draw. "I'll be with you there in Tuba in about twenty minutes."
And he was. As Chee had suggested, he parked his pickup in the Tuba City police station lot. Then he climbed out, took off his hat, nodded to Bernie and Chee.
"Well," he said. "As Jim was just asking us, what do we do now?"
12
Joe Leaphorn was listening to the coffee perking and deciding whether he would double his fried egg ration this morning and cut back on other food later in the day. His rationale for that indulgence was having slept later than usual this morning, having been up past eleven the night before on the phone with Louisa. It had been a long conversation, starting with her report on her interview with the old lady at the Havasupai settlement. He had responded with his own report on his Shorty McGinnis encounter, and McGinnis's tale of trading the cowboy for a diamond. That had triggered a bunch of questions, most of which he couldn't answer, and that had led backward into the whole business of Cowboy Dashee's cousin Billy Tuve, the problem he'd brought crashing down on himself by trying to pawn such a diamond, and Jim Chee's involvement in the whole Billy Tuve mess.
"When did Tuve get it?" Louisa had asked.
"Several years ago is about the best I can tell you. Tuve's very vague on chronology. He did some rodeo riding, and his horse fell on him, and he suffered some brain damage."
"I've always thought rodeo riders are brain damaged before they get on the horse," Louisa said. "But how about the other man? I mean McGinnis's cowboy. The one who swapped his folding shovel for the diamond. Do you have any specific date when that happened?"
"Well, the burglary in which Shorty claimed the thing was stolen was twelve years ago, but Shorty said he couldn't remember how many years he'd had the diamond before that. I think he said `several.' I guess it would be about the same with Billy Tuve."
"Except with Tuve, I guess we could find out the year he went down that Hopi Salt Trail for his Bear Clan initiation rite."
"Good idea," Leaphorn said. Why hadn't he thought of that? Probably because he was retired. It was none of his business. "But why is the timing important?"
"Well, it probably isn't," Louisa said. "But it helps me understand what I've been hearing down here in the canyon. Both of these old people I've been trying to collect origin stories from are full of tales of some huge airplane disaster that happened when they were young. Bodies falling out of the sky. Fires in the canyons. All sort of stuff raining down. Clothing. Suitcases. Dishes. Everything. The Park Service people here tell me it happened in 1956, two airlines collided over the canyon. Everybody killed."
"Does seem to be the sort of thing that might produce some new legends," Leaphorn said.
"Or get mixed in with the original ones," Louisa said. "That's my worry. I'm already noticing a mixing of the stories of the various Yuman tribes you have around here with what must have been seen in that disaster. Mixing was already a problem. The Hualapai, the Supai, and some Mohave branches, and even Paiutes-even the Utes and the Piautes are borrowing bits and pieces of legends from each other. Now we find them mixing in stories about stuff being found."
Leaphorn's interest abruptly sharpened. "Are you hearing things about diamonds?"
"Not specifically, but lots about the stuff found when people were out helping the rescue crews locate missing parts of bodies and airplane parts. And there's one about a Hualapai man from Peach Springs who came down to the river to see what was going on and saw something that might be diamond-connected. The way the most common version of that story goes, he saw some clothing items, or something, caught in a drift of debris, and in this pile of jetsam he saw a human arm." Louisa paused a moment for Leaphorn's reaction to that. Got none. "Is there some reason that doesn't surprise you?"
"Couple of reasons," Leaphorn said. "Body parts were scattered all over in that crash-across the mesa top, down the canyon walls, down into the river itself. Rescue crews were collecting body bits in bags. And besides, I heard the arm story before."
"Did the arm you're hearing about have some sort of attach‚ case connected to it? Maybe with a chain and a handcuff?"
"Yep," Leaphorn said. "That's the one. But the man who spotted it in my story couldn't reach it without drowning. When he got back with some helpers, the river had swept it away. Long ago, of course. I would have thought it would be pretty well forgotten by now."
Louisa laughed. "Joe! Who's going to forget seeing an arm sticking out of debris in their river? That's good enough to make a Greek myth. It's one of the problems for us seekers of undiluted, genuine legends, ancient and uninfected by our unromantic modern times."
"I guess you're right."
"Besides, if that arm with the case chained to it had been forgotten, somebody has stirred it up again."
"How?" Leaphorn asked. "And who? And why would they?"
&nb
sp; "They printed a sheet offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for just such a set of arm bones. Someone distributed them at the Grand Canyon Hotel, the private one, and at the National Park Service hotel, and visitor centers, and got them spread around among the professional guide and float trip outfits, and at Peach Springs. There's a number to call-I think it's in Flagstaff-if you find the arm and want to collect." Louisa laughed. "I should have saved one for you."
"Get one for me if you can, Louisa. What did it say?"
"Well, a big headline across the top said `Ten-Thousand-Dollar Reward.' And under that-in smaller type-it said something like `Family of 1956 airline crash victim seeks bones of the left arm of John Clarke, so that they can be placed with his body in the family's burial crypt.' And then it went on to explain the arm had been torn from his body when those two airlines collided over the Canyon and had never been recovered. It said the bones could be identified because the forearm had been broken previously and repaired with a surgical pin when this Clarke was young, or the forearm might still be attached by a metal and cuff to which a leather case was secured."
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 17 - Skeleton Man Page 10
