Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 12 - The Fallen Man

by The Fallen Man(lit)

  "Don't hear nothing about her, except some fellas guessing. And she's a real pretty woman, so that was probably just them wishing," Finch said. He was grinning at Chee. "You know how it works. If you're behaving yourself it's not interesting."

  The front door of the Breedlove house opened and Chee could see someone standing behind the screen looking out at them. He picked up his evidence satchel and stepped out of the vehicle.

  "I'll wait here for you," Finch said, "and maybe scout around a little if I get too stiff from sitting."

  Mrs. Elisa Breedlove was indeed a real pretty woman. She seemed excited and nervous, which was what Chee had expected. Her handshake grip was hard, and so was the hand. She led him into a huge living room, dark and cluttered with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. She motioned him into a chair, explaining that she'd had to run into Mancos "to get some stuff."

  "I got back just before you drove up and Ramona told me you'd called and were coming."

  "I hope I'm not-" Chee began, but she cut him off.

  "No. No," she said. "I appreciate this. Ramona said you'd found Hal. Or think so. But she didn't know anything else."

  "Well," Chee said, and paused. "What we found was merely bones. We thought they might be Mr. Breedlove."

  He sat on the edge of the sofa, watching her.

  "Bones," she said. "Just a skeleton? Was that the skeleton they found about Halloween up on Ship Rock?"

  "Yes, ma'am. We wanted to ask you to look at the clothing and equipment he was wearing and see if-tell us if it was the right size, and if you thought it was your husband's stuff."

  "Equipment?" She was standing beside a table, her hand on it. The light slanting through windows on each side of the fireplace illuminated her face. It was a small, narrow face framed by light brown hair, the jaw muscles tight, the expression tense. Middle thirties, Chee guessed. Slender, perfectly built, luminous green eyes, the sort of classic beauty that survived sun, wind, and hard winters and didn't seem to require the disguise of makeup. But today she looked tired. He thought of a description Finch had applied to a woman they both knew: "Been rode hard and put up wet."

  Mrs. Breedlove was waiting for an answer, her green eyes fixed on his face.

  "Mountain climbing equipment," Chee said. "I understand the skeleton was in a cleft down the face of a cliff. Presumably, the man had fallen."

  Mrs. Breedlove closed her eyes and bent slightly forward with her hips against the table.

  Chee rose. "Are you all right?"

  "All right," she said, but she put a hand against the table to support herself.

  "Would you like to sit down? A drink of water?"

  "Why do you think it's Hal?" Her eyes were still closed.

  "He's been missing for eleven years. And we're told he was a mountain climber. Is that correct?"

  "He was. He loved the mountains."

  "This man was about five feet nine inches tall," Chee said. "The coroner estimated he would have weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds. He had perfect teeth. He had rather long fingers and-"

  "Hal was about five eight, I'd say. He was slender, muscular. An athlete. I think he weighed about a hundred and sixty. He was worried about gaining weight." She produced a weak smile. "Around the belt line. Before we went on that trip, I let out his suit pants to give him another inch."

  "He'd had a broken nose," Chee continued. "Healed. The doctor said it probably happened when he was an adolescent. And a broken wrist. He said that was more recent."

  Mrs. Breedlove sighed. "The nose was from playing fraternity football, or whatever the boys play at Dartmouth. And the wrist when a horse threw him after we were married."

  Chee opened the satchel, extracted the climbing equipment, and stacked it on the coffee table. There wasn't much: a nylon belt harness, the ragged remains of a nylon jacket, even more fragmentary remains of trousers and shirt, a pair of narrow shoes with soles of soft, smooth rubber, a little rock hammer, three pitons, and a couple of steel gadgets that Chee presumed were used somehow for controlling rope slippage.

  When he glanced up, Mrs. Breedlove was staring at them, her face white. She turned away, facing the window but looking at nothing except some memory.

  "I thought about Hal when I saw the piece the paper had on the skeleton," she said. "Eldon and I talked about it at supper that night. He thought the same thing I did. We decided it couldn't be Hal." She attempted a smile. "He was always into derring-do stuff. But he wouldn't try to climb Ship Rock alone. Nobody would. That would be insane. Two great rock men were killed on it, and they were climbing with teams of experienced experts."

  She paused. Listening. The sound of a car engine came through the window. "That was before the Navajos banned climbing," she added.

  "Are you a climber?"

  "When I was younger," she said. "When Hal used to come out, Eldon started teaching him to climb. Hal and his cousin George. Sometimes I would go along and they taught me."

  "How about Ship Rock?" Chee asked. "Did you ever climb it?"

  She studied him. "The tribe prohibited that a long time ago. Before I was big enough to climb anything."

  Chee smiled. "But some people still climbed it. Quite a few, from what I hear. And there's not actually a tribal ordinance against it. It's just that the tribe stopped issuing those `back country' permits. You know, to allow non-Navajos the right to trespass."

  Mrs. Breedlove looked thoughtful. Through the window came the sound of a car door slamming.

  "To make it perfectly legal, you'd go see one of the local people who had a grazing permit running up to the base and get him to give you permission to be on the land," Chee added. "But most people even don't bother to do that."

  Mrs. Breedlove considered this. Nodded. "We always got permission. I climbed it once. It was terrifying. With Eldon, Hal, and George. I still have nightmares."

  "About falling?"

  She shuddered. "I'm up there looking all around. Looking at Ute Mountain up in Colorado, and seeing the shape of Case del Eco Mesa in Utah, and the Carrizos in Arizona, and Mount Taylor, and I have this dreadful feeling that Ship Rock is getting higher and higher and then I know I can never get down." She laughed. "Fear of falling, I guess. Or fear of flying away and being lost forever."

  "I guess you've heard our name for it," Chee said. "Tse' Bit' a'i'-the Rock with Wings. According to the legend it flew here from the north bringing the first Navajos on its back. Maybe it was flying again in your dream."

  A voice from somewhere back in the house shouted: "Hey, Sis! Where are you? What's that Navajo police car doing parked out there?"

  "We've got company," Mrs. Breedlove said, barely raising her voice. "In here."

  Chee stood. A man wearing dusty jeans, a faded jean jacket with a torn sleeve, and well-worn boots walked into the room. He held a battered gray felt hat in his right hand.

  "Mr. Chee," said Mrs. Breedlove, "this is my brother Eldon. Eldon Demott."

  "Oh," Demott said. "Hello." He shifted his hat to his left hand and offered Chee the right one. His grip was like his sister's and his expression was a mixture of curiosity, worry, and fatigue.

  "They think they've found Hal," Elisa Breedlove said. "You remember talking about that skeleton on Ship Rock. The Navajo police think it must be him."

  Demott was eyeing the little stack of climbing equipment on the table. He sighed, slapped the hat against his leg. "I was wrong then, if it really is Hal," he said. "That makes him a better climber than I gave him credit for, climbing that sucker by himself and getting that high." He snorted. "And a hell of a lot crazier, too."

  "Do you recognize any of this?" Chee asked, indicating the equipment.

  Demott picked up the nylon belt and examined it. He was a small man. Wiry. A man built of sun-scorched leather, bone, and gristle, with a strong jaw and a receding hairline that made him look older than he probably was.

  "It's pretty faded out but it used to be red," he said, and tossed it back to the tabletop. He looked at hi
s sister, his face full of concern and sympathy. "Hal's was red, wasn't it?"

  "It was," she said.

  "You all right?"

  "I'm fine," she said. "And how about this jumar? Didn't you fix one for Hal once?"

  "By God," Demott said, and picked it up. It reminded Chee of an oversized steel pretzel with a sort of ratchet device connected. Chee had wondered about it and concluded that the ratchet would allow a rope to slip in one direction and not the other. Thus, it must be used to allow a climber to pull himself up a cliff. Demott obviously knew what it was for. He was examining the place where the ratchet had been welded to the steel.

  "I remember I couldn't fix it. Hal and you took it into Mancos and had Gus weld it," Demott said to Elisa. "It sure looks like the same one."

  "I guess we can close this up then," Chee said. "I don't see any reason for you going down to Shiprock to look at the bones. Unless you want to."

  Demott was inspecting one of the climbing shoes. "The soles must be all the same," he said. "At least all I ever saw was just soft, smooth rubber like this. And his were white. And he had little feet, too." He glanced at Elisa. "How about the clothing? That look like Hal's?"

  "The jacket, yes," she said. "I think that's Hal's jacket."

  Something in her tone caused Chee to glance back at her. She held her lips pressed together, face tense, determined somehow not to cry. Her brother didn't see that. He was studying the artifacts on the table.

  "It's pretty tore up," Demott said, poking the clothing with a finger. "You think coyotes? But from what the paper said, it would be too high for them."

  "Way too high," Chee said.

  "Birds, then," Demott said. "Ravens. Vultures and-" He cut that off, with a repentant glance at Elisa.

  Chee picked up the evidence valise and stuffed the tattered clothing into it, getting it out of Elisa's sight.

  "I think I should go to Shiprock," Elisa said. She looked away from Chee and out the window. "To take care of things. Hal would have wanted to be cremated, I think. And his ashes scattered in the San Juan Mountains."

  "Yeah," Demott said. "Over in the La Plata range. On Mount Hesperus. That was his very favorite."

  "We call it Dibe Nitsaa," Chee said. He thought of a dead man's ashes drifting down on serene slopes that the spirit called First Man had built to protect the Navajos from evil. First Man had decorated the mountain with jet-black jewelry to fend off all bad things. But what could protect it from the invincible ignorance of this white culture? These were good, kind people, he thought, who wouldn't knowingly use corpse powder, the Navajo symbol for the ultimate evil, to desecrate a holy place. But then climbing Ship Rock to prove that man was the dominating master of the universe was also a desecration.

  "It's our Sacred Mountain of the North," Chee said. "Was that what Mr. Breedlove was trying to do? Put his feet on top of all our sacred places?" Having said it, Chee instantly regretted it. This was not the time or place to show his resentment.

  He glanced at Demott, who was looking at him, surprised. But Elisa Breedlove was still staring out the window.

  "Hal wasn't like that," she said. "He was just trying to find some happiness," she said. "Nobody had ever taught him anything about sacred things. The only god the Breedloves ever worshiped was cast out of gold."

  "I don't think Hal knew anything about your mythology," Demott agreed. "It's just that Hesperus is over thirteen thousand feet and an easy climb. I like them high and easy and I guess Hal did, too."

  Chee considered that. "Why Ship Rock, then? I know it's killed some people. I've heard it's one of the hardest climbs."

  "Yeah," Demott said. "Why Ship Rock? And why by himself? And if he wasn't by himself, how come his friends just left him there? Didn't even report it."

  Chee didn't comment on that. Elisa was still staring blindly out the window.

  "How high did he get?" Demott asked.

  Chee shrugged. "Close to the top, I think. I think the rescue party said the skeleton was just a couple hundred feet down from the crest."

  "I knew he was good, but if he got that high all by himself he was even better than I thought," Demott said. "He'd gotten past the hardest parts."

  "He'd always wanted to climb Ship Rock," Elisa said. "Remember?"

  "I guess so," Demott said thoughtfully. "I remember him talking about climbing El Diente and Lizard's Head. I thought they were next on his agenda." He turned to Chee, frowning. "Have you fellows looked into who else he might have climbed with? I have trouble believing he did that alone. I guess he could have and he was reckless enough to try it. But it damn sure wouldn't be easy. Not getting that high."

  "It's not a criminal case," Chee said. "We're just trying to close up an old missing person file."

  "But who the hell would go off and leave a fallen man like that? Not even report so the rescue people could go get him? You think they was afraid you Navajos would arrest 'em for trespassing?" He shook his head. "Or the way things are now, maybe they thought they'd get sued." He laughed, put on his hat. "But I got to get moving. Good to meet you, Mr. Chee," he said, and was gone.

  "I've got to be going, too," Chee said. He dumped the rest of the equipment in the valise.

  She walked with him to the door, opened it for him. He pulled at the valise zipper, then stopped. He should really leave this stuff with her. She was the widow. It was her property.

  "Mr. Chee," she said. "The skeleton. Were the bones all broken up?"

  "No," Chee said. "Nothing broken. And all the joints were still articulated."

  From Elisa's expression he first thought she didn't understand that anthropology jargon. "I mean, the skeleton was all together in one piece. And nothing was broken."

  "Nothing was broken?" she repeated. "Nothing." And then he realized the expression reflected disbelief. And shock.

  Why shock? Had Mrs. Breedlove expected her husband's body to be broken apart? Why would she? If he asked her why, she'd say it must have been a long fall.

  He zipped the valise closed. He'd keep these artifacts from the Fallen Man, at least for a while.

  6

  HE MET JANET AT THE CARRIAGE INN in Farmington, halfway between his trailer at Shiprock and the San Juan County courthouse at Aztec where she had been defending a Checkerboard Reservation Navajo on a grand theft charge. He arrived late-but not very late-and her kidding about his watch being on Navajo time lacked its usual vigor. She looked absolutely used up, he thought. Beautiful but tired, and maybe the fatigue explained the diminution of the usual spark, of the delight he usually sensed in her when she first saw him. Or maybe it was because he was weary himself. Anyway, just being with her, seeing her across the table, cheered him. He took her hand.

  "Janet, you work too hard," Chee said. "You should marry me and let me take you away from all this."

  "I intend to marry you," she said, rewarding him with a weary smile. "You keep forgetting that. But all you do is keep making more work for me. Arresting these poor innocent people."

  "That sounds to me like you won today," Chee said. "Charmed the jury again?"

  "It didn't take any charm. This time it wouldn't have been reasonable to have even a reasonable doubt. His brother-in-law did it and the state cops totally screwed up the investigation."

  "Do you have to go right back to Window Rock tomorrow? Why not take a day oft? Tell 'em you are doing the post-trial paperwork. Maybe preparing a false arrest suit or something."

  "Ah, Jim," she said. "I have to drive down there tonight."

  "Tonight! That's crazy. That's more than two hours on a dangerous road," he said. "You're tired. Get some sleep. What's the hurry?"

  She looked apologetic. Shrugged. "No choice, Jim. I'd love to stay over. Can't do it. Duty calls."

  "Ah, come on," Chee said. "Duty can wait."

  Janet squeezed his hand. "Really," she said. "I have to go to Washington. On a bunch of legal stuff with Justice and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I have to be there day after tomorrow ready to ar
gue." She shrugged, made a wry face. "So I have to pack tonight and drive to Albuquerque tomorrow to catch my plane."

  Chee picked up the menu, said, "Like I've been telling you, you work way too hard." He tried to keep it out, but the disappointment again showed in his voice.

  "And as I told you, it's the fault of you policemen," she said, smiling her tired smile. "Arresting too many innocent people."

  "I haven't had much luck at arresting people lately," he said. "I can't even catch any guilty ones."

  The Carriage Inn had printed a handsome menu on which nothing changed but the prices. Variety was provided by the cooks, who came and went. Chee decided to presume that the current one was adept at preparing Mexican foods.