The Fallen Man

by Tony Hillerman

  “Yes, sir,” Manuelito said, sounding very formal.

  “I mean it,” Chee said. “I’ll put a letter in your file reporting these instructions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Manuelito said.

  “Now. What’s this transfer request about? What’s wrong with Shiprock? And where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere.”

  That surprised Chee. He’d guessed Manuelito wanted to be closer to a boyfriend somewhere. Or that her mother was sick. Something like that. But now he remembered that she was from Red Rock. By Big Rez standards, Shiprock was conveniently close to her family.

  “Is there something about Shiprock you don’t like?”

  That question produced a long silence, and finally:

  “I just want to get away from here.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a personal reason,” she said. “I don’t have to say why, do I? It’s not in the personnel rules.”

  “I guess not,” Chee said. “Anyway, I’ll approve it.”

  “Thank you,” Manuelito said.

  “That’s no guarantee you’ll get it, though. You know how it works. Largo may kill it. And there has to be the right kind of opening somewhere. You’ll have to be patient.”

  Officer Manuelito was pointing out the window. “Did you notice that?” she asked.

  All Chee saw was the grassland rolling away toward the great dark shape of Ship Rock.

  “I mean the fence,” she said. “There where that wash runs down into the borrow ditch. Notice the posts.”

  Chee noticed the posts, two of which were leaning sharply. He stopped the pickup.

  “Somebody dug at the base of the posts,” she said. “Loosened them so you could pull them up.”

  “And lay the fence down?”

  “More likely raise it up,” she said. “Then you could drive cows down the wash and right under it.”

  “Do you know whose grazing lease this is?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “A man named Maryboy has it.”

  “Has he lost any cattle?”

  “I don’t know. Not lately, anyway. At least I haven’t seen a report on it.”

  Chee climbed out of the truck, plodded through the snow, and tried the posts. They lifted easily but the snow made it impossible to determine exactly why. He thought about Zorro, Mr. Finch’s favorite cow thief.

  Manuelito was standing beside him.

  “See?” she said.

  “When did you notice this?”

  “I don’t know,” Officer Manuelito said. “Just a few days ago.”

  “If I remember right, just a few days ago—and today, too—you were supposed to be running down that list of people at that dance. Looking for anyone willing to tell us about gang membership. About what they saw. Who’d tell us who had the gun. Who shot it. That sort of thing. Is that right? That was number one on the list you were handed after the staff meeting.”

  “Yes, sir,” Officer Manuelito said, proving she could sound meek if she wanted to. She was looking down at her hands.

  “Do any of those possible witnesses live out here?”

  “Well, not exactly. The Roanhorse couple is on the list. They live over near Burnham.”

  “Near Burnham?” The Burnham trading post was way to hell south of here. Down Highway 666.

  “I sort of detoured over this way,” Manuelito explained uneasily. “We had that report that Lucy Sam had lost some cattle, and I knew the captain was after you about catching somebody and putting a stop to that and—”

  “How did you know that?”

  Now Manuelito’s face was a little flushed. “Well,” she said. “You know how people talk about things.”

  Yes, Chee knew about that.

  “Are you telling me you just drove out here blind? What were you looking for?”

  “Well,” she said. “I was just sort of looking.”

  Chee waited. “Just sort of looking?”

  “Well,” she said. “I remembered my grandfather telling me about Hosteen Sam. That was Lucy’s father. About him hating it when white people came out here to climb Ship Rock. They would park out there, over that little rise there by the foot of the cliff. He would write down their license number or what the car looked like and when he went into town he would go by the police station and try to get the police to arrest them for trespassing. So when I was assigned here, and one of the problems worrying the captain was people stealing cattle, I came out here to ask Hosteen Sam if he would keep track of strange pickups and trucks for us.”

  “Pretty good idea,” Chee said. “What did he say?”

  “He was dead. Died last year. But his daughter said she would do it for me and I gave her a little notebook for it, but she said she had the one her father had used. So, anyway, I thought I would just make a little detour by there and see if she had written down anything for us.”

  “Quite a little detour,” Chee said. “I’d say about sixty miles or so. Had she?”

  “I don’t know. I noticed some other posts leaning over and I decided to pull off and see if they had been cut off or dug up or anything else funny. And then I got stuck.”

  It was a clever idea, Chee was thinking. He should have thought of it himself. He’d see if he could find some people to keep a similar eye on things up near the Ute reservation, and over on the Checkerboard. Wherever people were losing cattle. Who could he get? But he was distracted from that thought. His feet, buried to the ankles in the melting snow, were complaining about the cold. And the sun had now risen far enough to illuminate a different set of snowfields high above them on Ship Rock. They reflected a dazzling white light.

  Officer Manuelito was watching him. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “Tse´ Bit´ a´i´. It never seems to look the same.”

  “I remember noticing that when I was a little boy and I was staying for a while with an aunt over near Toadlena,” Chee said. “I thought it was alive.”

  Officer Manuelito was staring at it. “Beautiful,” she said, and shuddered. “I wonder what he was doing up there. All alone.”

  “The Fallen Man?”

  “Deejay doesn’t think he fell. He said no bones were broken and if you’d fallen down that cliff it would break something. Deejay thinks he was climbing with somebody and they just stranded him there.”

  “Who knows?” Chee said. “Anyway, it’s not in the books as anything but an accidental death. No evidence of foul play. We don’t have to worry about it.” Chee’s feet were telling him that his boots were leaking. Leaking ice water. “Let’s go,” he said, heading back for his truck.

  Officer Manuelito was still standing there, staring up at the cliffs towering above her.

  “They say Monster Slayer couldn’t get down either. When he climbed up to the top and killed the Winged Monster he couldn’t get down.”

  “Come on,” Chee said. He climbed into the truck and started the engine, thinking that you’d have a better chance if you were a spirit like Monster Slayer. When spirits scream for help other spirits hear them. Spider Woman had heard and came to the rescue. But Harold Breedlove could have called forever with nothing but the ravens to hear him. The stuff of bad dreams.

  They drove in silence.

  Then Officer Manuelito said, “To be trapped up there. I try not to even think about it. It would give me nightmares.”

  “What?” Chee said, who hadn’t been listening because by then he was working his way around a nightmare of his own. He was trying to think of another reason Janet Pete might have asked him about the Fallen Man affair. He wanted to find a reason that didn’t involve John McDermott and his law firm representing the Breedlove family. Maybe it was the oddity of the skeleton on the mountain that provoked her question. He always came back to that. But then he’d find himself speculating on who had taken Janet to that concert and he’d think of John McDermott again.

  THE FIRST THING JOE LEAPHORN NOTICED when he came through the door was his breakfast dishes awaiting attentio
n in the sink. It was a bad habit and it demanded correction. No more of this sinking into slipshod widower ways. Then he noticed the red light blinking atop his telephone answering machine. The indicator declared he’d received two calls today—pretty close to a post-retirement record. He took a step toward the telephone.

  But no. First things first. He detoured into the kitchen, washed his cereal bowl, saucer, and spoon, dried them, and put them in their place on the dish rack. Then he sat in his recliner, put his boots on the footstool, picked up the telephone, and pushed the button.

  The first call was from his auto insurance dealer, informing him that if he’d take a defensive driving course he could get a discount on his liability rates. He punched the button again.

  “Mr. Leaphorn,” the voice said. “This is John McDermott. I am an attorney and our firm has represented the interests of the Edgar Breedlove family for many years. I remember that you investigated the disappearance of Harold Breedlove several years ago when you were a member of the Navajo Tribal Police. Would you be kind enough to call me, collect, and discuss whether you might be willing to help the family complete its own investigation of his death?”

  McDermott had left an Albuquerque number. Leaphorn dialed it.

  “Oh, yes,” the secretary said. “He was hoping you’d call.”

  After the “thank you for calling,” McDermott didn’t linger long over formalities.

  “We would like you to get right onto this for us,” he said. “If you’re available, our usual rate is twenty-five dollars an hour, plus your expenses.”

  “You mentioned completing the investigation,” Leaphorn said. “Does that mean you have some question about the identification of the skeleton?”

  “There is a question concerning just about everything,” McDermott said. “It is a very peculiar case.”

  “Could you be more specific? I need a better idea of what you’d like to find out.”

  “This isn’t the sort of thing we can discuss over the telephone,” McDermott said. “Nor is it the sort of thing I can talk about until I know whether you will accept a retainer.” He produced a chuckle. “Family business, you know.”

  Leaphorn discovered he was allowing himself to be irritated by the tone of this—not a weakness he tolerated. And he was curious. He produced a chuckle of his own.

  “From what I remember of the Breedlove disappearance, I don’t see how I could help you. Would you like me to recommend someone?”

  “No. No,” McDermott said. “We’d like to use you.”

  “But what sort of information would I be looking for?” Leaphorn asked. “I was trying to find out what happened to the man. Why he didn’t come back to Canyon de Chelly that evening. Where he went. What happened to him. And of course the important thing was what happened to him. We know that now, if the identification of the skeleton is correct. The rest of it doesn’t seem to matter.”

  McDermott spent a few moments deciding how to respond.

  “The family would like to establish who was up there with him,” he said.

  Now this was getting a bit more interesting. “They’ve learned someone was up there when he fell? How did they learn that?”

  “A mere physical fact. We’ve talked to rock climbers who know that mountain. They say you couldn’t do it alone, not to the point where they found the skeleton. They say Harold Breedlove didn’t have the skills, the experience, to have done it.”

  Leaphorn waited but McDermott had nothing to add.

  “The implication, then, is that someone went up with him. When he fell, they abandoned him and didn’t report it. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “And why would they do that?” McDermott asked.

  Leaphorn found himself grinning. Lawyers! The man didn’t want to say it himself. Let the witness say it.

  “Well, let’s see then. They might do it if, for example, they had pushed him over. Given him a fatal shove. Watched him fall. Then they might forget to report it.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And you’re suggesting the family has some lead to who this forgetful person might be.”

  “No, I’m not suggesting anything.”

  “The only lead, then, is the list of those who might be motivated. If I can rely on my memory, the only one I knew of was the widow. The lady who would inherit. I presume she did inherit, didn’t she? But perhaps there’s a lot I didn’t know. We didn’t have a criminal case to work on, you know. We didn’t—and still don’t—have a felony to interest the Navajo Police or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Just a missing person then. Now we have what is presumed to be an accidental death. There was never any proof that he hadn’t simply—” Leaphorn paused, looked for a better way to phrase it, found none, and concluded, “Simply run away from wife and home.”

  “Greed is often the motivation in murder,” McDermott said.

  Murder, Leaphorn thought. It was the first time that word had been used.

  “That’s true. But if I am remembering what I was told at the time, there wasn’t much to inherit except the ranch, and it was losing money. Unless there was some sort of nuptial agreement, she would have owned half of it anyway. Colorado law. The wife’s community property. And if I remember what I learned then, Breedlove had already mortgaged it. Was there a motive beyond greed?”

  McDermott let the question hang. “If you’ll work with this, I’ll discuss it with you in person.”

  “I always wondered if there was a nuptial agreement. But now I’ve heard that she owns the ranch.”

  “No nuptial agreement,” McDermott said, reluctantly. “What do you think? If you don’t like the hourly arrangement, we could make it a weekly rate. Multiply the twenty-five dollars by forty hours and make it a thousand a week.”

  A thousand a week, Leaphorn thought. A lot of money for a retired cop. And what would McDermott be charging his client?

  “I tell you what I’ll do,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll give it some thought. But I’ll have to have some more specific information.”

  “Sleep on it, then,” McDermott said. “I’m coming to Window Rock tomorrow anyway. Why don’t we meet for lunch?”

  Joe Leaphorn couldn’t think of any reason not to do that. He wasn’t doing anything else tomorrow. Or for the rest of the week, for that matter.

  They set the date for one P.M. at the Navajo Inn. That allowed time for the lunch-hour crowd to thin and for McDermott to make the two-hundred-mile drive from Albuquerque. It also gave Leaphorn the morning hours to collect information on the telephone, talking to friends in the ranching business, a Denver banker, a cattle broker, learning all he could about the Lazy B ranch and the past history of the Breedloves.

  That done, he drove down to the Inn and waited in the office lobby. A white Lexus pulled into the parking area and two men emerged: one tall and slender with graying blond hair, the other six inches shorter, dark-haired, sun-browned, with the heavy-shouldered, slim-waisted build of one who lifts weights and plays handball. Ten minutes early, but it was probably McDermott and who? An assistant, perhaps.

  Leaphorn met them at the entrance, went through the introductions, and ushered them in to the quiet corner table he’d arranged to hold.

  “Shaw,” Leaphorn said. “George Shaw? Is that correct?”

  “Right,” the dark man said. “Hal Breedlove was my cousin. My best friend, too, for that matter. I was the executor of the estate when Elisa had him declared legally dead.”

  “A sad situation,” Leaphorn said.

  “Yes,” Shaw said. “And strange.”

  “Why do you say that?” Leaphorn could think of a dozen ways Breedlove’s death was strange. But which one would Mr. Shaw pick?

  “Well,” Shaw said. “Why wasn’t the fall reported, for one thing?”

  “You don’t think he made the climb alone?”

  “Of course not. He couldn’t have,” Shaw said. “I couldn’t do it, and I was a grade or two better at rock climbing than Hal. Nobody could.”

>   Leaphorn recommended the chicken enchilada, and they all ordered it. McDermott inquired whether Leaphorn had considered their offer. Leaphorn said he had. Would he accept, then? They’d like to get moving on it right away. Leaphorn said he needed some more information. Their orders arrived. Delicious, thought Leaphorn, who had been dining mostly on his own cooking. McDermott ate thoughtfully. Shaw took a large bite, rich with green chile, and frowned at his fork.

  “What sort of information?” McDermott asked.

  “What am I looking for?” Leaphorn said.

  “As I told you,” McDermott said, “we can’t be too specific. We just want to know that we have every bit of information that’s available. We’d like to know why Harold Breedlove left Canyon de Chelly, and precisely when, and who he met and where they went. Anything that might concern his widow and her affairs at that time. We want to know everything that might cast light on this business.” McDermott gave Leaphorn a small, deprecatory smile. “Everything,” he said.

  “My first question was what I would be looking for,” Leaphorn said. “My second one is why? This must be expensive, if Mr. Shaw here is willing to pay me a thousand a week through your law firm, you will be charging him, what? The rate for an Albuquerque lawyer I know about used to be a hundred and ten dollars an hour. But that was long ago, and that was Albuquerque. Double it for a Washington firm? Would that be about right?”

  “It isn’t cheap,” McDermott said.

  “And maybe I find nothing useful at all. Probably you learn nothing. Tracks are cold after eleven years. But let us say that you learn the widow conspired to do away with her husband. I don’t know for sure but I’d guess then she couldn’t inherit. So the family gets the ranch back. What’s it worth? Wonderful house, I hear, if someone rich wants to live in it way out there. Maybe a hundred head of cattle. I’m told there’s still an old mortgage Harold’s widow took out six years ago to pay off her husband’s debts. How much could you get for that ranch?”

  “It’s a matter of justice,” McDermott said. “I am not privy to the family’s motives, but I presume they want some equity for Harold’s death.”