A Thief of Time jlajc-8

by Tony Hillerman

  Luna laughed. 'It's pretty hard to have secrets here,' he said. 'You have experienced our telephone. You don't get any secret calls. And you don't get any secret mail--unless it happens to show up at Blanco the day you happen to pick it up.' He laughed again. 'And it would be pretty hard to have any secret visitors.'

  But not impossible, Leaphorn thought. No more impossible than driving out to make your calls away from here, or setting up a post office box in Farmington.

  'You just get to know everything by accident even if people don't mention it,' Mrs. Luna said. 'For example, going places. I hadn't thought to tell anybody when I was going to Phoenix over the Fourth to visit my mother. But everybody knew because I got a postcard that mentioned it, and Maxie or somebody picked up the mail that day.' If Mrs. Luna resented Maxie or somebody reading her postcard, it didn't show. Her expression was totally pleasant--someone explaining a peculiar, but perfectly natural, situation. 'And when Ellie made that trip to New York, and when Elliot went to Washington. Even if they don't mention it, you just get to know.' Mrs. Luna paused to sip her coffee. 'But usually they tell you,' she added. 'Something new to talk about.' At that she looked slightly abashed. She laughed. 'That's about all we have to do, you know. Speculate about one another. TV reception is so bad out here we have to be our own soap operas.'

  'When was the trip to New York?' Leaphorn asked.

  'Last month,' Mrs. Luna said. 'Ellie's travel agent in Farmington called and said the flight schedule had been changed. Somebody takes the message, so everybody knows about it.'

  'Does anyone know why she went?' Leaphorn asked.

  Mrs. Luna made a wry face. 'You win,' she said. 'I guess there are some secrets.'

  'How about why Elliot went to Washington?' Leaphorn added. 'When was that?'

  'No secret there,' Luna said. 'It was last month. A couple of days before Ellie left. He got a call from Washington, from his project director I think it was. Left a message. There was a meeting of people working on archaic migration patterns. He was supposed to attend.'

  'Do you know if Ellie's going to New York had anything to do with her pots? Is that logical?'

  'Just about everything she did had something to do with her pots,' Luna said. 'She was sort of obsessive about it.'

  Mrs. Luna's expression turned defensive. 'Well now,' she said, 'Ellie was about ready to make a really important report. As least she thought so. And so do I. She pretty well had the proof that would connect a lot of those St. John Polychromes from the Chetro Ketl site with Wijiji and Kin Nahasbas. And more important

  than all that, she was finding that this woman must have moved away from Chaco and was making pots somewhere else.'

  'This woman?' Luna said, eyebrows raised. 'She tell you her potter was a woman?'

  'Who else would do all that work?' Mrs. Luna got up, got the coffeepot, and offered all hands, including the children, a refill.

  'She was excited, then?' Leaphorn asked. 'About something she'd found recently? Did she talk to you about it?'

  'She was excited,' Mrs. Luna said. She looked at Luna with an expression Leaphorn read as reproach. 'I really do believe that she'd found something important. To everybody else those people are just a name. Anasazi. Not even their real name, of course. Just a Navajo word that means…' She glanced at Chee. 'Old Ones. Ancestors of our enemies. Something like that?'

  'Close enough,' Chee said.

  'But Ellie has identified a single human being in what has always just been statistics. An artist. Did you know that she'd arranged her pots chronologically… showing how her technique developed?'

  The question was aimed at Luna. He shook his head.

  'And it's very logical. You can see it. Even if you don't know much about pots, or glazing, or inscribing, or any of those decorative techniques.'

  Luna seemed to have decided about then that his self-interest dictated a change in posture on this issue.

  'She's done some really original work, Ellie has,' he said. 'Pretty well pinned down where this potter worked, up Chaco Wash at a little ruins we call Kin Nahasbas. She did that by establishing that a lot of pots made with this potter's technique had been broken there before they were fully baked in the kiln fire. Then she tied a bunch of pots dug up at Chetro Ketl and Wijiji to the identical personal techniques. Trade pots, you know. One kind swapped to people at Chetro Ketl and another sort to Wijiji. Both with this man's--this potter's peculiar decorating strokes. Hasn't been published yet, but I think she has it pinned.'

  It gave Leaphorn a sense of deja vu, as if he remembered a graduate student over some supper in a dormitory at Tempe saying exactly these same words. The human animal's urge to know. To leave no mysteries. Here, to look through the dirt of a thousand years into the buried privacy of an Anasazi woman. 'To understand the human species,' his thesis chairman liked to say. 'To understand how we came to behave the way we do.' But finally it had seemed to Leaphorn he could understand this better among the living. It was the spring he'd met Emma. When the semester ended in May he'd left Arizona State and his graduate fellowship and his intentions of becoming Dr. Leaphorn, and joined the recruit class of the Navajo Tribal Police. And he and Emma…

  Leaphorn noticed Chee watching him. He cleared his throat. Sipped coffee.

  'Did you have any clear idea of what she was excited about?' Leaphorn asked. 'I mean just before she disappeared. We know she drove over to Bluff and talked to a man over there named Houk. Man who sometimes deals in pots. She asked him about a pot she'd seen advertised in an auction catalog. Wanted to know where it came from. Houk told us she was very intense about it. He told her how to get the documentation letter. Did she say why she was going to New York?'

  'Not to me, she didn't,' Mrs. Luna said.

  'Or why she was excited?'

  'I know some more of those polychrome pots had turned up. Several, I think. Same potter. Some identical and some with a more mature style. Later work. And it turned out they came from somewhere else -- away from the Chaco. She thought she could prove her potter had migrated.'

  'Did you know Ellie had a pistol?'

  Luna and his wife spoke simultaneously. 'I didn't,' she said. Luna said: 'It doesn't surprise me. I'd guess Maxie has one, too. For snakes,' he added, and laughed. 'Actually it's for safety.'

  'Do you know if she ever hired Jimmy Etcitty to find pots for her?'

  'Boy, that was a shock,' Luna said. 'He hadn't worked here long. Less than a year. But he was a good hand. And a good man.'

  'And he didn't mind digging around graves.'

  'He was a Christian,' Luna said. 'A fundamentalist born-again Christian. No more chindi. But no, I doubt if he worked for Ellie. Hadn't heard of it.'

  'Had you ever heard he might be a Navajo Wolf?' Leaphorn asked. 'Into any kind of witchcraft. Being a skinwalker?'

  Luna looked surprised. And so, Leaphorn noticed, did Jim Chee. Not at the question, Leaphorn guessed. That fooling around with the bones they'd found at the ruins would suggest witchcraft to anyone who knew the Navajo tradition of skinwalkers robbing graves for bones to grind into corpse powder. But Chee would be surprised at Leaphorn's thinking. Leaphorn was aware that his contempt for the Navajo witchcraft business was widely known throughout the department. Chee, certainly, was aware of it. They had worked together in the past.

  'Well,' Luna said. 'Not exactly. But the other men who worked here didn't have much to do with him. Maybe that was because he was willing to dig around the burials. Had given up the traditional ways. But they gossiped about him. Not to me but among themselves. And I sort of sensed they were wary of him.'

  'Davis told me Lehman came. The man she had the appointment with.'

  'Her project supervisor?'

  “Yeah.'

  'Did he say what the meeting was about?'

  'She'd told him she had one more piece of evidence to get and then she'd be ready to publish. And she wanted to show it all to him and talk it over. He stuck around the next day and then drove back to
Albuquerque.'

  'I'll get his address from you,' Leaphorn said. 'Did he have any idea what that one piece of evidence was?'

  'He thought she'd probably found some more pots. Ones that fit. He said she was supposed to have them when they met.'

  Leaphorn thought about that. He noticed Chee had marked it, too. It seemed to mean that when Ellie left Chaco it was to pick up those final pots.

  'Would Maxie Davis or Elliot be likely to know any more about all this?'

  Mrs. Luna answered that one. 'Maxie, maybe. She and Ellie were friends.' She considered that statement, found it too strong. 'Sort of friends. At least they'd known each other for years. I don't think they'd ever worked together -- as Maxie and Elliot sometimes do. Teamed.'

  'Teamed,' Leaphorn said.

  Mrs. Luna looked embarrassed. 'Sue,' she said. 'Allen. Don't you two have any homework? Tomorrow is a school day.'

  'Not me,' Allen said. 'I did mine on the bus.'

  'Me either,' Sue said. 'This is interesting.'

  'They're friends,' Mrs. Luna said, looking at Sue, but meaning Maxie and Elliot.

  'When Mr. Thatcher and I talked to them it seemed pretty obvious that Elliot wanted it that way,' Leaphorn said. 'I wasn't so sure about Miss Davis.'

  'Elliot wants to get married,' Mrs. Luna said. 'Maxie doesn't.'

  She glanced at her children again, and at Luna.

  'Kids,' Luna said. 'Sue, you better see about your horse. And Allen, find something to do.'

  They pushed back their chairs. 'Nice to have met you,' Allen said, nodding to Leaphorn and to Chee.

  'Great children,' Leaphorn said, as they disappeared down the hallway. 'They ride the bus? To where?'

  'Crownpoint,' Mrs. Luna said.

  'Wow!' Chee said. 'I used to ride a school bus about twenty-five miles and that seemed forever.'

  'About sixty miles or so, each way,' Luna said. 'Makes an awful long day for `em. But that's the nearest school.'

  'We could teach them out here,' Mrs. Luna said. 'I have a teacher's certificate. But they need to see other children. Nothing but grownups at Chaco.'

  'Two young women and one young man,' Leaphorn said. 'Was there any friction between the women over that? Any sort of jealousy?'

  Luna chuckled.

  Mrs. Luna smiled. 'Eleanor wouldn't be much competition in that race,' she said. 'Unless the man wants an intellectual, and then it's about even. Besides, I think in Randall Elliot you have one of those one-woman men. He left a job in Washington and worked his way into a project out here. Just following her. I think he's sort of obsessive about it.'

  'Delete the `sort of,'' Luna said. 'Make it downright obsessive. And sad, too.' He shook his head. 'Elliot's a sort of macho guy most ways. Played football at Princeton. Flew a navy helicopter in Vietnam. Won a Navy Cross and some other decorations. And he's made himself a good name in physical anthropology for a man his age. Got stuff published about genetics in archaic populations. That sort of stuff. And Maxie refuses to take anything he does seriously. It's the game she plays.'

  From down the hall came the high, sweet sound of a harmonica--and then the urgent nasal whine of Bob Dylan. Almost instantly the volume was muted.

  'Not a game,' Mrs. Luna said, thoughtfully. 'It's the way Maxie is.'

  'Reverse snob, you mean?' Luna asked.

  'More to it than that. Kind of a sense of justice. Or injustice, maybe.'

  Luna looked at Leaphorn and Chee. 'To explain what we're talking about, and maybe why we're doing this gossiping, there's no way Maxie would be jealous of Dr. Friedman. Or anybody else, I think. Maxie is the ultimate self-made woman from what I've heard about her. Off of some worn-out farm in Nebraska. Her father was a widower, so she had to help raise the little kids. Went to a dinky rural high school. Scholarship to University of Nebraska, working her way through as a housekeeper in a sorority. Graduate scholarship to Madison, working her way through again. Trying to send money home to help Papa and the kids. Never any help for her. So she meets this man from old money, Exeter Academy, where the tuition would have fed her family for two years. Where you have tutors helping you if you need it. And then Princeton, and graduate school at Harvard, all that.' Luna sipped his coffee. 'Opposite ends of the economic scale. Anyway, nothing Elliot can do impresses Maxie. It was all given to him.'

  'Even the navy career?'

  'Especially the navy,' Mrs. Luna said. 'I asked her about that. She said, Of course, Randall has an uncle who's an admiral, and an aunt who's married to an undersecretary of the navy, and somebody else who's on the Senate Armed Services Committee. So he starts out with a commission.' And I said something like,You can hardly blame him for that,' and she said she didn't blame him. She said it was just that Randall has never had a chance to do anything himself.' Mrs. Luna shook her head. 'And then she said, `He might be a pretty good man. Who knows? How can you tell?' Isn't that odd?'

  'It sounds odd to me,' Leaphorn said. 'In Vietnam, he was evacuating the wounded?'

  'I think so,' Luna said.

  'That was it,' Mrs. Luna said. 'I asked Maxie about that. She said, You know, he probably could have done something on his own if he had the chance. But officers give each other decorations. Especially if it pleases Uncle Admiral.'Uncle Admiral,' that's what she said. And then she told me her younger brother was in Vietnam, too. She said he was an enlisted man. She said a helicopter flew his body out. But no uncles gave him any decorations.'

  Mrs. Luna looked sad. 'Bitter,' she said. 'Bitter. I remember the night we'd been talking about this. I'd said something about Randall flying a helicopter and she said, `What chance do you think you or I would have had to be handed a helicopter to fly?' '

  Leaphorn thought of nothing to say about that. Mrs. Luna rose, asked about coffee refills, and began clearing away the dishes. Luna asked if they'd like to spend the night in one of the temporary personnel apartments.

  'We better be getting back home,' Leaphorn said.

  The night was dead still, lit by a half-moon. From the visitor camping area up the canyon there was the sound of laughter. Allen was walking up the dirt road toward his house. As he watched him, it occurred to Leaphorn how everyone knew Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had left so early on her one-way trip.

  'Allen,' Leaphorn called. 'What time do you catch the bus in the morning?'

  'It's supposed to get here about five minutes before six,' Allen said. 'Usually about then.'

  'Down by the road?'

  Allen pointed. 'At the intersection down there.'

  'Did you see Ellie drive away?'

  'I saw her loading up her car,' Allen said.

  'You talk to her?'

  'Not much,' Allen said. 'Susy said hello. And she said something about you kids have a good day at school and we said for her to have a good weekend. Something like that. Then we went down and caught the bus.'

  'Did you know she was going away for the weekend?'

  'Well,' Allen said, 'she was putting her stuff in her car.'

  'Sleeping bag, too?' Maxie said she owned one, but he hadn't found it in her apartment.

  'Yeah,' Allen said. 'Whole bunch of stuff. Even a saddle.'

  'Saddle?'

  'Mr. Arnold's,' Allen said. 'He used to work here. He's a biologist. Collects rocks with lichens on them, and he used to live in one of the temporary apartments. Dr. Friedman had his saddle. She was putting it in her car.'

  'She'd borrowed it from him?'

  'I guess so,' Allen said. 'She used to have a horse. Last year it was.'

  'Do you know where this Mr. Arnold lives now?'

  'Up in Utah,' Allen said. 'Bluff.'

  'How'd she sound? Okay? Same as usual? Nervous?'

  'Happy,' Allen said. 'I'd say she sounded happy.'

  Chapter Eleven

  Ť ^ ť

  FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE -- since his early teens at least -- knowing that he was smarter than most people had been a major source of satisfaction for Harrison Houk. Now, standing with his back pressed again
st the wall of the horse stall in the barn, he knew that for once he had not been smart enough. It was an unusual feeling, and chilling. He thought of that aphorism of southern Utah's hard country -- if you want to be meaner than everybody else without dying young, you have to be smarter than everybody else. More than once Harrison Houk had heard that rule applied to him. He enjoyed the reputation it implied. He deserved it. He had gotten rich in a country where almost everybody had gotten poor. It had made him enemies, the way he had done it. He controlled grazing leases in ways that might not have stood grand jury scrutiny. He bought livestock, and sold livestock under sometimes peculiar circumstances. He obtained Anasazi pots from people who had no idea what they were worth and sometimes sold them to people who only thought they knew what they were getting. He had arranged deals so lopsided that, when daylight hit them, they brought the high councilor of his Latter-day Saints stake down from Blanding to remind him of what was said about such behavior in the Book of Mormon. Even his stake president had written once exhorting him to make things right. But Houk had been smart enough not to die young. He was old now, and he intended to become very, very old. That was absolutely necessary. Things remained for him to do.

  Now more than ever. Responsibilities. Matters of clearing his conscience. He hadn't stopped at much, but he'd never had a human life on his hands before. Not this directly. Never before.

  He stood against the wall, trying to think of a plan. He should have recognized the car more quickly, and understood what it must mean. Should have instantly made the link between the killing of Etcitty and the rest of it. He would have when he was younger. Then his mind worked like lightning. Now the killings had made him nervous. They could have been motivated by almost anything, of course. Greed among thieves. Malice over a woman. God knows what. Almost anything. But the instinct that had served him so well for so long suggested something more sinister. An erasing of tracks. A gathering in of strings. That certainly would involve him, and he should have seen. Nor should he have thought so slowly when he saw the car turning through his gate. Maybe he would have had enough time then to hobble back to the house, to the pistol in his dresser drawer or the rifle in the closet. He could only wait now, and hope, and try to think of some solution. There could be no running for it, not with the arthritis in his hip. He had to think.